Page 135 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

'Emotive meaning' is the charge of feeling carried by a particular word in a given utterance or 'text.' It should be distinguished from feeling conveyed more directly by speech gestures and vocal behavior (which are aspects of speech rather than language). There are brief utterances having purely emotive meaning (e.g., exclamations of surprise, anger, pleasure) which nevertheless use words and thus are part of language. Far more commonly, words combine emotive mean- ing with cognitive or 'referential' meaning. Essentially the feeling expressed in a particular word is simple, being either a positive or a negative attitude of the speaker towards his subject matter or his addressee, and varying only in degree, as Hayakawa saw when he wrote of'purr' words and 'snarl' words (Hayakawa
1964: 44-45).
Native speakers' intuitive expertise in 'expressing
themselves' in dual-function words, and in responding to others' expressions, can readily be applied to mak- ing a conscious distinction between the emotive and the cognitive components of meaning in a given utter- ance. To do so it is necessary first to grasp what appears to be the overall import and then to focus on individual words. Usually some relevant alternative words must be brought into consideration, that might have been used instead. This can be illustrated by the joke: 'I am firm. You are obstinate! He is pig-headed!' (attributed to Bertrand Russell; see Hayakawa 1964: 95). Here the cognitive content common to all three judgments is clear, while the emotive meanings of the adjectives are so different (or the range of feeling so wide) as to produce ironic humor.
The term 'emotive' owes its currency to the writings of Ogden and Richards in the 1920s. They always used the phrase 'emotive language,' not 'emotive meaning,' and distinguished two contrasting uses of language, the emotive and the referential (or 'scientific'). They tended to ridicule emotive language, and so far as they
hoped to oust it from certain kinds of texts, the growth of the social sciences since their time has largely pro- duced that result. Nevertheless, no matter how strong the tendency of formal education to promote objective use of language, emotive meaning retains a place: e.g., in the language of public rituals as in churches and law courts; and also wherever personal opinions are acceptable, whether they directly express their feelings (as in personal relations), or record impressions and perceptions (as by a travel writer or a critic of the arts), or express judgments leading to joint action (as in 'political' activity in its widest sense).
Richards (1924) believed that poetry is justifiably emotive language but that literary criticism is not. In the context of this view and of related theories of meaning current before World War II, techniques of 'close reading' were developed. Students of the humanities were taught to scan each word or phrase in a given text (literary or not) to account fully for its contribution, including emotive meaning, to its present context by reference both to elements sur- rounding it in the given text and also to connotations acquired from its past applications. Such 'semantic' analysis is different from 'semantics' as a division of linguistics, which marshals the meaning components of given words apart from any actual text or utterance. Semantic analysis may produce results akin to decon- struction, though resting on a different view of lan- guage and of literature. Close reading is indispensable to both, and also to the assessment of emotive mean- ing.
Bibliography
Hayakawa S I 1964 Language in Thought and Action, 2nd edn. Allen & Unwin, London
Ogden C K, Richards I A 1923 The Meaning of Meaning. Kegan Paul, London
Richards I A 1924 Principles of Literary Criticism. Kegan Paul, London
'Family resemblance' is an expression used by Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations (1958) during a discussion of meaning, particularly con-
cerning the ways that words and concepts apply. While it is doubtful that Wittgenstein saw himself as presenting a general theory based on the notion of
Emotive Meaning O. M. Meidner
Family Resemblance C. Travis
Family Resemblance
113