The Unconscious Emotive Dimension of Language: Freud and Psychoanalysis on the Mysterious Ways of Language

In this article, I draw attention to the fact that words do not just have a meaning. They do. However, we argue that some words also have an emotional dimension. We start by providing an example where a politician insists in naming a military move by one name and rejecting another name. We then turn to insights of Freud to make the claim that words have an emotional dimension into a general philosophical claim about language.