The Language of Emotion: A Critical Overview

Abstract

What I would like to do in this chapter is to provide a critical assessment of the main body of research in the “language of emotion” tradition as it relates to the question of how we understand the emotions. The rest, and, as we will see, for our purposes the more significant part, of the research will be discussed in the next chapter. In particular, I will here first present the relevant work in a number of disciplines, and then point out some of the advantages and the major weaknesses, drawbacks, and disadvantages of the approaches under consideration. Proceeding in this fashion, by the end of the chapter we shall be in a position to see the breadth and depth of what is involved in the attempt to answer our question in a serious way.