processes, affective mental and behavioural processes, and modal Adjuncts:
● affect as ‘quality’
– describing participants a sadcaptain Epithet – attributed to participants the captain was sad Attribute – manner of processes the captain left sadly Circumstance
● affect as ‘process’1
– affective mental his departure upsethim Process (effective) hemissedthem Process (middle) – affective behavioural the captain wept Process
● affect as ‘comment’
– desiderative sadly, he had to go Modal Adjunct Beyond this of course we find the usual range of grammatical metaphors (Halliday 1994), including nominalised realisations of qualities (joy, sadness, sorrow) and processes (grief, sobs, constriction in his throat).
In order to classify emotions we adopted the strategy of mapping out the terrain as systems of oppositions. It is not clear to us, having been trained as grammarians, how to motivate a lexis-oriented classification of this kind; nor have we been able to find relevant strategies of argu- mentation in the field of lexicography or corpus linguistics. Thus our maps of feeling (for affect, judgementand appreciation) have to be treated at this stage as hypotheses about the organisation of the relevant meanings – offered as a challenge to those concerned with developing appropriate reasoning, as a reference point for those with alternative classifications and as a tool for those who need something to manage the analysis of evaluation in discourse.
By way of classifying affect, we in fact drew on the following six factors, several of which are foregrounded in the grammar of English (after Halliday 1994) and so we assumed of highly generalised relevance to the question of types of emotion. For purposes of this discussion we’ll call the conscious participant experiencing the emotion an Emoter, and the phenomenon responsible for that emotion a Trigger.
i. Are the feelings popularly construed by the culture as positive (good vibes that are enjoyable to experience) or negative ones (bad vibes that are better avoided)? We are not concerned here with the value that a particular uncommon sense psychological framework might place on one or another emotion (cf. ‘It’s probably productive that you’re feeling sad because it’s a sign that …’).
46 The Language of Evaluation
● positive affect the captain was happy
● negative affect the captain was sad
ii. Are the feelings realised as a surge of emotion involving some kind of embodied paralinguistic or extralinguistic manifestation, or more internally experienced as a kind of emotive state or ongoing mental process? Grammatically this distinction is constructed as the opposition between behavioural (eg She smiled at him) versus mental (egShe liked him) or relational (eg She felt happy with him) processes.
● behavioural surge the captain wept
● mental process/state the captain dislikedleaving/the captain felt sad
iii. Are the feelings construed as directed at or reacting to some specific emotional Trigger or as a general ongoing mood for which one might pose the question ‘Why are you feeling that way?’ and get the answer ‘I’m not sure.’ Grammatically this distinction is constructed as the opposition between mental processes (She likes him/he pleases her) and relational states (she’s happy). With the mental processes both the Emoter and the Trigger of the emotion are participants (Senser and Phenomenon) and thus directly implicated in the process; with rela- tional states the Emoter and the emotion are the participants (Carrier and Attribute), pushing the Trigger to an optional circumstantial position (she’s happy with him/about that).
● reaction to other the captain dislikedleaving/leavingdispleased the captain
● undirected mood the captain was sad
Passive mental processes of the ‘please’ type fall between these poles (she’s pleased by him), especially where the Phenomenon is left implicit (she’s pleased) – in which case instances are typically hard to categorise as mental or relational. We can think of this region of meaning as a scale graded along the following lines:
mental
she likes him he pleases her she’s pleased by him
she’s pleased
she’s pleased with him she’s very pleased she’s happy relational
iv. How are the feelings graded – towards the lower valued end of a scale of intensity or towards the higher valued end; or somewhere in between? We don’t wish at this stage to imply that low, median and high are discrete values (as with modality– cf. Halliday 1994: 358–9), but expect that most emotions offer lexicalisations that grade along a evenly clined scale (cf. the discussion of sadness below).
● low the captain dislikedleaving
● median the captain hatedleaving
● high the captain detestedleaving
v. Do the feelings involve intention (rather than reaction), with respect to a stimulus that is irrealis (rather than realis). Grammatically this distinction is constructed as the opposition between desiderative and emotive mental processes (I’d like tovsI like it); for further discus- sion of the grammar at issue here see Davidse 1991, Halliday 1994, Lock 1996, Matthiessen 1995.
● realis the captain dislikedleaving
● irrealis the captain fearedleaving
Irrealis affectalways seems to implicate a Trigger, and so can be outlined as in Table 2.1 (setting aside parameter iii).
