Expression: what it is, how it manifests itself, pros and cons

Adviсe

• Determination of expression
• Expressive behavior
• Expressiveness of personality
• Conclusion

Have you ever heard the expressions “expressive girl” or “expressive dance”? The word “expression” in translation means expressiveness, intense manifestation of mood and emotions. Expression is also interpreted as the presentation of hidden psychological personality characteristics to other people for direct observation.

What is expression?

Expression is a vivid demonstration by a person of his internal state, expressed in the active manifestation of emotions and feelings, as well as in increased motor activity. The term “expression” comes from the Latin word “expressio”, which means “expressiveness”. The most typical and striking manifestations of expressiveness are:

• speed of speech and verbosity;
• loud and emotional conversation;
• liveliness of facial expressions;
• mannered behavior pattern;
• desire to take a leading position;
• sweeping and sharp gestures.

However, expressive individuals are not necessarily self-confident and often have a lack of willpower, problems with self-control, and an inability to take responsibility for their actions.

There is also a concept opposite to expression, this is impressiveness, i.e. accumulation by a person of various, most often negative, emotions without their external expression, suppression by a person of his own feelings and emotional impulses.

Expressiveness as a personality quality

Individuals demonstrate their emotions so vividly and violently that expressiveness is one of the main traits of their character.

The degree of expressiveness does not depend on the situation or a person’s feelings at a particular moment, but directly on his personal individual psychological characteristics. They are associated with the characteristics of a person’s temperament and psychotype and are stable in changing conditions.

Personality traits that determine a high level of expressiveness include:

• dominance of processes of excitation of the neurovegetative system over inhibition;
• dynamic nervous reactions, which leads to frequent changes of mood;
• personality activity;
• greater reactivity;
• sensitivity, which causes violent emotional responses to even minor stimuli.

It is believed that women are more expressive than men, since their emotional sphere prevails over the intellectual. Almost all children show expressiveness, since they do not yet know how to hide their emotions.

How does expression occur?

Emotional exchange is an important part of the lives of people and the entire society; the inability to share emotions with a loved one leads a person to loneliness and makes her feel lost. In addition, people need to be nourished by the feelings and emotions of others, which has led to the development of various forms and methods of demonstrating their own emotional state, called expressive means. These include:

• Mimicry , i.e. conveying emotions through facial expression. Facial expressions help a person reflect his mental and emotional mood through movements of the facial muscles; in this case, eyes and a smile have a special influence on facial expression. It is not for nothing that the eyes are called the mirror of the soul, because their expression is capable of conveying the internal state of a person to the smallest detail - the gaze can be filled with tenderness or anger, respect or contempt, positive and negative. The expression of the eyes is distinguished by powerful strength and energy; from their expression, an experienced person can easily guess the thoughts of his interlocutor.
• Pantomime , or a complex of gestures, postures and movements. This concept combines a set of facial expressions and body movements, which allows one to convey emotions and experiences more vividly and richly. A person’s gestures and postures change depending on his mood; this happens at the level of reflexes, regardless of the individual’s wishes. Different emotions have their own set of postures and gestures. For example, the movements of a person in a rage are rough and tense; a feeling of joy, on the contrary, is manifested in broad and confident gestures; a depressed mood is characterized by minimal, almost absent gesticulation. Their hands can tell a lot about people’s current mood. So, if there is no desire to establish contact, a person crosses his arms in the chest area, but a good mood manifests itself in smooth and light movements of his hands.
• Speech expression expresses the intonation of speech inherent in an individual and the way he constructs phrases and sentences. Intonation can be quiet or loud, soft or hard, etc. If we talk about the emotional coloring of speech, then it is capable of conveying emotions and mood no worse than facial expressions and gestures. In general, the speech of a personality prone to expression is characterized by the widespread use of exaggeration, diminutive names, changes in the timbre of speech, its volume and intonation depending on the current mood. Often verbal expressiveness is expressed in the actual manifestation of emotions by a person, for example, having become emotional, he can laugh, cry, break into a scream, etc.

