Expressivity (linguistics)
With expressivity which is generally expressiveness of the language of a speaker or a work of art called. In speech act theory , expressivity is the property of utterances with which the speaker expresses his emotional state or his social connection with the person addressed. In addition to its factual function, every utterance has an expressive function that can be expressed through volume and intonation . Roman Ossipowitsch Jakobson also calls the expressive function emotive .
In linguistics , the term is used to characterize linguistic expressions and constructions that primarily have an expressive meaning. These include B. Expressive adjectives . These can be left out without changing the descriptive content of a statement; only the emotional evaluation is then omitted. One and the same adjective can have both an expressive and a non-expressive meaning (e.g. “crazy”: “mentally confused” in the non-expressive sense and “confusing”, “incredible”, “disturbing” in the expressive sense). Expressive adjectives are also referred to as inherently intensified adjectives because they express an emotional heightening beyond the evaluation of an object. A denial of the conditions expressed in this way cannot meaningfully take place without emotional contradictions (“the soccer game was not crazy”).
Expressive adverbs contribute little or nothing to the factual statement of the sentence (“ unfortunately I can't come”). Despite their literal meaning, they often say little about the speaker's emotional state or his or her social relationship with the other person; so they can freeze into empty phrases. The expressive verbs include derogatory terms ("to drink" instead of "drink"). With many exclamations and exclamative sentences, the conventional non-expressive meaning is more or less irrelevant (“crap!” “You are stupid!”) So-called inflectives in comics and chats are used as a substitute for non-linguistic or para -linguistic actions and also have an expressive ( emotive ) content ("grin", "sigh"). But the positive or negative connotation of a term can also express its expressive content (pejorative: “mutt” instead of “dog”).
With semantic expressivity the possibility of generating diverse meanings of a limited set of elements is meant. A distinction is made between the lexical (number of entries in the dictionary, abundance of forms and numerous gradations of terms) from the syntactic (use of numerous, sometimes redundant means to represent relationships between the elements of a sentence or paraphrases for complex terms) expressivity. The polysynthetic languages have the highest lexical expressivity . High semantic expressiveness and low economy of a language are related.
literature
- Johannes Dölling: Semantics and Pragmatics. Script , Leipzig University.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rudi Keller: Paths of the Change of Meaning. In: Kristel Proost, Edeltraud Winkler: From intentionality to the meaning of conventionalized signs. Tübingen 2006, p. 354.
- ↑ Rudi Keller, Ilja Kirschbaum: Change of meaning: An introduction. Berlin 2003, p. 49.
- ↑ Barbara Stiebels: Typology of Argument Linking: Economy and Expressivity. Berlin 2002.