26.3790, Review: Cog Sci; Philosophy of Lang; Psycholing; Socioling: Salmela (2014)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-26-3790. Wed Aug 26 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.3790, Review: Cog Sci; Philosophy of Lang; Psycholing; Socioling: Salmela (2014)

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Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2015 18:13:45
From: Jose Aguilar Río [jose.aguilarrio at univ-paris3.fr]
Subject: True Emotions

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3584.html

AUTHOR: Mikko  Salmela
TITLE: True Emotions
SERIES TITLE: Consciousness & Emotion Book Series 9
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Jose Ignacio Aguilar Río, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

Mikko Salmela's work is a collection of writings published by the author in reviews and edited volumes between 2005 and 2011.

The book opens with an introductory chapter which presents the three basic questions of the volume: the true nature of emotions, emotional authenticity and emotional truth. Salmela defines his own interest in emotions as a research object within the so called “emotional turn” in the 1970s (Salmela, 2014: 1). The perspective taken is multidisciplinary the author draws on philosophy, psychology as well as cognitive, social and neurological sciences, in his study of emotions.

Chapter 2 is “Cognition in the structure of emotion”. It deals with “the role of cognition in the content of human emotions from a structural point of view” (Salmela, ibid.: 42). Two levels of emotional content analysis are discussed – functional and algorithmic. The author concludes the systematic role of cognition at functional levels of analysis as far as processing emotional content is concerned. As for the algorithmic level, Salmela concludes that emotional content may be of a cognitive or noncognitive nature. Since different human emotions may involve representations with different content, the author concludes the impossibility of excluding either  type of emotional content in the characterization of emotions.

The title of Chapter 3 is “Cognition in the dynamics of emotion”. It is concerned with the temporal structure of human emotions. Since emotion generation is a process that cognitive semantic representations join, Salmela defends the validity of cognitive process models of emotion.

Chapter 4 is “Emotional authenticity”. It brings the analysis of emotions to the realm of social contexts, as a phenomenon which may be made the object of communication processes. The starting point for the author is the (un)reflectivity of emotion processing. “Sincerity” is evoked as a psychological notion which may complete the characterisation of authenticity, which remains a normative notion. In effect, Salmela argues the lack of theoretical foundation for authenticity in contemporary research in emotion (Salmela, op. Cit.: p. 76). As regards the social dimension of emotions, the author questions the validity of “spontaneity” as a necessary condition for emotional authenticity (ibid.). The social dimension of emotions is further explored by distinguishing “emotion management” from “emotion regulation” (p. 81), namely the role of consciousness as far as automatic emotions are concerned. Ultimately, “authenticity” is described  “as coherence between the ev
 aluative content of emotion and one's subjectively rational values and beliefs” (p. 103).

Chapter 5, “Emotional truth” further develops the social characterisation of emotions. According to the author, two conditions  must be present for emotional truth to exist: a correspondence between an object of emotion and its formal object, and semantic satisfaction of the emotion's propositional content( i.e., the target of the emotion must exist).

Chapter 6 is “Authenticity and occupational emotions”. In contrast to Chapters 2 through 4, this chapter develops the characterisation of emotion within institutional, socially situated contexts, as the question of emotional authenticity is discussed in relation to specific professional situations – cheerful flight attendants, friendly funeral directors and empathic nurses (Salmela, ibid: 125) – where feeling and displaying emotions may be “part of professional identity” (ibid.). As regards the nursing profession, Salmela argues that emotion labour and regulation may be made into a training object, or else arise from professional experience – the author argues that it may be desirable for certain professionals to be able to set limits to their own emotions in order to attain an effective balancing. Ultimately, Salmela refuses to equate “emotional authenticity” to “spontaneous emotions”.

The title of Chapter 7 is “From true emotions to sentimental values”; it deals in mainly philosophically logical terms, with the so called conflation problem, which concerns the apparent loss of the differences among individuals, concepts of places that seemingly share specific characteristics (cf. Wikipedia). According to the author, such problem “has troubled previous nonsentimentalist theories of value”. (Salmela, ibid.: 165). The author argues a “fit-relevant reasons”-based solution to do away with the conflation problem (ibid.).

Chapter 8 presents the author’s “Concluding remarks”. The chapter is both a synthesis and an appraisal of the ideas developed throughout the volume. The author ultimately insists on his threefold objective to characterise i) the true nature of emotions, ii) the truth of emotion to the self, iii) the truth of emotion to the world.

EVALUATION

This reviewer found Salmela's work enriching, thought provoking and very well documented. The question of the emotions' authenticity is addressed thoroughly. Each chapter presents a recurrent pattern: a question concerning the emotions is introduced, discussed – with extensive reference to the literature – and a conclusion is suggested by the author, which allows him to move on with the next question. Notwithstanding the structural, thematic coherence of the book, this reviewer did notice the fact that the volume is a collection of papers published elsewhere, along a time span of several years – this is indicated by the author in the preface. In effect, this reviewer found that some ideas were repeating along the different chapters.

The author insists on his findings and observations; however, questions about his method and fieldwork remains to be addressed. Indeed, this reviewer – who is more familiar with conversation analysis works than with logical-philosophical literature – was left wanting for indications as to how some of the ideas developed by the author may come to be observed and confirmed/discarded when confronted with field-based, emotionally-laden, data. In effect, Salmela's rare and few allusions to everyday life situations, where emotions may be expressed, come across as anecdotes which may not quite qualify as real data – capable of supporting the ideas, models and hypotheses put forward. In this sense, the author seems to renew a Goffman-like tradition – Erving Goffman (1959) drew on a disparate, self-constituted corpus, whose cohesion, methodology and representativeness has sometimes been questioned (Lahire, 1998). Emotion, understood as a social phenomenon, has indeed been addressed by
  conversation analysts and ethnomethodologists, who have insisted on the importance of working with the right data (Peräkylä & Sorjonen, 2012). Illustrations of emotions in everyday, real life are particularly scarce in Chapters 2 through 4. These illustrations become more frequent in the subsequent chapters – particularly in Chapters 6 and 7. However, this increased frequency of illustrations does not quite qualify as proper data-based work.

Ultimately, Mikko Salmela's True Emotions offers a wealth of information for doctoral candidates and scholars whose work has to do with the theoretical characterisation of emotions.

REFERENCES

Goffman, E. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York: Anchor Books, 1967.
———. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Double Anchor Books, 1959.

Lahire, B. L’homme pluriel : Les ressorts de l’action. Paris: Nathan, 1998.

Peräkylä, Anssi, y Marja-Leena Sorjonen. Emotion in Interaction. Oxford University Press, USA, 2012.

Salmela, Mikko. True Emotions. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014.

“Conflation”, Wikipedia (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflation, webpage consulted on the 26th of August, 2015).


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jose Ignacio Aguilar Río is a Senior Lecturer at Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 University in France. He teaches undergraduate and post-graduate courses in education and applied linguistics. His research interests are in classroom interaction, foreign language teacher education and research methodology. He has presented papers at international conferences in Europe. His works have been published in international reviews.




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