Bibliometric mapping of the emotive language in scholarly discourse

Recognising how individuals perceive internal affective states and associate specific vocabulary with those experiences is fundamental to establishing effective emotional communication. The strategic use of such linguistic structures is known as emotive language. This quantitative study applied bibliometric methods to systematically examine the global publication trend in emotive language, using performance analysis and science-mapping techniques. Performance analysis included annual publication trend, prominent sources, prolific authors, institutional affiliations, countries, countries' collaboration network, and notable publications. Moreover, Science mapping included sophisticated visualisation of keyword co-occurrence, conceptual clusters and themes. The Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) and Scopus databases were used to retrieve data, and 944 records were included in the final analysis. R software version (2026.01.0+392) and VOSviewer software were used for analysing and visualising the bibliometric data. Findings indicate that although the earliest record in this bibliometric dataset dates back to 2005, a rising trend in publications has been observed in recent years. Among the 479 sources, the journal Frontiers in Psychology published the most documents on emotive language, and Macagno F, associated with argumentation theory, was identified as the leading author with 16 publications. The Freie Universität Berlin and countries like the USA, the United Kingdom, and China dominated the publication landscape. In emerging themes and topics, ‘human’, ‘emotion’, ‘language’ remain the most occurring keywords. The contemporary shift towards computational approaches to research at the interface of emotions and language shapes the direction of emerging publications. In sum, this study draws on a vast body of literature that will empower to identify the research gap and provide a strategic framework for scholars, linguists, and psychologists to determine the scope for future interdisciplinary investigations.