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

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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 8 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.