2015-03-12

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Relevance of emotion for language and linguistics

  • the conceptualization of emotions,
  • the expression of emotions and
  • the grounding of language.
From the expression perspective, it is claimed that the expression of 
emotions takes place on all linguistic levels: phonological, 
morphological, lexical, syntactic, and on the level of figurative 
language use (metaphor and metonymy). 'Grounding' of language in emotion 
means that emotion is one of the preconditions for the functioning of 
language (emotion is part of the embodied grounding) and for its coming 
into existence, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically. 
[@foolen2012relevance]

Relevance of emotion for language and linguistics

Emotions (and colours as well) highlight and sharpen the theoretical and methodological conflicts in semantics, they illustrate how the study of linguistic semantics is influenced by other human science disciplines.

But again, we focus more on (in terms of Semantics) "the meaning of the words by which people discuss and describe emotions".

Relevance of emotion for our social life

Emotive language can be persuative because it "encourages the reader to respond on at emotional level, rather than considering the facts, or it may subtly affect the way reader views the topic.

E.g., a thin person could be described as slender (苗條 positive) or emaciated (乾癟 negative) to affect the way the reader views that person.

The man stood in the corner talking to the girl.

The sleazy man stood in the dark corner talking to the young girl.

In-Class Exercise [1]

舉個中文例子唄

-(染色前) -(染色後)

Linguistic Knowledge for Emotion Studies

情緒對應的語言類型學

  • Lexicon of Emotions
  • Grammar of Emotions
  • Discourse Strategies and Emotions
  • Phonetics of Emotions in Speech
  • Conceptualization of Emotions

What are the linguistic devices displayed in spontaneous discourse concerning emotions, are there particular structures linked to affects in the observed languages and can we establish a typology based on that ?

Linguistic Expressions of Emotions (LEE)

Lexical Semantic Fundamentals

  • Polysemy (thus Ambiguity)
  • Underspecification (e.g., begin, very)
  • Relations (syntagmatic, paradigmatic, logical, association, etc)

複習

Polysemy

A word can have multiple senses in varied contexts

  • 動詞
  • 專有名詞 (國語日報貝多芬)

Sense vs Meaning Facet

連你都不一樣!

  • 你過來一下
  • 你到底愛不愛我
  • 我喜歡的不是這樣的你

公益廣告

Linguistic Expressions of Emotions (LEE)

Event Semantics

  • Event structure of Emotions
  • The subcategorization of emotion: cause-emotion-control-loss of control-behavioral response (K övecses 2003)
Drawing

Linguistic Expressions of Emotions (LEE)

Syntax

On a morphosyntactic level, we like to see

  • what are the predicative patterns favored in affective sentences,
  • what effect they have on transitivity and verb valence since utterances including verbs with emotional meaning often have a low transitivity, and
  • the degree of agentivity, volition and agent control in utterances conveying affects, etc.

Morphologically, it will be interesting as well to take into account the importance of possessive structures in which body parts are often involved, e.g., by making a list of different types of markers found in our corpora : affixes, affective particles, modal markers and verbal tenses that are favored in emotional communication. THE TYPOLOGY OF THE EXPRESSION OF EMOTIONS

要小心的是語言、概念系統與常識之間的剪不斷理還亂

  • 我昨天早上在大安公園裡看到那個小女孩。
  • 他昨天深夜在鐵工廠裡看到那個小女孩。

Caterizations of Emotion/Expressions

First Note from Cultural-Social Perspective

  • 甘え(amae,"emotional dependence") … an emotion that helps people to comply with social values.

the original Chinese ideogram was of a breast on which the baby suckled, which suggests that this emotion involves a lost of separateness, a return to the sense of oneness that fuses mother and child together in the first months of life. (Evans 2003)

  • Note that the distinction between basic emotions and culturally specific emotions is one of degree rather than of kind.

Basic (Universal) Emotions (Paul Ekman)

還是有人認為有基本與普世的情緒

  • Consensus: Joy, Distress, Anger, Fear, Surprise, Disgust1

Drawing

Higher Cognitive Emotions

  • There are not two kinds of emotion, but three: higher cognitive emotions (P.Griffiths).
  • HCE involve much more cortical processing than basic emotions. E.g.,
    love, guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride, envy, jealousy

HCE and Pragmatics

Drawing

In-Class Exercise [2]

語境填空,產生不同的言外之情!

_________ 現在他可樂著呢 ________

In-Class Exercise [3]: Linguistic Approach to Mood Detection

The Case of Happiness

  • What IS happiness? (IS NOT)
  • What Makes us happy? (eating an ice cream, listening to Bach's cantatas, witnessing a beautiful sunset,…)
  • What are the linguistic evidence saying that someone is happy?

Lab session [1]

Lab session [2]

Visualizaing book sentiment

Lab session [3]

Lab session [4]

Annotation platform rpubs

References

Evans, Dylan. 2003. Emotion: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.

K övecses, Zolt án. 2003. Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge University Press.