Emotive Language

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What Is Emotive Language?

Emotive language is the deliberate choice of words to elicit emotion (usually to influence). For example:

• The regime's soldiers massacred the untrained and unwilling combatants.
(This version is deliberately emotive and negative towards "the regime's soldiers.")
• Our soldiers heroically captured the terrorists' lair.
(This version is deliberately emotive and positive towards "our soldiers.")
• Our soldiers neutralized the enemy threat.
(This version is deliberately non-emotive.)

These three sentences all describe the same event. All three are designed to influence the reader.

Easy Examples of Emotive Language

Ideas can be expressed in a way that is positive or negative or welcoming or threatening. It all depends on the words selected. Look at this example:

• The victims were executed in cold blood.

Compare the example above to the one below, which uses non-emotive words.

• The men were killed.

Real-Life Examples of Emotive Language

Emotive language is designed to tell you the facts while influencing you to adopt the author's opinion. Here are three examples of non-emotive and emotive language side by side.

Example 1:

• Non-emotive version: Another person in the bar was injured by the man's glass.
• Emotive version: An innocent bystander suffered facial injuries when the thug launched his glass across the bar.

Example 2:

• Non-emotive version: The government will reduce interest rates.
• Emotive version: The government will slash interest rates.

Example 3:

• Non-emotive version: Mr Smith was attacked by Mr Jones for two minutes.
• Emotive version: For what seemed a lifetime, Mr Smith was subjected to a vicious, cowardly assault by the unemployed, steroid-pumped monster.

Emotive Language Using Connotation

Emotive language can be created far more subtly than the examples above. It can also be achieved with connotation (an added understanding of a word's meaning). Here are three examples that use connotation to create a negative or position spin:

Example 1:

• He is svelte.
(positive spin)
• He is skinny.
(negative spin)

Example 2:

• You are meticulous.
(positive spin)
• You are nitpicking.
(negative spin)

Example 3:

• You are unassuming.
(positive spin)
• You are plain.
(negative spin)

Why Emotive Language Is Important

There are two good reasons to care about emotive language:

(Reason 1) Influence others.

When using emotive language, you are the narrator and the judge at the same time. In other words, as an author, there is an opportunity to influence your readers' opinions.

• Lee begged / asked/ pestered passers-by for help.
(Pick your word to suit your needs. Do you want your readers to like Lee?)

Bear in mind that your choice of words can expose your leanings, which is why subtle emotive language is often more effective. Subtle emotive language is best created by using a thesaurus to find synonyms (a term that means the same – or very nearly the same – as another term). It is often the connotation (i.e., the additional, more nuanced meaning) of a word that provides the appropriate level of emotiveness.

• The flames barely illuminated Lee's svelte/ willowy/ skinny figure.
(Pick your word to suit your needs. Here, svelte and skinny create positive and negative impressions respectively. Willowy creates a generally negative impression, but it doesn't expose the author's contempt for Lee so evidently as skinny.)

(Reason 2) Don't be influenced by others.

Spotting emotive language is also useful from a reader's perspective. If an author describes a corporation as "the toxic giant" or an SUV as "an enormous gas-guzzler," you are unlikely to be reading an unbiased article.

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