The language of emotions: An analysis of a semantic field

Abstract

This paper uses a theory of the emotions to motivate a semantic analysis of English words referring to emotions. The theory assumes that emotions have a two-fold communicative function, both externally amongst members of the species, and internally within the brain so as to bypass complex inferences. It implies that there is a small number of basic signals that can set up characteristic emotional modes within the organism, roughly corresponding to happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. In human beings, these modes can be modulated by the propositional content of the cognitive evaluation that caused the emotion signal, or else, if this content fails to impinge on consciousness, these modes can be experienced as emotions that have occurred for no apparent reason. According to this “communicative” theory, there should be a set of terms that refer to basic emotions, and these terms should have no internal semantics, since they cannot be analysed into anything more basic, such as a prototype or a set of semantic features. Other terms should refer to states that combine a basic emotion with a propositional content. Finally, the theory implies that any emotional term should devolve upon one of the five basic emotion modes, or some subset of them, and that there will be no need to invoke any other emotional states. These predictions were borne out by the semantic analysis of 590 emotion words.