In:Emotion in Discourse
Edited by J. Lachlan Mackenzie and Laura Alba-Juez
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 302] 2019
► pp. 3–26
Chapter 1Emotion processes in discourse
Published online: 27 March 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.302.01alb
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.302.01alb
Abstract
This chapter contextualizes the book as a whole, surveying the study of emotion in discourse and presenting our own view and definition of the phenomenon. We show how functional, cognitive and social linguistic approaches to discourse analysis, in what is labeled the ‘emotional turn’, have ceased to ignore the affective functions of language. This redirection of research has been partly inspired by Appraisal Theory’s interest in identifying the evaluative component of many forms of discourse. But across the social sciences, scholars are recognizing the essential role of emotional phenomena. This has spawned multiple interdisciplinary studies, which bring together students of the mind, social interaction and, crucially for this volume, language, and deliver a better understanding of the psychological, interactional and social processes triggered by emotions. The chapter ends with a brief summary of the remaining thirteen chapters, showing how they together rise to the challenge of identifying the role of emotion in discourse.
Article outline
- 1.Linguistic approaches to emotion
- 1.1Main research questions motivating this work
- 1.2Emotion as a discourse-pragmatic phenomenon
- 2.Emotion processes in discourse: towards a definition
- 2.1The terms used
- 2.2Emotion as state or as process?
- 2.3Our approach to emotion in discourse
- 2.3.1Our definition
- 3.The sections and chapters in this book
Notes References
References (80)
Alba-Juez, Laura. 2017. “Evaluation in the Headlines of Tabloids and Broadsheets: A Comparative Study.” In Evaluation in Media Discourse: European Perspectives, ed. by Ruth Breeze & Inés Olza, 81‒119. Berlin: Peter Lang.
. 2018. “Emotion and Appraisal Processes in Language: How Are They Related?” In The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction, ed. by María de los Ángeles Gómez González & J. Lachlan Mackenzie, 227‒250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Alba-Juez, Laura & Tatiana Larina (eds.). 2018. The Discourse of Emotions. Special Issue on Language and Emotion of the Russian Journal of Linguistics 22 (1).
Alba-Juez, Laura & J. Lachlan Mackenzie. 2016. Pragmatics: Cognition, Context and Culture. Madrid: McGraw Hill.
Alba-Juez, Laura & Elena Martínez Caro. 2017. “Estudio comparativo de la ‘insubordinación’ en inglés y en español, con especial énfasis en su función expresiva.” Presentation given at the XLVI Simposio Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística. Madrid, January 24‒27, 2017.
Alba-Juez, Laura & Geoff Thompson. 2014. “The Many Faces and Phases of Evaluation.” In Evaluation in Context, ed. by Geoff Thompson & Laura Alba-Juez, 3‒23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Andor, József. 2018. “Reflections on Discourse and Knowledge: An Interview with Teun van Dijk.” International Review of Pragmatics 10. 109‒146.
Arnold, Magna. 1960. Emotion and Personality: Vol. 1: Psychological Aspects. New York: Columbia University Press.
Batson, C. Daniel, Laura L. Shaw & Kathryn C. Oleson. 1992. “Differentiating Affect, Mood, and Emotion: Toward Functionally-Based Conceptual Distinctions.” Review of Personality and Social Psychology 13: 294‒326.
Bekoff, Marc. 2007. The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy ‒ and Why They Matter. Novato, CA: New World Library.
Böhme, Gernot. 2014. “The Theory of Atmospheres and Its Applications.” Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts 15: 92‒99.
Bosque, Ignacio. 2010. “Aspectos individuales y sociales de las emociones. Sobre la noción de ‘vergüenza’ y sus variantes.” Páginas de Guarda 10: 13‒27.
. 2016. Interview for the Emo-Fundett MOOC on language and emotion. July 2016, Canal UNED: [URL].
Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987 [1978]. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper, Jonathan, Gila Schauer, Leyla Marti, Meilian Mei & Minna Nevala. 2014. “Impoliteness and Emotions in a Cross-Cultural Perspective.” SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 30: 67‒88.
