Toward a Pragmatics of Emotive Communication

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Toward a pragmatics of emotive communication*Claudia Caffi, Richard W. Janneyb

* Dipartimento di Scienze Glottoetnologiche, Universitri di Genova, Via Balbi 4, I-16126 Genoa, Italyb Department of English - EZW, University of Cologne, GronewaldstraJe 2, D-50931 Cologne, GermanyAbstract

The task of developing a unified pragmatics of emotive communication poses many inter-esting challenges for future research. This paper outlines some areas in which more workcould be done to help coordinate present linguistic research. After briefly reviewing somepioneering historical work on language and affect, the paper discusses the following concepts,all of which seem to be in need of further clarification: emotive meaning, involvement,emotive markedness, degree of emotive divergence, objects of emotive choice, loci ofemotive choice, and outer vs. inner deixis. Competing categories of emotive devices in cur-rent studies of language and affect are reviewed, and a simplified framework is proposed,consisting of: (1) evaluation devices, (2) proximity devices, (3) specificity devices, (4) evi-dentiality devices, (5) volitionality devices, and (6) quantity devices. It is argued that onlywith consensual categories and objects of analysis can investigators start focusing on, andcomparing findings about, emotive linguistic phenomena from a unified point of view.Finally, some distinctions between potential perspectives, units, and loci of emotive analysisare proposed, and the paper concludes with a call for increased discussion of how research onlanguage and affect might be better coordinated in the future.

1. Introduction: Metatheoretical views from a fuzzy peripheryPresently, a vast amount of linguistic data on language and affect is being col-lected in pragmatics that cannot be fully compared or interpreted due to the lack ofa unified, overriding conceptual framework. If we look at the growing body of liter-

ature on language and affect, it is difficult to discern a consensual theory, a consen-sual object of investigation, or a consensual analytical methodology. Investigators

* We would like to express our thanks to Horst Amdt and Klaus HSlker for their valuable commentson the line of reasoning presented in this paper, and free them, at the same time, from any responsibilityfor deficits in the final product. Parts of the paper are adapted from a forthcoming book by RichardW. Janney entitled Speech and Affect: Emotive Uses of English. Stankiewicz (1964: 267) used the expression fuzzy periphery to refer to the no mans land ofemotive language. His original statement was: I see no reason . why we should be reluctant to admitthe existence of a fuzzy periphery.0378-2166/94/$07.00 0 1994 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reservedSSDI 0378-2166(94)00040-L


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presently seem to be proceeding in an ad hoc manner, operating on the basis ofsometimes very different assumptions, producing findings that are interesting on anindividual basis, but which cannot be fully accounted for from a unified point ofview. Yet, if there is anything that we can be intuitively sure of as users of language,it is our awareness, deeply rooted in our everyday experience as communicators, thatfeelings and language are intimately interconnected in speech and writing.

In this paper, we would like to make some modest suggestions about how linguistsworking in this area might begin cooperating in investigating affective featuresof language from a more unified, systematic, pragmatic point of view. We do notpresume to be able here to fully answer all of the metatheoretical and methodolog-ical questions potentially raised by our suggestions, but we do believe that it isimportant to draw attention to the lack of coordination in current research, and tosuggest the feasibility, at least, of bringing order to this endeavor.

The complexity of the interface between language, people, and affect is implicit inthe observation that: (1) we can all express feelings that we have, (2) we can all havefeelings that we do not express, and (3) we can all express feelings that we do nothave, or feelings that we think our partners might expect or wish us to have, orfeelings that it might simply be felicitous to have in a given situation for particularreasons. In short, we all seem to be capable of producing, modifying, and modu-lating linguistic and other expressions of affect more or less at will, in very subtleways, in order to fit the personal and interpersonal exigencies of different occasions;and we are capable of negotiating agreement about the intersubjective significanceof our expressions of affect. In this broad sense, at least, the expression of feelingsand attitudes in language does not seem to be that much different from the expres-sion of ideas: both processes are cognitively mediated - if perhaps in different ways,to different extents, and to different purposes (cf. Arndt and Janney, 1991).

But how do we do this? On the basis of what type of linguistic knowledge, orwhat type of broader underlying pragmatic capacity? Is the ability to produce andinterpret expressions of affect in speech and writing rooted in knowledge of somehitherto underexplored emotive subcode within the code of language, as suggestedby Stankiewicz (1964), Volek (1987), and others? Is it rooted in knowledge of hith-erto only partly investigated uses of the affective tools, devices, or resources oflanguage, as suggested by Irvine (1982), Labov (1984), Ochs (1986), and Ochs andSchieffelin (1989)? Or is it perhaps rooted in knowledge of a much wider, meta-communicational pragmatic nature, for which we presently have only dimmetaphors, as suggested by Watzlawick et al. (1967), Friedrich (1986), Arndt andJanney (1987), and a few others?

Behind questions like these, there are naturally some even more basic metaprag-matic questions (cf. Caffi, 1993). For example, how far do present pragmatic con-ceptual frameworks, descriptive approaches, and analytical procedures actually go inaccounting for this complex, if apparently effortless, everyday ability? Is a unifiedinvestigation of language, affect, and human interaction even within the presentscope of linguistics? Is a new, even more integrative, interdisciplinary effort perhapscalled for? For lack of space, these questions will remain only implicit in the fol-lowing discussion. Instead, we will have the following, more restricted, aims: first,


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we will review some old and new approaches to language and affect that seem to beof potential interest in developing what we would like to call a pragmatics of emo-tive communication; second, we will discuss some conceptual and methodologicalconstraints on current research on language and affect, pointing out some underlyinglinguistic issues at stake in this research; and third, we will present a rough sketch ofsome conceptual distinctions that we feel could be helpful in approaching emotivecommunication from a unified, pragmatic point of view. The paper is not program-matic in spirit, but exploratory. That is, it is not an attempt to impose our ownsketchy, preliminary ideas about various problems that seem (to us) to need to bedealt with in present studies of language and affect on others working in this area,but rather an attempt to clear ground for further discussion, in the hope of encourag-ing suggestions about how studies of language and affect might be better coordinatedin the future.I .I. Some preliminary definitionsI .I .I. The emotive capacityOne of our underlying assumptions will be that all competent native speakers of agiven language possess what might metaphorically be called an emotive capacity:that is, certain basic, conventional, learned, affective-relational communicative skillsthat help them interact smoothly, negotiate potential interpersonal conflicts, andreach different ends in speech. These skills are related, to performances of linguisticand other activities that broadly can be interpreted as signs of affect, or as indicesof speakers feelings, attitudes, or relational orientations toward their topics, theirpartners, and/or their own acts of communication in different situations. Successfulinteraction depends to a certain extent on a mastery of these conventional skills. Wewill assume that explaining what the emotive capacity is, where it comes from, andhow it is used to reach different ends in linguistic interaction, are fitting goals ofpragmatic research.1.1.2. The notion of afSect

The decision to focus on language and affect implies some body of underlyingassumptions about what affect is to begin with. The great diversity of phenomenastudied under the rubric of affect in different branches of science underscores thetruism that affect means many things to many people - not only across disciplinesbut also within disciplines, among different investigators. Like other terms used inscience, the term affect is a figure of speech, a metaphor, which, reified by scien-tific practice, enables us to approach certain ranges of conceptualized phenomena asindependent objects of study, and define certain other ranges of phenomena asbeyond the scope of investigation (cf. Sarbin, 1986: 87).

Western psychologists commonly distinguish between feelings, a broad, complexclass of subjective personal sensations or states of inner physiological arousal (cf.Besnier, 1990: 421); emotions, a restricted subset of empirically investigable phe-nomena within this general class that are relatively transitory, of a certain intensity,and are attached to, or triggered by, particular objects, ideas, or outer incentive


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events (cf. Kagan, 1978: 1617); moods, which are said to be of longer durationthan emotions, and not necessarily attached to specific inner states or definite objects(cf. Davidson, 1984: 321); and attitudes, or transitory feeling states with partlyuncontrollable subconscious psychobiological components and partly controllableexpressive components, which are said to be instrumental in maintaining social andpsychological equilibrium and adapting to different situations (cf. Plutchik andKellerman, 1980: 30).

The term affect is usually reserved for feeling states that are ascribed to otherson the basis of their observable behavior in different situations (cf. Besnier, 1990:421). In cognitive psychology, notions of affect range from hot to cold extremes(cf. Mandler, 1990: 21). At the hotter end, affect is used almost synonymouslywith emotion, as defined above. At the cooler end, it is used to refer simply tohuman preferences, attitudes, or likes and dislikes, and to adaptive choices related tothese (cf. Mandler, 1990: 21-22). This latter perspective, which is incidentally ofgreat potential interest for pragmatics, sees affect as a state of interpretive action andarousal that results from goal-directed cognitive appraisals of perceptions of innerand outer processes in different contexts (cf. Lazarus, 1982: 1024; Lewis et al.,1984: 271).

