The Routledge Handbook of Language and Emotion

Abstract

Terhi Utriainen (University of Turku, Study of Religion) Learning healing relationality: Dynamics of religion and emotionThis chapter approaches religionand specifically present-day lived religious expressionfrom the perspective of emotions and learning to work with emotions. The particular emphasis is an approach that understands emotions as dynamic ways to relate to the self, different kinds of others, and the world. This relationality is in many more or less subtle ways enhanced, guided and regulated by religious teachings and rituals. The dynamics of religion and emotion are also strongly present in contemporary forms of "spirituality" that are closely connected to a wider therapeutic culture offering countless methods and pedagogies for individuals to learn to tend to their emotions, and to enhance their emotional lives (see, Wilce and Fenigsen 2016). After discussing the complex conjunction of religion and emotion and several theoretical ways of framing and approaching this conjunction, I provide an ethnographic case-study involving Finnish women engaging angelspirituality as an example of a globalizing religious culture in which emotions receive attention as key to self-understanding and as dynamic relations between human and super-human others and, ultimately, with the whole universe. As June McDaniel (2004: 266) writes, emotion in religious life is not a passive response to the world, but an active engagement in it. Religion and the dynamics of emotionReligion and emotion have strong and multiple connections in history as well as today. Sentimentality and "the sacred heart" in Christian mystic traditions, bhakti or "the devotional way" in Hindu traditions, and compassion as well as detachment in Buddhist traditions each provide a window into the ways in which emotion can be important in religious worlds and ritual lives. Many religious teachings and ritual practices highlight particular emotions that may be anything between humility and pride or joy and fear (Corrigan 2004a: 19; Riis and Woodhead 2010, 69-94). Religious traditions and rituals also often function as emotional socialization or "schooling of emotions", in the sense that they set cultural models of how such emotions as grief, joy and anxiety are to be felt and expressed in changing life circumstances (Douglas 2011: 37-67;Frazer 2007;Halloy 2012).Religious ritual can sometimes be emotional to the point that even the ritual language does not convey the desired messages or effects so much by its referential content and vocabulary as by other communicative means, such as sound and embodied rhythm. Examples of this are laments and glossolalia. Lament (ritual weeping) is a special ritual language most often addressing those in grief and those beyond this life, the ancestors. Glossolalia (speaking in tongues) is language spoken in a

The rise of affectivism

“…Researchers have also begun to pay more attention to affective processes in general linguistics, analysing, for example, how emotions are referred to the languages of the world via the diverse emotion lexica 14 . In terms of cultural comparisons, there are emotion words that do not seem to have equivalent words in English, such as amae, a Japanese emotion word which means something like desiring to be loved by or dependent on someone.…”

“I feel really special and proud that I am bilingual”: Exploring a second-generation Korean American bilingual adolescent’s emotions and sense of belonging through family language policy

“…More recently, research has recognized the importance of including children's perspectives and their agency in and responses to FLP (King & Fogle, 2013;Luykx, 2005;Smith-Christmas, 2018;Wilson, 2020) as well as the socioemotional domain of FLP. In addition to crosslinguistic differences in expressing emotions (e.g., Pavlenko, 2004) and affective aspects of language socialization (De Houwer, 2020;Pritzker et. al., 2020), FLP research on the socioemotional dimension includes psychological well-being and family cohesion (Hollebeke et al, 2020;Tannenbaum, 2012).…”

Emotions and multilingualism in family language policy: Introduction to the special issue

“…In recent decades, the concept of emotion has increasingly been on the agenda of scholars from numerous disciplines, different subdisciplines of linguistics, and in various research contexts (e.g., linguistic, sociological, neurological, anthropological, psychological, and educational) (e.g., Barrett et al, 2016;Lüdtke, 2015;Pritzker et al, 2020;Schalley & Eisenchlas, 2020;Schiewer et al, in press). Although the contexts and methodologies of these disciplines differ greatly, they generally concur on the pivotal role affective factors play in language acquisition and development.…”

“…Although the contexts and methodologies of these disciplines differ greatly, they generally concur on the pivotal role affective factors play in language acquisition and development. Two distinct ways in which language and emotion intersect in psychology of language learning and SLA research are (1) the language of emotions (cf., Pritzker et al, 2020) and ( 2) emotions about language(s), linguistic repertoire, and language practices. 1.…”