ABSTRACT
The role of language is particularly apparent in the way in which emotions have become medicalized and psychologized in modern Western cultures. Three aspects of the topic need to be differentiated: subjective emotional experience, emotional expression and communication, and discourse about emotion. When emotional expression involves emotion-language as such, as well as being a matter of intonation, then again this language will play some determining role. Psychological attention invariably concentrates on a few extreme emotions such as fear, anger and love, providing quite a false picture of our emotional lives. Non-aroused states of contentment, self-satisfaction and serenity are also emotions. ‘Emotions’, however, are sources of action, ‘movements out’, a sense embodied in the standard undergraduate Psychology module-title ‘Emotion and Motivation’. ‘Social construction’ refers to the process that renders emotions meaningful and publicly discussable, which in turn determines their character as experienced psychological realities.