In linguistics, on the other hand, the term affect is often used simply as a broadsynonym for feeling, and is regarded as subsuming not only traditional psycholog-ical notions of emotion, mood, and attitude, but also notions of character and per-sonality, and notions related to interactional linguistic phenomena such as masking,hedging, undercutting, and so forth (cf. Irvine, 1982: 32; Ochs, 1986: 254; Ochsand Schieffelin, 1989: 7). In the following pages, in keeping with standard linguis-tic usage, we will use the term affect in this latter, broader sense - apologizing topsychologists in advance for blurring important theoretical distinctions - as an over-riding, generic term for linguistically expressed feelings, attitudes, and relational dis-positions of all types (cf. Ochs, 1989).I .I .3. Emotive communicationWe would like to suggest that pragmatics should focus broadly on what Marty(1908), at the turn of the century, called emotive communication: the intentional,strategic signalling of affective information in speech and writing (e.g., evaluativedispositions, evidential commitments, volitional stances, relational orientations,degrees of emphasis, etc.) in order to influence partners interpretations of situationsand reach different goals. Marty contrasted the notion of emotive communicationto the notion of emotional communication, which he regarded as a type of sponta-neous, unintentional leakage or bursting out of emotion in speech (cf. Amdt and Jan-ney, 1991). According to Marty, emotive communication influences partners inter-pretations of situations by suggesting what he called states of affairs that coincidewith ones own declared feelings and desires in the widest sense (Zustanden, diedem kundgegebenen eigenen Ftlhlen und Wollen im weitesten Sinne entsprechen)(1908: 364). Martys wording is important here, because it underscores the notionthat emotive communication, by this definition, has no automatic or necessary rela-tion to real inner affective states. Rather, it is related to self-presentation, and it is


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inherently strategic, persuasive, interactional, and other-directed by its very nature(cf. Parret, 1984: 583; Robinson, 1986: 659; Amdt and Janney, 1991: 526-532).Emotive communication, thus viewed, is hence less a personal psychological phe-nomenon than an interpersonal social one. This aligns Martys (1908) idea of emo-tive utterances conceptually with Ballys (1909) and Sapirs (1927) notions ofsocial emotional displays, Biihlers (1934) idea of relational traffic signals, andBlacks (1949) notion of persuasive employments of affect.

We could say that the function of emotive communication, in Biihlers terms, isessentially appellative: emotive uses of language impose a kind of communicativevalence (kommunikative Vulenz) on the situation, influencing partners perceptionsof what literally is communicated at the ideational level (cf. Biihler, 1934: 31).During interaction, we tend to perceive others as opening up or closing down,being responsive or reticent, making signs of approach or withdrawal; we perceivetheir relative strength or weakness, their fuller or lesser presence, their attentivenessor disinterest (cf. Frijda, 1982: 112). All such perceptions are rooted in, and dependon, emotive displays. The prerequisite for interpreting emotive activities, accordingto Frijda, is often merely only the ability to view a piece of linguistic or other behav-ior as the possible starting-point of its own continuation (1982: 112). It is thecapacity, for example, to view positive behavior as a possible starting point foragreement or cooperativeness, negative behavior as a possible starting point fordisagreement or conflict, confident behavior as a possible starting point for self-assertiveness or determination, uncertain behavior as a possible starting point forcompromise or resignation, and so forth. In all cases, the interpretation of emotiveactivities involves an appreciation of interpersonal relations and self-presentationstrategies (cf. Frijda, 1982: 112). In this sense, following Biihlers (1934) discussionof the appellative function, emotive communication seems to be more closely relatedto notions of dramatic performance (role performance) and rhetoric (persuasion) thanto traditional notions of emotional expressivity (cf. Amdt and Janney, 1991).

2. Historical notes on language and affectA reasonable first step toward developing a unified pragmatics of emotive com-

munication, we would like to suggest, is to reflect on the history of similar endeav-ors in the past, and see what lessons can be drawn from these. Throughout the his-tory of linguistic thought, we can find an unstable balance between the necessity ofabstraction and the necessity of not losing sight of living language. Emotive com-munication inherently belongs to the latter. Solutions to the problem of the relationbetween language and affect vary according to the roles assigned to these two com-peting needs. The problem of the relation itself, however, has always been present intheoretical reflections on language - present, and yet often somehow repressed, dueto the difficulty of solving it in a fully satisfactory way. It figures, for example, inSublimes (Pseudo-Longinus) &3oq (1st century A.D.), and in the semiotics of pas-sions of the 70s (cf. Greimas, 1983; Parret, 1986; Fabbri and Pezzini, 1987), in theacrus signatus (as opposed to the actus exercim) of medieval scholastic philosophy,


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and in the entangled problem of connotation (for a good historical survey on conno-tation, see Garza-Cuarbn, 199 1).If we look for theories that explicitly make the linguistic expression of affect a

central concern, however, the list of possible candidates becomes shorter: we canfind significant forerunners not only in linguistics, but also in rhetoric, philosophy oflanguage, and linguistic stylistics. In particular, Aristotles rhetoric, Martys philos-ophy of language, Ballys linguistic stylistics, and Prague functionalism offer pre-cious insights. Each of these approaches is famous, and at the same time extremelycomplex, making any attempt to explain the many subtle differences between theirunderlying views of language and affect potentially a subject of volumes of philo-logical and exegetical analysis. Here, we will simply mention, in a very cursory way,some reasons for their relevance.2.1. Rhetoric: Aristotle and the argumentative perspective

If pragmatics - envisioned here as dealing with the whole reality of communica-tion, including its emotive aspects - could choose a prestigious ancestor, it should beancient rhetoric. Aristotles Rhetoric can be seen as a metapragmatic treatise on theconstruction of the shared knowledge necessary for effective emotive communica-tion. Starting from what today would be regarded as a social psychological perspec-tive, Aristotle analyzes different kinds of argumentation which must fit differenttypes of audiences. In Rhetoric I, (A), 3, 1358b, perhaps an original source of therecurring semiotic triads in philosophy and linguistics throughout the ages, Aristotlestates that discourse is comprised of three fundamental elements - the speaker, thetopic, and the hearer.In the present century, Aristotles rhetoric of persuasive discourse has beenpursued in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas Trait de largumentation. La nouvellerhetorique (1958), a work of great potential interest for pragmatics, which focuseson complex emotive strategies stemming from speakers continuous efforts to adaptto their addressees. Interestingly, some basic aspects of Giles and Couplands(1991: 60ff.) accommodation theory are anticipated by, and subtly analyzed in,the Traits. The main problem dealt with by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca is howspeakers build up a consensus, or a communion of minds, with addressees throughthe strength of their arguments, and by the capacity of these to trigger theaddressees emotive participation.

What makes the classical rhetorical perspective a refined precedent of a prag-matics of emotive communication is mainly its strong intersubjective orientation.In classical oratory, emotive activities are regarded as semiotic phenomena withcommunicative potential, regardless of whether they are sincere or not, andregardless of which mode (verbal, prosodic, or kinesic) they are performed in. Itcould be claimed, in fact, that emotive uses of language have been studiedthroughout most of Western intellectual history as rhetorical techniques. Rhetor-ical communication and emotive communication share some crucial features: bothtrigger a surplus de sense, both presuppose shared knowledge on the speakers andhearers parts, and both rely on the hearers cooperation and willingness to under-


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take the inferential steps necessary to give utterances intended meanings beyondtheir literal ones.One interesting goal for a pragmatics of emotive communication would be tobegin attempting to account for emotive rhetorical techniques from a new, more sys-tematic, unified, point of view. This would require, among other things, rethinkingand reinterpreting many important rhetorical insights of the past, and perhapsre-evaluating some modem contributions in this area such as Lausbergs (1960) andPerelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas (1958). Helpful recent research in this directionhas been done by Mortara-Garavelli (1988).2.2. Philosophy of language: Anton Marty

Anton Martys (1908) discussion of emotive ;iujerungen, at the turn of thecentury, may be regarded as an important pioneering philosophical contribution tolater linguistic studies of emotive communication.2 To Marty, as said earlier (seesection 1.3), we owe the insight that we must first distinguish between emotional(cathartic, expressive) and emotive (instigative, appellative) affective uses of speechbefore we can begin to investigate language and affect from a systematic pragmaticpoint of view. In the present connection, Martys main contribution was his discus-sion of what he called interest-demanding (interesseheischende) utterances: thatis, utterances signaling momentary evaluative stances or volitional states, which areperformed by speakers to strategically guide partners attention and influence theirbehavior. For this category, he invented the term emotive utterances, apologeti-cally adding that One must excuse the new term on the grounds that in present lin-guistic usage, no better term for the whole class is available, as words like procla-mation, request, wish, command, etc. all have a narrower meaning (Manentschuldige den neuen Terminus damit, da8 im bisherigen Sprachgebrauch ein furdie ganze Klasse passender nicht vorhanden ist, da die Namen: Ausrufung, Frage,Wunsch, Befehlsatz usw. alle einen engeren Bedeutungsumfang haben) (1908:275). Later, Btihler (1934) integrated Martys distinction between emotional andemotive uses of language into his notions of the Ausdruck and Appell functions oflanguage.According to Marty, emotive communication is rooted in the relationship betweenexplicit forms of linguistic expression and their potential implicit significance forinterpreters. Marty noted that speakers habitually modify explicit forms of linguisticexpression in order to emotively color them and steer interpretations of theirimplicit, intended significance (1908: 524ff.). The linguistic activities involved inemotive communication, he said, are not cathartic in nature, but intentional, infor-mative (Mitteillung), persuasive (uberzeugung), and/or coercive (Beeinflussung). Anutterance, he argued, is like a stenograph or a rough sketch of an idea: while thebasic conceptual coordinates for interpreting it are provided by the linguistic code,* Martys philosophy was much more linguistically oriented, for example, than his friend Brentanos,as is evidenced by the title of Martys major work, Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeineGrammatik und Sprachphilosophie (1908).


