The connections between intensionality and emotive content as expressed in natural language will be traced to determine how patterns in the relation between intensionality and emotive expressions reveal something about the way emotion as an independent component of the human mind interacts with the cognitive domain of language. Intensionality cannot be characterized without the notion of intentionality in that intensionality has something to do with non-specificity or opacity, and this opacity has partly to do with the underdetermination or underspecification of aboutness or directedness toward objects or entities.
This characterizes the essence of intentionality. Such non-specificity or opacity has parallels in both language and structures of emotive content in the sense that intensional elements in quantificational contexts show a systematic semantic variability in the way non-specificity or opacity is expressed, and contents of (emotional) affect reveal similar patterns. Another reason why two distinct but otherwise related phenomenaâintensionality and intentionalityâare co-defined in association with each other is that intentionality appears to be a much more primitive form of biological feature (and maybe it was also present in earlier life-forms) from which languageâespecially linguistic meaningâhas evolved (Searle 1983). And intensionality constitutes a significant and, at the same time, baffling aspect of linguistic meaning.
As we will see, intensionality plays a major role in the linguistic expression and conceptualization of emotive content. This book will make explicit how and in what ways such inseparable links between intensionality, linguistic meaning and emotive content exist. The way they relate to each other can unravel the fundamental form of the cognitive structures of emotion and the nature of linguistic meanings within the fabric of grammar. In addition, insights from such an exploration of the liaison between intensionality, linguistic meaning and emotive content will also help unlock the nature of operations that occur at the interface that connects language to the domain of emotion in the human mind.1 Before we move on to the problems that have been posed in this chapter, letâs first try to clarify the concepts of emotion, intentionality and intensionality as they characterize the boundaries within which the relation between intensionality, linguistic meaning and emotive content is configured. In the discussions that follow, no strict attempt at precisely demarcated definitions will be made; however, the relevant notions will be characterized, insofar as they can be tailored to fit the descriptive and explanatory analyses in the book.
1.1 On the Concept of Emotion and Emotive Content
It is difficult to come up with a widely applicable definition of emotion given the diverse range of differences in the ways in which the word âemotionâ can be expressed and construed. Studies on emotion have often been neglected because of its fuzzy, hazy and labyrinthine character. The study of emotion in social and biological sciences has, however, gained a dramatic change in fortune (Lazarus 1991a, b). The amount of neuroscientific work on emotion has been growing rapidly, as evident in Ekman and Davidson (1994), LeDoux (1996), Borod (2000) and Lindquist et al. (2012). There are two broad aspects or dimensions according to which emotion has been characterized. The cognitive aspects of emotions have been emphasized by cognitive theories of emotion (Arnold 1960; Roseman 1984; Scherer 1984; Lazarus 1991a). In fact, the landmark study on emotions in terms of the cognitive appraisal of emotions was conducted by Schachter and Singer (1962) who, by injecting adrenaline into participants who were then subjected to different situations, intended to substantiate the proposal that emotions, depending on the cognitive appraisal of situations, vary in character or class. For Frijda (1988) too, emotions vary as a function of the interpretation of the meaning of situations. And this has a cognitive liaison, as the appreciated meaning of situations has to be conceptualized by the subjects. On the other hand, the non-cognitive character of emotion is underpinned by aspects of emotion that appeal to the distinctively unique characteristics of emotion. Damasio (1994, 2003), and Oatley and Johnson-Laird (1987, 2002) follow the (William) Jamesian line of thinking in proposing that the basis of emotion is dissociated from aspects of general cognition, though emotional processing can affect and be related to categorization, memory, attention, reasoning and so on. Damasioâs somatic marker hypothesis (1994) makes this explicit and precise. One of the most prominent features of this approach toward emotion is that emotions precede feelings, as emotions are bodily grounded and come before any feeling state, which is characterized by a perception of a state of the body along with a state of thinking and thoughts (Damasio 2003). This was also emphasized by William James as he argued that we feel sad because we cry, not the other way round.
