| Key Psycholinguistic Distinctions in Eye-Zen English (c) 2009-11 by Angus Cunningham Principal, Authentix Coaches |
| Some years ago I came to two recognitions that I later recognized are critical to making practical use of the field of knowledge known as Psycholinguistics:
In the ordinary course of your life, you probably use the words “emotion”, “feeling”, “thought”, “idea”, and “thinking” quite often. Yet, when you do so, do you have distinctions between their meanings clearly in mind? People who study psycholinguistics find that clearly distinguishing between the meanings of each of these words is useful in learning to communicate with less chance of triggering upsets and conflicts and more chance of facilitating the identification and meeting of real needs. Because the meanings of the words "emotion" and "feeling" are especially often conflated -- even by professionals in the fields of mental, physical, and emotional health -- the particular aim of this essay is to distinguish these two words in a way useful to people who are new to psycholinguistics. Virtually everyone studying emotions agrees that those of which we are unaware are a source, if not the source, of irrationality. Many people also agree that irrationality leads to a huge array of problems. Some would even say that all problems are caused by emotions. Perhaps that’s why so many people think that having an emotion is “bad” and therefore why people are so often in denial of politically incorrect emotions. Truth in this matter includes both that emotions urge us to respond to situations to which a response is actually necessary, and also that, in many situations, emotions of which we are insufficiently conscious drive us, willy nilly like the proverbial caveman or woman, to irrational, and therefore problematic, action. A major task of every human being, therefore, is to become sufficiently conscious of his or her flow of emotions to be able to increase the degree of rationality of his or her conduct. Leaders have especially the obligation to model and coach this task. Many, perhaps most, people are not, however, much conscious of their emotions. This suggests that, if more of us were to share honestly, which requires more empathy than does 'frankly', our experiences and thinking related to these issues, we would be likely to learn how to incorporate these crucial truths about our emotions more wisely into our conduct than is currently the case. Certainly, we would be working toward discovering ways to lessen the world-wide plague of human irrationality. In particular, I have observed that much conflict arises without the parties to it being aware that its cause lies in their unwitting usage of words or phrases in either different ways or in what with the emoto-linguistic bias that is often called presumption. One aim of my upcoming book, tentatively called "Rational Presence -- Solving Problems Together in Equanimity!", is therefore to stimulate more conversation in this field, especially among decision-makers and opinion leaders. A book showing us how to become more accurately aware as to why the different modes of language expression to which families and tribes become acculturated often stir up conflict unwittingly, and how to avoid such problems would, I believe, become useful ground for widespread discussion. An affect is the technical term for either an emotion or a mood, and it may be conceived as the energetic spring of a feeling. This tells us that the essential distinction between an affect and a feeling is that the former expresses the quality of body and mind in which the latter arises. The essential distinction between the two kinds of affect, emotion and mood, is that the former has greater fluidity and pertinence to current circumstances. These psycholinguistic distinctions are key to making good use of Eye-Zen English principles of communication. They are summarized in the following table: |
