In:Imperative Turns at Talk: The design of directives in action
Edited by Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Liisa Raevaara and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 30] 2017
► pp. 1–24
Chapter 1Imperative turns at talk
An introduction
Published online: 18 August 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.30.01sor
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.30.01sor
Article outline
- 1.Prior research
- 2.Profile of the volume
- 3.Imperative turns: Conceptual issues
- 3.1Variation in imperative forms
- Morphological vs. syntactic marking
- Singular vs. plural marking
- Familiar vs. formal (T/V) marking
- Aspect
- 3.2Imperatives in their turns
- 3.3Pragmatic dimensions of directive situations
- The participation framework
- The relation of the nominated action to the on-going activity
- The degree of immediacy or urgency of the action nominated
- The deontic rights and responsibilities of the participants
- 3.4Imperative turns, actions, and sequences
- 3.1Variation in imperative forms
- 4.Structure of the volume
- Author queries
Notes References
References (38)
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper (eds). 1989. Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Craven, Alexandra, and Jonathan Potter. 2010. “Directives: Entitlement and Contingency in Action.” Discourse Studies 12 (4): 419–442.
Drew, Paul, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen. 2014. “Requesting – From Speech Act to Recruitment”. In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 1–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fox, Barbara A. 2007. “Principles Shaping Grammatical Practices: An Exploration.” Discourse Studies 9 (3): 299–318.
Fukushima, Saeko. 2000. Requests and Culture. Politeness in British English and Japanese. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Goffman, Erving. 1979. “Footing.” Semiotica 25: 1–29. Reprinted in Forms of Talk (1981), by Erving Goffman, 124–159. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goodwin, Charles. 2007. “Interactive Footing”. In Reporting talk. Reported Speech in Interaction, ed. by Elizabeth Holt, and Rebecca Clift, 16–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness. 2000. “Participation”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9 (1–2): 177–181.
Goodwin, Charles, and Marjorie Harness Goodwin. 2004. “Participation”. In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, 222–244. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Kendrick, Kobin H., and Paul Drew. 2016. “Recruitment: Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1): 1–19.
Kent, Alexandra, and Kobin H. Kendrick. 2016. “Imperative Directives: Orientations to Accountability.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (3): 272–288.
Kärkkäinen, Elise, and Tiina Keisanen. 2012. “Linguistic and Embodied Formats for Making (Concrete) Offers.” Discourse Studies 14 (5): 587–611.
Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2000. Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A Contrastive Study of Requests and Apologies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Mondada, Lorenza. 2011. “The Situated Organization of Directives in French: Imperatives and Action Coordination in Video Games.” Nottingham French Studies 50 (2): 19–50.
Ogiermann, Eva. 2009. “Politeness and Indirectness Across Cultures. A Comparison of English, German, Polish and Russian Requests.” Journal of Politeness Research 5 (2): 189–216.
Rossi, Giovanni. 2012. “Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives and Mi X? Interrogatives in Italian.” Discourse Processes 49 (5): 426–458.
Salgado, Elizabeth Flores. 2011. The Pragmatics of Requests and Apologies: Developmental Patterns of Mexican Students. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Searle, John. 1975. “Indirect Speech Acts”. In Syntax and Semantics Vol. 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and J. L. Morgan, 59–82. New York: Academic Press. Reprinted in Pragmatics: A Reader, ed. by S. Davis (1991), 265–277. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stevanovic, Melisa. 2011. “Participants’ Deontic Rights and Action Formation: The Case of Declarative Requests for Action.” Interaction and Linguistic Structures 52. ([URL])
Stevanovic, Melisa, and Anssi Peräkylä. 2012. “Deontic Authority in Interaction. The Right to Announce, Propose, and Decide.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (3): 297–321.
van der Auwera, Johan, and Ludo Lejeune (with Umarani Pappuswamy, Valentin Goussev). 2013a. “The Morphological Imperative”. In The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, ed. by Matthew S. Dryer, and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. ([URL], Accessed on 2016-05-01.)
van der Auwera, Johan, and Ludo Lejeune (with Valentin Goussev). 2013b. “The Prohibitive”. In The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, ed. by Matthew S. Dryer, and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. ([URL], Accessed on 2016-05-01.)
van der Auwera, Johan, Nina Dobrushina, and Valentin Goussev. 2013. “Imperative-Hortative Systems”. In The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, ed. by Matthew S. Dryer, and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. ([URL], Accessed on 2016-05-01.)
Vine, Bernadette. 2004. Getting Things Done at Work: The Discourse of Power in Workplace Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1985. “Different Cultures, Different Languages, Different Speech Acts: Polish vs. English.” Journal of Pragmatics 9: 145–178.
. 2003. Cross Cultural Pragmatics. The Semantics of Human Interaction. Second edition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Cited by (12)
Cited by 12 other publications
Keevallik, Leelo, Emily Hofstetter & Jan Lindström
2025. Linguistic and other vocal resources of instructing bodies. Interactional Linguistics 5:1-2 ► pp. 1 ff.
Ma, Xiaoxin, Wen Ma & Shuai Zhang
Suomalainen, Karita
2025. Second-person singular imperatives in Finnish everyday conversations. In Grammar in Action [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 37], ► pp. 264 ff.
Riou, Marine, Karim Tazarourte, Delphine Hugenschmitt, Christian Di Filippo & Pierre-Yves Gueugniaud
Weiser-Zurmühlen, Kristin
Pekarek Doehler, Simona, Hilla Polak-Yitzhaki, Xiaoting Li, Ioana Maria Stoenica, Martin Havlík & Leelo Keevallik
Betz, Emma, Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm & Peter Golato
2020. Mobilizing others. In Mobilizing others [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 33], ► pp. 1 ff.
Muntigl, Peter, Adam O. Horvath, Lynda Chubak & Lynne Angus
Stevanovic, Melisa
2020. Mobilizing student compliance. In Mobilizing others [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 33], ► pp. 115 ff.
Taleghani-Nikazm, Carmen, Veronika Drake, Andrea Golato & Emma Betz
2020. Mobilizing for the next relevant action. In Mobilizing others [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 33], ► pp. 47 ff.
Thompson, Sandra A. & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
2020.
English why don’t you X as a formulaic
expression. In Fixed Expressions [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 315], ► pp. 99 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
