Emotivism
The view first articulated by A.J. Ayer (1910-1989) in Language, Truth and
Logic that normative sentences convey no propositional content and are therefore
literally meaningless. However, Ayer maintained that such sentences served two
distinct functions:
- they could evince the emotions of the speaker, and
- they could arouse an emotional response in others.
Hence, normative language is emotive language.
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