Expressiviteten

Expressiviteten, or expressivity, is a term used in Scandinavian languages to denote the quality by which something expresses attitudes, emotions, or value. The concept appears across linguistics, philosophy, aesthetics and the theory of formal systems, and is distinguished from mere propositional content by highlighting how utterances or works convey stance, feeling, or evaluative meaning beyond facts.

In linguistics, expressivity concerns the expressive layer of meaning—prosody, intonation, evaluative adjectives, and discourse markers that signal stance or emotion. It interacts with propositional content and can vary across languages, contributing to politeness, persuasion, or rhetorical effect.

In moral and meta-ethical debates, expressivism is a family of theories suggesting that normative statements express attitudes or prescriptions rather than objective facts. The focus is on expressive force and the motivational or social impact of utterances, not on truth-conditions alone.

In aesthetics and art, expressivity describes a work's capacity to convey emotions or inner states through form, color, rhythm, or structure. Interpretations emphasize the felt experience conveyed by a piece, though assessments of expressivity are often subjective and culturally informed, reflecting audience reception as well as the artist's intention.

In logic and computer science, expressivity also measures how much a formal language can represent. More expressive systems can encode more ideas but may be harder to analyze. The balance between expressivity and tractability is a central consideration in design and evaluation.