Jonathan Thuresson
INQ Spot 4
English 1102
20 November 2014
Inspired by INQ Note 8
Sentences With the Purpose of Motivating
A sentence is everything that is written or said between a capitalized letter
and a dot, exclamation mark or question mark. A sentence is constructed with the
context of subjects, predicates, clauses, phrases and modifiers. What the
components of a sentence do is they build the sentence purposes. The purpose to
educate, inform or motivate.
A sentence with a motivational purpose might be argued to be the hardest
one to compose, but at the same time it might be the most powerful sentence to read
or hear when it is composed correctly and when its purpose is achieved.
In the book “How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One” by Stanley Fish,
the author discloses that he belongs "to the tribe of sentence watchers," and shares
his passion and learning through a collection of example. Mr. Fish makes an
interesting point in the book when he says that the context of a sentence should be
paired with purpose, in order for it to be a good sentence. He says:
“People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a
sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved”
(Fish, p.37).
The fascination behind sentences with the purpose to motivate is that, when
achieved, they have an ability to create a world or reality that the reader is willing to
believe and accept. The created world or reality does not necessarily have to be
truthful, as its purpose is to manipulate the perception of reality for the reader to a
more obtainable one.
The desired effect of motivational sentences is to produce motivation for the
reader. A type of motivation that makes achievements seemingly hard or even
impossible at first, actually seem achievable and reasonable. Motivation is a
psychological attribute that triggers an organism to act towards a goal. Motivation
creates, controls and, in some cases, maintains a targeted goal. It is the deciding
factor of the fulfillment of goals into achievements.
Take this sentence by Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was an American
abolitionist and author, as an example of a sentence that creates motivation:
“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems you
could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and
time that the tide will turn.”
The obvious purpose of this sentence is to motivate the reader to hang on, even
when times are hard. Furthermore, the desired effect of this motivational sentence
is to make the reader understand that whenever he or she finds him or herself in a
difficult situation, one needs to hang on and fight through it. What Mrs. Beecher
Stowe does here is she manipulates the world and the reality of the reader to
something more viable. However, a reality where the tide turns when it seems like
you cannot hang on a minute longer, might not be truthful in every situation. There
might be situations where the tide will not turn and when the chance of falling down
is greater than the chance of hanging on. This is when the manipulation of the
readers perceptive kicks in, because if the reader does not realize that the odds are
against his/her favor, then the purpose of the motivational sentence has been
achieved.
A motivational sentence will, however, be more powerful when it is spoken
rather than when it is written. Even though we have the possibility to create more
structuralized sentences when we write, there are additions to a spoken
motivational sentence that contribute to the power more than what structure and
completion can do. These additions are the body language that we use when we
preannounce a motivational sentence. It is the gestures, the faces we make, what we
put emphasis on, pauses and the exaggerations we make when we preannounce a
sentence that contributes to the power of the motivational sentence. Almost none of
these factors can be transferred into the written language – in the end it will just
become a bunch of characters. A dot means a longer pause, a comma means a
slightly shorter pause, an exclamation mark means more emphasis and so forth.
Nevertheless, it is still weak, even though some writers have this possibility to
“create a voice” within a text. When we speak we can, in one single word, with our
emphasis; add appeal, happiness, sarcasm, tenderness, contempt, admiration and
yearning. That possibility does not exist when we write.
In conclusion, there are three ways of dictating the purpose of sentences. By
using the components that build sentences, one can either compose an educating, an
informing or a motivating sentence. Although I have come across the educational
and informational sentences over the course of my education, more than I have
come across motivational sentences, I find motivational sentences more compelling
and interesting. What I believe separates, the motivational sentence from the other
two, and what fascinates me is its capability to manipulate the perception of the
reader or the listener and its competence to make even the most unrealistic
situation seem realistic to the reader or the listener. Such possibilities do not exist
for the educational- or the informational sentence. If a sentence with the purpose to
educate had an unrealistic message it would be telling a lie and the purpose of
educating would be lost. The same goes with the informational sentence which
would be providing false information if it was to contain an unrealistic message.
When motivation is created for the reader or the listener of a motivational
sentence, the purpose of the sentence is achieved and this is something that I
personally have come across a few times in my athletic career as a soccer player. I
have found myself in many situations, and seen even more, where motivational
sentences, creates a world, which is not the world, but the world as it emerges
within a dimension of assessment. The sentence does not have to describe a true
world. All it has to do is manipulate the perception of the reader or the listener so
that an unrealistic scenario seems more realistic because that is when true
motivation is achieved and triggered and when the chance to make the impossible
possible is born. That is, in my perspective, where the power of a motivational
sentences lies.
Nonetheless, it is a fact, that motivational sentences become more powerful
when they are spoken rather than when they are read. A spoken sentence with the
purpose of motivating adds, as previously mentioned, body language,
preannouncement, gestures, emphasis and pauses to the experience of being
introduced to a sentence. These additions can be used in the written language as
well but never to their full extent or their capacity to affect the reader.
Works Cited
Fish, Stanley Eugene. How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. New York:
Harper, 2011. Print.
Beecher Stowe, Harriet. Unknown Work. Web. 17 Nov. 2014:
http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/motivational-quotes.html
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my dear father, Fredrik Thuresson, who gave me a lot of good
perspectives on motivation. His insight on the subject gave the paper depth and I am
happy that he was able to assist me in the process of writing this INQ Spot. I would
also like to thank my close friend Katya Kouzine for proofreading my INQ Spot and
giving me feedback on my writing.