Understanding Written Practical Instructions
Studies in English and Italian Multitype Texts

Area 10 – Scienze dell'antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche

Recipes, instructions for use and patient information leaflets are part and parcel of our day-to-day experience. They are ‘genres we live by’, which bring with them a special focus of attention on imperatives and imperative strategies as directive speech acts. This book integrates insights from text linguistics, research into text types and genre studies so as to provide a fresh view on English and Italian recipes, instructions for use and patient information leaflets as members of the prototypical category of written practical instructions and genres on the move. Based on notions such as participant roles, relationships, needs and goals in (a)symmetric communication, future orientation and desire-, goal- and rule-oriented sentential modality, authority of practical validity, competence/accuracy, rational, factual knowledge, and procedural knowledge, the book shows how the fruitful interaction of studies on text, text types, discourse modes and genre, and, on the other hand, imperatives, imperative strategies and speech acts, can contribute to a better characterization of text types and genre conventions (also, generic structure potential) while explaining the pragmatic versatility of imperatives and imperative strategies.

SINTESI