Directives

3 Key excerpts on "Directives"

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  eBook - ePub

  Enhancing Communication for Individuals with Autism

  • Howard C. Shane, Emily Laubscher, Ralf W. Schlosser, Holly L. Fadie, James F. Sorce, Jennifer S. Abramson, Suzanne Flynn, Kara Corley(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Brookes Publishing

    (Publisher)

  9

  Directives

  Directives are the fourth communicative function addressed in the Visual Immersion System™ (VIS™). When used expressively, this function allows individuals to guide the actions of others during play, instruction, and everyday routines; as such, it offers an important means of controlling others and the environment. This function also includes a receptive component; the ability to follow Directives is important for personal safety, successful participation in instructional activities and routines of daily living, and more.

  DEFINITION

  Directives are defined in the VIS as follows:

  • Directive: Explicit instructional language used to control the behavior of another. Underlying a directive is an implicit understanding that a specific order or command will be carried out. Directives have both a receptive and expressive role (Shane et al., 2009).

  According to this definition, the intent of a directive is to command or urge a communication partner to perform a specific action. Directives can be either given or received, but in either case they are intended to control others. Directives are most commonly related to the wants and needs of the person issuing the command.

  The Directives used most commonly by individuals with ASD and their mentors fall into four categories (Shane et al., 2009):

  1. Control: Directives that regulate conduct and behavior. The vocabulary that underlies these Directives includes phrases such as stop running, sit down, and be quiet.

  2. Routine-based: Directives that relate to participation in daily routines. The vocabulary that underlies these Directives includes words such as get, open, put away, and hang up.

  3. Instructional: Directives that promote the ability to follow an instruction within an educational, vocational, or other settings where instruction and learning is the focus. The vocabulary that underlies these Directives includes words such as cut, circle, and point.

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  eBook - ePub

  Japanese at Work

  Politeness, Power, and Personae in Japanese Workplace Discourse

  • Haruko Minegishi Cook, Janet S. Shibamoto-Smith, Haruko Minegishi Cook, Janet S. Shibamoto-Smith, Haruko Minegishi Cook, Janet S. Shibamoto-Smith(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  © The Author(s) 2018

  Haruko Minegishi Cook and

  Janet S. Shibamoto-Smith (eds.)

  Japanese at Work Communicating in Professions and Organizations https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63549-1_8

  Begin Abstract

  8. Directives in Japanese Workplace Discourse

  Naomi Geyer

  1   

  (1) Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

   

    Naomi Geyer

  End Abstract

  1 Introduction

  This chapter explores several different forms speaker use when issuing Directives in Japanese workplace discourse. Directives are “utterances designed to get someone to do something” (Goodwin 2006 , 517), including actions such as requests, suggestions, proposals, and so on. Such utterances are ubiquitous in workplace discourse as well as in daily conversations. As such, they are one of the most studied speech acts in the fields of pragmatics and interlanguage pragmatics.

  1.1 Politeness, Power, and Community

  Researchers have adopted several different approaches to Directives touching upon various concepts such as politeness, power, social setting, indirectness, entitlement, and contingency. Among them, a prevalent line of research on Directives and requests is linguistic politeness theory, as represented by Brown and Levinson’s (1987 ) proposal. Brown and Levinson claim that politeness, a manifestation of respect for the interlocutor’s “face (the public self-image),” can be found in various languages, that it supports the orderliness of social interaction, and that it is consequently one of the essential foundations of human social life. A directive, within this framework, is considered a face-threatening act due to the fact that it imposes on the recipient. Researchers have focused on the range of politeness strategies, or special linguistic devices, used to mitigate face threats caused by requests and Directives (e.g., Blum-Kulka 1987 ; Clark and Schunk 1980 ; Craig et al. 1986 ; Francik and Clark 1985 ; Gagne 2010 ; Rinnert and Kobayashi 1999

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  The Language of Everyday Life

  An Introduction

  • Judy Delin(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  has to result in an action. Looking at the utterances themselves, it is often impossible to predict which Directives will result in compliance on any given reading and which will not. It is more straightforward, then, to characterize Directives as having a potential to result in action.

  Directives IN WRITING

  The Directives that are used in speech, and those used in writing, tend to be rather different in form. In this section, we will look briefly at the forms that are found in writing, some of which were exemplified in the discussion of the wok leaflet. In a study of more than a thousand directive utterances in written instructions, Murcia-Bielsa (1999) found four main forms of directive. Nearly 80% of examples were imperatives, such as those exemplified earlier. The next most popular forms were modal verbs: statements with should and must, as in the following examples:

    The bowl should be washed and dried after use and before storage.This instruction book must be kept handy for reference.

  These formed around 15% of examples. Another 5% were what Murcia-Bielsa terms ‘appeals to the reader’, which present the benefits of the action to encourage the reader to comply. These are forms such as we recommend that and it is a good idea to, as in the example below:

    It is a good idea to clean the inside of your fridge after defrosting. A minority of examples, finally, were other kinds of statements, such as the use of the future tense:  

  The minimum height of the cooker will be set at 900mm to the top of the hob.

  Present tense and the passive may also be used:2

   

  … optimum performance is achieved by pre-heating the grill for about one minute.

  In written instructions, then, imperative forms are in the vast majority. It is worth noting, however, that the remainder, although only around 20% of the cases in Murcia-Bielsa’s study, are statements of a range of different kinds. Murcia-Bielsa attributes the choice of the various expressions at least partly to the degree of necessity of the action involved. Directives that are intended as advice or suggestions for best practice, such as we suggest, we advise, we recommend (and forms that don’t name the agent of the recommendation, such as it’s recommended/advisable) relate to less necessary actions, while imperatives and expressions with should, must, have to, and need

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