Emotive language

Functions

page 15/think 5

What is emotive language?

Emotive Language is the type of language which conveys or evokes an emotion in the mind of the reader.

For Example:

Non-Emotive: The government has reduced the gasoline priced

Emotive: The government has slashed the price of gasoline.

Notice that just by changing the word “reduced” to “slashed”, the emotional value of the sentence has been increased dramatically.

Emotive technique

• question tags

• repetition of a word or phrase

• rhetorical questions

• emphatic use of the auxiliary verb in positive statements

• phrases such as tell me, I don't understand, you can't be serious or you must be joking