Does this literary device/technique have a name? (beehaw.org)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by EponymousBosh@beehaw.org to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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So John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats does this thing in some of his lyrics where he'll start a sentence out with a verb as though it's an imperative, but it's from a first-person POV. There's a lot of examples but the song "Counterfeit Florida Plates" is the one that comes to mind first, for me. Is there a technical term for what he's doing here?

EDIT: changed wording to be less ambiguous

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[-] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 8 points 10 months ago

I don't know if there's a name for it as a literary technique, but it's an example of Implied Subject in grammar. In English, we almost always used an implied subject in imperative sentences, but that page offers examples of many other situations we use it, too.

this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024

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