Modeling the Impact of Emotions on Descriptive Writing

In this chapter, I propose a process model for how writers express their emotions through word choice in written text. I also present a computer simulation of the model to demonstrate that it can actually choose words as writers would. The model assumes that writers recognize many families of words. Each family member is related but conveys a different shade of meaning. For example, rain might be described as a sprinkle, a drizzle, a shower, a storm, a deluge, or a frog-strangler. In the model, when the translation process selects language to express ideas from the proposer, emotions influence which word is chosen from the relevant word family. The connection of this model to a volume dedicated to Steve Graham’s body of work is this. The model proposed here is teachable. It could be taught as part of SRSD to make writers aware of their options for expressing degrees of emotion or, more generally, degrees of meaning. As the computer simulation of the model shows, difficulty in expressing degrees of meaning could result from limited vocabulary. A teacher could potentially help writers who have difficulty expressing emotions through vocabulary instruction or by instruction in the use of a thesaurus.