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Part of
Emotion in Discourse
Edited by J. Lachlan Mackenzie and Laura Alba-Juez
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 302] 2019
► pp. 301–332

Chapter 12
Rethinking Martin & White’s affect taxonomy

A psychologically-inspired approach to the linguistic expression of emotion

| Universities of Zaragoza and Granada respectively (Spain)
| Universities of Zaragoza and Granada respectively (Spain)

Utterance production/interpretation depends unmistakably on emotional contexts. This makes the analysis of emotion in language fascinating and difficult, as it permeates all levels of linguistic description. Appraisal Theory is a powerful instrument intended to capture the subtleties of emotion in discourse. Its status as an open-ended tool, though, reveals a need for more sharply defined categories. Whilst the appreciation subsystem has already been elaborated, affect seems to require further refinement. In this chapter, we do so by using corpus evidence and drawing inspiration mainly from three psychological approaches to emotion: appraisal theories, construction theories and neuroscience. In emphasizing the notion of goal as the foundation of all emotion types, our revised model aims to describe emotional instances in more detail.

Keywords: appraisal, affect, emotion, psychology, linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Appraising and re-appraising affect
    • 2.1Rethinking ATTITUDE
    • 2.2Rethinking emotion
      • 2.2.1Do we not feel pleasure when we are happy?
      • 2.2.2Do we not feel satisfied when we are happy? Why is happiness not also goal-related?
      • 2.2.3Do we not feel momentarily happy after enjoying a good meal?
      • 2.2.4Why are happiness and sadness treated as moods?
      • 2.2.5Do our feelings of affection and antipathy derive from happy and sad moods respectively?
      • 2.2.6Do we feel satisfied when something interests us?
  • 3.Towards a more psychologically-inspired emotion taxonomy
    • 3.1Goal-seeking emotions
    • 3.2Goal-achievement emotions
    • 3.3Goal-relation emotions
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 March 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.302.12ben
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