Darwin, Charles. 1872. The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray. Pdf available at: [URL]
Davidson, Richard J., Klaus R. Scherer & H. Hill Goldsmith (eds.). 2003. Handbook of Affective Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dingemanse, Marc 2011. The meaning and use of ideophones in Siwu. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen.
Downing, Angela & Elena Martínez Caro (this volume). “Interjections and Emotions: The Case of gosh.”
Ekman, Paul. 1972. “Universals and Cultural Differences in Facial Expressions of Emotions.” In Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, ed. by James K. Cole, 207‒283. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
. 2003. Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life. Revised Edition. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Ellsworth, Phoebe C. & Klaus R. Scherer. 2003. “Appraisal Processes in Emotion.” In Handbook of the Affective Sciences, ed. by H. Hill Goldsmith, Richard J. Davidson & Klaus R. Scherer, 572–595. New York: Oxford University Press.
Escandell-Vidal, Victoria. 2017. “Expectations in Interaction.” In Pragmemes and Theories of Language Use, ed. by Keith Allan, Alessandro Capone & Istvan Kecskes, 493‒503. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Evans, Nicholas. 2007. “Insubordination and its uses.” In Finiteness: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations, ed. by Irina Nikolaeva, 366‒431. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foolen, Ad. 2012. “The Relevance of Emotion for Language and Linguistics.” In Moving Ourselves, Moving Others. Motion and Emotion in Intersubjectivity, Consciousness and Language, ed. by Ad Foolen, Ulrike M. Lüdtke, Timothy P. Racine & Jordan Zlatev, 349‒368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2016. “Expressives.” In The Routledge Handbook of Semantics, ed. by Nick Riemer, 473‒490. London & New York: Routledge.
Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. 2010. “Can there be a Pragmatic Theory for the Entire World?” Plenary talk given at the 4th International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics and Communication. Madrid, 15–17 November 2010.
Grossberg, Lawrence. 1992. We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture. New York: Routledge.
Harding, Emma J., Elizabeth S. Paul & Michael T. Mendl. 2004. “Animal Behaviour: Cognitive Bias and Affective State.” Nature 427 (6972): 312.
Izard, Carroll E. 1980. “Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Emotion and Emotion Communication.” In Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology, ed. by Harry C. Triandis & Walter Lonner, 185‒221. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Kaplan, David. 1999. “The Meaning of ‘ouch’ and ‘oops’: Explorations in the Theory of Meaning as Use.” 2004 version. Ms. Los Angeles: University of California.
Larina, Tatiana. 2015. “Culture-Specific Communicative Styles as a Framework for Interpreting Linguistic and Cultural Idiosyncrasies.” In International Review of Pragmatics, Vol. 7 (5). Special Issue: Communicative Styles and Genres: 195‒215.
Levinson, Stephen C. 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press.
Lüdtke, Ulrike M. 2015. “Introduction: From Logos to Dialogue.” In Emotion in Language, ed. by Ulrike M. Lüdtke, vii–xi. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Majid, Asifa. 2012. “Current Emotion Research in the Language Sciences.” Emotion Review 4 (4): 432‒443.
Martin, James R. & Peter R. R. White. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Myers-Schultz, Blake, Maia Pujara, Richard C. Wolf & Michael Koenighs. 2013. “Inherent Emotional Quality of Human Speech Sounds.” Cognition and Emotion 27 (6): 1105‒1113.
Ogarkova, Anna, Cristina Soriano & Anna Gladkova. 2016. “Methodological Triangulation in the Study of Emotion: The Case of ‘Anger’ in Three Language Groups.” Review of Cognitive Linguistics 14 (1): 73‒101.
Ortony, Andrew & Terence J. Turner. 1990. “What’s Basic about Emotions?” Psychological Review 97 (3): 315‒331.
Ott, Brian L. 2017. “Affect.” In the Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Communication (communication.oxfordre.com). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parr, Lisa A. 2001. “Cognitive and Physiological Markers of Emotional Awareness in Chimpanzees.” Animal Cognition 4 (3–4): 223–229.
Pell, Marc D., Silke Paulmann, Chinar Dara, Areej Alasseri & Sonja A. Kotz. 2009. “Factors in the Recognition of Vocally Expressed Emotions: A Comparison of Four Languages.” Journal of Phonetics 37: 417‒435.
