Abstract

The history of concepts should be grounded in a history of word use, which is now possible thanks to the creation of computer-readable corpora and textcollections. The claim is substantiated in an illustrative analysis of the use of ›emotion‹ in the history of English and (to a less extent) French. After a briefdiscussion of the Anglo-Saxon reception of ›Begriffsgeschichte‹ some important text collections are described. Accepting Koselleck’s warning that »identicalwords taken by themselves are not suffi cient evidence of identical facts [›Sachverhalte‹]« (Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Einleitung, p. XX), the analysis of thesyntactic and situational micro-contexts of ›emotion‹ is used to trace the gradual emergence of the morally neutral category of ›emotion‹ alongside the moral category of ›passion‹. Against the wide-spread view that discourse is autonomous an important change in psychological discourse is shown to be embedded ingeneral language use.