The Role of Language in Emotional Development

Abstract

Much literature suggests a link between language and emotions. Parents’ language use is linked to children’s later emotion perception and understanding. Perhaps most compellingly, access to emotion words shapes which emotion someone sees on another’s face. In this chapter, we outline a developmental perspective on the role of language in emotion perception, whereby language is a mechanism for acquiring and using emotion concept knowledge to make meaning of others’ and perhaps one’s own emotional states across the life span. We begin by discussing language and emotion understanding in preverbal infants, who without language perceive emotional facial expressions in terms of the more basic dimension of valence. Next, we discuss how language acquisition throughout toddlerhood and early childhood leads to increased emotion understanding and more nuanced emotion perception. We continue to trace the relationship of language and emotion throughout adolescence and into adulthood, documenting that disorders of aging that impair language also impair emotion perception. We close by speculating on the role of emotion words in the context of emotion experience, emotion regulation, and cross-cultural differences in emotions.