TOWARD A PRAGMATICS OF EMOTIVE COMMUNICATION

The task of developing a unified pragmatics of emotive communication poses many interesting challenges for future research. This paper outlines some areas in which more work could be done to help coordinate present linguistic research. After briefly reviewing some pioneering historical work on language and affect, the paper discusses the following concepts, all of which seem to be in need of further clarification: 'emotive meaning', 'involvement', 'emotive markedness', 'degree of emotive divergence', 'objects of emotive choice', 'loci of emotive choice', and 'outer vs. inner deixis'. Competing categories of emotive devices in current studies of language and affect are reviewed, and a simplified framework is proposed, consisting of: (1) evaluation devices, (2) proximity devices, (3) specificity devices, (4) evidentiality devices, (5) volitionality devices, and (6) quantity devices. It is argued that only with consensual categories and objects of analysis can investigators start focusing on, and comparing findings about, emotive linguistic phenomena from a unified point of view. Finally, some distinctions between potential perspectives, units, and loci of emotive analysis are proposed, and the paper concludes with a call for increased discussion of how research on language and affect might be better coordinated in the future.