Language and Affect

Abstract

In a seminal overview of semantics, Lyons (294) breaks down the notion of into three components: descriptive (frequently termed propositional, notional,�' or denotative)-i.e. the mapping of linguistic signs onto the entities and processes they describe; meaning, consisting of the categories (gender, class, ethnicity, situation, etc) represented in language; and expressive (or affec­ tive or emotive) meaning, representing the speaker's or writer's feelings, moods, dispositions, an4 attitudes toward the propositional content of the message and the communicative context. Variants of this model have been proposed by such authors as Malinowski (296), Sapir (364), Jesperson (242), Buhler (81), Bally (19), Ullman (426), Firth (138), and members of the Prague School (155, 362, 433, 434), although details of conceptualization can diverge significantly from author to author. For example, what other writers call is subsumed in Halliday's funCtional model (182, 183) in part by the interpersonal (i.e. that through which social groups are delimited, and the individual is identified and reinforced, 182: 143) and in part by the textual (that which gives coherence to discourse). Similarly, affect straddles several categories in Jakobson's model of language functions (235; cf 91). In addi­ tion, not all writers agree that meaning and semantic are appropriate labels for affective components of language (e.g. 275, 445). A strict distinction among referential, social, and affective meanings rests