A survey of emotion theories and their relevance to language research.

Abstract

The topics of language and emotion are studied by very different scientific disciplines, of which their respective members rarely interact. At the same time, the everyday use of language, whether colloquial or professional, is richly intertwined with, and dependent on, emotion. This suggests that it will be useful for language researchers to at least have a feel for what is going on in emotion research. This chapter provides an overview of current trends in emotion science for language researchers, so that they will be in a better position to consider, design, interpret, or discuss research at the intersection of these two fields. After explaining why emotion science is relevant to language research, I discuss four currently influential views on emotion: the basic emotions perspective, the motivational perspective, the component process model, and the psychological construction perspective. Next, I define a metamodel of emotion to highlight what these views have in common, as well as where they differ. I end by proposing a research agenda for affective language science. Although having an interface with emotion is not what makes language ‘special’, understanding emotion may well help language research advance.