“You make me feel...”: Affective Causality in Language Communication

In this paper we analyse linguistic structures, such as “You make me feel angry”, which imply the possibility that a person can cause another person’s affect. We illustrate the concept of “affective causality”, based on an implicit-naïve theory of interpersonal relations linked to common sense. We present two theoretical alternative viewpoints (deriving from psychology and psychotherapy) which promote people’s emotional autonomy. We propose an alternative linguistic model to causal structures, in which a listener’s feelings are not causally linked to a speaker’s utterances. We also show the relation between affective causality in language and in perception. Finally, we outline some possible uses of our model in relation to Affective Computing. 1 AFFECTIVE COMPUTING AND