Emotion discourse

The expression of emotion not only is a form of reflection on experience, but also occurs as a way of justifying and negotiating cultural values and power issues (Lutz 1990a:204).

We do not disregard the importance of cognition and its key notions such as that of schemata.² Its importance within the scope of emotion is based on the fact that it may work as a ‘shorthand […] to refer to the various events and processes which comprise the phenomenon of emotion’ (Ekman, 1997:3), and can help es-tablish coherence (Bednarek, 2009:399). We are conscious of the complexity of emotion but apply it in a very specific context (political discourse) and with a very specific goal: to analyse its argumentative value within this context. We con-centrate on emotion in use (Edwards, 1999), which is framed within the scope of discursive psychology. One of the premises of this approach is that discourse is a ‘social practice rather than a mental expression, where mental states are talk’s categories and concerns rather than its causes’ (Edwards, 1999:288).

However, Edwards’ view is not without criticism. Gee agrees with him inas-much as ‘we have a repertoire of different linguistic forms for and about emo-tions that we recruit, adapt and transform “on the spot” in interaction’ (1999:306).

However, the author highlights that social groups, classes, cultures and institutions are missing from Edwards’ theory (307). Also, Pérez Campos et al. maintain that no social practice occurs in isolation. They make sense within collectivities and can only be separated analytically (1999:295). We agree with these remarks and there-fore the concept of community of practice is of great importance in our analysis.

Other authors, like Bednarek (2009), claim the importance of the linguistic di-mension of emotion. In her view, ‘the rhetorical – pragmatic functions of linguistic expressions of evaluation are at least as important, if, indeed, not more important [than mental representations]’ (2009:200). She refers to evaluation in general, but emotion is included in her model of analysis, which we will discuss briefly.

Bednarek (2009) defines the expression of emotion as a ‘discursive practice’

that does not necessarily represent the speaker’s real affective state (2009:405), and 2. Schema theory ‘suggests that mental knowledge is organised in structures or chunks which capture the typical features of the world’ (Bednarek, 2005:685–686).

she distinguishes between emotion and emotional talk. Emotion talk is character-ised by words that directly denote emotions (love, hate, fear, etc.). However, emo-tional talk is created by phrasings that signal affective meanings (395). This dis-tinction coincides with Martin’s (2000) and Martin and White’s (2005) disdis-tinction between evoked and inscribed evaluation. However, emotion and argumentation must be distinguished. Thereafter, this dichotomy was further developed by Hood and Martin (2007) who described three different options for inscribed evaluation:

provoked, flagged and afforded appraisal. They describe these options as follows:

The term [provoke] refers to implicit ATTITUDE which is evoked through lexical metaphors. Choosing [flag] means that we deploy some kind of GRADUATION to alert readers to the feelings at risk. The [afford] option makes room for the way in which ideational meanings alone imply evaluation.

(Hood and Martin, 2007:746) The rhetorical value of emotion is manifested through different linguistic strate-gies. For instance, Edwards described the importance of metaphors in emotion discourse and found that heat, pressure and container metaphors often represent-ed anger. Lakoff (1987) notrepresent-ed that madness, struggle and dangerous animal meta-phors were used for the like. According to Edwards (1999:279), all these choices allow speakers to construct alternative narratives of causal attribution and ac-countability (1999:279). Different uses of emotion discourse have been described such as justifying actions (Edwards, 1999:274), providing reasoning for unusual behaviour, bolstering justification and softening demands, and providing under-standing for social actions (Bednarek, 2009:425).

Only authorial emotion has so far been considered in this work. However, in the light of emotion in use, non-authorial emotion (the speaker is not the emot-er) is a valuable strategy. Emotions are considered as private states; thus, it is not easy to attribute them to other people (Bednarek, 2009). It is common to find this type of attribution performed in a mitigated way. Contrarily, it can be considered as a face-threatening act. However, we should note that although this is the case in Western societies, it is not the only way in which culture operates in relation to emotion. The concept of cultural models is central. Gee (1999:309) describes them as ‘simplified pictures of the world […] as seen from the perspective of par-ticular discourse (social group or identity)’. Social practices guide us in relation to patterns that would separate or bring us closer to certain social groups, culture, institution or discourse (Gee 1999:310). It is in this context where gender consid-erations would apply.

The emotional experience is gendered as emotionality is culturally attributed to women and rationality to men (Lupton, 1998). Therefore, masculinity is partly defined by restrictive emotionality (Jansz, 2000). These are culturally accepted

stereotypes (Fischer, 1993; Plant, Hyde, Keltner and Devine, 2000; Lupton, 1998;

Lutz, 1990b). Therefore, they have been taken for granted in different studies bounding gender and emotion in everyday language (Chodorow, 1999; Langford, 1999; Locke, 2002) or in the political sphere (Carranza, 2012, 2013; Fuentes-Rodríguez, 2012).

Nevertheless, a framework or model is advisable for any analysis. Until now, no specific model for emotion has been described, but this concept has been in-cluded in models devoted to evaluation. We will briefly describe two of the most widely recognised models of evaluation, Bednarek’s and Martin’s (appraisal), and the role of emotion within them.

Martin’s appraisal theory (2000) is developed within systemic functional lin-guistics, aimed at exploring interpersonal meaning. It distinguishes three main subsystems: engagement, graduation and attitude. Engagement deals with con-cepts such as voicing, modality or evidentiality, for example. Graduation focuses on grading. Attitude is related to positive and negative evaluations. It is further divided into affect, appreciation and judgement. In this model, affect is dealt with through dichotomies like in/security, dis/satisfaction or un/happiness.

Bednarek, unlike Martin, takes cognition into account in her model, which

‘draws on a wide range of linguistic studies on evaluation to establish its [her] own framework of evaluative parameters’ (2006:187). She describes nine ‘sets of values’

or evaluative parameters, one of which is emotivity:

1. Comprehensibility (comprehensible/incomprehensible) 2. Emotivity (positive/negative)

3. Importance (important/unimportant) 4. Seriousness (humorous/serious)

5. Expectedness (expected/unexpected, contrast/contrast – comparison) 6. Mental state (belief/disbelief, emotion, expectation, knowledge,

state-of-mind, process, volition/non-volition)

7. Evidentiality (hearsay, mindsay, perception, general knowledge, evidence, un-specific)

8. Possibility/necessity (possible, not possible, necessary, not necessary) 9. Reliability (genuine/fake, high/medium/low)

10. Style

In spite of the utility of these models, emotion can be analysed from different perspectives. Recently, Fuentes-Rodríguez (2012) has connected the concepts of emotion and politeness within the context of political discourse and argumenta-tion, a field that will be further developed in this work.

Within the linguistic sphere, emotion has been approached from the perspec-tive of modality as an expression of affect on the part of both the speaker and

the listener. Other aspects of the appraisal classification already mentioned are studied at different levels: engagement or graduation. Attitude is the field that is most directly related to linguistic modality. Conversely, while studying the expres-sion of the speaker’s emotion, we should take into account the discourse type as an essential variable. Therefore, our study focuses on one specific discourse type:

parliamentary discourse. We attempt to study the discursive behaviour of the dif-ferent ways in which emotion is expressed.

Each of these fields should be considered in relation to diastratic and diapha-sic variables, such as the role of the speaker in Parliament, the position of their party and the gender of the Parliament Member. These factors condition the use of the verbal resources oriented towards a strategic goal: persuasion.

We will divide the analysis into two parts: the study of the strategic expression of the subjectivity or emotion of the speaker, and that directed towards the hearer.

We will aim at the argumentative goal of the speaker and the different linguistic tools adopted.