The face of emotions: a logical formalization of expressive speech acts

Abstract

In this paper, we merge speech act theory, emotion theory, and logic. We propose a modal logic that integrates the con-cepts of belief, goal, ideal and responsibility and that allows to describe what a given agent expresses in the context of a conversation with another agent. We use the logic in order to provide a systematic analysis of expressive speech acts, that is, speech acts that are aimed at expressing a given emotion (e.g. to apologize, to thank, to reproach, etc.).