Enlanguaged emotions: a pragmatist-inspired proposal

In this paper, we propose applying the view of human experience as enlanguaged to the field of emotions and present the hypothesis of “enlanguaged emotions” as a challenging research hypothesis. To support this proposal, we explore the affinity between American Pragmatism and modern research on the relationship between, firstly, language and experience, particularly the so-called Grounded Language Approach, and secondly, language and emotions, especially the so-called Theory of Constructed Emotions. In the first part of the paper, we embrace the idea that human experience and language are not fundamentally separate realms: Human experience is enlanguaged, ontogenetically and phylogenetically. Language is an integral part of human experience and is not primarily experienced per se, as an independent syntactic or semantic system. Rather, it is strictly interwoven in human cognition, emotivity and joint action. Conversely, this ‘integrated view’ suggests that human experience, involving perception, cognition and emotion, is significantly configured through language. In the second part of the paper, we suggest extending the Pragmatists’ assertion that bodily and facial gestures are an integral part of emotional wholes to include linguistic gestures. These are not merely exterior vehicles for expressing internal states that exist in the mind or brain independently of human practices and interactions with a complex environment. More precisely, we argue that linguistic gestures — not only words, but more broadly linguistic habits, i.e. relatively stable ways of interacting and doing things through speech — contribute to the very constitution of human emotions, given the peculiarly enlanguaged experience and environment characterizing our species.