expressiva

Expressiva is a term used in linguistics, philosophy of language, and related fields to denote utterances that express the speaker's emotions, attitudes, or evaluative stance rather than making a factual claim about the world. In English-language discussion, the more common term is expressives or expressive language; expressiva appears as the feminine form in Romance-language texts and can also be used to describe musical or literary marks that convey mood.

Expressiva contrast with assertives, which aim to describe states or events, and with directives or commissives, which aim to influence behavior. Expressives do not have truth-conditions in the same sense as assertions; their primary force is evaluative or affective. Examples include interjections like "wow," "alas," "my goodness," as well as adjectives or adverbs that convey attitude, such as "wonderful" or "unfortunately" when used to express sentiment rather than to convey new information.

In philosophy and pragmatics, the study of expressives helps explain how speakers convey stance, personality, and social attitude, and how listeners react to such cues through prosody, gesture, and context. Historically, the term-variation reflects the cross-linguistic use of the root express-, with "expressiva" emerging in Romance-language grammars and music notation to indicate expressiveness.

See also: expressive language, emotive language, interjection, speech act theory, expressivity.