Thank you for your response. Your comments are much appreciated as you seem to be the first person, who understands what I am trying to learn.
Yes. You will have to forgive my clumsy attempts to write the above sentence, as I was trying to word it in a way that would make it interchangeable with the sentence following it. So I needed "radiating from" to interchange with something, and ended up with "closed up". Probably not the best example.Dunce wrote:This seems a very strange phrase to me; possibly an Americanism which has yet to cross the Atlantic? Is it like saying, "His face was scrunched up in thought" or more like, "His face ceased to be expressive when he started thinking?" The first - and arguably the second - would be external expression of internal thought, although not giving away its content.Gee wrote: 1. "The student sat at his desk in quiet contemplation; his thoughts closed up on his face."
At least you got the point. Please do not assume that all Americans write as badly as I do. (chuckle)
Agreed. If you will consider it, I think that you will find that when someone talks about "betraying their thoughts", those thoughts are intertwined with emotion. Say you are in a situation where you are uncomfortable and wish to leave; you may fidget, check your watch, not be fully engaged in the conversation, and others will know that you want to leave. But did they read your thoughts, or did they read your feelings/emotions? On the other hand, if you were considering the maintenance of your car, or compiling a shopping list, would anyone know? No. Not unless you told them.Dunce wrote: Perhaps it is relevant to consider the way we use the phrase, "I betrayed my emotions." The word betray has its roots in the Latin tradere - to hand over. The way we use it seems to imply a duty to keep our emotions protected inside - that we have given in to a base instinct if we fail to do so. I don't think I hear people talking about betraying their thoughts nearly as often. We seem to think we have greater control over thoughts and the expression of thoughts than we do feelings and their expression. You are more likely to hear someone say,"I can't help the way I feel" than. "I can't help the way I think."
Thought is a product of the rational conscious part of the mind, and it is private, logical/rational, and directed by us. Because the rational conscious mind has been well studied, these concepts are well understood and universal in humans and probably in more animals than we would like to believe.
Emotion, on the other hand, is not well studied except by religion, but religion does more interpreting than studying as it was not privy to scientific methodology when it made its conclusions. So very little is actually known and understood regarding emotion, and what is "known" is often very wrong. Emotion makes it's home in the sub/unconscious part of the mind, is reactionary, shared, and incredibly honest. It is my thought that this part of the mind, and the way it works, is also universal. Hence my questions.
So thought is private unless we choose to share it. Emotion is shared unless we intentionally hide it. I believe that both of these concepts are universal, and the study of body language bears out my belief. It occurred to me that like the "Freudian slip" that gives away information that we did not intend to share, language may actually be able to reflect knowledge about emotion, that we don't even know that we have. When we say that his anger "hit me like a physical blow", or that his fear "emanated from him in waves", or that his nobility "shone from his eyes like light", or that his terror was "palpable", is there any chance that we are actually seeing these things unconsciously? Maybe.
Gee
