Commentary: Framing Sympathy

Abstract

The expression of emotion takes many forms and their linguistic expression is one of the key ways they are articulated. The study of the semantic fields in which the expression of emotion takes place is in need of an appropriate methodology and a sufficiently broad set of examples. Anna Gladkova’s attempt to use the methodology of Natural Semantic Metalanguage to explore the semantics of certain emotion terms in English and Russian is examined and evaluated in light of certain philosophical and semiotic categories and considerations. Of principal interest is the bearing of the work of C.S. Peirce and John Dewey, from the American pragmatist tradition, and of Karl Bühler, from the psychological tradition, on such a methodology. It appears that the expression of emotion in language is embedded in multiple fields of rather different types and performs different semantic functions. I indicate how this would modify, without reducing the need for, the types of analyses undertaken by Gladkova.