What is Expression?
How a Formal Theory can clarify the Expressive Possibilities of Language
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To distinguish between the form and content of expression is to distinguish between how a thought or feeling is expressed and what kind of thought or feeling is expressed. The “how” of expression may include its sequence, rhythm, speed, duration, and intensity. The “how” of expression may also include its mood and perspective, its style and formal architecture, its syntactic and thematic structure, its rhetoric and genre. On the other hand, the “what” of expression may include its subject matter, themes, concerns, field of reference, denotations, connotations, and implications. The “what” of expression may also include the background of expressions in which a given expression occurs, the other expressions that determine the meaning or truth value of an expression, and the other expressions that an expression makes possible. The form of an expression may also be its shape, pattern, configuration, structure, organization, arrangement of component parts, or mode of presentation. On the other hand, the content of an expression may be whatever it “means,” signifies, exemplifies, instantiates, sets forth, explicates, describes, represents, reveals, or communicates. The content of a work of art may be drawn from the external world, and it may not be a set of messages or meanings that is strictly contained within the work of art itself. The content of a work of art may represent an experience, a vision, or a way of looking at the world that depends as much on the external world as on the form of the artwork itself. The form and content of expression may be interdependent, insofar as the form of any meaningful expression may depend on the expression’s having some meaningful content, and insofar as the content of any meaningful expression may depend on the expression’s having some meaningful form. The meaningfulness of any expression may depend on its form being appropriate to its content and its content being appropriate to its form. The form and content of expression may be inseparable, insofar as a change in the form of any meaningful expression may also change its content, and insofar as a change in the content of any meaningful expression may also change its form.
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About the Book
What are the elements of expression? What are the origins, aims, and functions of expression? An adequate theory of expression can help us to address these questions and to recognize the diversity of the many modes of expression (scientific, ethical, aesthetic, religious, and sociocultural).
Alex Scott describes the interdependence of the modes of expression, showing that a theory of expression can promote social understanding by illuminating the nature of our interdependence as individuals in society.
Expression theory, as described by Scott, is not merely a theory of art. It is a theory of the ethics, aesthetics, psychology, logic, language, and politics of expression. It is a theory that enables us to examine in a more comprehensive way the question of whether there are any logical limits to the expressive capacity of language.
Expression theory is also a theory that enables us transcend the dialectics of the said and the unsaid, the sayable and the unsayable. It enables us to address the question of whether the communicability of a person’s thoughts or feelings is determined solely by that person’s communicative competence or whether there are some kinds of thoughts and feelings that are truly ineffable and incommunicable.
About the Author
Alex Scott is a philosopher and physician who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of The Conditions of Knowledge: Reviews of 100 Great Works of Philosophy, and Christian Semiotics and the Language of Faith. His interests include ethics, semiotics, and the philosophy of language.