48 The Language of Evaluation
Table 2.1 Irrealis affect
DIS/INCLINATION Surge (of behaviour) Disposition
fear tremble wary
shudder fearful
cower terrorised
desire suggest miss
request long for
demand yearn for
vi. The final variable in our typology of affectgroups emotions into three major sets having to do with un/happiness, in/security and dis/
satisfaction. The un/happiness variable covers emotions concerned with
‘affairs of the heart’ – sadness, hate, happiness and love; the in/security variable covers emotions concerned with ecosocial well-being – anxiety, fear, confidence and trust; the dis/satisfaction variable covers emotions concerned with telos (the pursuit of goals) – ennui, displeasure, curiosity, respect.
● un/happiness the captain felt sad/happy
● in/security the captain felt anxious/confident
● dis/satisfaction the captain felt fed up/absorbed
The un/happiness set of meanings is probably the first to come to mind when we think about emotions, and is included in all of the inventories we have encountered. It involves the moods of feeling happy or sad, and the possibility of directing these feelings at a Trigger by liking or disliking it (see Table 2.2).
In/security covers our feelings of peace and anxiety in relation to our environs, including of course the people sharing them with us. In stereotypically gendered communities the feelings here are associated with ‘mothering’ in the home – tuned to protection from the world outside (or not) (see Table 2.3).
Table 2.2 Affect – un/happiness
UN/HAPPINESS Surge (of behaviour) Disposition unhappiness
misery whimper down [low]
[mood: ‘in me’] cry sad [median]
wail miserable [high]
antipathy rubbish dislike
[directed feeling: ‘at you’] abuse hate
revile abhor
happiness
cheer chuckle cheerful
laugh2 buoyant
rejoice jubilant
affection shake hands be fond of
hug love
embrace adore
Dis/satisfaction deals with our feelings of achievement and frustration in relation to the activities in which we are engaged, including our roles as both participants and spectators. In stereotypically gendered commu- nities the feelings here are associated with ‘fathering’ (and mentoring in general) – tuned to learning and accomplishment. These oppositions take us to the borders of affectas it is popularly perceived, as reflected in Star Trek characters like Spock (a human/Vulcan hybrid who suppresses emotion) and Data (an android who feels none) – who occasionally express their fascination with things (typically triggered by what they regard as human eccentricity). Directed emotions in this region are sensitive to how active a role we are playing in the activity we’re react- ing to. We get angry as frustrated participants in an activity, but fed up as spectators; we’re pleased with our own achievements, but charmed by others’ (see Table 2.4).
The examples we’ve provided in these tables are by no means exhaus- tive, but included simply to give the gist of the range of meanings involved and emphasise the fact that the choice of one lexical item or another always involves grading the depth of feeling. To reinforce this point we’ve taken just one cell, for the mood ‘unhappy’, and blown it up in Table 2.5 by including a broader spectrum of meanings from Roget’s Thesaurus – and in doing so we’ve included only a few of the meanings elaborated in Roget. In order to do justice to this kind of lexical elaboration we would need to develop semantic topologies for 50 The Language of Evaluation
Table 2.3 Affect – in/security
IN/SECURITY Surge (of behaviour) Disposition insecurity
disquiet restless uneasy
twitching anxious
shaking freaked out
surprise start startled
cry out jolted
faint staggered
security
confidence declare together
assert confident
proclaim assured
trust delegate comfortable with
commit confident in/about
entrust trusting
Table 2.4 Affect – dis/satisfaction
DIS/SATISFACTION Surge (of behaviour) Disposition dissatisfaction
ennui fidget flat
yawn stale
tune out jaded
displeasure caution cross, bored with
scold angry, sick of
castigate furious, fed up with
satisfaction
interest attentive involved
busy absorbed
industrious engrossed
pleasure pat on the back satisfied, impressed
compliment pleased, charmed
reward chuffed, thrilled
Table 2.5 Affect – kinds of unhappiness
Affect Positive Negative
dis/inclination miss, long for, wary, fearful, terrorised yearn for
un/happiness cheerful buoyant, sad, melancholy, despondent;
jubilant; like, cut-up, heart-broken … love, adore broken-hearted, heavy- hearted, sick at heart;
sorrowful … grief-stricken, woebegone … dejected …;
dejected, joyless, dreary, cheerless, unhappy, sad;
gloomy, despondent, … downcast, low, down, down in the mouth, depressed …; weepy, wet-eyed, tearful, in tears … in/security together, confident, uneasy, anxious,
assured; comfortable, freaked out; startled, confident, trusting surprised, astonished dis/satisfaction involved, absorbed, flat, stale, jaded; cross,
engrossed; satisfied, angry, furious; bored with, pleased, chuffed/ sick of, fed up with impressed, charmed,
thrilled
each cell, designed around various intersecting parameters – a project well beyond the scope of this book.