Means of expressiveness

Expression finds its expression in very specific means that give an emotional color to speech, movements, facial expressions and the image as a whole.

These tools in psychology are divided into:

• morphological - consist in the peculiarities of word formation, when with the help of suffixes new verbal forms with different colors are created - diminutive, magnifying, disparaging;
• phonetic - they manifest themselves in a deliberate, uncharacteristic stretching of sounds, uncharacteristic for ordinary speech, accentuation and highlighting of individual phrases and words with special intonation;
• syntactic - when a person deliberately rearranges words in sentences so that they sound in a special way, uses inappropriate repetitions;
• paralinguistic - these include facial expressions, gestures, timbre and volume of speech;
• lexical - the use of interjections, evaluative phrases, amplification particles, sarcastic and caustic speech constructions, interjections.

Reasons for the occurrence of expression

Every inhabitant of our planet is prone to expressive expression. However, it manifests itself in different ways - some people can be extremely emotional even about small things, while others are able to remain absolutely calm even in critical situations. Scientists name a number of factors that influence such differences in the behavior of different people. Among these factors are:

• Heredity. Genetic predisposition directly affects the formation of temperament and the functioning of the nervous system. Therefore, active people most often have active children, in contrast to them, children of calm parents are also distinguished by calmness and self-control.
• Anatomy. Anatomical features of a person directly influence the formation and further functioning of the limbic system, the area of ​​the brain responsible for the individual’s emotional perception of the world around him. Stimulation of this area provokes expression and a parallel increase in motor activity; during periods of depression, this area of ​​the brain ceases to play a dominant role, as a result, the level of serotonin released into the blood falls, which leads to a depressed mood.
• Social factors. These factors are determined by the conditions of upbringing, education, activities and social circle of the individual, which is why they have a significant influence on the expression of expression.
• National (historical) factors. It is known that the expressiveness of behavior is often influenced by the ethnicity of the individual. For example, southern peoples are characterized by expressive behavior with active gestures and facial expressions, while northern peoples are characterized by calmness, restraint, and sometimes some slowness.

Polysemantic words that take on emotional overtones when used as metaphors

It happens that only when a word is used as a metaphor, expressive vocabulary is formed. Examples: nag your husband (reference to the previous word), sing to your boss, miss the bus. In general, the word “sawing” means dividing wood into several parts using a special tool. But if you use it as a metaphor, then literally it will turn out to be something like “divide your husband into several parts.” That is, even with a literal interpretation of this metaphor, it is unlikely that anything positive will be found. So here's an example of a clearly expressive expression.

Pros and cons of expressiveness

Like most phenomena in our world, expressiveness has both positive and negative traits.

The advantages of the described phenomenon include:

• Ease of communication;
• Communication skills;
• Frankness;
• The brightness of expressed feelings and emotions;
• Tendency to creative activity;
• Love of life;
• Initiative;
• Tendency to take leadership positions.

However, expression may also have some negative features, namely:

• Committing unreasonable and often simply ill-considered actions;
• Tendency to carelessness and frivolity;
• Irresponsibility;
• Reluctance to hear and understand your interlocutor;
• Excessive noise and intrusiveness, sometimes unceremonious interference in the affairs and personal space of other people;
• Often, individuals of this type show disdain for the interests of others.

Unambiguous words with a clear evaluative meaning

In some terms, the emotional connotation is so pronounced that whatever the context, it will still be clear what kind of assessment the one who writes or speaks wants to give. It is incredibly difficult to use such words in any other meaning. For example, how can you say the word “henpecked” in a positive or neutral context. Typically, such expressions are used only if a person wants to express a negative attitude. Otherwise, softer words and phrases like “good husband” and others will be used.

“Henpecked” is a characteristic word. There are also terms containing an assessment of the action. Such are, for example, the words “to disgrace”, “to cheat”. The first means a person who made another feel shame, and the second implies deception. This word, by the way, also has a predominantly negative connotation.

