Part of
Emotion in Language: Theory – research – applicationEdited by Ulrike M. Lüdtke
[Consciousness & Emotion Book Series 10] 2015
► pp. 157–174
Edited by Ulrike M. Lüdtke
[Consciousness & Emotion Book Series 10] 2015
► pp. 157–174
Language and emotion
The cognitive linguistic perspective
In this article, the relationship between language and emotion is explained
within the theoretical framework of the critical cognitive linguistic approach.
According to cognitive linguists both emotion and language are seen as complex
mental systems consisting of different knowledge subsystems that interact in
manifold ways. First, the paper discusses some fundamental issues concerning
language, cognition and emotion, giving an outline of some areas of recent
cognitive linguistic research. The focus is on the characterization of emotion
as the evaluative mental system within our cognitive apparatus. Some crucial
methodological and theoretical considerations with regard to the relationship
of language and emotions are outlined. The paper then concentrates on the
analysis of the affective potential in text and discourse. Accounting for the large
range of linguistic features that serve to express emotion and evaluation, it is
shown that feelings and judgments can be conveyed explicitly, through lexical
items and grammatical structures or implicitly, through ideational meanings.
Implicitly conveyed evaluations have to be inferred by drawing specific emotive
implicatures. Such e-implicatures depend on emotional representations that are
based on culturally shaped encyclopedic knowledge. In those cases, the utterance
is articulated in order to give an affective judgment about the referent or
state-of-affairs in question and reveals the attitude of the speaker.
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