The article is devoted to studying imperative, one of the basic communicative constructs in the languages of different structures - Russian and English. The research objectives are as follows: to prove that imperative and means of its linguistic representation are insufficiently investigated within the framework of traditional linguistics and to justify relevance of the cognitive aspect. Scientific originality of the paper involves analysing the existing approaches to studying the imperative category and its linguistic representation including connected with its secondary comprehension. Imperative is considered as a system of knowledge and is examined through the lens of different linguistic approaches with their own peculiarities. Relying on the conducted analysis, the researcher identifies means to represent the imperative category. However, there are some other means to transfer imperative in speech, for example, secondary structures, which are still insufficiently investigated. The research findings are as follows: the author proves that different approaches to understanding the imperative category supplement each other, but only the cognitive approach makes it possible to conduct a comprehensive analysis of imperative as a system of conceptual and linguistic knowledge.