What is Love? Discourse about Emotions in Social Sciences

Abstract

The study of emotions has been one of the most important areas of research in the Social Sciences. Social Psychology has also contributed to the development of this area. In this article we analyse the contribution of social Psychology to the study of emotion, understood as a social construct, and its strong relationship with language. Specifically, we open a discussion on the basis of the general characteristics of the Social Psychology of emotions and the contributions from different disciplines in this area of research, to give meaning to the relationship they have with the language of emotions. In this regard, we have reviewed basic references for the study of the construction of an emotion, and thematically classified them into three broad categories: 1) Contributions from different backgrounds and perspectives; 2) Construction and de-construction studies of emotion, and 3) Postconstructionist studies of emotion. In the first category, we consider the main contributions from the Social Sciences, which can be summarized in two areas: philosophical-construction of an emotion; mainstream-psychology of emotion. In the second category we have began with the relationship between emotion and language and the social construction of emotion, i.e., its discursive status. We end with postconstructionist theories, i.e., Butler's concept of performance and technoscience. To give more meaning to this line of research, the use of a concrete example of emotion seemed appropriate. Thus, we chose "love".

Emotions, affects and the production of social life

“…… Instead, the focus should be on discourses about emotions and how various emotion vocabularies are used. (Freund : 453)From a constructionist view, emotions are bodily experiences whose expression cannot be separated from socio‐cultural contexts (Belli, Harré and Iniguez : 261) and socialization (Turner and Stets : 2–3). For example, emotional differences between men and women reflect different socialization (Duncombe and Marsden ), perpetuating dominant values and social forms, including class, ethnic and gender stratifications (Jaggar : 159–60).…”

“…Emotions may be manipulated for social goals, for instance in social movements (Bensimon ; Jasper ) or the workplace (Lee‐Treweek ; Niven, Totterdell and Holman ). Some emotions have ceased to be recognized as experiential states altogether (Belli, Harré and Iniguez : 2612), while developing ‘new’ emotions might be a means to subvert the social order (Jaggar : 1612).…”

“…I want now to develop more fully a sociology of emotions using the framework set out above, illustrating this with examples of romantic love and the potentially related topic of erectile dysfunction. Love is a social form, phenomenon and emotion that has been subjected to much social scientific analysis and debate (Belli, Harré and Iniguez ; Jackson ). However, my approach is not – as a conventional sociology might – to look at experiential data, discourses or social structures, but rather to consider a ‘love‐assemblage’.…”

“It’s all discursive!” Crossing boundaries and crossing words with Rom Harré

“…SB: Your idea of fluid positioning in discourse where positions can and do change, because there are not fixed roles, and are used by people to position themselves or be positioned in the discourse was pioneering in social science. For this reason, I would like to return to Judith Butler's (1993) concept of performance that I've worked on with you at Georgetown University (Belli, Harré & Iñiguez, 2010). This concept is indebted to John Austin's speech acts, particularly the perlocutionary act, and for this reason is not so new in the field of linguistics.…”

Narratives from call shop users: Emotional performance of velocity

“…Thus, new areas are created in the technology sector, like Human-Computer Interactions, Science and Technology Studies, etc. (Belli, Harré, & Íñiguez, 2010). This is how emotions begin to enter technological narrative as another performance in everyday narrative.…”