Emotional Expressions Support the Communication of Social Groups: A Pragmatic Extension of Affective Pragmatics

Abstract

Expanding on linguistic frameworks for how speakers use speech acts to convey a variety of distinct meanings that are unachievable through words’ denotations alone, Andrea Scarantino (this issue) proposes the theory of affective pragmatics (TAP) as a means to explain what signalers do with their emo- tions to nonverbally convey nuance in meaning. The central tenets of TAP are that emotional expressions express more than just emotions and that these expressions function as Speech Act Analogs. Yet, as he suggests in his conclusion, TAP should extend to other nonlinguistic forms of communication as well. This proposition is reminiscent of past efforts by other scholars; such as Birdwhistell’s (1970) attempts to establish a nonverbal grammar. Yet, unlike those efforts, Scarantino succeeds by limiting his focus to emotional expressions, which might lay a foundation that serves as a common ingredient present throughout other various forms of communication. Here, we contend that the seeds for this may already exist in how people use information in emotional expressions to categorize social groups.