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The influence of emotional valence on the interpretation of expressive adjectives

 | Ruhr-Universität Bochum
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Abstract
Pure expressive adjectives (EAs) (e.g., damn) convey a negative speaker attitude toward a discourse referent and display interpretational flexibility, often targeting elements beyond their syntactic sister. The speech-act hypothesis treats EAs as quasi-independent, non-at-issue speech acts whose target is pragmatically inferred. We propose that ‘contextual valence’ — the perceived positivity or negativity of discourse referents — is a key factor in EA interpretation. Study 1 (English) shows that EAs are significantly more likely to target negatively valenced referents, though this effect interacts with EA-placement. Study 2 (German) extends this framework to mixed EAs (e.g., shitty), whose descriptive content negativizes the local referent and thereby biases for local readings. However, non-local interpretations become more likely when additional contextual cues support a more negative evaluation of the non-local referent. Taken together, these findings show that valence systematically guides EA interpretation and provide a unified explanation for a range of previous experimental results and theoretical argumentations.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Study 1: Influence of contextual referent valence on the interpretation of pure EAs
    • 2.1Method
    • 2.2Items
    • 2.3Hypotheses
    • 2.4Participants
    • 2.5Data exclusion
    • 2.6Results
    • 2.7Discussion
  • 3.Study 2: Influence of contextual valence on the interpretation of mixed EAs
    • 3.1Method
    • 3.2Items
    • 3.3Hypotheses
    • 3.4Participants
    • 3.5Data Exclusion
    • 3.6Results
    • 3.7Discussion
  • 4.Applying valence to prior research on EA-interpretation
    • 4.1Valence and the Culprit-Hypothesis
    • 4.2Valence and syntactic EA-interpretation
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Data availability
  • Ethics and consent
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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