Grouping Task

Texts 1, 4 and 6 all use imperatives to achieve the main purposes, which are to persuade and inform. Text 6 is the conditions of use for a First bus ticket and has heavy use of imperatives to achieve it’s purpose, an example of this being ‘PHOTOCARDS must be carried at all times’, which is direct and leaves the statement no room to be worked around and no room for interpretation. This text uses a bald on record face throughout as the firm is not concerned with losing face with the ticket holder as the conditions are set rules that the  holder has to follow, which is emphasized by the use of all-caps on the word ‘photocards’. This is made apparent more so as the text lacks the use of mitigated imperatives, as it would weaken and/or defeat the point of the text as it would have intensity on the condition being met, and does not use cloaked imperatives as it would have no use and only serve to confuse the ticket holder, which would contradict the purpose.

Text 4 differs from text 6 in the type of imperative and face it uses to achieve its purpose, which is to persuade rather than inform. The way text 4 does this is through the use of a cloaked imperative. The text is a transcript of a phone call in which one participant (who is the father of the other participant) and uses a cloaked imperative in saying ‘Get some milk in Lidl on the way home?’ The imperative is cloaked with an interrogative in order to make the participant receiving the request more likely to accept as it gives the recipient the notion that the person asking knows they are imposing on them and that they can refuse even if they have no reason to do so. In contrast, the para-linguistic features of this sample such as the raise in tone at the end of the sentence suggests that the sentence is actually an imperative and the sentence is actually a command dressed up as a question in order to achieve the text purpose, which is even more apparent when you consider that if the asking participant was really trying to avoid losing face, the imperative would have been mitigated as well as cloaked as an interrogative. In addition, the relationship between the two participants (father and son) also suggests that the person asking the question is also banking on their natural authority coming into play in persuading them to fulfill the request. 
Text 1 also heavily relies on the use of imperatives to achieve its purpose primary purpose of persuading. The text is an appeal card from Amnesty International and is appealing to the recipient of the card to sign their name and information on the card as part of an appeal to release a union worker from prison in Bahrain. The front of the card has large, bold and all-caps writing stating ‘Free Mahdi Abu Dheeb’. The imperative used is not mitigated nor cloaked as they would serve little purpose in aiding the purpose of the text. Mitigating this imperative could possibly harm the message of the text as it would sound desperate, make the resolve of freeing the man depicted weaker and make the entire situation sound less important than the text wants the audience to think it is. The imperative used is also very direct with the audience as if to say that they themselves have the ability to free the subject of the appeal and as the audience has voluntarily signed up to receiving these appeal cards, the imperative plays on the audiences humanitarian side in order to convince the audience to sign the card. The imperative uses a bald on record face rather than a positive or negative face as it could give the audience a feeling of authority or strength, which could give an impression that this organisation is capable of doing the things that they appeal to the audience to help them with.