Emotional Analysis

Introduction

Humans feel emotions. This observation, admittedly somewhat banal, contains an idea that proves to be crucial for an emotional analysis of a piece of discourse. Namely, emotions are not something that is out there in the world. They arise in people who bring their experiences and concepts to bear on their interaction with that world. For the purposes of analysing language this amounts to the heuristic that emotions, if they are to be found language, will be found in the 'personal touches' of utterances. This vague notion of 'personal touch' will be fleshed out below in the steps.

The goal of this sub-layer is to chart out the basic emotional tone and/or progression of the psalm. To be sure, this is a descriptive endeavour. The point is to try to determine with some level of precision the emotions of the psalmist. How and for what this description is used will vary according to the norms and needs of the culture served.

Theoretically, we view emotions as componential. The field of emotional research is vast, and somewhat confusing, because it is not exactly clear what an emotion is, essentially. A number of scholars, however, have recognised that all of the many theories can be grouped in three categories that reflect something undeniably true about emotions. (1) Emotions involve cognitive processes such as evaluating, categorising and judging. (2) Emotions, obviously, involve many kinds of feelings, whether they be physical such as a fast heart-beat, or more abstract such as excitement or depression. (3) Emotions often lead to the motivation to act or even an action itself.. We designate these three components as the 'think' component, the 'feel' component and the 'do component. All of this corresponds to the basic intuition that no part of our life is left untouched by our emotions, from how we think to how we act.

To sum up the essential theoretical points in this short introduction. Emotions are human and componential.

Method Overview

The theoretical points translate into the following steps:

1. Copy and paste the analysis chart and headings from the template.
2. Copy the CBC into the CBC column by verse.
3. Strip each CBC down into the 'bare proposition' in the designated column.
4. Account for the differences in the 'think', 'feel' and 'do' columns.
5. List the 'think', 'feel' or 'do' component under the appropriate heading.

Steps

The following steps will be illustrated with Psalm 9:2–6.

1. Copy and paste the analysis chart and headings from the template

Copy the think-feel-do chart as well as the headings from the template board and paste them into your workspace.

2. Copy the CBC into the CBC column by verse

Copy the CBC translation into the chart under the appropriate column. The rows are arranged by verse. Your chart should so far look like the following.

3. Strip each CBC down into the 'bare proposition' in the designated column

Earlier in the introduction it was said that if emotions are to be detected in language, they will be reflected in the 'personal' touches of the utterance. The 'bare propositions' column is where we strip away all of these 'personal touches' so that we can account for them later. If you think back to unit-level semantics, this is similar to the 'propositional content' column, but taken a few steps further. The following (Hebrew) linguistic features are to be stripped away.

• Verbal semantics (tense, aspect, mood/modality)
• Adverbs and/or adverbials (this includes all prepositional phrases serving as adjuncts, negators, etc).
• Figurative language
• Any kind of demonstrative reference (mainly the pronouns this, that, I, you, he, she, it, they ,them)
• Vocatives
• All subordinating particles and conjunctions (e.g., כִּי).
• Quantifiers (such as כל).

In terms of clause presentation, convert all verbs into present-tense and third person, as was the case in unit-level semantics.

Study the following examples:

• V. 2
  • I will praise YHWH >> David praises YHWH (removal of verbal semantics)
  • with all my heart >> ø (removal of adverbial prepositional phrase)
  • all your wonderful works >> YHWH's wonderful works (removal of quantifier and reference to 'you'/'your')
  • Notice, however, that 'wonderful works' was carried over, since this is part of the semantics of נפלאות.

• V.3
  • because of you >> ø (removal of adverbial prepositional phrase)
  • Most High >> to Yahweh (removal of the vocative, replaced with the intended verbal complement)

• V. 4
  • When my enemies turn back, may they stumble and perish >> David's enemies perish (removal of figurative language "turn back" and "stumble" and removal of subordination)
  • because of your presence >> ø

• V. 6
  • You blotted out their name forever and ever >> the wicked are forgotten (removal of the 'blotting out' metaphor and the adverbs 'forever and ever'

4. Account for the differences in the 'think', 'feel' and 'do' columns

Herein lies the heart of this analysis, and for this reason we will spend a little more time on this step. The big-picture methodological task here is to explain the differences between the CBC and the bare proposition, and then categorise those differences as either expressing the 'think' component, the 'feel' component or the 'do' component. Note that some components may be lexically expressed (such as 'wonderful works' below); these will simply be copied in the relevant column. What this step is accomplishing theoretically is accounting for all of the linguistic features through which affect could potentially be expressed. Didactically stated, we are comparing what is being said to how it is being said. Let us walk through verses 2–4.

Verse 2

Let's start with the main differences between the CBC and bare propositions (not all differences will be relevant to the analysis).

• The verbal semantics are a good candidate for expressing a 'personal touch'. Why does the psalmist add it? In verbal semantics it was noted that these verbs express the firm resolve of the psalmist. In effect, David is certain that he will praise YHWH. In other words, the morphology encodes this resolve—this 'personal touch'. This certainty is reinforced by the next difference.
• Notice the words 'all' and 'my heart' are omitted from the bare propositions. Why would the Psalmist say 'all my heart' and that he will tell of 'all' of YHWH's wonderful work. He most certainly will not do these things literally. It would be physically impossible to tell about all of YHWH's works, and whatever the meaning of heart, to calculate whether or not one is using all of it is impossible. What is the Psalmist trying to communicate? These are instances of hyperbole, used for the purpose of expressing the fact that nothing can prevent the Psalmist from doing these things.
• Both of these express feeling of certainty (quite strongly), and therefore go in that column.