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the task of filling the utterance into a meaningful cognitive-emotive whole is leftlargely up to the interpreter (1908: 145). In interpreting an utterance, he said, thepartner must assign relative importance to the concepts referred to, and must recon-struct most of the implicit relations between these concepts and the speaker, thetopic, and the context in which the utterance is made. Inferences about such implicitrelations are influenced, in part, he maintained, by the form of the utterance. He con-cluded that the potential emotive interpretations of utterances are restricted by theperspectives on events that the utterances explicitly sketch out.

In Martys view, although notions like, for example, You must do x, I wantyou to do x, Please do x, It would be nice if you did x, Ill be unhappy if youdont do x, Would you like to do x? , etc., may all perhaps potentially be in mindat the moment that a speaker makes an utterance meant to express a general idealike do x, the stenographic nature of utterances themselves requires speakers toselect only one version. Insofar as only one version can be uttered explicitly, theothers remain implicit. Marty claimed that for this reason, it is constantly necessaryfor speakers to reduce complex thoughts into simplified, explicit verbal sketches onthe one hand; and by the reverse logic, it is constantly necessary for partners toexpand simplified verbal sketches into complex thoughts on the other. From this, heconcluded that the literal information that passes back and forth during conversationis thus inevitably always only a small, selective percentage of what potentially maybe meant by the speaker, and what potentially may be understood by the partner(1908: 168).

Emotive expressions, he said further, can be distinguished into two main sub-classes: (1) those related broadly to evaluation, e.g., expressions of acceptanceor rejection, agreement or denial, like or dislike, etc., and (2) those related to whathe termed interest, e.g., expressions of wishes, desires, and feelings relatedto these (1908: 276).4 He regarded this second category as linguistically morecomplex than the first one. In sections 3, 4 and 5, in which we discuss the catego-rization of emotive communicative activities in psychology and linguistics, we willsee that Marty seems to have been quite correct. His category of interesse-heischende _ erungen seems to have certain similarities with the psycholinguisticnotion of the motivational potency of utterances (see section 4) and with notionsof linguistic involvement (see section 6), both of which are associated with amultitude of linguistic activities. A pragmatics of emotive communication canscarcely ignore Martys contribution to later distinctions in Btihlers Sprachtheorie,5

3 Marty would not have subscribed to the view of language as a conduit of meaning.4 Martys sub-class of evaluative phenomena corresponds roughly with psychological concepts ofpositive and negative attitudes and their intensity. His sub-class of interest-related phenomena cor-responds roughly with psychological concepts of individual conation or motivation and its urgency.5 In a review of Marty (1908) Biihler remarked that whereas Wundt concentrated on language mainlyas Ausdruck (emphasizing emotional expressivity), and Husserl, in his strong opposition to Wundt,focused mainly on language as Darstellung (emphasizing the referential function), Marty dealt with theAusdruck (emotional) and Appell (emotive) functions, but ignored aspects of language related toDarstellung.


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and to the Prague School notion of the expressive-emotive function (see sec-tion 2.4).

2.3. Linguistic stylisties: Charles BallyCharles Ballys linguistic stylistics is also of special interest: not only for prag-

matic approaches to emotive communication in particular, but also for pragmaticstout court, because style (understood as expressivity in Ballys approach), isregarded not simply as an auxiliary or accompanying feature of the linguistic sys-tem, but as a constitutive one. Style, as defined by Bally, makes it possible toestablish a link between affect as a psychological category, and grammar (under-stood in a broad sense as also including the prosodic resources of language) as asocial category. Ballys stylistics is of extraordinary linguistic relevance mainlybecause, in it, affective values are embedded in the linguistic system itself, and notsimply added to, or superimposed on, the linguistic system.

As is well-known, Ballys stylistics is a stylistics of language (while Vosslersand Spitzers, for example, are stylistics of literary texts). Bally defines stylisticsas follows : Stylistics studies the expressive facts of language from the viewpointof their affective content, in other words, the expression of feelings through lan-guage and the action of language on feelings (La stylistique Ctudie . les faitsdexpression du langage organise au point de vue de leur contenu affectif, cest-a-dire lexpression des faits de la sensibilite par le langage et laction des faits delangage sur la sensibilitb) (1970: 16 [ 19091). Following Bally, two abstract fun-damental tendencies, or modes of communication, are dialectically at work in lan-guage: the intellectual mode (the mode pur) and the affective mode (the modev x). These two modes do not constitute a true dichotomy, but are rather idealpoles of a continuum: a message, that is, will be more oriented toward one ofthem or the other. The intellectual, logical mode is, above all, an abstract possi-bility which offers the identifying term: that is, the neutral choice - for example,in a series of affective synonyms representing possible choices for the speaker(and not only words, but also whole sentences and expressions) - against whichthe expressive choice can be detected, compared, and evaluated. There is a con-tinuous silent process of comparison at work in communication: Words areunderstood and felt only through a continuous and unconscious comparisonamong them in our mind (les mots ne sont compris et sentis que par une com-paraison incessante et inconsciente qui se fait entre eux dans notre cerveau)(1970: 22 [1909]).

In Ballys view, there are two main types of affective features: first, natural affec-tive features (caractkes affectifs naturels), which are connected with notions ofintensity, evaluation, and beauty (1970: 300, 170ff. [1909]); and second, evocativeeffects (effets par vocation), which are connected with the capacity of linguisticchoices to evoke the milieu where their employment is most natural (les milieuxoti leur emploi est le plus naturel) (1970: 30 [1909]). While natural affective fea-tures of language are implicitly centered on the speaker, he says (partly prefiguringlater notions of the expressive function), evocative effects are centered mainly on


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the addressee (cf. Segre, 1985: 314), and are related to subcodes and registers oflanguage that project different tacit definitions of the partners social status, profes-sional affiliations, respective cultural levels, and so forth.6Bally further distinguished between two types of formal expressive processes@rocedesformels) and linguistic features connected with these: first, what he callsdirect processes, which involve lexical choices; and second, indirect processes,which involve prosodic and syntactic choices that go beyond single words (1970:

250ff. [ 19091). Ballys exemplifications of these two types of expressive processesand their formal features deserve careful attention in modern pragmatics. There isnot enough room in these sketchy notes to fully discuss Ballys contribution to theunderstanding of affective aspects of language, but it is worth emphasizing thatBallys approach is not restricted to the lexicon. His notion of modality in theanalysis of sentences is an important step that clears the way for the representationof ways in which speakers subjective attitudes are formally embedded insentences.

According to Bally, a sentence is comprised of a modus (similar to the modernnotion of modality) and a dictum (similar to the notion of propositional content).The modus, which is expressed by verbs of propositional attitude like think,rejoice, hope, etc., is the heart of the sentence (cest lame de la phrase)(1965 : 36 [ 1925]), and represents the speakers attitude toward the propositionalcontent, or the dictum, in Ballys terms, in its active, operative mode. The linkbetween the intellectual and emotive modes, rediscovered within the theoreticalunit sentence (see section 7.7.2), finds its formal abstract representation here.Starting from this conception, Bally develops a refined analysis of different typesof dislocation (la phrase segmentee), which, in many respects, anticipates both thePrague studies of the thematic progression of texts in theme-rheme, and modernpragmatic analyses of right- and left-dislocation.

6 While there are certain similarities between Ballys natural/evocative distinction, Martys emo-tional/emotive distinction, and Bilhlers expressive/appellative distinction, it would be a mistake toassume that these notions are all synonymous. Ballys discussion is, in a sense, more linguisticallyoriented than those of Marty and Biihler. Rather than discussing different reasons or psychologicalmotivations for making linguistic choices, that is, Bally is pointing out two different basic types oflinguistic stylistic choice: his natural affective features are related mainly to intrastylistic choices, orchoices within a given style or register between different linguistic form tokens and arrangements; andhis evocative features are related mainly to interstylistir choices, or choices between different styles orregisters of speech per Se (cf. Amdt and Janney, 1987). Notions somehow close to Ballys more explicit notion of modality can be found in the followingdefinitions: the intellectual subscription to an act can be accompanied by a more or less lively sym-pathy toward that act (lassentiment intellectuel que nous donnons a un act peut etre accompagnedune sympathie plus ou moins vive pour cet acte) (Brunot, 1922: 539); Every sentence of collo-quial language . . is comprised of two distinct elements: the idea and its presentation There is alsoa feeling which accompanies the experience and which is expressed at the same time as the experi-ence . It is the affective presentation (Toute phrase du langage courant renferme deux elementsbien distincts: lidee et la p sentution de celle-ce .., I1 y a aussi un sentiment qui accompagne lexpe-rience et que le sujet exttriorise en mCme temps quelle .._ Cest la prf?sentation affective) (Camoy,1927: 1).


