Expressive function
المؤلف:
Bronwen Martin and Felizitas Ringham
المصدر:
Dictionary of Semiotics
الجزء والصفحة:
P62
2025-05-31
513
Expressive function
If a communication is focusing on the addresser (sender) of the message, calling attention to his/her feelings, beliefs or emotions, then it is the expressive (or emotive) function that dominates. The expressive function is indicated in several ways:
(1) through the use of exclamation marks and interjections.
(2) through the use of modalization, that is, linguistic devices that point to the presence of a narrator, drawing our attention to the subjective source of an utterance. The two principal forms here are:
- the use of emotive or evaluative terms (expressing judgement) that reveal the presence of a narrator: The father had forgotten the poor girl. She was lying awake and unhappy. In the midst of friends ... she was alone' (W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair).
— the use of terms that nuance or rectify a statement such as 'seem1, 'appear', 'perhaps', 'undoubtedly', 'certainly', etc. 'One would certainly suppose her to be further on in life than her seventeenth year - perhaps because of the slow, resigned sadness of the glance ... perhaps because ...' (George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss).
Dominance of the expressive function in a text does not preclude the other speech functions being present to varying degrees.
See also communication model.
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