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.
But before I go any further I’d like to mention the bibliography I’ve used in order to
develop this topic:
- Downing, A. and P. Locke. 2002. A University Course in English Grammar.
- Greenbaum, S. 2000. The Oxford Reference Grammar.
- Hymes, D. 1972. On communicative competence.

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

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 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

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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,

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 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:

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  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!

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 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

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 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.

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 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!

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 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.