Emotions and language about motion: Differentiating affective dominance with syntax from valence with semantics

Motion as encoded in linguistic cues is used to differentiate affective valence and dominance. Participants were invited to rate their affective responses to different words along valence and dominance scales. The words were nouns describing static cues and verbs describing motion, connected to DOWN/UP and Avoidance/Approach cues. The results of three studies showed that valence and dominance could be differentiated through syntax and semantics of motion. On one hand, dominance feelings, compared to valence ones, are particularly influenced by motion encoded in syntactic classes (verbs vs. nouns). On the other hand, valence feelings, compared to dominance ones, are influenced by a semantics of motion through DOWN/UP and Avoidance/Approach cues, considered as polarities. A polarity correspondence effect is proposed to explain these results.