EMOTION
1. Definitions
1.1 Psychology
From a psychological point of view, emotion is a syndrome, a temporary synthesis of different states:
— A psychic state of consciousness.
— A neurophysiological state, whether perceptible to the subject or not, such as the goosebumps associated with emotions such as fear or pleasure; or an adrenaline rush associated with anger.
— An altered self-presentation, including changes in facial expression, body posture and specific attitudes and emergence of actions, such as the fight-or-flight response, characteristic of fear.
— A cognitive state, including a structured representation of reality.
The direction of causality between these components is debated. Common sense suggests that the psychological state determines the neurophysiological and attitudinal changes, “he cries because he is sad”. However, when a person is placed in the physical state corresponding to a particular emotion, they will experience that emotion. Thus, literally, “he is sad because he cries” (James, 1884).
1.2 Basic Emotions
The emotions listed by Aristotle in the Rhetoric and adopted by Latin rhetoricians can be considered as the very first set of basic social emotions in the Western world, see pathos.
Modern philosophers propose their own lists of emotions. For example, Descartes claims that there are only six “simple and primitive” passions, “wonder, love, hate, desire, joy, and sadness. […] All the others are composed of some of these six or are species of them » ([1649], §69).
Psychologists define basic emotions as universal and independent of language and culture. These lists vary and are more or less developed. They generally include fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, surprise. Ekman (1999) lists the following ones: amusement, anger, contempt, contentment, disgust, embarrassment, excitement, fear, guilt, pride in achievement, relief, sadness-distress, satisfaction, sensory pleasure, and shame.
In theology, the seven deadly sins–pride, envy, anger, sadness (acedia: sloth, depression), avarice, gluttony, lust, can be seen as emotional leaks; they are sins insofar as they are left uncontrolled.
1.2 Emotions and Mood: Phasic and thymic
Moods are defined as stable or thymic affective states. In contrast, emotions are phasic, i.e, they develop in an event structure, according to a bell-shaped curve, see calm.
1.3 Emotions and Situations
An emotion is related to a situation. Causal theories of emotion analyze situations as stimuli that mechanically produce corresponding responses, that is, the corresponding emotions.
However, this view does not explain the possibility of emotional injunctions or disagreements about emotions (see below).
In fact, emotions are not related to some kind of objective situations, but rather to subjective perceptions of situations; the stimulus is a situation under a certain description. In other words, the perceived emotional situation is part of the emotion itself.
A distinction can be made between emotion as it is experienced and emotion as it is framed in the experiencer’s discourse. The relationship between experienced emotion and spoken emotion is analogous to that between time as an extra-linguistic reality, and tense as the linguistic form that language gives to time. The object of rhetorical-argumentative treatment of emotion is the emotion-tense, whereas psychology focuses on the emotion-time.
2. Argumentative emotions
Serious argumentative situations are inherently emotional. Contradiction, whether conflictive or not, disrupts routine beliefs and plans of action. For example, having to make a decision creates tension at the social, cognitive, and emotional levels. The arguer must confront an uncomfortable situation in which relationships with the others, social statuses and representations of the everyday world are potentially threatened. Personal identities based on these representations are also destabilized.
2.1 Emotions as Issues in Argumentative Discourse
The situation associated with an emotion is not a causal source of that emotion. For example, when it rains there is no argument about whether one will get wet.
In contrast, emotions are negotiable. This is evidenced by the existence of emotional injunctions, such as:
“Time for Outrage!”(Stéphane Hessel)
“A Call for Indignation” (Ignacio Ramonet)
“Indignant? We Should Be” (Simon Kuper).[1]
In a given situation, there can be significant differences in the emotional states of the participants:
S1 — Let us weep! The father of the nation is dead!
S2 — Let’s rejoice! The tyrant is dead!
S1 -— I’m not afraid!
S2 — You should be.
An emotion is a point of view. In the second example, S2 starts a debate by disagreeing with S1, and must explain his emotional position. S2 must reveal his reasons for being afraid and justify his feelings. Conversely, S1 is now at risk of being refuted by S2, and being left with an inappropriate emotion.
As with argumentation in general, we can distinguish between cases in which emotions are argued explicitly, and cases in which the argument is left implicit, and leaves us with an orientation toward a particular, unnamed, emotion. In both cases, the source of the emotion lies in the participants’ perception of the situation. Ultimately, the formatted situation and the experienced emotion form a cohesive unit. Therefore, in order to justify an emotion, one must provide a detailed account of what happened along with the corresponding subjective emotional evaluations.
This formatting process follows a relatively simple system of “emotional parameters”, that determine the nature and intensity of the emotion, depending on the predictability and pleasantness of the situation is, its origin, distance, control, and the experiencer’s norms and values (after Scherer [1984a], p. 107; 1984b).
2.2 The Rhetoric: How Emotions are « Done » and « Undone »
Aristotle’s Rhetoric provides an excellent description of the thematic structure of speeches that construct or deconstruct specific emotions. The book is not about the psychology of emotions but rather it is a treatise on what discourse can do with emotions and how an emotional social thrust can be controlled, reconstructed or refuted. The focus is not on the nature of anger or calmness, but rather on how discourses that are likely to provoke or tranquilize anger are constructed. From an argumentative perspective, this is why action predicates should be preferred to substantives when referring to emotions. For example:
— To anger vs. to cool down the anger.
