Interpretation of the Imperative Situation in Public Service advertising discourse

Abstract

The article represents the results of the public service advertising texts analysis in Russian with the use of relevant English and German-language texts. The discourse of public advertising less often assumes a direct imperative in contrast to commercial, more often the imperative meaning is only implicated, forcing the recipient to think, presenting prerequisites for independent conclusions, evaluation, building an associative series. As a fragment of the modality category, motivation represents various connotations of modal meanings in the discourse of social advertising. An imperative situation, being a special type of modality, can be directly an act of will expression. The categorical imperative semantics is represented in the relevant imperative forms. The implicit variety of non-categorical imperative is presented with the help of a future indicative, questions about the realization of a possibility, forms of the subjunctive mood that represent the modality of a possibility, modal verbs of different semantics, forms of the infinitive. Additional connotations of meanings are revealed, due to the presence in one or another language of unique forms that do not have an equivalent in another language.