The “emotional turn” has promoted an increasing number of empirical studies
on the traces of emotion in language and theoretical approaches to language,
cognition and emotion. This article discusses the question of how to align the
descriptive facts concerning language as a multi-layered system with theoretical
approaches to language and emotion. Outlining recent developments given in
the embodiment and usage based approaches to language, an experiential view
on language is portrayed which relates perception, emotion and action, including
social interaction and communication. Reviewing theories of emotion and
the course of language acquisition, it is argued that affect expression and affect conceptualization
are both present in language, which is incompatible with views of
emotion as a form of cognition.
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