Rossi, Daniela, Marc Dominicy & Régine Kolinsky. 2015. “The Inference of Affective Meanings: An Experimental Study.” Language and Cognition 7 (3): 351‒370.
Russell, James A. 1991. “Culture and the Categorization of Emotions.” Psychological Bulletin 110 (3): 426‒450.
Sanford, Anthony J. & Catherine Emmott. 2012. Mind, Brain and Narrative. Cambridge, U. K.: Cambridge University Press.
Scherer, Klaus R. 2009. “The Dynamic Architecture of Emotion: Evidence for the Component Process Model.” Cognition and Emotion 23: 347‒385.
Schnoebelen, Tyler. 2012. Emotions are Relational: Positioning and the Use of Affective Linguistic Resources. PhD Dissertation, Stanford University.
Schwarz-Friesel, Monika. 2010. “Expressive Bedeutung und E-Implikaturen – Zur Relevanz konzeptueller Bewertungen bei indirekten Sprechakten: Das Streichbarkeitskriterium und seine kognitive Realität.” In Kultura Kak Tekst (Kultur als Text), ed. by William Rudnitzky, 12‒27. Moscow: SGT.
. 2015. “Language and Emotion. The Cognitive Linguistic Perspective.” In Emotion in Language, ed. by Ulrike M. Lüdtke, 157‒173. Amsterdam; John Benjamins.
Soriano, Cristina, Johnny R. J. Fontaine & Klaus R. Scherer. 2015. “Surprise in the GRID.” In Special Issue of Review of Cognitive Linguistics 13 (2): 436‒460.
Summerfield, Christopher & Tobias Egner. 2009. “Expectation (and Attention) in Visual Cognition.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13 (9): 403‒409.
Thompson, Geoff. 2015. “Emotional Talk, Emotion Talk, and Evaluation.” Presentation to the Jornada de Investigación Emo-Fundett. Madrid, February 4th, 2015, later revised in July 2015. Madrid: UNED.
Thompson, Geoff & Laura Alba-Juez (eds.). 2014. Evaluation in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tomkins, Silvan S. 1982. “Affect Theory.” In Emotion in the Human Face, ed. by Paul Ekman, Wallace V. Friesen & Phoebe Ellsworth, 2nd ed., 353‒395. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Berkum, Jos J. A., Bregje Holleman, Mante Nieuwland, Marte Otten & Jaap Murre. 2009. “Right or Wrong? The Brain’s Fast Response to Morally Objectionable Statements.” Psychological Science 20: 1092‒1099.
. 1977. Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse. London: Longman.
Van Gelder, Tim. 1998. “The Dynamical Hypothesis in Cognitive Science.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21: 615‒665.
Vuillermet, Marine. 2018. “Grammatical Fear Morphemes in Ese Ejja: Making the Case for a Morphosemantic Apprehensional Domain.” Studies in Language 42 (1): 262‒300.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1999. Emotions across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cited by (17)
Cited by 17 other publications
Dymova, A. V., A. I. Zolotaiko & A. P. Chudinov
Hidalgo-Downing, Laura
2025. The pragmatics of emotion in socio-cultural contexts. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
Jiang, Zhaoping & Jiting Wu
Xia, Jie
Trushchelev, Pavel N., Elena V. Petrenko & Larisa A. Piotrovskaya
Vittoria Calvi, Maria & Francisca Suau-Jiménez
2023. La negociación de la autenticidad en el lenguaje dialógico del turismo digital. Spanish in Context 20:1 ► pp. 130 ff.
Khrystenko, Oksana
Larina, Tatiana & Douglas Mark Ponton
López-Rodríguez, Clara Inés
Mestre-Mestre, Eva María & María Beatriz Pérez Cabello de Alba
Alba-Juez, Laura
Alba-Juez, Laura
Bolotova, Elena, D. Rudoy, A. Olshevskaya & N. Ugrekhelidze
Rakhmankulova, Svetlana Evgenyevna, Tatiana Nikolaevna Sineokova, Nadezhda Alexandrovna Kokhan, Robert Alexeyevich Kuzmin, G. Sorokoumova & T. Grob
Shi, Yan
Shvanyukova, Polina
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
