Imperatives as persuasion strategies in political discourse

Abstract This paper attempts to explore the extent to which imperatives, linguistically manifested in direct commands, attention-getters, and let-constructions, function as persuasion strategies in one of the speeches of President El-Sisi of Egypt. The main objective of this paper is to test the hypothesis that imperatives, irrespective of their type, do not necessarily require a verbal or physical response, as is the case with their ordinary semantic function; however, they go beyond their common semantic functionality towards specific pragmatic purposes, targeting the communication of particular political meanings in discourse. Two main findings are revealed in this paper: first, El-Sisi uses imperatives to motivate his addressees’ pragmatic competence rather than to elicit their verbal performance. Second, the three forms of Arabic imperatives are persuasion strategies employed in the speech to initiate a cognitively communicative channel through which intended meanings are communicated to interlocutors.