2 - The imperative mood and directive force

Summary

In the last chapter, we identified the imperative as a morpho-syntactic structure whose prototypical function is to perform directives. If imperatives were used only to perform directive speech acts, then one could justifiably claim that what they encode is directive force. Life would be simpler and this book much shorter. However, it has been suggested that there is a range of data that indicates that imperatives have a use beyond directive speech acts. In this and the next chapter, we will consider these claims in some depth. In the next chapter, we will look at cases where an imperative is conjoined with a declarative sentence, giving rise to a conditional interpretation. In this chapter, by contrast, we will be concerned with cases where the imperative is used in a single-clause utterance, but, allegedly, lacks directive force. These include, among others, cases where the imperative is used to express good wishes and give advice.

Whether a given use of an imperative is classified as non-directive will depend on how directive force is defined. Before asking whether the imperative has uses beyond the performance of directive speech acts, then, we need to consider what exactly constitutes a directive speech act: perhaps the view that some of the examples considered in this chapter are non-directive is simply a result of an overly restrictive notion of directive illocutionary force. Section 1 of this chapter will therefore consider possible definitions of directive force, before section 2 takes a close look at the range of uses that have been argued to constitute non-directive uses of the imperative. We will show that, in many cases, whether these uses can indeed be considered non-directive depends on how directive speech acts are defined.