The Imperative Mood

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My response to questions 2 and 3 in Lawrence Weinstein's and Thomas Finn's Grammar Moves: Shaping Who You Are

Differences can make things interesting in many situations.  Generally, people are different, and their differences make them unique, including their use of a variety of sentences when they communicate. Whether with oral or written language, people's differences can include the use of sentence variety. Some people prefer to use declarative sentences, and others incline to use imperative sentence for difference reasons, such as in urgent and emergency circumstances (24-26).  If normal imperatives can make speakers feel awkward and uncomfortable due to their nature of being authoritative, they can use "gentle imperative" (Weinstein and Finn 26).

From my personal and professional experience, I recalled my last academic assistant provost who freely used imperatives to remind me what I would need to do.  The provost's freestyle of imperatives did not make things easier for me. I became more resistant to her commands even though I did what I was told to. Thus, I rarely use imperatives in life, except with younger ones and my students. 

I recalled a time when I used imperatives freely. This was when I served as an academic director of a language school in Vietnam. My use of imperatives was not widely accepted due to the authoritative nature of imperatives. My subordinates became resistant to the commands until I softened my stance and reworded what I must want my subordinates to use.  For example, I would email my subordinates and tell them to: "report to the meeting on time."   This imperative did not work well for my subordinates because many of them did not respond to the email. In another email, I asked the staff to report to the team's meeting by stating: join me at the next meeting. The email received responses comparing the previous email.

Works Cited

Weinstein, Lawrence, and Finn, Thomas. Grammar Moves: Shaping Who You Are. Longman,

     2011.

Hau

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