Reviewed by Heli Tissari Reviewed by Heli Tissari Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English Department of Modern Languages University of Helsinki, Finland [email protected]...

The aim of this article is to give a general idea of how meanings of single emotion words, and configurations between words, change historically, reflecting changes in people’s understanding of emotions. The article provides a selective overview of linguistic research on the histories of a number of English words for emotions. It focuses on changes in the words emotion and mood as well as analyzing terms for the specific emotions of anger, fear, happiness, joy, love, pride, respect, and sorrow. This (...) article also suggests that it is possible to use linguistic data in order to recover some “psychological” information about emotions, such as information on people’s responses to them. (shrink)