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Emotive meaning

 Emotive meaning contrasts with descriptive meaning. Terms have descriptive meaning if they do the job of stating

 facts: they have emotive meaning if they do the job of expressing the  speaker’s emotions or attitudes, or exciting

emotions or attitudes in others. Emotivism, the theory that moral terms have only or primarily emotive meaning, is

an important position in twentieth-century ethics. The most important problem for the idea of emotive meaning is

that emotive meaning may not really be a kind of meaning: the jobs of moral terms supposed to constitute emotive

meaning may really be performed by speakers using moral terms, on only some of the occasions on which they use

them.

There are two components in emotivist accounts of the function and meaning of moral terms. One is a matter of 

relations to the speaker: moral assertions serve to express the speaker’s emotions or attitudes. The other is a matter

of relations to the audience: moral assertions serve to commend things, or to arouse emotions or attitudes in the

audience.

The most celebrated accounts of emotive meaning were developed by A.J. Ayer and C.L. Stevenson. Ayer (1936)

argued on general metaphysical and epistemological grounds that moral terms can only express and exciteemotions. Stevenson (1937) developed a more detailed theory, relying more on distinctively ethical considerations

(see Emotivism). These theories are liable to make moral discussion seem irrational, and to make no distinction

between moral argument and propaganda. R.M. Hare developed a theory designed to remedy these defects. He

argued that sentences using paradigm moral terms like ‘good’, ‘right’ and ‘ought’ are really disguised imperatives.

Since there is a logic of imperatives, there is room for rational moral argumentation, and moral argument can be

distinguished from propaganda, even though moral assertions do not primarily state facts (see Prescriptivism).

The most important difficulties for the idea of emotive meaning can be raised by asking whether the emotive

meaning of moral terms is a matter of the speech act performed by someone using these terms, and, if so, what

kind of speech act? One can distinguish between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts (or force).

Locutionary acts are simply a matter of uttering certain words with certain senses and referents. Illocutionary acts

are done in saying things; what illocutionary act one performs in uttering a sentence is determined together by thesenses and referents of the words in the sentence and the context. Perlocutionary acts are done by saying things.

That one performs a certain perlocutionary act is not guaranteed by performing an appropriate illocutionary act: it

depends on further variable features of the context. Suppose Bob utters the words ‘Down with the aristocrats!’

before a large crowd in a revolutionary situation. Bob performs a locutionary act just by saying words with that

meaning. In this context, Bob also performs the illocutionary act of inciting revolution. Bob’s words may also, in

that context, have the perlocutionary effect of  provoking revolution; but this is not guaranteed by the locutionary

or the illocutionary force of Bob’s utterance. If Bob is sufficiently unpopular, his advocating revolution may

actually dampen revolutionary enthusiasm. This classification suggests that the order of explanation typically goes

from the locutionary to the illocutionary and the perlocutionary: it is in virtue of the sense and reference of the

words one utters and the context that one performs a certain illocutionary act, and that one performs certain

perlocutionary acts. The presumption is that an account of meaning will begin with sense and reference; if it begins

with illocutionary or perlocutionary acts, it may begin in the wrong place (see Speech acts).

Some early accounts of emotive meaning seem to identify the meaning of moral assertions with perlocutionary acts

(for example, arousing emotions). But this seems both to be the wrong place to begin and to raise a further

concern. If we think of meaning as a matter of convention, not (mere) causal variation, then causal correlations

between utterances and the production of certain effects are not really meanings. Perhaps then emotive meaning is

a matter of illocutionary force. Unfortunately, seeing emotive meaning as illocutionary force is also problematic;

in addition to the general problem that an account of meaning apparently should not begin with the illocutionary,

there is the specific problem that moral terms do not seem always to have the right kinds of illocutionary force.

Consider the suggestion that ‘good’ is used to commend. While it may be true that the term ‘good’ as used in ‘This

is a good tennis racket’, uttered in a sports shop has the illocutionary force of commending a tennis racket, ‘good’

as used in ‘If you can’t get a good one there, try the shop down the street’, does not obviously seem to commendanything.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)

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Moral arguments raise especially acutely a version of the same problem for the view that emotive meaning is

illocutionary force. Consider the argument: ‘Telling the truth is good; if telling the truth is good, getting your little

brother to tell the truth is good; so getting your little brother to tell the truth is good. ’ This argument looks valid.

But while ‘telling the truth is good’ in its occurrence as the first premise commends telling the truth, in its

occurrence in the second premise it does not seem to commend anything. So, the suggestion is, emotivists cannot

account for the validity of some moral arguments, because if meaning is understood as illocutionary force, it is notthe same between different occurences of the same words in arguments. This problem is often called ‘the problem

of unasserted contexts’ (in the second premise, ‘telling the truth is good’ occurs unasserted).

Fans of emotive meaning can respond to these criticisms. Hare (1952), Blackburn (1984) and Gibbard (1990) have

all offered solutions to the problem of unasserted contexts. It is certainly true that the meanings of some words

(like ‘promise’) seem well explained by explaining the illocutionary act one performs in using them. Moreover, it

is not an accident that, for instance, ‘good’ is often used to commend, while it is an accident if  ‘fast’ is used to

commend. Still, an attractive alternative to the theory that ‘good’ has emotive meaning is that ‘good’ means

something like ‘meets the relevant standards’. It is by virtue of this meaning that ‘good’ is often used to commend.

Emotive force is then explained by meaning, not vice versa.

See also: Emotivism; Prescriptivism

DAVID PHILLIPS

References and further reading

Ayer, A.J. (1936) Language, Truth and Logic , New York: Dover.(Chapter 6 is Ayer’s classic argument for andpresentation of emotivism.)

Alston, W. (1967) ‘Emotive Meaning’, in P. Edwards (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York:Macmillan and the Free Press, vol. 2, 486-93.(A trenchant critique of the idea of emotive meaning.)

Blackburn, S. (1984) Spreading The Word , Oxford: Oxford University Press.(Chapters 5 and 6 defend a theorygiving moral words emotive meaning.)

Gibbard, A. (1990) Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.(A sophisticated andwide ranging recent defence of, inter alia, a kind of emotive meaning.)

Hare, R.M. (1952) The Language of Morals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.(Classic defence of the view thatmoral terms are disguised imperatives.)

Stevenson, C.L. (1937) ‘The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms’, Mind 46: 14-31.(Stevenson’s initialpresentation of emotivism.)

Stevenson, C.L. (1944) Ethics and Language, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.(Book-length developmentof Stevenson’s view.)

Urmson, J.O. (1968) The Emotive Theory of Ethics, London: Hutchinson & Co.(Balanced consideration anddevelopment of emotive theory.)

Ziff, P. (1960) Semantic Analysis, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.(Chapter 6 is an early and trenchantdevelopment of the kind of critique of emotive meaning given above.)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)

Emotive meaning