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Ballys importance for a pragmatics of emotive communication rests finally in thefact that he restores the crucial role of emotive expression in language; and he goesfurther, assigning affective language, the mode vecu, supremacy with respect tointellectual language. Whenever we speak, he says, we are called upon to choose themost effective ways of expressing our ideas and feelings; and our feelings comefirst. In saying this, Bally completely subverts de Saussures dichotomy betweenlungue and parole. The subversion, however, was never made explicit in Ballysworks, where we find nothing but words of devoted assent to the master whose noteshe, together with Sechehaye, so carefully collected and edited into the Cows (1916).Perhaps this explains divergent, often critical, interpretations of Ballys viewpointslater (cf. Stankiewicz, 1964; Braselmann, 1982; Chiss, 1987). Without entering intoexegetical discussion here, it may suffice to quote a touching passage, which has theflavor of a confession: [after acknowledging the Saussures importance for hiswork] Nevertheless, this incomparable master did not particularly dwell on the ques-tions which I later came to love, I mean the questions concerning expressive lan-guage, the vehicle of affective thought (Toutefois ce maitre incomparable ne sestpas attarde specialement aux questions qui mont passion5 plus tard, celles notam-ment qui concement le langage expressif, vehicule de la pensee affective) (Journalde Gendve, 10 April, 1957, quoted in Hellman, 1988: 109).Once we recognize the true significance of affect in Ballys stylistics, which hasnothing to do with the whimsical expression of idiosyncratic emotionality or irra-tionality, but rather comes very close to the Latin afSicere (to affect, to do somethingto something, to influence something or someone), it becomes possible to shareBraselmanns (1982) and Wunderlis (1990) conclusion that it is reductive to seeBallys works merely as studies of expressive language. His research, beyondbeing stylistic, is, in fact, eminently pragmatic: it is centered on the active socialcharacter of language, viewed as the tendency by which speech is moved to serveaction (la tendance qui pousse la parole a servir laction) (1965: 18 [ 19251). Thesocial nature of affective language is never blurred in Ballys research: one canshow what one is thinking and feeling only through expressive means which areunderstandable to others (on ne peut montrer ce quon pense et ce quon sent soi-meme que par des moyens dexpression que les autres peuvent comprendre) (1970:6-7 [1909]). Ballys work paves the way for models of linguistic communicationbased on intersubjectivity, such as those developed by Benveniste and Bachtin laterin the century, and makes him, as Wunderli (1990: 385) says, one of the importantforerunners of modem pragmatics (einer der wichtigen Vorlaufer der heutigenPragmatik).2.4. Linguistics: Prague functionalism

Finally, important contributions to the study of language and affect have alsocome for several decades from the Prague School, which has dealt with the affectivefunctions of language since the very beginning (cf. Dane:, 1989). The second andthird statements of the third thesis of the Prague Linguistic Circle (1929), for exam-ple, are directly concerned with this issue. After distinguishing conceptually between


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internal and manifested speech (in a manner, incidentally, that is reminiscent ofMartys earlier distinction between inner and outer manifestations of language),8the writers state that the features important for the characterization of language arethe intellectuality and the emotionality of language manifestations. Both these fea-tures either interpenetrate each other or one of them prevails over the other (1929:88). In the Prague functionalist view, intellectual speech is always sociallyoriented; emotional speech, on the other hand, may be itself an outlet of thespeakers emotion (Martys emotional function Btihlers Ausdruck function); itmay also have a social orientation: for example, when it aims at causing emotionsin the hearer (Aristotles persuasive goal, Martys emotive function Btihlers Appellfunction).

Among works in the Prague functionalist tradition that are particularly relevant formodem studies of language and affect, at least Mathesiuss studies of linguisticmeans of reinforcement (Verstiirkung) and emphasis (Emphase) have to be men-tioned. Mathesius (1964) distinction between reinforcement and emphasis may besummarized as follows: whereas reinforcement is mainly a lexical matter, involvingchoices of graded suffixes, marked lexemes, slang, and so forth, emphasis is mainlya matter of syntax and prosody, and involves choices in sentences in which the par-ticular Satzmelodie and intonation express the emphatic orientation of the speaker tothe content (emphatische Einstellung des Sprechenden zum Satzinhalt) (1964: 430).

Roman Jakobson, who was a protagonist of Prague functionalism from the outset,includes, within his widely-known six functions of language, a function called theexpressive or emotive function, which is speaker-centered, and is based on theexpressive (Ausdruck) function in Biihlers (1934) Organon-model. In Jakobsonswords, this function aims at a direct expression of the speakers attitude towardwhat he is speaking about . The emotive function, laid bare in the interjections, fla-vors to some extent all our utterances, on their phonic, grammatical, and lexicallevel (Jakobson, 1960: 354). In hindsight, it is rather unfortunate that Jakobsoncombined Martys (and, to a lesser extent, Biihlers) clear distinction between theemotional and emotive functions of language into a single function in his model.Nevertheless, Jakobson makes explicit reference to Martys contribution, pointingout the informational capacity of emotive elements of messages, and stressing thesystematic - and not yet adequately studied - character of this capacity. In thisconnection, Jakobson offers the famous example of the forty different interpretablemessages communicated by the phrase This evening in Stanislavskijs MoscowTheatre, and understood by the audience.

After Jakobson, working within a much narrower conceptual framework, Stan-ckiewicz (1964) repeatedly emphasizes the systematic character of expressive devicesin language. Stanckiewicz aims at restoring the primacy of cognitive aspects of affec-tive linguistic forms, narrowing the range of affective phenomena potentially relevantto linguistics to features such as expressive phonemes, expressive derivation, suffixes,and so forth. According to Stanckiewicz, Biihler did not always draw a clear distinc-

* The fact that Marty taught for many years in Prague gives rise to intriguing conjectures about hisinfluence later on the Prague School.


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tion between emotive phenomena which are contextually conditioned and emotivefeatures which are embedded in the code (1964: 266). Here again, it could be argued,we find a certain lack of clarity with respect to differences between the expressive(subjective, personal) and emotive (intersubjective, interpersonal) functions of signs ofaffect in speech. Stanckiewicz himself seems to have recognized the problem of thefailing interpersonal orientation of a strictly code-centered approach: practicallyevery word can be endowed with emotive connotations if it is placed in an appropriatesocial situation or verbal context (1964: 242). The history of concepts of expressiv-ity and emotivity in the Prague functionalist approach has been dealt with in detailrecently by Volek (1987).Finally, it remains to be said that, over the years, the Prague School linguists haveraised many important foundational questions about relations between language andaffect, some of which are still waiting for adequate answers. One problem that espe-cially needs to be addressed - which is related to the concept of markedness as firstdefined in Prague phonology, and is potentially very important for studies of emo-tive communication (cf. Hiibler, 1987, and see section 6 below) - is: from wheremust we begin in order to detect, and make inferences about, emotive connotationsin the first place? As Bally said, two opposing tendencies appear to be operative inexpressivity (les tendances opposees de lexpressivite): expectation (lattente) andsurprise (la surprise) (1965: 69 [1932]). The crucial point generally seems to be thedivergent choice from some type of expectation. We will go into this matter in moredetail in section 6.

3. Psychological dimensions of affectAnother step toward developing a unified pragmatics of emotive communication- in addition, that is, to reconstructing the history of related endeavors in the past -would be to start working on developing systematic concepts about the underlying

nature of what Black (1948), Richards (1948), Stevenson (1948), Alston (1967), andothers earlier in the century called emotive meaning.3.1. The issue of emotive meaning

The issue of how emotive activities function as substitutes for what they mean,denote, signify, or index has important implications for studies of emotive com-munication (cf. Ogden and Richards, 1923; Black, 1949). Regardless of how we ulti-mately analyze emotive linguistic phenomena, initially, we depend, to a greaterextent than we perhaps like to admit, on assumptions about what emotive signs aresigns of, and about their potential meanings and interpretations in different situa-tions. We need such assumptions in order to designate conceptualized emotiveactivities as objects of analysis in the first place (cf. Janney, 1981; Amdt and Jan-ney, 1987: 13-20). The decision to study emotive communication from a pragmaticperspective implies underlying interpretive assumptions (or biases) of some kindfrom the very outset, and these should be stated explicitly in advance.


