Friday 14 November 2014

Processes Of Emotion: Directionality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 141):
Processes of emotion are typically bidirectional.  They can be construed either as the emotion ranging over the Phenomenon or as the Phenomenon causing the emotion — as in I like Mozart’s music (the ‘like’ type) : Mozart’s music pleases me (the ‘please’ type) Here the grammar of English construes a complementarity between two conflicting interpretations of emotional processes, with opposing angles on whether we are in control of our emotions, as if neither one by itself constitutes a rounded construction of experience.