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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2016
Edited by Jenny Audring and Sander Lestrade
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 33] 2016
► pp. 41–53

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Imperatives and politeness in Dutch

 | Radboud University Nijmegen
 | Radboud University Nijmegen
 | Radboud University Nijmegen
 | Radboud University Nijmegen
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 21 December 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.33.04hoo
Abstract
Imperatives are usually thought of as direct and therefore impolite. However, imperatives such as Have some coffee, Enjoy your holiday, or Sleep well are not considered impolite. The reason seems to be that these imperatives refer to actions that are beneficial to the hearer only. We make a distinction between two types of imperatives, those referring to actions that are beneficial to the speaker and those that are beneficial to the hearer. We have conducted an experiment in order to examine the relation between the two types of imperatives and how they are perceived by speakers of Dutch. The results show that there is indeed a significant difference in interpretation between the two types of imperatives in Dutch. In addition, we have tested the effects of adding a politeness marker alsjeblieft ‘please’ or discourse particles to the imperatives.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Three hypotheses on the interpretation of imperatives in Dutch
    • 2.1Speaker’s versus hearer’s interest
    • 2.2Adding the politeness marker alsjeblieft ‘please’ to imperatives
    • 2.3Adding discourse particles to imperatives in Dutch
  • 3.The experiment
    • 3.1Methodology
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Materials
      • 3.1.3Pretest
      • 3.1.4Design
      • 3.1.5Procedure
      • 3.1.6Data analysis
    • 3.2Results
    • 3.3Discussion
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
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Perevozchikova, Tatiana
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Mulder, Gijs & Patricia Sánchez Carrasco
2023. Beyond politeness. Linguistics in the Netherlands 40 ► pp. 178 ff. DOI logo
de Hoop, Helen & Gijs Mulder
2022. Claiming common ground with utterance-final particle hoor in Dutch. Linguistics in the Netherlands 39 ► pp. 88 ff. DOI logo

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