Rules for communicating with an expressive personality

When communicating with a person prone to expressive behavior, you should remember that any conversation for such a person is something like a small speech, for which he awaits the approval of his interlocutor. For this reason, communicating with an expressive person (if, of course, you want to build a constructive dialogue with him) requires following the following recommendations:

• Even when irritated, you should not enter into open conflict with your interlocutor;
• You should not take his promises too seriously and remind him of previously unfulfilled obligations;
• During the dialogue, it would not be amiss to encourage the interlocutor (by word or gesture);
• Try to speak with expressive individuals in their language, without being embarrassed by emotionally charged expressions and speech patterns;
• Defend firmly any issue that is fundamentally important to you, but do not forget about restraint;
• Do not try to divert the attention that your interlocutor is focusing on third parties during your conversation.

Remember that expression is not alien to any person; there is nothing reprehensible or negative in this phenomenon. It’s just that some people are more expressive by nature, while others, on the contrary, are more reserved and emotionally cold. If desired, a constructive dialogue can be established with almost any person.

An expressive person - who is he?

An expressive person rarely goes unnoticed. His appearance and behavior usually speak before the dialogue with him.

Characteristic features of such a personality:

1. Fast, sweeping movements with large amplitude.
2. A large number of small movements accompanying gait or speech, active articulation and gestures.
3. Jerky, abrupt nature of movements.
4. An abundance of words in the dialogue, a loud voice, laughter that attracts attention.
5. Lively facial expressions, easily interpretable.
6. Mannered behavior, pretentiousness.
7. The real or fabricated role of the leader, the “ringleader”.

The fabricated role of a leader means that a person is ready to accept all the attention and all the rights of a leader, but is not ready to bear responsibility.

An expressive person does not always mean confident or dominant . It often happens the other way around: with outwardly bright behavior there is a lack of willpower and self-control.

Such people often make a lot of promises, make a lot of plans, and also like to express their opinions in public.

Expressive girls often attract attention with their atypical persistence in expressing themselves or responding to communication.

They are often the center of men's attention, but have difficulty building relationships due to lack of restraint. Also, expressive ladies are characterized by lability of emotional reactions and a tendency to hysteria .

The first sign of female expression is appearance: bold combinations of colors and models predominate, often absurd, but lively facial expressions and visible optimism successfully compensate for such inconsistencies.

Other meanings of the term

In addition to its main meaning, the described term has two other meanings, which are also quite actively used in speech. Thus, in the field of art, expression is understood as a strong, both positive and negative feeling, or a range of feelings that arises in an individual when viewing an unusual picture or when listening to exciting music that directly affects his emotions.

In addition, genetic engineers use the concept of “gene expression,” which refers to their activity. Any gene in our body is endowed with its own functions; it performs them to the maximum, to the minimum, or not at all. It is the genome that fulfills its function 100% and is called expression.

Expressive crowd concept

Such a crowd of people is formed against a general excited background : all members of this crowd are in high spirits and, as a rule, ready for action, but they do not perform any action.

An expressive crowd has no goal, but has great energy potential; individuals are united by the similarity of their state and readiness to express it.

Such a crowd usually has a leader, but this does not always give purpose to the crowd of people.

A striking example of an expressive crowd can be seen at football matches or carnival processions.

In some cases, such a crowd poses a danger because it has no means of control or direction and is subject to the chaotic influence of an excited mood.

Are emotional and evaluative vocabulary the same thing?

In general, these are synonyms. Because expressive vocabulary always expresses a certain attitude of the speaker towards something. But in some cases, emotional words do not contain evaluation due to their contextuality. For example, people say “ah” both when something good and bad has happened in their life.

It also does not include words whose lexical meaning already contains an evaluation. The use of expressive vocabulary is the use of words that have an emotional component, and not containing only emotion. So, we need to draw one conclusion. A word becomes evaluative when an emotional component is superimposed on it by creating a certain context. At the same time, the independent lexical meaning of the word is preserved.