What Is Emotive Language? (With Examples)
Arousing or able to arouse intense feeling:animal experimentation is an emotive subjectthe issue has proved highly emotive
EXAMPLE SENTENCES
• Film is an emotive medium, uniquely able to manipulate through lighting and music as well as words.
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Expressing a person’s feelings rather than beingneutrally descriptive:the comparisons are emotive rather thananalytic
EXAMPLE SENTENCES
• At the end of the day, it is entirely up to you whether you buy or rent your home, and this is often an emotive rather than rational decision.
Usage
• The words emotive and emotional share similarities but are not simply interchangeable. Emotive is used to mean‘arousing intense feeling’, while emotional tends to mean‘characterized by intense feeling’. Thus an emotive issueis one which is likely to arouse people’s passions, while an emotional response is one which is itself full ofpassion. In sentences such as we took our emotivefarewells the word emotive has been used in a contextwhere emotional would be more appropriate.
Examples of Emotive Language
Emotive language is designed to tell you the facts while influencing you to adopt the author's opinion. Here are examples of emotive language.
• Non-emotive version: Another person in the bar was injured by the man's glass.
• Emotive version: An innocent bystander suffered facial injuries when the thug launched his glass across the bar.
• Non-emotive version: The government will reduce interest rates.
• Emotive version: The government will slash interest rates.
• Non-emotive version: Mr Smith was attacked by Mr Jones for two minutes.
• Emotive version: For what seemed a lifetime, Mr Smith was subjected to a vicious, cowardly assault by the unemployed, steroid-pumped monster.
*When writing emotive language, you get to be newsreader and judge at the same time.