The Language of Disappointment: On the Language Analysis of Feeling Words

Abstract

This is an introduction to a specific form of ordinary language analysis that tries to bridge the gap between phenomenological analysis on the one hand and conceptual analysis on the other. It shows that it is possible to analyze a feeling word and at the same time analyze the lived experience indicated by that word. Before starting the analysis of the term disappointment, something must be said about some basic philosophical problems connected with the use of the method of conceptual analysis. These questions are not be pushed too far, and pragmatic answers are formulated. If the reader is not interested in these kinds of questions or if he or she wishes simply to start the analysis, it is possible to skip the first section on language and to start with the second section, a conceptual analysis of disappointment. Reality and Social Reality It is intended that conceptual analysis be presented here as a method of analyzing terms of experience, and accordingly, philosophical problems concerning the relation between language and reality are not of main interest. However, the subject cannot be completely ignored. Usually we try to avoid statements on the status of the concepts being analyzed. Having chosen the point of view of the so-called methodolog ical nominalism, statements on the status of concepts are renounced. In ontological nominalism, statements on the status of concepts are made in the sense that the existence of extralinguistic concepts is denied. In methodological nominalism, it is clear that there are approaches with ontological pretensions, but analyses of that sort are generally con cluded to be nothing more than clarifications of linguistic use. From a philosophical point of view there are and were enough alterna tives. Methodological nominalism in all its remarkable attraction goes straight back to Wittgenstein, taking into account that, for him, it is essential that language be connected to nonlinguistic activities (Dum mett, 1978, p. 435 and pp. 445, 446). Austin (1976), however, spoke differently at the time about these issues. It may be significant that Austin thought ordinary language philosophy or linguistic philosophy was characterized better by the term linguistic phenomenology. Accord