Abstract
M.A.
Emotive language is found is various sectors of grammar, and
occurs'for instance in words, affixes, fixed expressions and
certain syntactic constructions, and is, indicative of the
speaker's emotionally charged attitudes or value judgments
in regard to referents, or elements of the speech situation
or participants in the speech situation. Certain figures of
speech seem to be emotionally charged as well. Emotive
language has clear formal or semantic correlates, and
important parameters are the meliorative/pejorative scale
and that of strengthening/weakening.
In Chapter 2, which dealt with the morphological
expression of emotion, certain affixes and types of
compounds were found to play a part in marking language as
emotive. It became clear that the diminutive suffix in
particular played a major role, and was employed in
expressing emotive aspects such as affection, admiration,
ridicule, disdain, contempt, sympathy and mistrust.
Compounds functioning as intensive forms or of the bahuvrihi
type were moreover found to•be emotively charged.
Chapter 3•dealt with the role of syntactic mechanisms in
emotive language. While certain parts of speech, such as
interjections, emphatic particles, degree words, forms of
address and exclamations were found to be particularly prone
to emotive expression, rhetorical questions, elliptical
constructions and various kinds of repetition were also
found to have emotive functions.
In Chapter 4 the important part played by lexemes and
fixed expressions in emotive language was investigated.
Emotive words or expressions were found to contrast with
neutral, i.e. purely referential, words or expressions in many cases. Modal adverbs proved to be an important carrier
of emotive overtones, while the emotive sphere was seen to
be enhanced by loans from languages such as English and
Zulu.
The role of figurative. language and certain figures of
speech in particular in emotive expression, was studied in
Chapter 5. The figures of speech which were considered, were
metaphor, dehumanisation, hyperbole, comparison, sarcasm,
synecdoche and irony.
In Chapter '6 certain conclusions were drawn, such as the
fact that emotive language may take on various forms and
occur in various sectors of grammar and vocabulary. At the
same time it is found in a spectrum of registers of
Afrikaans, e.g. in novels, short stories, youth literature,
magazines and even the language of the Bible.