I am relatively certain that there is a category of speech acts called expressives that account for statements about oneself. You might want to check into that to answer your question about statements reporting an emotional state.

Hope this helps,
Margaret

Mary Aloe
Proud Mary Entertainment

Her presentation certainly seemed in the style of the great traveling charlatans and revival ministers. I think that’s what stuck me first and foremost about her. Eyes closed, hands raised to the heavens, a pleading voice, a building up of emotion, a use of repetition, an ecstatic rumbling conclusion. If the talk wasn’t presented as grounded in science and scientific observation and given public weight by her status as a neuroanatomist, I think most of us would either be moved by the talked or would have simply moved on with a roll of the eyes. It’s interesting and also annoying to see how susceptible we are still to these kind of performances, how much we grasp for meaning.

What is the purpose of bring out a real human brain with its dangly bits? She could have easily include a clear picture of the brain in one of her slides. But the effect of it was wonderful – the gasps of the audience, the putting on of the gloves, the demonstration that her authority as a scientist licensed her to hold this miraculous organ, the holding it up into the air, the invitation to us to enter her 19th century surgeon’s theater.

I don’t mean to suggest, of course, that she’s a charlatan. But the talk is not by a scientist and is actually inteclectually uninteresting and scientifically misinformed. It is, however, an impassioned performance by a woman struggling to shape and express her experience and her desire that the world be a better place, that through understanding there is no separate self we can create a more peaceful and compassionate world.

Or maybe it’s just an annoying, cloying, rather egocentric presentation elevated in a unquestioning public discourse.

Her presentation certainly seemed in the style of the great traveling charlatans and revival ministers. I think that’s what stuck me first and foremost about her. Eyes closed, hands raised to the heavens, a pleading voice, a building up of emotion, a use of repetition, an ecstatic rumbling conclusion. If the talk wasn’t presented as grounded in science and scientific observation and given public weight by her status by a neuroanatomist, I think most of us would either be moved by the talked or would have simply moved on with a roll of the eyes. It’s interesting and also annoying to see how susceptible we are still to these kind of performances, how much we grasp for meaning.

What is the purpose of bring out a real human brain with its dangley bits? She could have easily include a clear picture of the brain in one of her slides. But the effect of it was wonderful – the gasps of the audience, the putting on of the gloves, the demonstration that her authority as a scientist licensed her to hold this miraculous organ, the holding it up into the air, her invitation to us to enter her 19th century surgeon’s theater.

I don’t mean to suggest, of course, that she’s a charlatan. But the talk is not by a scientist and is actually inteclectually uninteresting and scientifically misinformed. It is however an impassioned performance by a woman struggling to shape and express her experience and the desire that the world be a better place, that through understanding there is no separate self we can create a more peaceful and compassionate world. Or maybe it’s just an annoying, cloying, rather egocentric presentation elevated in a unquestioning public discourse.

I say one place to look is in who is it that is making the statement … “I am experiencing sadness” can be a declaration (being a creation of the “thing itself”~ sadness ~ in the speaking of it), and it can also be an assertion (being a report of an observed condition and maybe grounded by your commitment to provide evidence for your opinion should it be requested). Seems to me that the mere construction of the words in sentence in this case, is not what makes the statement either a declaration or assertion.

This is a beautiful quote, even for someone who has yet to reach the age of 30. While I have continued to perform music, I have done so in a choir, where individual musical inclinations are set aside for the balance and movement of the whole. What creative spaces I had when I was younger have mostly disappeared. And so I am taking up fiction again (both reading and writing) and pulling out my bassoon, folding and shaping some cane, and brushing off my Saint-Saens.

I don’t have a context to see what I miss without creative outlets, but it feels significant, perhaps because of quotes like this.

I hope you and your family are well.

Best,
Sarah