— To inspire friendship vs. to break with friends.
— To frighten vs. to encourage.
— To feel shame vs. to despise others’ opinions and behave shamelessly.
— To be grateful vs. to feel no obligation.
— To pity vs. to be indifferent.
— To incite rivalry, jealousy and envy vs. to incite a spirit of open competition.
Emotions belong in the realm of discursive action. In Rhetoric, they are defined based on typical scenarios, activated and developed by the speaker. This description of the discursive strategies that generate emotions is one of the major achievements of rhetorical argumentation theory.
Anti-oriented discourses construct and refute anti-oriented emotions. Speech alters representations, thus arousing or appeasing or counterbalancing emotions, just as any point of view can be fought, turned back, or circumvented.
Examples of pity and anger can illustrate these basic argumentative techniques.
2.2 Pitiful vs Merciless
Moving to pity:
A pities B when he considers that B is the victim of an undeserved evil; and when A is well aware that he may one day suffer from the same evil (after id., 1385b10-15, RR, p. 291).
For A to feel compassion for B, the distance between them must be properly calibrated: one feels pity towards people who are similar and close to us. Distance plays an essential role in the construction of emotion, not as an objective metric, but as a cultural, language-based notion.
According to this description, pity should not be considered an automatic feeling. In particular, those who have nothing to fear for themselves would be insensitive to pity.
According to the theory of the moral character (mores) of the audience, the successfull construction of an emotion depends on a good analysis of the audience, see ethos.
In other words, to directly induce pity, B must show that he is suffering, and that he does not deserve it, and that the same thing could happen to you. Then, of course, these substantial commonplaces must be reinforced.
If pity is constructed according to these parameters, it is considered justified, decent and reasonable.
Rejecting misplaced pity — Walton has shown how the target can resist misplaced pity, that is, how to construct a discourse against pity, enabling the target to remain calm, unmoved, and not yield to a movement of undue pity. This discourse is first constructed along a specific “information line”, about the situation. The appeal to pity is relevant only if the situation and the domain allows for personal involvement. For instance, scientific discourse excludes subjectivity, and does not permit appeals to pity, which are then deemed “irrelevant” (Walton 1992, p. 27): “I beg you, publish my paper!« .
When relevant, appeals to pity routinely function in the general conflict of pro and contra arguments, concerning personal involvement. In the case of dismissed workers, for instance, the appeal to compassion (ad misericordiam) is pitted against the need to preserve the interests of shareholders (ad pecuniam vs. ad misericordiam), to position the company well in the market (ad rivalitatem vs. ad misericordiam), or to preserve the jobs of other workers in the company (ad misericordiam vs. ad misericordiam).
2.3 Anger: Getting Angry and Calming Down
Argumentation theory has glorified the appeal to pity with a Latin name, ad misericordiam. From an argumentative point of view, however, there is no reason to distinguish pity from other emotions. All emotions should all be given the same lexical consideration, particularly the appeal to anger, « ad iram« , a highly arguable and argumentative emotion.
Make angry — Anger is a basic rhetorical emotion. If a speaker intends to incite public anger, he will express feigned or real righteous indignation or holy anger, and will adopt a virtuous ethos. To produce the same virtuous ethos, the opponent will denounce rage, fury and hatred, see pathos.
Discursive representations play an essential role in these oppositions. In order to make A angry with B, the speaker must show to A that:
— B despises, offends and mocks A;
— B is an obstacle to A‘s plans and wishes,
— B derives pleasure from it.
— A suffers and seeks revenge by harming B.
— A fantasizes about and enjoys his future revenge.
These are the basic lines of inflammatory speech. It should be noted that anger is not an atomic emotion, a crude response to the bite of a stimulus, but rather the complex result of an aggregate of interactive emotions such as humiliation, contempt and even pleasure. The rationality or morality of anger depends on properly constructing a sense of injustice. Anger can be fully virtuous, rational and emotional, when these distinctions are significant.
Anger triggers the mechanisms of revenge. In a typical serial episode, the anger constructed and justified in the first sequence, transforms into an argument for subsequent action.
Anger is not hatred; anger can be justified rationally, but hatred cannot. There is no acceptable reason for hatred. From a religious point of view, hate speech is a sin against the fundamental commandment of charity: « Love one another!« , at least “Bear with one another!”.
From anger back to calm — To calm a person, A angry with B, B‘s advocate will develop a discourse on the following substantial topoi:
- A‘s expression of anger is expressed in a contradictory way and unreasonable.
- B‘s behavior towards A was not contemptuous, mocking, insulting, or outrageous.
- B was misunderstood; he was joking; had no hostile intentions.
- B behaves this way with loved ones.
- B is sorry, and offers apologies and compensation.
- Anyway, B has already been punished.
The reassuring discourse will conclude that all of this happened a long time ago, and that the situation has changed. See kettle.
[1] Stéphane Hessel (2011). Time for Outrage! London: Charles Glass Books.
Ignacio Ramonet (2011). http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/02/a-call-to-outrage/(11-08-2017)
Simon Kuper (2011). Quoted after https://www.ft.com/content/280c9816-192c-11e0-9311-00144feab49a?mhq5j=e1 (11-08-2017)