I'm writing a short article and now I'm stumped, thought I'd turn to your collective intelligence to help out.
"You must stay for dinner!"
It's not exactly an imperative, I think, because the subtext is something like, "We would be happy if you accepted our hospitality", which implies a request but doesn't command anything. So how might I describe that in a few words? Is it a "friendly offer"? But I'm hoping for something more exact, if there's a linguistic term for this kind of phrase, for example.
Thank you in advance!