THE NOT ALTOGETHER SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF EMOTIONS - A CRITIQUE OF HARRE AND GILLETT

Are emotions like sneezes, unwilled, mechanical, or are they like judg ments; are they entirely social constructions? Harre and Gillett belie ve that emotions are exclusively judgments. We argue that their view m isses something important. Imagine a person quaking in anger. Both we and Harre and Gillett believe that he is angry only if he has made an implicit judgment, such as I have been transgressed against. But it is the quaking, not the judgment, that gives authenticity and force to t he expression of anger. The quaking does not clarify what the actor me ans but rather it clarifies the relation of the actor to the meaning o f his display. What makes it a genuine expression of anger and not a j oke or performance is that the quaking is beyond the will. Bodily disp lays are not necessary to make expressions authentic; anything that sh ows that the expression is beyond the will will do, for instance, obse ssive thoughts, intrusions, or an inability to concentrate. For Harre and Gillett emotions both as displays and feelings do not merely embod y judgments but are also speech acts. We argue that an expression, a f eeling or hitting through the mind, cannot be a speech act since only the overt can fit into the convention, the strictures of a community. Nor is the display merely a speech act. Since for an emotional display to be genuine it must slip from the lips unbidden. Further, a speech act account makes the emotions arbitrary; they imply that the set of p ossible emotions is open. We think, on the other hand, that only some sorts of judgments can become part of an emotion; judgments that relat e to things that are important enough in a particular culture that jud gment display and feeling are linked together involuntarily.