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Connecting emotions and words: the referential process

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Abstract

This paper outlines the process of verbal communication of emotion as this occurs through the phases of the referential process, including arousal of an emotion schema; detailed and specific descriptions of images and episodes that are exemplars of emotion schemas; and reflection and reorganization, which may include emotion labels and other types of categorical terms. The concepts of emotion schemas and the referential process are defined in the theoretical framework of multiple code theory which includes subsymbolic sensory, visceral and motoric processes, symbolic images and words. Emotion schemas are defined as clusters of representations of events incorporating similar bodily, sensory and motoric processes activated in relation to different people in different contexts. Through the referential process subsymbolic components of a schema that have been activated in a speaker or writer and that may be connected only partially to words may be evoked in a listener or reader. The concept of the emotion schemas is examined in relation to current work in emotion theory and neuroscience. The unique effects of detailed descriptions of episodes in conveying complex aspects of emotional experience are discussed, as recognized by writers, and as demonstrated in empirical research. Computerized measures of the phases of the referential process are presented, focusing particularly on the central measure, the Weighted Referential Activity Dictionary (WRAD) which identifies points of narrative and imagery. The operation of the function words that dominate the WRAD are examined in relation to the structure of narrative expression underlying the verbal representation of emotion schemas.

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Notes

  1. Lyrics of popular song by M. Gordon, 1945; information downloaded from wikipedia.org, Sept. 5, 2013.

  2. But see Ramachandran 2004, Chapter 4, pp. 60–82, for discussion of the relation between the sounds of speech and meaning; this relationship provides an additional perspective on the connection of emotional experience to language.

  3. The term ‘subsymbolic’, was taken from connectionist and Parallel Distributed Processing approaches and is used here to mean nonsymbolic, not as characterizing this form as less systematic or complex than symbolic forms.

  4. Geneva Appraisal Questionnaire (GAQ): Format, development, and utilization; http://www.affective-sciences.org/researchmaterial. Also see Scherer (2001)

  5. For each such measure the DAAP program constructs a visually smooth curve with a value at each word; this curve is relatively high when there are a relatively greater number of nearby words with the corresponding feature.

  6. In all therapy excerpts, any identifying information has been changed for purposes of confidentiality.

  7. The English language versions of DAAP and WRAD, along with other dictionaries currently in use, can be downloaded from the website: www.thereferentialprocess.org.

  8. The weights are reported as lying between −1 and +1 in Bucci and Maskit (2006), but in practice they are linearly rescaled to lie between 0 and 1.

  9. The full list of WRAD words in alphabetical order with their dictionary weights can be found in Bucci & Maskit (2014).

  10. The DAAP software transforms most filled pauses, such as ‘uhm’ or ‘hm’, to the word ‘mm’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Derner Institute, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, 11530, USA

    Wilma Bucci

  2. New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, 247 E. 82nd St, New York, NY, 10028, USA

    Wilma Bucci & Sean Murphy

  3. Mathematics Department, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA

    Bernard Maskit

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Bucci, W., Maskit, B. & Murphy, S. Connecting emotions and words: the referential process. Phenom Cogn Sci 15, 359–383 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-015-9417-z

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