Sentencing: Reflecting on Words and Worlds

Abstract

I want to start this chapter with an evaluation of the sentence

’Bomb their BOAT!’

In the discourse of contemporary grammar, the sentence demonstrates the use of the imperative mood: the writer’s expression of a command, instruction or request (to someone) to do something. In English, this requires the bare infinitive form of the verb (in this case, ‘bomb’), and may also include an object (in this case, ‘boat’). This sentence also includes a possessive pronoun, indicating that the boat belongs to some (unspecified) people. The use of an exclamation mark signifies the rhetorical intensity of the instruction.

A hesitation in the face of difference, which leads to caution before difference and ends in fear of it. Before long, the only voice you recognize, the only life you can empathize with, is your own.

(Zadie Smith 2009, ‘Speaking in Tongues’, New York Review of Books)