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Almost fifty years ago, Black (1948: 112-l 13) argued that confusion inapproaches to emotive language in America during the 1920s to 40s were duemainly to the lack of a consistent and coherent theory of emotive meaning ; andtoday, we still lack linguistically useful theories of emotive meaning (cf. Volek,1987: 249). As a consequence, linguists studying emotive communication are some-times forced to adopt (or adapt) interpretive categories derived from Western psy-chological notions of underlying basic dimensions of affect (cf. Brown andGilman, 1960; Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968; Dittmann, 1972; Arndt and Janney,1983; Brown and Levinson, 1987; Dane& this issue).

Gaps between psychological and linguistic approaches to affect, however,presently make it difficult to imagine directly transferring concepts from psychologyinto linguistics without first considering their compatibility, descriptive adequacy,and explanatory power in the linguistic context. Psychological studies often do nottake language and interaction fully into consideration; and linguistic studies, on theother hand, often shy away from psychology. Although potentially useful models ofemotive meaning were devised many years ago in psycholinguistics (cf. Osgood etal. 1957; Davitz, 1964, etc.), there has not yet been much apparent interest in incor-porating these into current studies of emotive communication. As a result, the workof many linguists who presently are most actively addressing issues related to lan-guage and affect tends to remain psychologically rather uninformed.3.2. Dimensions of affect in psychology

In psychology, there is a tradition of tripartite distinctions between metaphoricalbasic dimensions of affect reaching back to about the turn of the century (cf. Gallois,this issue) (see Table 1). The term dimension was first used in connection with affectin studies of moo in the 1950s (cf. Nowlis and Nowlis, 1956). It was originally ameans of suggesting that affective states are not static, stable mental things (e.g., fixedqualities, traits, or characteristics of mind), but dynamic, gradient mental processes thatmust be represented and measured on variable, more/less scales (cf. Osgood et al.,1957). Western psychologists tend to agree about three broad basic dimensions of affec-tive experience: (1) a positive or negative evaluative dimension, (2) a power, control, orpotency dimension, and (3) an activity, arousal or intensity dimension (see Table 1).The psychological view, at the most reduced level, is that people typically respondaffectively to objects of appraisal9 (if and when they respond) mainly by feeling pos-itively or negatively evaluatively inclined toward them, and by feeling in some senseeither in control of them or not in control of them; and these affective orientationstend to vary in intensity or strength. The resilience of psychological distinctions suchas these for the past several decades seems to argue in favor of using related dimen-sions, at least, for comparing assumptions about emotive meaning in linguistics.0

The issue of objects of emotive appraisal is dealt with in section 8.lo Osgood et al.s (1957) categories of evaluation, potency, and activity are used to organize the list inTable I, as these have been the most widely recognized psycholinguistic terms in recent decades, andhave been subject to the most rigorous empirical testing.


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Table 1Basic psychological dimensions of affectAuthors (+/-) EvaluationWundt (1912)Osgood et al. (1957)Leary (1957)Gough (1957)Brown and Gilman (1960)Davitz (1964)Averill ( 1975)Russell (1978)Amdt and Janney (1983)Daly et al. (1983)Amdt and Janney (1987)Russell (1991)

(+/-) pleasantness(+/-) evaluation(+/-) like(+/-) affiliation(+/-) solidarity(+/-) valence(+/-) affect(+/-) affect(+/-) ego-threat(+/-) affect(+/-) affect(+/-) pleasure(or affiliation)

(+/-) Potency (+/-) Activity(+/-) relaxation(+/-) potency(+/-) dominance(+/-) power(+/-) power(+/-) strength(+/-) control(+/-) agressiveness(+/-) ego-nearness(+/-) control(+/-) assertiveness(+/-) dominance(or power)

(+/-) arousal(+/-) activity

(+/-) activity(+/-) intensity(+/-) intensity(+/-) ego-involvement(+/-) intensity(+/-) intensity(+/-) arousal(or activity)

4. Emotive categories in linguisticsAn important question that naturally arises in connection with psychological

notions such as those represented in Table 1 is whether they might be useful asunderlying interpretive categories for a pragmatics of emotive communication. Itwould seem that their usefulness depends on the degree of fit that can be establishedbetween them and present linguistic emotive categories. Are psychological and lin-guistic emotive categories compatible? The issue of degree of fit is relevant for threereasons: first, naturally, because it invites us to consider where present linguisticfindings fit into the vast body of findings about emotive phenomena in otherbranches of science (cf. Buck, Gallois, this issue); second, because it invites us toconsider the extent to which linguists presently agree about the underlying nature ofemotive phenomena per se (cf. Dane& 1989, and this issue); and third, because itinvites us to consider the extent to which linguists are presently focusing on the same- or at least related - phenomena as objects of investigation. The present sectionaddresses these issues.Table 2 lists some categories that have been used in recent decades in linguisticstudies of emotive communication. The terms are organized according to Osgood etal.s (1957) original psycholinguistic categories (evaluation, potency, and activity) inorder to facilitate a comparison of notions of affect in linguistics and psychology.Assuming that at least some degree of conceptual fit between linguistic and psycho-logical categories is desirable if we wish to argue that the emotive capacity, how-ever we ultimately define it, is psychologically (in addition to socially and linguisti-cally) grounded, what is the present situation in linguistics?


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Table 2Linguistic emotive categoriesAuthors (+/-) Evaluation (+/-) Potency (+/-) ActivityLabov and Waletzky(1967)

intensifiers

Hymes (1972)Gumperz (1977)

Chafe (1982)specifying keys

_~~ affectkeys_----___---____----__-intensifying keys

involvement/detachment emphatic particles

Irvine (1982) loaded termsLabov (1984)

Tannen (1984)

Ochs (1986)

Schiffrin (1987)

Hiibler (1987)

Volek (1987)

focus: indices oflinguistic distancingfrom concrete events

emphatic particlesintensity maximizersintensity minimizers

_-_-involvement ___~____~_____~~_____

affect specifiers

focus: indices ofemotional interest in, oridentification with, thetopic, the needs of thepartner, or theinteraction itselfdistance from theproposition

affect intensifiers

commitment orposition with respectto the message

focus: indices ofconfidence oruncertaintyinvolvement:attachment ordetachment vis-a-visthe speech actfocus: indices of anemotive identificationwith the speech act

evaluative excitizers emphasizers and par-ticularizers

unspecific excitizers andintensifiers


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Table 2 (cont.)Authors (+/-) Evaluation (+/-) Potency (+/-) ActivityFairclough (1988) affect minimizersaffect maximizersBiber and Finegan(1989)

-------------stancemarkers--_----------affect markers evidentiality markersfocus: indices ofpositive or negativeaffect

focus: indices ofcertainty or doubt

@hs~dSchieffelin _ ___ affectkey~(1989) affect specifiers affect intensifiersWowk (1989) intensity of affectKatriel and Dascal

Besnier (1990)

commitment(1989)focus: indices ofcognitive commitment tothe belief, state, etc.expressed by theutterance__________----involvement __

topical involvementfocus: indices ofweak/strong attentionalorientation to the topic

interactionalinvolvementfocus: indices ofweak/strong attentionalorientation to the speechsituation and/or theparticipants

positive/negative affect directionality of affect intensity of affectfocus: indices of selfvs. outside focus of amessage


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Table 2 (cont.)Authors

Lutz (1990)

(+/-) Evaluation (+/-) Potency (+/-) Activity

personalization of affectfocus: indices ofpersonal distance vs.nondistance

Amdt and Janney (1991) value-ladenness assertiveness intensityfocus: indices of positive focus: indices of focus: indices of strong oror negative affect confidence or uncertainty weak affective involve-

ment

Table 2 shows that there are currently many competing emotive categories in lin-guistics, and these do not always refer to exactly the same things (cf. Besnier, thisissue). This lack of consensus at the categorical level, it can be assumed, reflects acorresponding lack of consensus at the epistemological level. Which broad cate-gories of phenomena are currently being studied, and how are these being conceptu-alized and labeled for analytical purposes (see section 7)?

Linguists presently appear to distinguish most clearly between emotive categoriesrelated to the psycholinguistic dimensions of evaluation and activity in Table 1:that is, between (1) categories related to positivelnegative orientations, e.g.,notions of affect specifying keys (Hymes, 1972; Gumperz, 1977), loaded terms(Irvine, 1982), affect specifiers (Ochs, 1986; Ochs and Schieffelin, 1989), evalu-ative excitizers (Volek, 1987), positive/negative affect markers (Biber and Fine-gan, 1989; Besnier, 1990), value-ladenness choices (Amdt and Janney, 1991), etc.,and (2) categories related to morelless intense orientations, e.g., notions of inten-sifiers (Labov and Waletzky, 1967), affect intensifying keys (Hymes, 1972;Gumperz, 1978), emphatic particles (Chafe, 1982; Irvine, 1982), intensity maxi-mizers and minimizers (Labov, 1984), affect intensifiers (Ochs, 1986; Ochs andSchieffelin, 1989), unspecific excitizers and intensifiers (Volek, 1987), affectmaximizers and minimizers (Fairclough, 1988), the intensity of affect (Wowk,1989; Besnier, 1990; Arndt and Janney, 1991), etc.With respect to the potency dimension, however, which is the central psycholin-guistic motivational category in Table 1, I there seems to be less agreement. Here, avariety of phenomena are presently being studied, and it is not clear whether all ofthem can, or even should, be included within a single category. From a psychologi-cal standpoint, at any rate, it can be said that most of these phenomena are related insome sense to approach and avoidance behavior. Leaving current linguistic notionsof involvement temporarily out of consideration (see section 5), we can outline fourbroad linguistic categories that are commonly associated with the potency dimen-I According to Volek (1987: 249), the motivational structure of emotive signs appears as a crucialphenomenon, since their semantics is not based on representation, but rather on direct associativeconnections.


