Use imperatives.

Holly Taylor

 

If I say "sit down" to someone, it's obvious what I have just done. I've told someone to do something. If I say "let's sit down" you will think of it quite differently. Perhaps because it is less like an order in comparison to the first and more of a suggestion to another person. Either way, these two things fall into the same group called imperatives. Although widely though of as simple commands, there is much more depth. Ordering your sibling to "get out of my room, now!";  instructions of how to bake a cake in a cook book; a teacher asking their students if they could make a line ready to come in from playtime; advising a friend on what to wear. These are all imperative forms but much different in how they are said and received.

 The first being the least polite progression through to the more polite imperatives. Orders require a result, or action. For example military orders aren't made to be polite due to the need to enforce discipline.

Instructions in a cook book are simply lists of minor sentences. They don't need to be polite as their only purpose is to tell someone exactly what to do in the simplest, sharpest way possible.

The most interesting kind of imperatives in my opinion are those used in teaching. Teachers give orders, instructions and suggestions all day to their students. The kinds of imperatives used differ between ages of the students and what the teachers are teaching them. When teaching dancing, we have to use constant imperatives. When teaching young children, deictic language is used as orders, for example "do this", or "watch me and copy".  They are also said in a higher pitch to accommodate the age of the child and how the order may come across.  If we know students are familiar with the names of the moves, we may say "point", this is also only appropriate as the child gets older as they will not take it as a rude order. Although not polite, they are still not the same as those used in the military. It would take far too much time to unnecessarily say "please could you point your foot". But students unconsciously recognise this.

Another interesting way of using imperatives in language is how they say "lets", "shall we" and other similar things. These, although sounding more interrogative, are still imperatives with the function to command someone to do something. If a teacher asks their class "do you all want to go and put your PE kit on?", the teacher doesn't actually want them all to answer her whether they want to go and get ready or not, she just wants them to do it. Similarly they may say to a persistently misbehaving child "shall we go to the head master's office?" This is simply a nicer way of saying "we are going to the head master's office." This language is used more with younger children as it is more encouraging in positive situations and in a negative situation it is less harsh to say it as a suggestion rather than an order.

Lakoff has also investigated into how adding words like 'because', 'even though' and 'if' into imperatives have a greater effect on how they are received.