Abstract

Linguistic mood is a grammatical term as well as a morphological category of the verb. Due to its often philosophical implications it is challenging to find a definition or a common understanding of the notion; it has been proven historically and linguistically difficult to analyze. In this essay I aim to cast new light upon and interpret the concept of mood in extended, philosophical manners. The argument of the essay is that the traditional approach to the notion is done in ways that omit fundamental aspects of it, as well as puts it into a framework that tries to explain it in ways through which it cannot fully be explained. Thus the thesis is that there is more to the notion than what meets the eye. The idea is to find this through the work of phenomenologists. Alongside a linguistic use, the word mood [Modus/mode] is also being used in philosophy, most notably within a phenomenological discourse. Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty all use the word. By going through a close-reading of the concept, I argue for the proximity between the linguistic and the phenomenological adaption of mood and show how they are ontologically related; the objective is to suggest that there is more common ground between them than the mere name. By concentrating on this term I want to further examine in what way a phenomenological understanding of language can challenge an overly narrow, one-dimensional understanding, which I see as a fault shared by the linguists.