Expressing and describing surprise
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Agnès Celle
Abstract
This paper re-examines the well-established distinction between expression and description of emotion as regards surprise. First, the authors show that the expression of surprise does not involve the use of surprise lexemes, but rather mirative utterances and specific syntactic constructions (while the description of surprise involves surprise lexemes). Second, the investigation of the corpus data indicates that surprise lexemes – namely the noun surprise and the adjective surprised – differ from other emotion lexemes in that they do not systematically refer to the emotional state of an experiencer. The noun surprise can have such a state reading but can also evaluate a source seen as a salient unexpected referent. As for the adjective surprised, it may serve various argumentative strategies. These uses reflect the epistemic rather than emotional nature of surprise, which sets it apart from other emotions.
Abstract
This paper re-examines the well-established distinction between expression and description of emotion as regards surprise. First, the authors show that the expression of surprise does not involve the use of surprise lexemes, but rather mirative utterances and specific syntactic constructions (while the description of surprise involves surprise lexemes). Second, the investigation of the corpus data indicates that surprise lexemes – namely the noun surprise and the adjective surprised – differ from other emotion lexemes in that they do not systematically refer to the emotional state of an experiencer. The noun surprise can have such a state reading but can also evaluate a source seen as a salient unexpected referent. As for the adjective surprised, it may serve various argumentative strategies. These uses reflect the epistemic rather than emotional nature of surprise, which sets it apart from other emotions.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Surprise as a conceptual category 7
- The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise” 27
- Grammatical evidentiality and the unprepared mind 51
- Operationalizing mirativity 91
- The computer-mediated expression of surprise 121
- Surprise routines in scientific writing 153
- Surprise in the GRID 173
- Surprise and human-agent interactions 197
- Expressing and describing surprise 215
- Index 245
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Surprise as a conceptual category 7
- The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise” 27
- Grammatical evidentiality and the unprepared mind 51
- Operationalizing mirativity 91
- The computer-mediated expression of surprise 121
- Surprise routines in scientific writing 153
- Surprise in the GRID 173
- Surprise and human-agent interactions 197
- Expressing and describing surprise 215
- Index 245
