24.

ASSERTING, EMPHASIZING AND OBJECTING

In our daily basis, as human beings, we interact with our counterparts by

using language. Words, and therefore sentences, express our feelings and

emotions, beliefs and despair; by using language, we can emphasize an idea,

show our opinion or even our disagreement, or object to something. Therefore,

language helps us to interact and communicate with the others.

In this topic, I will first examine what assertion means going through the

different assertive and nonassertive forms. Secondly, I will focus on

emphasizing and how it can be carried out with the different means we have at

our disposal. Finally, I will discuss what objection means and how it can be

expressed through different ways.

Before moving to on deal with assertion, I would like to present Searle’s

Speech Act Theory, which is closely related to the notions I am going to deal

with in this topic. One of the most widely used taxonomies of speech act types

is that proposed by Searle (1976). There are 5 types of general functions

performed by speech acts:

 Directives (Requests). Those speech acts that speakers use to get

someone else to do something. They are commands, orders, requests,

suggestions; positive or negatives. Some verbs include: suggest,

prohibit, order… for example: “Don´t touch that!” The imperative and

polite imperative are usually taught in foreign language teaching. The

relationship between the roles of the speaker and addressee act as a

 constraint and if these constraints are ignored or unknown, offence may

be taken.

 Commissives. Those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit

themselves to some future action. They express what the speaker

intends. They are promises, threats, refusals, pledges… Commissives

are also language and culture bound differing across status, situation

and according to some gender. Some verbs used are: guarantee, swear,

promise…. An example is: “I’ll be back”

 Representatives. A speaker expresses his/her belief that the

propositional content of the utterance is true so modality is an important

element here. He may express an attitude of belief using several types of

acts: asserting, predicting, describing, advising... Some verbs include:

affirm, advice, suggest… for example: “the earth is flat”.

 Expressives. Also called “evaluatives”, they are utterances that have an

expressive function, stating what the speaker feels. They express

psychological states and can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes,

dislikes, joy or sorrow. They are about the speaker’s experience. Some

verbs include: greet, apologise, compliment… for example,

“Congratulations!” Many of the stereotypes regarding cultures are bound

up with expressives.

 Declaratives/ Performatives. The issuer informs objectively about the

external reality or about his/her ideas about it. They, when uttered, bring

about a new state of being, for example when a priest says, “I pronounce

you man and wife” the status of the couple changes. The person who

utters it must have the power to do so.

 Assertions are to be found within the representative speech acts,

whereas emphasis and objection are to be found within the expressive type.

Once my division is clear, let me start with assertion. In order to fully

understand the importance of assertion, it is important to remember that the

three major sentence types in English are declaratives, interrogatives and

imperatives. These terms are typically used for syntactic categories and thus

the sense of a declarative, interrogative and imperative sentence is respectively

a statement, a question and a command. We can say that from the syntactic

point of view we have declarative sentences; from the semantic, statements;

and from the pragmatic, assertion.

The notion of assertion has been described as a matter of describing with

conviction or emphasis. Grammatically speaking, assertion is related to the

notions of positive and declarative sentences, but with respect to their function

in communication, the main function of assertives is to make statements. On the

contrary, the notion of non-assertion is related grammatically to the notions of

negative and interrogative sentences. In general terms, it can be said that there

is a close connection between questions and negation, since both constructions

need an operator. Even Yes-No questions demand from the addressee a choice

between a positive and a negative statement. Let’s see an example: “Do Gran

Hermano contestants get any money from selling their intimacies on TV? Yes

they do/No they don´t”. From this example it can be seen that Yes-No questions

are also related to negation through their association with certain words called
non-assertive forms like: any, anybody, anything, ever, yet. Assertive forms

include items such as some, somebody, something, sometimes, already etc.

Together with assertive and non-assertive forms, there are also some negative

forms like no, nobody, nothing, never.

Once the concept of assertion is clear, let me mention the most common

assertive items. We can name a number of assertive and non-assertive items

that are to be drawn form different grammatical categories:

 We may find verb which may be assertive (affirm, state, agree, inform,

report) or non-assertive (disagree, refuse, deny). In the same way, we

may find nouns derived from the previous verbs, which can also be

assertive (affirmation, information, agreement) or non-assertive

(disagreement, refusal, denial). Adjectives can also be assertive or non-

assertive (accepted Vs. refused; full Vs. empty). The same happens with

adverbs (always Vs. never; already Vs yet).

 We may mention prepositions with a certain assertive or non-assertive

meaning (in Vs out; on Vs off); conjunctions (and Vs but; moreover Vs

however); indefinite articles (some Vs any); indefinite pronouns

(somebody Vs anybody; something Vs anything); non-count pronouns

(each Vs neither), etc.

One of the features that differentiate negative from affirmative clauses is

the fact that they are followed by non-assertive items. On some occasions,

there is a choice between verb negation and negation by some other element.
 She isn’t any good / She is no good

I won’t come ever again / I will never come again

Like negative statements, questions will replace any assertive forms with

their non-assertive equivalents.

I have already done my homework. Have you done yours yet?

However it is possible to find questions with a positive orientation, in

which the expected answer is positive. This is usually conveyed by means of

assertive items.

Did someone ask for me? (I think someone did)

Non-assertive items tend to occur in all contexts where the truth of the

proposition is not definite, or where a certain degree of subjectivity or

uncertainty is implied. This is the reason why negatives and interrogatives are

typical environments for non-assertive forms, but a number of contexts tend to

favour them as well. They include:

 Conditional clauses: they are like questions in implying uncertainty. They

are either neutral in their expectation or biased towards a negative

response. She always carries a lighter in case anyone needs it //

Parada said to Carmen Sevilla “if you ever phone me again, I will call the

police”
  Putative should clauses convey the notion of a situation which is

recognized as possibly existing or coming into existence; the non-

factuality is highlighted when used within a conditional clause.