Luckily, the content of the 'think' and 'do' columns are expressed lexically in this verse.

• The content of the 'think' column is God's 'wonderful works'. The main clue here is the evaluative nature of these works, they are wonderful. They would not be so wonderful from, say, the perspective of someone who bore enmity towards God.
• The content of 'do' is also expressed in the 1st person verbs.

The formatting when populating the columns is as follows:

• The actual component of each column is in italics.
• Words restored from the CBC are in bold.

The italics will help you in the next step when you list out all the components under the headings in the next visual. The bold will help a user immediately see the subjective element you are trying to explain.

Verse 3

Let's look at verse 3, starting from the 'think' column and working left to right.

• The figurative language of שמך was stripped away in the bare proposition. Why does David say this? He will not literally sing to a name. A name, of course, stands for the entity named. But it also signifies how that entity is known. In the context of the Psalm , YHWH is known by his wonderful works. And this also explains why the psalmist rejoices because of YHWH (restored in the column as himself). This is the 'scene' in the Psalmist's mind, expressed in different words for the sake of greater immediacy. In effect, the 'think' component is the same as verse 2, God's wonderful works. The word name is in bold since it is restored from the CBC. The content of think—wonderful works—is placed italics.
• Verb morphology yields certainty once more, so certain is in italics and the restored will in bold. The word 'Most High' in the CBC was replaced with the actual referent in the bare proposition. This designation is quite specific. Its associations (in the 'notes' column) serve to reflect the Psalmist's sense of security most likely
• Like verse 2, what the Psalmist does is explicitly stated in the text through 1st person verbs. Note that this will rarely be the case, however. More on this below.

Verse 4

As you can see, the CBC and bare proposition are vastly different here.

• The 'think' component seems the most likely place to account for the CBC's 'because of your presence'. This 'presence' results in the 'turning away' and 'stumbling' of the enemies. Because of this sequence of events (presence > turning back > stumbling), the exact nature of this 'presence' is not entirely relevant for the present purpose. Whatever it is (theophany? a particular act?), the presence induces terror in the enemies, and is therefore terrifying. So we write a formulation that contains the restored presence in bold and terrifying in italics.
• 'When' David's enemies turn back reflects, once again, David's certainty about the matter.
• Probably the most striking difference between the bare proposition and the CBC is the omission of the verbs 'turn back' and 'stumble'. The reason for this is that they are most likely figurative language. The main clue here is that the two seem to go together, yet they are a far cry from the ensuing event—perishing. In other words, literally stumbling after one retreats by no means results in 'perishing'. Why say it then? The purpose, most likely, is to prolong the event of perishing. This prolonging is certainly a technique used for affect, since the Psalmist is inviting the reader to 'be there' and experience something. What is that something? It is the terrifying presence of God, as made clear in the next verse. Thus, the psalmist, by drawing out this process, exposes just how terrifying God's presence really is, but with a positive valence (since it is the Psalmist's feeling). We may therefore gloss with awe.
• The 'do' column is empty, since there are no first-person verbs and no signs of a bodily response. This point is very important and deserves a brief statement

The 'Do' Column

The 'do' column is reserved for actual actions and/or bodily responses like, e.g., 'crying' (cf. Psa 6:7–8). Speech acts may be included in grey, because they are directly relevant, even though they are not explicitly actions or bodily responses. The exception to this is if the speech act is expressed by the psalmist using a 1st-person verb, as in vv. 1–2, in which case it may be kept in black. (Note this is an update, accommodating speech acts, 9-Jan-2023.)

Repeat

This tutorial illustrated step 4 with these three verses. Complete this process for every verse, keeping in mind that you do not need to account for every single difference between the CBC and bare propositions. Be realistic and try to choose those differences which seem to contribute to the emotional profile of the Psalm. This tutorial was detailed for the sake of illustration. In many cases, the affective tone will be intuitively obvious; the purpose of the method is to enable you to explain this intuition.

5. Summary visual

Steps 1-4 present a method for the verse-by-verse analysis of emotions in a psalm. This fifth step involves the creation of a new visual, the purpose of which is to summarise the detailed verse-by-verse emotional analysis.

First, copy the 'think'-'feel'-'do' headings from the template, which looks like this

Second, take all of italicised words in the "Feel" column of the chart and list them under the "Feel" heading of the summary visual. List each word one time, regardless of how many times it occurs in the chart. If, for example, the psalmist feels "confidence" in 10 different verses within the psalm, you will still list "confidence" only one time in the summary visual. The following image is a summary list of everything that the psalmist "feels" in Psalm 110:

Third, drawing from the chart, similarly list items under the headings "Think" and "Do," and connect each of these to the appropriate item in the "Feel" list. For example,

• Because this is a summary visual, you will want to be as concise as possible. Not every thought in the "Think" column of the table will be included. Some thoughts which are similar to one another will be combined and others will be omitted. Choose to include only those thoughts which are most necessary for explaining the various "feelings" listed under "Feel."
• The order of items in each list does not need to reflect the order in which they appear in the psalm.
• If events in the "Do" column are speech acts within the psalm which coincide exactly with a particular line or series of lines in the psalm, cite the line/verse in which the speech act occurs (e.g., "v. 1a") (as in the Ps. 110 summary above).

References