A Cognitive Pragmatic Study Of Emotion Language In Litigation Documents

Emotion is where humans live their spiritual lives. It is an old and young research theme with numerous amount of literature. There were discussions on emotion from ancient philosophers in both eastern and western cultures. Current cognitive science is shifting its interest from cold cognition to warm cognition, emotion. A growing body of researchers and practitioners in law are paying attention to the status and function of emotion in law. Some researchers are tapping into the field of emotion and language from areas of developmental psychology, economic decision making, discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics and appraisal theory.Although the definition and categorization of emotion language may differ from area to area, or even from researcher to researcher, the nature of emotion-language relationship and its generalizability in different cultures are most frequently explored with mixed successes. Cross-disciplinary studies are still scarce, partly due to inadequacy of proper language data. Current studies are drawing data from daily conversation, press, business talks and experimental data designed for laboratory researches. Few has tried litigation discourse, which should be an ideal kind of data for cross-disciplinary study. Language in legal setting is a promising test field for pragmatic theories of emotion language selection in specific and for theories about emotion and language in general due to high stakes set for interlocutors in legal setting. We intend to take the niche in the research of emotion and language.Through literature review, field work on litigation documents of real cases and interviews with litigation practitioners and lay folks, we found speakers/writers in legal setting often conceptualize the same thing differently. Each individual speaker/writer may also conceptualize the same thing differently in different time or situation. Different conceptualization forms convey different emotions or emotion cues. They will incur different emotion responses. They are mostly selected for a special reason. Different conceptualization forms arise from different communicative goals and will result in different legal implications. Therefore, they are all various forms of emotion language.According to expressive salience degree, different conceptualization forms are categorized into meta-emotion terms, specific emotion terms, explicit emotional language and implicit emotional language under one umbrella term:emotion language. Different types of emotion language can form a hierarchy in terms of subjectivity, with meta-emotion terms and specific emotion terms the least subjective, indirect emotional language the most subjective, and salient emotional language in between. Different emotion language types are also interrelated. More objective forms can be used as evidence for the most subject types, eg, external behavior can be indicative of internal emotion experience. All types and forms of emotion language are conceptualization of parts of the emotive schema. All types and forms of emotion language will finally be compressed into certain legal judgment, which is also one subset of salient emotional language.Most language users make decisions on conceptualization forms according to a goal-directed conceptual integration model. Interlocutors in legal setting are agents fighting for their own benefits or even lives. They demonstrate high gear biological adaptivity and creativity in language selection process. Goal is an ideal schemata in the cognitive process of decision making. It is a constitutive principle. Intersubjectivity and adaptation are ranked next in language decision making. They are like guiding principles. Goal interaction between different agents requires that interlocutors play the language game according to rules and take other’s goal into consideration, which is when intersubjectivity and adaptation come into play.Options for language decision making are different types and forms of emotion language. More subjective language is granted more loading in litigation, but even the most subject language has a part to play in litigation. They can be selected to serve the communicative goal when needed, and when more subject language is not optional in some situation. Whatever is chosen for communication is probably the optimal form compared with other available options. Subsets of emotion terms and salient emotional language are ranked differently in valence and potency in social cognition and law. Positive emotions are better than negative emotions. Weak negative emotions are better than more powerful negative emotions. Spontaneous negative emotions are better than deliberate negative emotions. Heat of passion is a better appeal for killing people than long lasting hatred because the latter always implies predetermination or premeditation.For the accused (of murder or manslaughter) and defendant, in language decision making process during litigation, the hierarchy of emotion language options (conceptualization of his emotion in the crime scene), from the optimal to the worst, would be:positive emotion (eg. self defence)-backgrounded implicit emotional language (eg. The knife fell onto his neck)-passive weak emotion (eg. sadness, pain and fear)-vague but more powerful emotion (eg, uncomfortable, not reconciled)-heat of passion (eg. impulsion, heat of passion)-rage (including different types of anger in force dynamics)-hatred (including different types of hatred in force dynamics)-jealousy-greed-random killing with no provocation. For the plaintiff the ranking would be the opposite when depicting the criminal emotion in the crime scene. For the institution, they would most choose backgrounded implicit emotional language in enquiry, interrogation and legal documents. When necessary, they could also resort to more explicit emotion language.All language choices and rankings are made with reference to laws or norms, therefore reference spaces are law space or sociocultural space. Representation space here is either internal emotion experience or external behavior of emotion. The ideal schema is that the chosen conceptualization form in the blend space will have certain pragmatic implication beneficiary to the language decision maker in reality space.There exist different degrees of conceptual compression in different forms of emotion language. Concrete concepts, like time and space in implicit emotion language are the least compressed, which can be selected, syncopated and compressed into more salient emotion language, like intentionality and causality. Meta-emotion terms, specific emotion terms and mental state terms will be further compressed into legal judgment, the ultimate purpose of language choice in litigation discourse.Interlocutors will change their language if situation changes, such as different interlocutors, different time or place, etc. and new information. In a new context, some previously high ranked options may become unavailable, or better options may also join the toolkit. If choice maker has an ideal cognitive model, she can make an optimal language choice. Information inadequacy can most likely lead agents to poor choices. However, it by no means demonstrates that agents are not guided by a goal. Genre can also influence the specific forms and types of emotion language. Besides goal, sociocultural, and cognitive factors, there is also individual difference in this language selection process.The categorization framework for emotion language and the goal-guided conceptual integration model for emotion language selection we propose here are based on authentic litigation language data and comprehensive field work. We hope they can shed some new light on language and emotion research in general, and context theory, appraisal system, conceptual integration theory and goal principle in specific.