On the Nature of Emotions: the Linguistic Deconstruction of Emotional Realism

If it hurts is real? Can't lies hurt? Aren't our dearest truths, still a fiction of language?

Synchronic language is not an exclusive construction of atemporal discourse (pragmatism, mathematics, etc.). It can be realized by the iteration of diachronic gestures –as in Bourdieu's concept of the Habitus–. Moreover, the interplay is not restricted to the extreme categories of time and no-time as suggested by the dichotomy synchronic/diachronic; it also involves intermediate structures in social space-time (aka temporality, etc.). Think on time scales such as weeks, decades, generations, intergenerations, etc. And despite Heidegger's emphasis on time, just as important, scales on social space: bacterial colonies, individuals, families, communities, nations, etc. 

In particular there is a realization of synchronic language (and as language being prior to emotions, these will lead to synchronic emotions: feelings) through the diachronic language of social relations (friends, couples, etc.). This is slightly different to the Habitus whose emphasis is on the local perpetuation of institutions [1]. The realm I want to point out (also targeted in the post: On the Nature of Emotions: Vanity Within) is that of emotions in literary realism. The personal experience of the social in its synchronic stance. But an intimate social, the relation with the family, friends, neighbors, etc. How this synchronic stance induces a form of emotional realism in which our inability to deconstruct it often leads to existential thoughts. Sartre's nothingness more than a claim on the condition of the real is a claim about the broadness of language. 

So the idea to take home from this note is that our relation with language mediates the interpretation of our feelings, and even of our emotions. Moreover, it also invents and upholds those feelings, their physical existence. It is a double feedback. Our linguistic condition is not only an intellectual condition but a social one.

Podata: Difference between emotions and feelings (a citation to Jung).