THE LANDSCAPE OF AFFECTIVE MEANING
type: CreativeWork
description: Swear words are highly colloquial expressions that have the capacity to sig- nal the speaker’s affective states, i.e., to display the speaker’s feelings with respect to a certain stimulus. For this reason, swear words are often called expressives. Which linguistic mechanisms allow swear words display affective states, and, more importantly, how can such ‘affective content’ be character- ized in a theory of meaning? Even though research on expressive meaning has produced models that integrate the affective aspects of swear words in a compositional framework, there is extensive evidence that swear words can- not be assigned a single or stable affective interpretation across contexts. For example, even though expletive adjectives (e.g., 'damn'), particularistic insults (e.g., 'bastard') and slurs (e.g., 'wop') typically express (and elicit) negatively valenced affective states, they can also be interpreted positively in some con- texts. Thus, inspired in recent developments in formal sociolinguistics, I propose an 'indexical' approach to affective meaning. Under this approach, an affective expression is associated with a set of affective qualities, anyone of which may emerge at a given context depending on the interpreter’s prior assumptions about the speaker’s affective states and/or relation with the tar- get of the swear word. To define this set, also called 'indexical field', I will use the dimensions pleasure, arousal and dominance, standardly employed in cognitive psychology to characterize and measure affective episodes. In this dissertation, thus, the affective meaning of an expression is given by the set of affective states it typically conveys within a linguistic community, but its interpretation at a given context is established by taking into account the interpreter’s prior assumptions about the speaker’s affective states and/or attitudes with respect to the target of the affective expression.
abstract: Swear words are highly colloquial expressions that have the capacity to sig- nal the speaker’s affective states, i.e., to display the speaker’s feelings with respect to a certain stimulus. For this reason, swear words are often called expressives. Which linguistic mechanisms allow swear words display affective states, and, more importantly, how can such ‘affective content’ be character- ized in a theory of meaning? Even though research on expressive meaning has produced models that integrate the affective aspects of swear words in a compositional framework, there is extensive evidence that swear words can- not be assigned a single or stable affective interpretation across contexts. For example, even though expletive adjectives (e.g., 'damn'), particularistic insults (e.g., 'bastard') and slurs (e.g., 'wop') typically express (and elicit) negatively valenced affective states, they can also be interpreted positively in some con- texts. Thus, inspired in recent developments in formal sociolinguistics, I propose an 'indexical' approach to affective meaning. Under this approach, an affective expression is associated with a set of affective qualities, anyone of which may emerge at a given context depending on the interpreter’s prior assumptions about the speaker’s affective states and/or relation with the tar- get of the swear word. To define this set, also called 'indexical field', I will use the dimensions pleasure, arousal and dominance, standardly employed in cognitive psychology to characterize and measure affective episodes. In this dissertation, thus, the affective meaning of an expression is given by the set of affective states it typically conveys within a linguistic community, but its interpretation at a given context is established by taking into account the interpreter’s prior assumptions about the speaker’s affective states and/or attitudes with respect to the target of the affective expression.
author: CARRANZA PINEDO, VICTOR RAFAEL
language: eng
keywords: philosophy of language, pragmatic, expressive, swear word, rational speech-act framework, emotions, Settore M-FIL/05 - Filosofia e Teoria dei Linguaggi
date published: 2022-07-11
date modified: 2026-07-27T20:19:00Z
provider: Università degli Studi di Milano
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Università degli Studi di Milano

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2434/933926

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.13130/carranza-pinedo-victor-rafael_phd2022-07-11