What is the Emotional Meaning's - part two

WHAT IS THE EMOTIONAL MEANINGS - PART TWO

Let us now try the experiment of keeping these two lines in a metrical form, but replacing all the emotionally coloured words by neutral ones, while making as few other changes as possible. We may write:

Full on this window shone the wintry moon,

Making red marks on Jane's uncoloured chest.

No one will doubt that all of its poetic value has been knocked out of the passage by these changes. Yet the lines still mean the same in external fact; they still have the same objective meaning. It is only the emotional meaning which has been destroyed.

Now if Keats had been writing a scientific description for a text book on physics instead of a poem, it would have been necessary for him to have used some such coldly objective terms as the ones into which we have just translated his lines. Such emotionally charged phrases as warm gules and fair breast would only have obscured the facts to which the scientist exactly but unbeautifully refers when he speaks of "the selective transmission of homogeneous light by pigmented glass."

The purpose of the present essay is to deal with the kind of problem in which cold and scientific thinking is required. Most of the practical problems of life are of this order. The fact that I shall abuse the use of emotional thinking in connection with such problems as tariffs, social ownership, revolution, and war does not mean that there is no place for emotional thinking.

Poetry, romantic prose, and emotional oratory are all of inestimable value, but their place is not where responsible decisions must be made. The common (almost universal) use of emotional words in political thinking is as much out of place as would be a chemical or statistical formula in the middle of a poem. Real democracy will come only when the solution of national and international problems is carried out by scientific methods of thought, purged of all irrelevant emotion. Into the action which follows decision we can put all the emotion which we have refused to allow in our thinking. Let us think calmly and scientifically about war, and then actively oppose it with all the passion of which we are capable.

The growth of the exact thinking of modern science has been largely the result of its getting rid of all terms suggesting emotional attitudes and using only those which unemotionally indicate objective facts. It was not always so. The old alchemists called gold and silver "noble" metals, and thought that this emotionally coloured word indicated something belonging to the metals themselves from which their properties could be deduced. Other metals were called "base". Although these terms have survived as convenient labels for the modern chemist, they carry none of their old emotional significance.

In popular biological discussions, on the other hand, such words are still used with their full emotional meaning, as when they "nobility" of man is contrasted with his alleged "base" origin. In this respects, popular biological discussion differs form that of the textbook and the laboratory, in which are used terms almost as devoid of emotional meaning as those of physic or chemistry.

When we turn to polities and international questions, we are still further form straight scientific thinking. Such words as "Bolshevik," "Fascist," "reactionary," "revolutionary," "constitutional,' "national honour," etc, are all words used in national and international political thinking which carry more of emotional than of any other meaning. So long as such words are the ordinary terms of rival politicians, how can we hope to think straight in national and international affairs?

If a chemist doing an experiment depended on such thought processes as a nation uses in selecting its rulers or in deciding on peace or war with other nations, he would blow up his laboratory. This, however, would be a trivial disaster in comparison with what may result from emotional thinking i9n politics. Better have a hundred chemical laboratories blown up than the whole of civilization!

We must look forward to and try to help on the day when the thinking about political and international affairs will be as unemotional and as scientific as that about the properties of numbers or the atomic weights of elements. The spirit of impartial investigation of facts unswayed by irrelevant emotions has given us great advances in the sciences. Its triumphs will be even greater when it is applied to the most important affairs of life.

We look forward to the day when we shall be able to discuss and settle such questions as Tariffs, Public vs, Private Ownership, and disarmament Treaties as successfully as physicists have discussed and settled Einstein's theory of relativity.

Let us try to study a few more examples of the use of words with emotional meanings taken form various sources. Accounts of wars are rich sources of such material, so we are not surprised to find in a book on the French Commune the statement that large numbers of the regular troops were assassinated during the street fighting by the Communards, while a much larger number of the latter were summarily executed by the regulars.

In order to reduce this to a statement of objective fact it is clear that the one word "Killed" should be used in place both of assassinated and summarily executed. We have already noticed how such a choice of words with the same objective but opposite emotional meaning can be used bo make us feel sympathetic to one and hostile to the other of two sides in warfare. During the Spanish Civil War, the supporters of the Government referred to themselves as the "Loyalists" and called Franco a "Rebel" or an "Insurgent".

The supporters of Franco, on the other hand, called themselves "Nationalists" and referred to their opponents as "Reds". During the conflicts between Red and White forces in Russia and in China, our newspapers told us of the atrocities of the Bolsheviks and the wise severity of the White commanders. Examination of the details (often possible only long afterwards) shows that the objective facts of an atrocity and of wise severity are much the same, and that they are not the kind of objective facts which will call out an emotion of approval in a humane person.

A similar choice of words will be noticed in political discussion. A fluent and forcible speech delivered by one of our own party is eloquent, a similar speech by one of the opposite party is fanatical; again two words with the same objective meaning but with the opposite emotional meanings of approval and strong disapproval. The practical proposals of the opposition, moreover, are panaceas - a highly emotional word calling out the strongly disapproving emotions which we feel for those quack patent medicines which make extravagant claims.

Those who show enthusiasm in support of proposals with which a speaker disagrees are crackpots; while those showing similar enthusiasm on his own side are called sound. If a politician wishes to attack some new proposal he has a battery of these and other words with emotional meanings at his disposal. He speaks of this suggested panacea supported only by fanatical crackpots" ; and the proposal is at once discredited in the minds of the majority of people, who like to think of themselves as moderate, distrustful of panaceas, and uninfluenced by windy eloquence. Also we may notice that it has been discredited without the expenditure of any real thought, for of real objective argument there is none - only the manipulation of words calling out emotion.

It is not, however, only in warfare and politics that such words are used in order to influence opinion more easily than can be done by words embodying real thought. Art criticism is also a good source for this kind of material. Ruskin said of Whistler's Nocturnes: " I have heard and seen much of Cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face".

As in earlier passages, I have italicized the words or phrases with strongly emotional meanings. Stripped of these and reduced to a statement of objective fact, the passage would have to be paraphrased in some such way as follows: "I have heard and seen much of the behaviour of Londoners before now, but never expected to hear a painter ask two hundred guineas for painting a picture which seemed to me to have no meaning." Plainly not much is left of Ruskin's criticism after this operation has been performed on it.

                                            (to be continue part three)

here...Feelings...original contents by www.sensualityface.com or www.fairyage.com / described with help of ROBERT H. THOULESS Emotional meanings