I’d be surprised if he should ever pass the exam

 Comparative clauses carry some non-assertive force, as in She is too

old to do any job // Massiel drinks Whisky more than any other drink

 After some words such as unlikely, fail…

It’s unlikely that she has any money / she failed to notice any danger

 Ssome nonassertive expressions are used to give emotive intensification

to negations: by any means, a bit, in the least, at all. Negative

determiners and pronouns are emphasized by at all and whatsoever

“Farruquito had no idea at all”.

Assertive and Nonassertive forms being explained let me move onto

Emphasis. To start with, emphasis is defined as the force or stress laid on a

word or words to make its significance clear, or to show the value or special

importance of something. The notion of emphasis is to be found within the

expressive function. Grammatically speaking, the notion of emphasis is related

to the notions of declarative sentences, imperative sentences and exclamatory

sentences. Let’s see some ways of expressing emphasis:

 End-focus, which means that the last element in the sentence is the most

prominent. Victoria says that Madrid smells to GARLIC

 Stress, rhythm, and intonation.

 Interjections. Oh, no. I can’t believe it!

 Certain parts of the sentence may be given emphasis by moving them to

the front part of the sentence. At the disco Ana met Beckham

 Subject-verb inversion. Here are your books

 By means of certain grammatical structures and idiomatic expressions

involving inversion. Not a word did he say Hardly had I

finished when he came

 By means of clef-sentences and pseudo-cleft sentences. It was this

news that appears in the newspaper // What television is doing is giving

fame to non-professional people

 By means of repletion or reiteration. Jennifer Aniston was much much

prettier than Angelina.

 By means of rhetorical and exclamatory questions. They are very

common in daily speech whenever we express our feelings. They come

from the inside of a person, and therefore they demand a variation of

tone from the speaker Isn’t she beautiful!

 By means of exclamatory structures, such as What / How a…; such / so

a…, etc

Marujita Díaz said when she met Dinio for the first time “What a hot guy”

to what Dinio replied in his mind “How much money I´m going to get

from you!”.

 Persuasive sentences, which are affirmative imperative sentences with

a stressed do form in front of the verb. Do come if you dare!

  Intensifiers also emphasize and modified the sentence in which they

appear. Intensifiers express some kind of degree. Many degree adverbs

and other expressions intensify the meaning of the word they modify:

Very good indeed // Dinio is an absolute fool!

It is worthwhile mentioning that there are also two kinds of Intensifiers:

amplifiers and downtoners. On the one hand, amplifiers intensify

upwards the word they accompany. They usually appear in mid-position

when modifying verbs but end position is also possible.

Carmen Sevilla regretted not calling Parada profoundly

However, when modifying adjectives or adverbs, amplifiers usually

precede them Kate Moss was slightly high when the police found

her

On the other hand, downtoners scale downwards the word they

accompany. They usually modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs,

scaling down their meaning.

Studying for the oposiciones depressed me a little bit!

To finish with emphasis I would like to point out that teaching how to

express emphasis is very important since it is a very useful and necessary

device in our daily speech. We should make our students be aware of how

important it is to use different tones when speaking so that our speech becomes
livelier, and how to vary the structures we use depending on the meaning we

want to convey.

After dealing with the expression of assertion and emphasis, I am going

to move on to the last part of the topic, dealing with the expression of objection.

Objection is a semantic element which shows the disagreement or disapproval

of the speaker to what has been said before. The same as emphasis,

disagreement is also a quite common phenomenon present in our daily lives.

On a daily basis, we have to express different views or opinions. In English, as

well as in the rest of languages, there are some rules on speech that we have to

follow so that we do not offend our interlocutor; we have to start from the idea

that everybody´s opinion is equally valid. Therefore, in class apart from teaching

our students about how to disagree with people in English, we should teach

them some polite ways of doing so, and maybe some cultural notions so that

they do not sound rude.

Disagreement has to be carried out in a proper way so that we do not

hurt anybody´s sensibility (tactful disagreement). In this sense, the best way to

show our denial would be by introducing our sentence with an apology or by

adjusting to the speaker´s point of view. In that way, when dealing with

disagreement in class, we should teach our students fixed expressions such as

“I see your point but…”, “I´m afraid I disagree with you” etc. so that students can

learn them by heart. However, when introducing disagreement, we should warn

our students about the importance of not translating directly from Spanish since
by saying “Yo no estoy de acuerdo” they would say “I am not agree” and that is

incorrect because the verb “to agree” does not collocate with to be.

All in all, language is one of the most valuable treasures that human

beings have. Thanks to language we can communicate with the others

expressing our feelings and emotions, beliefs and despair; by using language,

we can show, as seen throughout this topic, our opinion, emphasize an idea, or

even our disagreement.

Let’s see some ways of expressing disagreement:

 With positive statements such as “I don’t agree with you”, “I’m afraid you

are wrong…”

 With negative statements. Tomorrow isn’t Friday

 With short answers. No, it isn’t. Certainly not

 By introducing the construction BUT. I know English is difficult but It is

easier than German

 By means of formal expressions such as “I can’t go along with that” or “I

wholly and fully disagree”

 By means of idiomatic expressions and swear words. Rubbish! No

way! That’s ridiculous!

To sum up, throughout this topic I have dealt with the expression of

assertion, emphasis and objection. As a final word I would like to point out that

some of the structures presented in this topic may be difficult for our students,
as they are either too formal or too idiomatic. It is important however, to

introduce them in the class, taking into account the necessities of our pupils and

the situations in which these expressions may be needed.