Tuesday 12 July 2016

Confusing Affect With Affection

Martin (1992: 533):
Poynton's (1984: 25) network for affect, subclassifies positive and negative features, but the more delicate features are not discussed.  Unfortunately at present there do not appear to be any obvious linguistic criteria for classifying types of affection.  Feelings about oneself do seem to pair off with attitudes to someone else, and so a [self/other] system will be introduced here (for an alternative classification see Roget).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This confuses the theoretical notion of affect (a charged or neutral relation between interlocutors) with the general notion of affection ('a gentle feeling of fondness or liking').

[2] This continues the misconstrual of a relation between interlocutors (affect) as the mental processes and states of an individual.