![]() Although the word “emotion” (imported into English from the French émotion) was in use in the 17th and 18th centuries, it did not become established as the name for a category of mental states that might be systematically studied until the mid-19th century. The history of the term “emotion” as a keyword of just this kind is both shorter and more eventful than its modern users might imagine. Psychological categories and concepts in particular have this reflexive relationship with our mental lives, shaping and colouring as well as explaining them ( Khalidi, 2010 R. This is especially true in the realms of culture and thought, where new words, or new meanings attached to old ones, can create new concepts, and even new worldviews, which in turn transform people’s ability to imagine, experience, and understand themselves. Historians have long recognised the importance of keywords as both mirrors and motors of social and intellectual change ( Dixon, 2008 Williams, 1976). An historical perspective can help to answer these questions. Izard’s recent article and several of the responses to it ( White, 2010 Widen & Russell, 2010 Wierzbicka, 2010) ask questions about the language of “emotion”: whether it forms part of a universal human “folk psychology,” whether it is part of “ordinary language” in English, and whether, in light of the answers to these questions, it can be expected to operate as part of a truly scientific lexicon. Indeed, as I shall suggest below, it has been in crisis, from a definitional and conceptual point of view, ever since its adoption as a psychological category in the 19th century. “Emotion” is certainly a keyword in modern psychology, but it is a keyword in crisis. Among the scientists surveyed by Izard, there was moderate support for the view that the term “emotion” is “ambiguous and has no status in science,” and that it should therefore be abandoned ( 2010a, pp. ![]() Some even believe that it should be thrown out of psychology altogether. Izard’s (2010a) interviews with leading emotion scientists, together with responses from other experts, powerfully demonstrate that, despite the continuing proliferation of books, journals, conferences, and theories on the subject of “emotion,” there is still no consensus on the meaning of this term. In that year William James wrote an influential article in Mind entitled “What Is an Emotion?” A century and a quarter later, however, there seems to be little scientific consensus on the answer to his question, and some are beginning to wonder whether it is the very category of “emotion” that is the problem. “Emotion” has, since 1884, been a theoretical keyword at the heart of modern psychology. ![]()
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