The Situated Organisation of Directives in French: Imperatives and Action Coordination in Video Games

Directives realised with imperative verbs have been mainly considered as a rude form, offending the face of the recipient and as being generally used less than other, more indirect, forms, which are considered more polite. As a result, studies focusing on directives produced by using imperative verbs are scarce, and their situated use in specific social actions remains understudied. This paper aims to propose an alternative description of directive turns constructed with imperative verbs: within a conversation analytic perspective, it treats them as instructions which are formatted moment by moment by the participants taking account of the context and the activity in which they are uttered.