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sion: (1) categories related to near/far orientations, e.g., notions of the distanc-ing of language from concrete events (Chafe, 1982), the speakers distance fromthe truth of the proposition conveyed (Ochs, 1986), the speakers position withrespect to the message (Schiffrin, 1987), the speakers degree of personal distancefrom the message (Lutz, 1990), the directionality of affect (Besnier, 1990), etc.; (2)categories related to clearlvague orientations, e.g., notions of clear/vague signals(Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968), clear vs. fuzzy uses of words (G. Lakoff, 1972),particulizers (Volek, 1987), linguistic specificity phenomena (Arndt and Janney,1991), etc.; (3) categories related to confdentldoubtjhl orientations, e.g., notionsof the speakers cognitive commitment to the message (Schriffrin, 1987; Katrieland Dascal, 1989), modality markers (Chafe and Nichols, 1986), evidential cer-tainty and doubt markers (Biber and Finegan, 1989), etc.; and (4) categories relatedto self-assertivelunassertive orientations, e.g., notions of politeness principles(Leech, 1983), supportive strategies (Amdt and Janney, 1985), indirectness(Blum-Kulka, 1987), face saving strategies (Brown and Levinson, 1987), rela-tional work (Watts, 1989), self vs. outside focus of the message (Besnier, 1990),linguistic assertiveness (Arndt and Janney, 1991), and so forth.

In Table 3, the categories above are compared with the psychological categoriesdiscussed earlier. Are they finally compatible? The answer to this question seems tobe a qualified yes, but only in a general sense. In order to analyze specificinstances of emotive communication in terms of categories such as those listed inTable 3, a pragmatics of emotive communication seems to need various conceptualand methodological bridges: first, from a linguistic standpoint, it would seem thatinvestigators need to agree in principle about how emotively significant linguisticcontrasts are recognized as such in natural discourse (see section 6); second, emotivecategories like positive/negative, near/far, clear/vague, confident/doubtful,self-assertive/unassertive, more/less intense, etc., need to be connected with spe-cific types of linguistic choices (see section 7); and third - and an issue of deepestconcern from a pragmatic point of view - a systematic interpretive account of lin-guistic emotive choices and their inferred objects and objectives must be devised(see section 8). Although each of these problems is naturally too complex to be ade-quately discussed in a paper of this length, later, we will make some modest prelim-inary suggestions about how these might be addressed. But before doing this, wewould like to briefly discuss the present status of the central notion of involvementin linguistics.

5 Involvement: An entangled notionAs said in the preceding section, the lack of agreement in linguistics about emo-

tive categories is particularly evident in the middle column of Table 2, in the cate-gories associated with the psycholinguistic motivational notion of potency (cf.Osgood et al., 1957). If we look more closely at this middle column, we notice oneterm that has been used so often in pragmatics in connection with emotive communi-cation that it deserves special consideration: the term involvement. Here, we will


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Table 3A comparison of psychological and linguistic emotive categoriesPsychological Evaluationcategories

Main positive/

Potency

powerful/contrasts negative unpo werful

ActivityI

unaroused

Linguisticcategories

Evaluation Proximity Specificity

Maincontrasts

positive/negative

near/far clear/vague

Evidentiality Volitonality Quantity

confident/doubtful

assertive/unassertive

more/lessintense

present a sketchy overview of some current notions of involvement in pragmatics,making no claim to completeness, and attempt to clarify a few basic distinctions. Thediscussion will focus on: (a) what involvement is; (b) what involvement is opposedto; and (c) what linguistic units are pertinent to different studies of involvement.5.1. The notion of involvement

The folk-psychological notion of involvement is sometimes used in pragmaticsas a sort of bridging category between the broad psychological categories discussedin section 3, and the narrower linguistic ones discussed in section 4. Involvementcomes from the Latin involvere (in + volvere), meaning literally to roll, to wrapup. Still present in its etimology, is the idea of movement, with the mildly negativeconnotation of danger of potential entanglement. Understood in this sense, the termnicely encapsulates the idea that getting involved in the dynamics of human emo-tive communication can be a risky move.* Unlike traditional linguistic notions ofexpressive language, expressive derivations, and so forth (see the discussion ofJakobson and Stankiewicz in section 2.4), which tend, in their code-centeredness,to presuppose a person not in a WITH, as Goffman (1981: 78) puts it, the folk-psychological notion of involvement suggests immediately that emotive communi-cation has an interpersonal relational dimension. Here it is worth mentioning that inwell-known psychiatric research, the parameter of involvement has been used to

* In the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971), involved is paraphrased byimplicated, entangled, engaged, and the substantive involvement is paraphrased by embarassment. entangled condition . complicated state of affairs, imbroglio.


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assess expressed emotion (EE) in schizophrenics relatives discourse (cf. Vaughnand Leff, 1976).13

5.2. Linguistic definitions of involvementIn linguistic literature, we find that the term involvement is used in widely dif-ferent ways: for example, (1) with reference to speakers inner states as precondi-tions of interaction: unlike commitment, involvement is not a social but a mentalstate and, as such, it is not rule-governed (cf. Katriel and Dascal, 1989: 291); (2)

with reference to speakers emotive identifications with speech acts, as a sort of addi-tion or complement to the Gricean sincerity condition (cf. Htibler, 1987: 371); (3)with reference to uses of linguistic techniques and strategies as conventionalizedways of establishing rapport (cf. Tannen, 1984: 30): conversation, like literature,seeks primarily to MOVE an audience by means of involvement (cf. Tannen, 1984:153); (4) with reference to overall rhetorical effects, or senses of vividness evokedby the strategic use of narratives, reported speech, imagery, and so on (cf. Tannen,1989);i4 (5) with reference to speakers cognitive orientations to shared discoursetopics (cf. Katriel and Dascal (1987: 285) on topical involvement), which, in someother approaches, are associated with notions of saliency and fore- and back-grounded information in thematic organization: and finally (6) with reference tometamessages of rapport, successful communication, shared feelings, etc., as meansof enhancing social cohesion (cf. Tannen, 1989: 13).

In the list above, we could say that there is a movement from an individual psy-chological orientation to an interpersonal social orientation, via a rhetorical-stylisticorientation. Clearly, these three orientations call for different theoretical standpoints,rely on different assumptions, and refer to different designated realities (cf. Caffi,1992). Echoing Besnier (this issue), we can say that linguistic notions of involve-ment are presently heterogeneous. Involvement is a pre-theoretical, intuitive, rathervague, unfocused notion, which has not yet been employed in a technical way, andwhose present use, even within individual frameworks, is inconsistent. As is shownabove, the term is used variously to refer to preconditions (inner states), techniques(rhetorical-stylistic strategies), messages (messages of rapport, shared feelings), andeffects (the result of happy or cohesive interaction) of communication. DeborahTannen alone uses it in three different senses (see above).In view of this, it seems reasonable to ask which uses of involvement are mosthelpful from a pragmatic standpoint. As to the usefulness of employing involve-ment to refer to emotive techniques, we have already pointed out the difficulty ofattempting to distinguish clearly between emotive features of language assumed tobe embedded in the code and features that are contextually or cotextually condi-tioned (cf. also Stankiewicz, 1964: 266). The root of this problem is simply that in

I3 We are indebted to Giuseppe Car& Dipartimento di Psichiatria, Universiti3 di Pavia, for havingbrought this to our attention.I4 It may be worth mentioning here that such strategies are called figures of presentation in rhetoric(cf. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958: $42).


