Language and Emotion

This book analyses the signals people use to express emotion, looking at the social, cultural and political functions of emotional language.

James M. Wilce (Author)

9780521864176, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 April 2009

246 pages, 1 map
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.5 cm, 0.52 kg

'… a must-read for anyone interested in language or emotion.' Laura M. Ahearn, Rutgers University

Language is a means we use to communicate feelings; we also reflect emotionally on the language we and others use. James Wilce analyses the signals people use to express emotion, looking at the social, cultural and political functions of emotional language around the world. His book demonstrates that speaking, feeling, reflecting, and identifying are interrelated processes and shows how desire or shame are attached to language. Drawing on nearly one hundred ethnographic case studies, it demonstrates the cultural diversity, historical emergence, and political significance of emotional language. Wilce brings together insights from linguistics and anthropology to survey an extremely broad range of genres, cultural concepts, and social functions of emotional expression.

Introduction
Part I. Theory: 1. Defining the domain
2. The relationship of language and emotion
3. Approaches to language and emotion
4. The panhuman and the particular
Part II. Language, Power, and Honor: 5. Language, emotion, power, and politics
6. Status, honorification, and emotion for hire
Part III. Identification and Identity: 7. Language as emotional object
8. Language, affect, gender, and sexuality
Part IV. Histories of Language and Emotion: 9. A history of theories
10. Shifting forms of language and emotion
11. Language and the medicalization of emotion
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Sociology [JHB], Sociolinguistics [CFB]