ABSTRACT
This chapter situates our present-day thinking about language and emotion by providing a historical overview of Western thinking about emotion while considering central moral values that have dominated Western approaches to emotions and their management. We also briefly discuss historical conceptualizations of the relationship between “emotion” and “language” in both Western and non-Western thought. It is our hope to offer some cultural-historical context for understanding theoretical discussions represented by the following chapters, each of which engages with the notions of “language” and “emotion” from various disciplinary perspectives.
