Language Development and Emotional Expression

Abstract

The relation of language and emotion in development is most often thought about in terms of how language describes emotional experiences with words that name different feelings. However, children typically do not begin to use these words until language development is well underway, at approximately 2 years of age. Given the relatively small number of words for naming feelings and emotions, and the redundancy between emotion words and the expressions they name, understanding how emotion and language are related in early development requires looking beyond just acquisition of specific emotion words.