The expressive dimension

Theoretical Linguistics 33 (2):165-198 (2007)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Expressives like damn and bastard have, when uttered, an immediate and powerful impact on the context. They are performative, often destructively so. They are revealing of the perspective from which the utterance is made, and they can have a dramatic impact on how current and future utterances are perceived. This, despite the fact that speakers are invariably hard-pressed to articulate what they mean. I develop a general theory of these volatile, indispensable meanings. The theory is built around a class of expressive indices. These determine the expressive setting of the context of interpretation. Expressives morphemes act on that context, actively changing its expressive setting. The theory is multidimensional in the sense that descriptives and expressives are fundamentally different but receive a unified logical treatment.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 98,316

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
139 (#142,517)

6 months
17 (#154,765)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

The Social Life of Slurs.Geoff Nunberg - 2018 - In Daniel Fogal, Daniel W. Harris & Matt Moss (eds.), New Work on Speech Acts. Oxford University Press. pp. 237–295.
Slurring Perspectives.Elisabeth Camp - 2013 - Analytic Philosophy 54 (3):330-349.
Slurring Words.Luvell Anderson & Ernie Lepore - 2011 - Noûs 47 (1):25-48.
Slurs.Adam M. Croom - 2011 - Language Sciences 33 (3):343-358.

View all 120 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references