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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

Imperatives and politeness in Dutch

| Radboud University Nijmegen
| Radboud University Nijmegen
| Radboud University Nijmegen
| Radboud University Nijmegen
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.
Keywords: imperative, politeness, requests, experiment, discourse particles
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
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 21 December 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.33.04hoo
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