Enacting Affect: Pragmatic Analysis

Abstract

As proposed, the large-scale studies of Chapters 2 to 4 are complemented by a brief foray into the pragmatics of emotion talk in the BRC baby using a modified version of appraisal theory and the methodology described in Chapter 5 (also in Appendix A 6.2 online). The 85,000 words of the BRC baby were manually analyzed for all listed variables, but because of space constraints only extracts are included in this chapter. Such a small-scale analysis allows us to make safer guesses about the pragmatics of emotion talk in the four registers than are possible using large-scale analysis, but is less representative. (The small-scale analyses are necessary because it takes time to analyze texts manually according to the methodology outlined in Chapter 5.) No detailed, ‘truly’ qualitative analyses of each of the roughly 60 texts in the BRC baby were undertaken, which would take into account textual development, or logogenesis (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 43) and social context, though an extended extract from fiction will be commented upon. This is because there are already many such qualitative analyses using the appraisal framework (see Section 5.1 for references). The aim of this chapter is thus to open up research by pointing to future fields of study, showing opportunities for new research projects, and laying out a ‘road-map’ for further research into affect. More specifically, this chapter discusses the notions of affective key and stance before outlining some typical functions of emotion terms.