Semantic primitives for emotions: A Reply to Ortony and Clore

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. We respond to four criticisms by Ortony and Clore (1989) of our semantic analysis of English emotion terms (Johnson-Laird & Oatley, 1989). We clarify how our theory enables people to speak of certain emotions that they experience without knowing their cause. We explain why emotions are best regarded as mental states with distinctive phenomenal tones-not " just " feelings, and how emotion terms can relate to terms denoting moods. Finally, we discuss an issue that distinguishes our theory from other contemporary cognitive theories: We claim that there is a small number of discriminably different basic emotions, and that the semantics of English emotion terms is comprehensible if these basic states are taken as unanalys-able primitives.