Behavioral science · construct
Emotives
William Reddy, 2001
Reddy noticed that saying how you feel is not only a report; it is an act that reaches back and changes the feeling. To say 'I am calm' in a tense room is to do something to your own state, not merely to describe it. He called these first-person emotion statements *emotives*, and argued that every community rewards some and punishes others, building an emotional regime out of which feelings may be spoken.
Working definition
First-person emotion statements are performative; naming a feeling changes it, and regimes reward some emotives over others.
Where Vela uses this
Emotives carry the constructionist insight into history and language, which is why Vela leans on the concept across the emotion lens and the Christianity arc: confession, testimony, and prayer are emotive practices that shape the feelings they name. Pairs with constructionist emotion theory (the mechanism), emotional communities (the regime), and hypocognition (what happens when the regime offers no word at all).
Origin & lineage
Reddy (*The Navigation of Feeling*, 2001), drawing on speech-act theory (Austin) and constructionist psychology → foundational for the history of emotions alongside Rosenwein.
Where it shows up in Vela
Related concepts
- Emotional communities
Sits next to — Two foundations of the history-of-emotion turn.
- Hypocognition
Sits next to — Both concern how available vocabulary shapes felt life.
Scholars
Honest framing
Emotives are a theoretical proposal more than a measured mechanism, and how far an utterance reshapes a feeling is hard to pin down empirically. Vela treats the idea as a generative lens on emotional practice, not as a quantified effect.