Language and human emotions .
How can language represent emotions?
Is it an effective device to properly manifest human emotions?
What procedures do think are involved ?
Dear Rahimi, language can only reflect emotions to a certain degree, we all have moments in our life that we feel linguistically powerless in expressing our emotions, and I assume it is true for other aspects of human life: language is a powerful means of expression, but it by no means can cover all these aspects (concepts, emotions, etc.).
Our language has multiple ways of expressing emotions, e.g., emotions can be mapped onto spatial dimensions, e.g., HAPPINESS IS UP, UNHAPPINESS IS DOWN on a vertical scale. In cognitive linguisitics, the relations between langauge and emotions are elaborated in image schema theory (Johnson, 1997), in conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987), to name just a few.
thanks matthew, do you believe language can comprehensively effectively reflect human emotions ?
Dear Rahimi, language can only reflect emotions to a certain degree, we all have moments in our life that we feel linguistically powerless in expressing our emotions, and I assume it is true for other aspects of human life: language is a powerful means of expression, but it by no means can cover all these aspects (concepts, emotions, etc.).
Dear Marković, thanks for the reference, BTW, the name of the author is Lev Vygotsky.
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