ABSTRACT
Expressivism is the view that certain kinds of language have the function of expressing states of mind rather than representing facts. Different expressivists target different kinds of language, associate them with different attitudes, and locate the contrast with description in different ways, producing a diverse family of views. This chapter examines expressivism as the claim that certain classes of words, especially 'thin' normative terms like 'ought' and 'good', conventionally function to express non-cognitive psychological states. It considers the relation between attitudes and utterances. The chapter focuses on the more specific question of how language, as a conventional communicative system in which words combine to form whole sentences, might implement this relation. Expressivism seems like a coherent and attractive way to capture, within the analysis of language, many of the psychological and metaphysical intuitions that motivate non-cognitivists and anti-realists.
