Emotions in specialised genres: Power, manipulation and persuasion from the Affect Spectrum Theory

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine professional genres from a novel perspective linking social constructivism and basic emotion theory, making the assumption that emotions are intrinsically social, and that social phenomena (such as professional communities) have an emotional nature (TenHouten, 2021). Thus, we aim to consider the constructive role of emotions in the creation and development of specialised texts (occasionally focusing specifically on the legal field), and, in turn, on the professional communities from which these texts emerge. Our work builds on the socio-evolutionary theory of emotions, or affect-spectrum theory (AST), which is developed in dissonance with other Cartesian and rational-choice models that set reason and emotion in opposition and assert that society only progresses to the extent that the former can control, suppress and triumph over the latter. Specifically, it is our underlying hypothesis that specialised and professional communication is articulated around emotions –and power, manipulation and persuasion, among other negative or positive emotional expressions. Thus, textual mechanisms or genres, as communicative instruments of specialised communities reveal the tensions that occur centripetally or centrifugally, i.e., inwards or outwards from that community. They do so from an agonistic relational model, in a centripetal tension that promotes agency through coercion and/or manipulation, or from a hedonistic relational model, in a centrifugal tension where interpersonal relationships of persuasion and dissemination are established in order to engage in communal relationships.