Olfaction has recently been highlighted as a sense poorly connected with language. Odor is difficult to verbalize, and it has few qualities that afford mimicry by vision or sound. At the same time, emotion is thought to be the most salient dimension of an odor, and it could therefore be an olfactory dimension more easily communicated. We investigated whether sounds imitative of an innate disgust response can be associated with unpleasant odors. In two experiments, participants were asked to make a (...) forced choice between a pseudoword including a disgust sound and a neutral pseudoword, for pleasant and unpleasant odors. Overall, participants chose more disgust pseudowords than neutral pseudowords for unpleasant odors, but this was not the case for pleasant odors. This effect was not driven by a general association between unpleasant sounds and unpleasant odors, but specifically the sounds [x/χ] and [f], thought to reflect physical responses to disgusting odors, as seen in the Polish fu! or the English ugh!. In line with growing evidence that language can encode odor, we provide the first experimental evidence for an association between the sound of a word and odor valence. (shrink)

Goddard proposes a three-partite division of emotive interjections, which is helpful in delineating this heterogeneous set of phenomena. The distinction also explains inconsistencies between Goddard’s and previous findings: While his study demonstrates variability across languages in word-like primary interjections, previous work investigating noise-like interjections has found evidence for universality. Such cross-culturally consistent, categorical perception of emotional signals can be explained as emerging from bottom–up information without the need for top–down learning via language or interjections.

The philosophical debate over disgust and its role in moral discourse has focused on disgust’s epistemic status: can disgust justify judgments of moral wrongness? Or is it misplaced in the moral domain—irrelevant at best, positively distorting at worst? Correspondingly, empirical research into disgust has focused on its role as a cause or amplifier of moral judgment, seeking to establish how and when disgust either causes us to morally condemn actions, or strengthens our pre-existing tendencies to condemn certain actions. Both of (...) these approaches to disgust are based on a set of assumptions that I call, in what follows, the evidential model of disgust. This paper proposes an alternative model, which I call the response model. Instead of looking at disgust as a cause and justification of judgments of moral wrongness, I will argue that disgust is better understood as a response to wrongness. More precisely, I argue that disgust is a response to norm violations, and that it is a fitting response insofar as norm violations are potentially contagious and therefore pose a threat to the stability and maintenance of norms. (shrink)

Abstracct The present article expands our empirical and theoretical knowledge of conative animal calls (CACs) in the languages of the world. By drawing on canonical typology and prototype theory – and by contrasting the original evidence related to the category of CACs in Arusa Maasai with the evidence concerning CACs in other languages that is currently available in scholarship – the authors design a cross-linguistic prototype of a CAC and enumerate its 18 prototypical non-formal (semantic-pragmatic) and formal (phonetic, morphological, and (...) syntactic) features. (shrink)

This study investigates affective meanings expressed in facial expressions and bodily gestures from a semiotic perspective. Particularly, the study focuses on disentangling relations of affective meanings and exploring the meaning potential of facial expressions and bodily gestures. Based on the analysis of over three hundred screenshots from two films (one animation and one live-action film), this study proposes a system of visual affect, as well as a system of visual resources involved in the expression of visual affect. The system of (...) visual affect makes a further step in the investigation of affective meanings afforded by facial expressions and bodily gestures, and can provide methodological insights into the examination of affective meanings expressed visually. The system of visual resources provides a more meaning-motivated framework for systematic tracking of the visual resources, which may be applied to the analysis of other visual media apart from films. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of face emoji (disc-shaped pictograms with stylized facial expressions) that accompany written text. We propose that there is a use of face emoji in which they comment on a target proposition expressed by the accompanying text, as opposed to making an independent contribution to discourse. Focusing on positively valenced and negatively valenced emoji (which we gloss as _happy_ and _unhappy_, respectively), we argue that the emoji comment on how the target proposition bears on a contextually (...) provided discourse value endorsed by the author. Discourse values embody what an author desires, aspires to, wishes for, or hopes for. Our analysis derives a range of non-trivial generalizations, including (i) ordering restrictions with regards to the placement of emoji and text, (ii) cases of apparent mixed emotions, and (iii) cases where the lexical content of the accompanying text influences the acceptability of a face emoji. (shrink)

Sauter raises interesting points about expressive vocalisations, such as laughing, crying, gasping, etcetera. This reply discusses an expanded research agenda incorporating these. Riemer’s commentary is based on his opposition to nonreferentialist approaches to meaning. My reply seeks to clarify the natural semantic metalanguage position on the conceptual status of semantic primes, while urging researchers to consider independently the merits of reductive paraphrase as a heuristic and a corrective to terminological Anglocentrism.

When communal sharing relationships suddenly intensify, people experience an emotion that English speakers may label, depending on context, “moved,” “touched,” “heart-warming,” “nostalgia,” “patriotism,” or “rapture”. We call the emotion kama muta. Kama muta evokes adaptive motives to devote and commit to the CSRs that are fundamental to social life. It occurs in diverse contexts and appears to be pervasive across cultures and throughout history, while people experience it with reference to its cultural and contextual meanings. Cultures have evolved diverse practices, (...) institutions, roles, narratives, arts, and artifacts whose core function is to evoke kama muta. Kama muta mediates much of human sociality. (shrink)

Resumen En este trabajo se analizan 19 fórmulas rutinarias del español peninsular que comparten un mismo esquema sintáctico (Vete a+sintagma nominal o Vete a+sintagma verbal) y que se describen en los diccionarios como expresiones “de rechazo” hacia el interlocutor. Con base en las clasificaciones existentes, estas expresiones podrían considerarse fórmulas “subjetivas”, “afectivas” o “expresivas actitudinales”, ya que sirven para mostrar la actitud y las emociones del hablante. Sin embargo, conceptos complejos como “expresión afectiva”, “actitudinal” o “de rechazo” no resultan muy (...) esclarecedores a la hora de explicar el significado de este tipo de expresiones a hablantes de otras lenguas o de otras variedades del español. Por otro lado, dado que el español peninsular cuenta con al menos 19 expresiones de este tipo, es razonable pensar que entre ellas puedan existir algunas diferencias de significado. El presente estudio pretende dar respuesta a estas dos cuestiones mediante la aplicación de la Metalengua Semántica Natural (NSM) al análisis semántico-pragmático de estas unidades. Este trabajo ofrece un primer acercamiento a este tipo de expresiones mediante la elaboración de explicaciones semántico-pragmáticas para los diferentes grupos de fórmulas que, con base en los ejemplos encontrados, se han establecido en el estudio. (shrink)