From the semiotics of passions to emotions as effects: the affective dimension from a pragmatic perspective

In this paper, we intend to revisit the discussion on affectivity as object of semiotics, in order to retrace the path towards a socio-semiotics of emotions of Piercian roots. Thereunto, we address in the role this paradigm assigns to the corporal in cognition, establishing a significant distance from the structuralist tradition. After a brief analysis of the relationships established between emotional and logical interpretant, we intend to outline a hypothesis about emotions as effects of meaning: we argue that what we call emotions would be a particular type of signs characterized by the relevance acquired in them by emotional interpretants. Afterwards, we introduce the reader to the matter of the distinction between emotions and feelings, steering the discussion toward the manner in which the discursive construction of these feelings may affect the production of the rules governing the emotional production in a given community.