Zinck and Newen (2008) have specified emotion in terms of some core features emotions exhibit. They are:
- I.automatic appraisal that is tuned to quick onset, brief duration and typically unbidden occurrence;
- II.distinctive physiognomic and physiological reactions;
- III.distinctive cognitions: thoughts, memories, images;
- IV.distinctive subjective experience;
- V.interpersonal/interactive orientation;
- VI.characteristic behavioral and motivational features.
In their characterization of emotion, Zinck and Newen have also vouched for a non-cognitive character of emotions, as they have made a distinction between mental representations, emotions and cognitive attitudes such as belief, thoughts and so forth. A phenomenal appraisal of situations, a preparation and motivation for action by the elicitation of physiological changes, facial reactions, behavioral flexibility and so on are some of the major aspects of emotions that distinguish them from other mental phenomena. In addition, Damasio (2003) has proposed a kind of definition of emotion in the form of some of its central characteristics. What emanates from his hypothesis is that emotions are a complex collection of neurochemical responses which are produced by emotionally relevant stimuli evolutionarily significant or learned in the course of lifetime, and which result in changes in the states of the body and neural structures that map body and thinking, and these changes are relevant to the survival and well-being of the organism.
While non-cognitive approaches toward emotion do not deny aspects of emotion that relate to aspects of cognition, as discussed above, cognitive theories of emotion in turn do not fail to pinpoint the distinctive nature and origin of emotions in the autonomic nervous system. With this proviso, what is to be stipulated for the present work is that emotions are bodily grounded, are elicited in a reflex-like manner (as in basic emotions such as fear and anger) or in a manner ensured by the appraisal of the meaning of the relevant pattern of stimuli with the result that certain (neuro)cognitive structures of emotion are formed, formatted, altered, modulated by patterns of emotions depending on the nature of the relevant stimuli which may be evolutionarily significant or learned, and these (neuro)cognitive structures of emotionâhowever conceptualized in the mindâcan be expressed linguistically through an âinterfaceâ that connects language and emotion as components or domains of cognition.2
Thus the conceptualization of the (neuro)cognitive structures of emotion may well fall out of a linguistically grounded construal of affect, just as expressions of spatial concepts ensue from linguistic conceptualizations of space (Bloom et al. 1996). Such conceptualizations of the (neuro)cognitive structures of emotion constitute the emotive content. Not surprisingly, Freeman (2000), on the basis of a deeper link between emotion and intentionality, has argued that emotion is a kind of intention to act in the near future with its increasing levels of complexity of contextualization, as emotion is a âstretching forthâ of intentionality. However, the characterization of emotive content in the proposed stipulation gives us a significant advantage in that this combines both cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of emotion. This characterization of emotive content will be applied and extrapolated to all cases where the notion of emotion or emotive content has been used in order for us to appreciate its expression in language.
1.2 The Concept of Intentionality
Intentionality is a property of mental states or events which characterizes aboutness or directedness at objects or states or affairs. For example, a desire for water is directed at or about water. Intentionality is a much more primitive form of biological feature from which languageâespecially linguistic meaningâhas derived and evolved (Searle 1983). In fact, discussions about intentionality can be traced to the earliest era of philosophical thinking on mind. For Descartes, the essence of mind is thinking which consists in the presence of intentionality. More significantly, Brentano (1874) hypothesized that all mental states are intentional states. What this means is simply that all mental phenomena involve directedness or aboutness toward objects or entities or states of affairs. While the Brentano thesis receives support from Crane (2001), it has been criticized by Millkan (1984) and Nes (2008) on the grounds that the feature of intentionality is also true of many non-mental phenomena; for instance, the directedness of the stomach toward (digestion of) food. On the other hand, the absence of directedness of pain experiences is adduced to counter the claim that all mental phenomena are intentional. Given these disagreements and various attempts to describe intentionality in concrete terms, specifically by philosophers and more generally by cognitive scientists, the representational capacity of mental states is still faintly understood (Brandl 2009). Brandl (2009) has shown, however, that there are two broad approaches that have been taken toward a better understanding of this problem: informational semantics and phenomenological semantics. What is important for informational semantics is the character of information that cognitive systems track, and such information is significant for the cognitive systems concerned, mainly because it maximizes or op...