Ilmaisimia

Ilmaisimia is a Finnish linguistic term used to describe signals that convey attitudes, stance, or interpersonal meaning beyond the literal proposition of a statement. In a broader semiotic sense, the concept also encompasses signals that accompany communication in multimodal contexts, including nonverbal cues.

The category covers a range of devices. Linguistic ilmaisimia include discourse markers, mood or epistemic modality markers, evaluative adjectives and adverbs, and other lexical items that color or frame an utterance. Nonlinguistic elements such as facial expression, gesture, and intonation are also considered ilmaisimia when analyzed as part of communicative meaning.

Functions of ilmaisimia include signaling stance (for example certainty, doubt, approval, or skepticism), managing interpersonal relations (politeness, rapport-building, or deference), adding emphasis or hedging, and guiding how the listener interprets the information. They help convey attitudes and social meaning that are not explicit in the propositional content.

In research, ilmaisimia are studied within pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis, often in combination with multimodal data. The term highlights how language interacts with social signaling. While widely used in Finnish linguistic literature, similar concepts appear under labels such as stance markers, evaluative language, affect signals, or nonverbal cues in other traditions and languages.

See also: stance, discourse markers, pragmatics, multimodality.