Language comprehension and emotion: where are the interfaces, and who cares?

Abstract

When you hear somebody speak, or read a bit of text, you are somehow assigning meaning to an unfolding sequence of signs. Because of the representational and computational complexity involved, this process of language interpretation is considered to be one of the major feats of human cognition. However, you also happen to be just another mammal, and as such you are biologically predisposed to have emotions, evaluations, and moods, i.e., to feel certain things about your environment. How do these two acts of assigning meaning relate to one another? And what are the implications for neurolinguistics, the endeavour to understand how the brain realizes language use? After examining why emotion is not naturally foregrounded in language processing research, I review some basic insights in emotion science, discuss a processing model of affective language comprehension, and explore how the model can contribute to neurolinguistics and other fields.