Novelty (2): emotions

The discovery of new emotions in oneself is apparently the situation where the whole question, viz. ‘Can we discover a new emotion?’, makes most sense. In connection with that, we need to make a distinction between a person discovering that they themselves can experience an emotion that before they have only seen experienced/expressed/talked about by other people, and a person discovering something in themselves that they don’t know from interaction with others.

It seems the first case is a characteristic feature of emotional development, where, next to interaction with others, expression in art, in particular literature, and the appeal it makes to imagination can play an important role. The second case is more puzzling: if one has never encountered an expression of a particular emotion, can one even classify it as such? But if that’s the case, aren’t we back at the ‘bootstrapping’ issue of novelty?

As for the issue of ‘untranslatable’ emotions: is that really a matter of a particular language not being able to express the emotion? Or is it rather a difference between expressions of some emotions being lexicalised in one language and only being describable in another? The permanent discussion about the supposed untranslatability of Dutch ‘gezellig’, or, more popular nowadays, Danish ‘hygge’ would be an example of that. The distinction between lexical or merely descriptive expression might just indicate a difference in the relevant importance of the indicated emotion. Such cultural differentiation is certainly real, but seems not to go to the heart of the problem.

Martin Stokhof
from: Radical Discussion Board
date: spring 2021