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studying emotive communication, we deal not simply with signs, but with indices, inPeircean terms: that is, we investigate signs which point to, or are associated with,things that may be emotively significant, but whose significance ultimately can onlybe decided on external contextual or cotextual grounds. The hypothetical, conjecturalnature of indices of affect tends to make it difficult to avoid constructing corre-spondingly hypothetical, conjectural typologies of emotive devices (see section 7).As to the usefulness of employing involvement to refer to inner states, we cannote that this practice has a history in psychology, where the notion of ego-involve-ment has sometimes been contrasted to notions of ego-threat and ego-nearness,and has been interpreted as a dimension of inner affect somewhat similar to Osgoodet al.s (1957) activity (cf. Amdt and Janney, 1987: 135ff.). One problem with thisidea from a pragmatic standpoint, however, is that the notion of involvement as aninner state, like the notion of involvement as a message, is viable only as long as wecan establish inferrable connections between emotive activities and their observableexternal effects. In a pragmatics analysis, as in everyday interaction, we do not usu-ally deal with remote causes or slippery and fathomless inner states, but witheffects. A partners hypothetical inner state is a projected reality, a sort of impli-cature, hence defeasible, which can only be assigned by an act of inference (cf.Sbisa, 1990). Precisely because of the potential confusion between observable outereffects and inferrable inner states, the notion of involvement lends itself easily to asort of circularity. As Besnier (this issue: p. 285) points out, some linguistspresently seem to assume that involvement is the result of the . use of involve-ment strategies, and the . use of involvement strategies is the result of involve-ment. An ancient rhetorical notion lurks behind this critical remark: the notion ofemphasis (cf. Lausberg, 1960), to which modem treatments of involvement add littleadditional insight.i5In order to escape this circularity, it would perhaps be helpful to shift from a tax-onomic point of view (focused on developing lists of signs of involvement), to afunctional, inferential point of view that concentrates on investigating the mecha-nisms involved in the construction of shared presuppositions and background expec-tations about others feelings and attitudes. From such a viewpoint, involvementwould be regarded as a kind of unsaid. The question would then become: what enti-tles hearers to abductively assign feelings of involvement to speakers? What types ofassumptions, display rules, and inferences are required?

If we were to start from this end of the problem, perhaps we could begin to pro-vide - more than ad hoc lists of signs of involvement - lists of pragmatic con-straints linked to different types of interactions and different types of texts, whichaccount for variations in the ways in which (and extents to which) speakers expressinvolvement under different conditions. Rather than starting with definitions of theemotive meanings of signs of involvement, that is, we would simply start withchoices of words, syntactic arrangements, discourse patterns, and so forth that are

Later (see section 8.2), we suggest that in order to add anything new to ancient rhetorical treatmentsof emphasis, modem approaches to involvement will have to open up and incorporate the relevant find-ings of empirical social psychological work such as Wiener and Mehrabians (1968).


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hypothesized to be of potential emotive significance (see section 7.7.2 on micro- vs.macro-choices), and then, using these choices as independent variables, we wouldinvestigate their uses and effects in different types of contexts and cotexts, lookingfor variations that confirm or contradict these hypotheses.5.3. What is involvement opposed to?

As said, in psychology, the notion of ego-involvement is sometimes opposed tonotions of ego-nearness and ego-threat (cf. Amdt and Jarmey, 1987). In order toclarify linguists understandings of the concept of involvement, it may be useful tolook at the paradigmatic oppositions to this notion in the literature. Glancing throughsome random examples, we find that in linguistics, involvement is opposed to thefollowing concepts: (1) detachment (Chafe, 1983); (2) integration (Chafe, 1983);16(3) considerateness (Tannen, 1984); (4) commitment (Katriel and Dascal, 1989); and(5) sincerity, in the Gricean sense, as presupposed in unmarked utterances inBallys mode pur (see section 2.3) (Hiibler, 1987).

Again, these oppositions, like the definitions listed in the preceding section, arerooted in different conceptual frameworks, and are based on different (to a certainextent, incompatible) assumptions, whose discussion is beyond our aims. Here, wewill just mention an interesting line of reasoning in Htiblers (1987) discussion ofinvolvement, which points to how we perhaps might conceptualize oppositions tothis notion. Htibler argues that if the concept of involvement is to be analyticallyuseful, it must be regarded a continuum: that is, we must regard both detachmentand attachment as modes of involvement (1987: 373):Either mode can be said to represent the speakers involvement equally . They just represent differ-ent solutions to the methodological question of how to externalize ones involvement in terms of lin-guistic behaviour. The mode of attachment represents the mode of living ones involvement. The modeof detachment is a mode of suppressing it . the attempt not to appear involved is too obvious not to becommunicatively relevant.

From a pragmatic analytical point of view, this is something of an improvementover the present situation, because it breaks with the simple equation of involvementwith emphasis (cf. Lausberg, 1960), and makes it possible to consider detached com-municative behavior as also potentially emotively relevant. Within this more dynamicnotion, the rhetorical forms of subtraction, for example (reticence, ellipsis, preteri-tion, understatement, silence, etc.), can be regarded as cold means of emotive expres-sion. This adds rich new possibilities for the analysis of emotive communication.5.4. Linguistic units in studies of involvement

In present studies of involvement, it seems to be recognized - although not alwaysforegrounded, as in ancient rhetoric (see section 2.1) and in Ballys linguistic stylis-I6 Chafe (1983) speaks of the involvement and fragmentation of oral discourse, as opposed to thedetachment and integration of written discourse.


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tics (see section 2.3) - that impressions of involvement result from clusters of lin-guistic, prosodic, and other features. Many studies mention (but few actually ana-lyze) the importance of prosodic and other vocal activities as signals of involvement(e.g., speech rate, frequency, rhythm; pitch prominence, contour, gradience, etc.)(for a review, see Selting, this issue); and a few recognize the importance of kinesicactivities (e.g., gaze, facial expression, body posture) (for a review, see Arndt andJanney, 1987). But most studies tend to focus mainly on linguistic units such as thefollowing: (1) channel (oral/written) (Chafe, 1983); (2) conversation (Tannen,1984; Katriel and Dascal, 1989); (3) narrative style (Tannen, 1989); (4) utterance(Katriel and Dascal, 1989); (5) speech act (Hubler, 1987).The list shows that the linguistic units presently being chosen as relevant to thestudy of involvement - like present definitions of involvement (see section 5.2) andpresent notions of conceptual oppositions to involvement (see section 5.3) - are nothomogeneous, and share no common theoretical framework. So far so good. But ifthe notion of involvement is to be incorporated into an integrative pragmatics ofemotive communication - for example, an approach like the one advocated here,which takes psychological, linguistic, and rhetorical stylistic findings into account -it is clear that precisely from a theoretical standpoint, some crucial problems need tobe clarified both at the local utterance level and at the global discourse level (seesection 7.7.2).

In particular, at the utterance level, it is important to clarify the relation betweennotions of involvement and modality, on the one hand, and between notions ofinvolvement and felicity conditions (especially the sincerity condition of a speechact), on the other. Also, the relation between involvement and commitment needs tobe clarified (cf. Katriel and Dascal, 1987). As is well known, the main linguisticmeans of commitment in the epistemic modality are Urmsons (1952) parentheticalverbs, and modal adverbs like probably, which modify the claim to truth of anassertion. These are called evidentials in another tradition. If commitment isdefined as a sign of subscription (neustic in Hares terms) (cf. Hare, 1970; Lyons,1977), then involvement, it seems, could be defined as the emotive subscription tothe utterance. However, such a definition, which is to some extent plausible, wouldfirst have to be grounded on an empirical basis (see section 8).At the discourse level, it is important to clarify the relation between involvementand interaction-types and text-types, since these latter put constraints on the kind andamount of involvement allowed. A solution might start from an emit definition ofcontexts, as in sociological and anthropological work (cf. Besnier, 1990). Onceagain, however, here, we face the problem of the margins of freedom: we can startmaking inferences about partners behavior and about their involvement only whenpartners can choose among different, equally possible, communicative alternatives.Clearly, choice is much reduced, at times approximating zero, in highly ritualizedtypes of interaction (e.g., institutional interaction). It seems evident that there is aninverse relation between the strictness of the conventions that are expected to be metin any given interaction-type, and the speakers freedom of emotive choice: themore ritualized the interaction is, the less apparent the choices will be that triggeremotive interpretations.


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6. Emotive contrastsAnother step toward developing a unified pragmatics of emotive communication

is to agree about how emotive activities are recognized and interpreted as such tobegin with. What constitutes an emotively significant linguistic contrast? The waythis question is answered has important implications for how we finally representemotive contrasts as objects of analysis, and how we explain them from a systematicpoint of view.6.1. D i vergence

Following a line of rhetorical reasoning that goes back beyond Montesquieus(1758) Plaisirs de la surprise to Ciceros (55 B.C.) concept of praeter expecta-tionem and Aristotles (330 ca. B.C.) concept of poo66~qzov, and which figuresprominently in studies of style shift in sociolinguistics (cf. Gumperz, 1982;Labov and Fanshel, 1977) and literary stylistics (cf. Riffaterre, 1960), we canhypothesize that emotive significance is associated mainly with features of dis-course that strike interpreters as being in some sense unusual, unexpected, orsurprising in the situation. The figures and tropes of classical rhetoric are essen-tially techniques for producing discourse patterns that diverge from the matter-of-fact . presentation of thoughts (Baily, 1981: 30).18 The notion that surprisingdivergence is emotively significant is very much in keeping with modem homeo-static views of language perception and cognitive appraisal. At the most reducedlevel, it is sometimes said, interpreters project something like hypothetical furthercourses of events, which are either confirmed or disconfirmed by partners subse-quent behavior. Unexpected events tend automatically to call attention to them-selves (cf. Sperber and Wilsons (1986) notion of relevance) by destabilizinginterpreters situational assumptions (cf. Amdt and Janney, 1987: 55-63). In home-ostatic terms, unexpected behavior leads to a sort of interactive destabilization,which triggers a post-destabilization reorganization of interpretive assumptions,

I7 Selting (1985: 180) defines a style shift as the alternation of one speech style with another speechstyle in the context of the same communicative event.s Such activities are dealt with in rhetoric under the concept of style (L. elocutio, utterance, expres-sion; G. lexis, speech, diction, word; G. phrasis, way of speaking). The categories of classicalrhetorical stylistics - (1) position, (2) repetition, (3) quantity, (4) appel, and (5) substitution, as Plett(1991: 28) says, are essentially categories of linguistic divergence: that is, categories of variational pos-sibilities in utterances or sentences, in which different grammatically definable elements are respectively(1) rearranged, (2) repeat ed (3), expanded or compr essed, (4) adj usted in some sense, and/or (5)replaced in order to create different persuasive emotive effects. The first four categories, usually referredto as the figures, consist mainly of variational possibilities in which words preserve what Lanham callstheir ordinary meanings, but are placed in significant arrangements of some kind (1969: 116). Thelast category, usually referred to as the tropes, consists mainly of uses of words to suggest thingsother than their ordinary meanings, as in metaphor (1969: 116). Rhetorical stylistics could thus beregarded, in the present connection, as an early approach to studying techniques for producing emotivelymarked, surprising or divergent patterns in discourse (cf. Fraser, 1980: 349).


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350 C. CafJi, R.W. Janney I Journal of Pragmat i cs 22 (1994) 325-373and leads to fresh interpretive hypotheses based on new assumptions (cf. Janney,1992: 470-473).19

6.2. MarkednessA methodological problem that has never been fully resolved in studies of diver-gent uses of language (whether in rhetorical stylistics, linguistic stylistics, sociolin-guistics, or modem discourse analysis), is the problem of the unmarked, neutral form:the standard of comparison against which a linguistic activity can be said to consti-

tute an emotively significant contrast (cf. Caffi, 1992: 273-275). Assuming, withKasher (1984: 68), that what we are looking for, from a descriptive point of view,are contrasts between linguistic alternatives that are in some sense diRerent whileessentially similar, we must specify what such linguistic choices vary in relation to.

Sapirs (1927: 893) solution to this problem, which has greatly influenced Amer-ican functional linguists, but which also has a long, independent tradition in thePrague School concept of markedness (see section 2.4),20 was to suggest that theanalysis of emotive features of discourse must begin by focusing on variations, how-ever minimal, from what he called nuclear patterns o behavior.2 Sapir claimed thatwe cannot adequately represent emotive contrasts without first, in every instance,assigning some type of baseline or background to the activities in question, and thennoting degrees, or positing scales, of divergence or markedness in relation to thisbackground.22 In Sapirs view, in order for a description of an emotive contrast torepresent what really matters emotively - that is, the emotively relevant variation inthe perceived situation, as opposed to the individual token activity per se - a form ofrepresentation must be developed that focuses on, or somehow captures, the rela-

In this connection, Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983: 93) remark that the divergent characteristics ofunexpected utterances also have important implications for their semantic organization, their influenceon memory, and their interactive effects. It is also worth mentioning that from a literary semiotic per-spective - for example, Lotmans (1970) - an artistic text is defined as informative precisely becauseit surprises, escaping routines.* The typological notion of markedness was originally developed by the Prague School linguists,who first used it to assign marked and unmarked values to categories of phenomena in phonologicalsystems (cf. Trubetzkoy, 193 l), and later used it to describe categories of morphosyntactic and semanticphenomena (cf. Jakobson, 1932).? The notion of nuclear patterns has a long history in linguistics, which cannot be dealt with in detailhere. It may be noted, however, that in prosodies, nuclear patterning has been used as a metaphor forcertain core features of intonation (cf. Trager and Smith, 1949; Chomsky and Halle, 1968). In linguisticstylistics, it has been used as a logical or statistical norm for identifying so-called deviations amongpre-selected linguistic features of texts (cf. Darbyshire, 1971; Akhmanova, 1976). In the Prague Schooltradition, it has sometimes been used as a metaphor for unmarked syntactic patterns against whichdistinctive features or disruptions of normal word order are identified (cf. Jakobson, 1960; Stankiewicz,1964; Volek, 1987). And in some sociolinguistic work, it provides the unmarked, neutral baselinecondition against which emotive features of speech like emphasis and intensity are said to be definedas marked for affect (cf. Labov, 1984).22 Sapir regarded this as essentially a conventional linguistic background (1927: 893). The followingdiscussion attempts to show that emotive contrasts can be defined in relation to contextual and cotextualbackgrounds as well.


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tionship between a hypothetical nuclear pattern, and a certain range of potentialchoices that vary significantly in relation to this pattern, and can hence be regardedas marked choices. It is always the implicit variation against some type of anticipa-tory schema (cf. Atkinson and Allen, 1983) that matters emotively, he said, not theindividual activity itself (Sapir, 1949: 542).23Assuming that the recognition of emotive markedness, at the most reduced level,involves anticipatory schemata and divergent activities,24 it becomes appropriate toask what types of anticipatory schemata are involved in the marking of emotivecontrasts. The following are some potential candidates:6.2.1. Linguistic anticipatory schemataLinguistic anticipatory schemata, we might say, consist of common assumptionsabout language, its vocal, kinesic, graphological, and other supporting systems, andtheir usual manifestations and meanings in everyday discourse. Implied here aregeneral expectations about words and meanings, pronunciations, syntactic arrange-ments, graphological conventions, and syntactically/semantically appropriateaccompanying prosodic behavior and kinesic activities. In some modem syntacti-cally oriented approaches to emotive communication, linguistic anticipatoryschemata are tacitly assumed to provide the tertium comparationis for recognizingemotively marked divergence in individual utterances or sentences independentlyfrom other contextual and cotextual factors .25For example, if we assume that a syn-tactic question requires a rising intonation (Is that right P), a syntactic questionwith a falling intonation represents a divergence (Is that right L); if we assumethat in a syntactic statement, the predicate follows the subject (Id like to knowwhat happened), a statement in which the predicate precedes the subject repre-sents a divergence (What happened, Id like to know); if we assume that the pro-nunciation of good is [gud], a pronunciation like [gu: : : :d] represents a divergence,and so forth.

23 Pilot experiments with students reported in Garfinkel (1967) provide many examples of the impor-tance of this point. In one experiment, Garfinkel sent students home with the instruction to be morepolite than usual with their parents, and note the results. The students reports overwhelmingly showedthat their polite behavior was interpreted in the intimate, family context, as an attack. The parents con-sensus responses, in cases where it did not stop, were, in this order, and with increasing intensity: (1) issomething wrong?, (2) why are you doing this?, (3) youre trying to make me mad [breaking offcontact]. In these cases, it was not the polite behavior itself that caused the problem, but the divergencefrom the parents contextual behavioral expectations (see the discussion of contextual schemata in sec-tion 3.2.1).24 Here, for lack of space, we will not go into the interesting motivational and attitudinal processesinvolved in the perception of emotive contrasts. These are discussed, however, in Amdt and Janney(1987: 63-70).25 For example, many techniques dealt with in classical rhetorical stylistics under the term dispositio(cf. Plett, 1991), and some phenomena dealt with in modem discourse studies of foregrounding, topi-calization, left/right dislocation, etc., depend indirectly on linguistic anticipatory schemata for theirtertium comparationis (cf. Prince, 1981; Given, 1984; Horn, 1991). Without notions of normal syn-tactic patterning, that is, they could not be defined as objects of analysis. The same is true of many mod-em studies of emotive prosody (see Selting, this issue).


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6.2.2. Contextual anticipatory schemataContextual anticipatory schemata, we might say, consist mainly of expectationsabout kinds of communicative behavior that different types of speakers or writers arelikely to produce in different discourse situations. Implied here are both (1) rela-tively nonnegotiable global assumptions about human values, feelings, desires, moti-vations, interpersonal attitudes, and social affiliations in ones culture, and assump-tions about how these are typically communicated in different situations;26 and (2)relatively fragile, hypothetical, predictive situational assumptions about how specificpartners may be likely to act in the immediate situation (cf. Amdt and Janney, 1987:109-l 13).27 In much sociolinguistic research, contextual anticipatory schemata areassumed to provide the tertium comparationis for recognizing instances of emotivelymarked divergence from expected communicative styles, strategies, or speechchoices in different situations. Here, the standard of comparison is less closely con-nected with specific linguistic forms than with general expectations about broad pat-terns of linguistic be

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Toward a Pragmatics of Emotive Communication