Expression | CU Experts

Abstract; ; Expression is a basic concept in both scholarly theories and vernacular understandings of communication. It was terminologically derived from the Latin verb meaning to press out a physical substance, but over time came to signify representation practiced through art, language, or other symbols. Its deep conceptual roots in the West are found in ancient Greco‐Roman rhetoric; it traverses the canons of both delivery and style (whose Latin name,; elocutio; , is sometimes translated as “expression,” here connoting the aesthetic qualities of technical performance). That deeper history in turn indicates some of the persistent theoretical fault lines in understanding expression. This entry engages three of those fault lines, subsequently depicting expression as (1) embodied, stylized performance whose relation to “substance” is to be scrutinized; (2) utterance whose successful accomplishment is contingent upon initiation as well as reception; and (3) individual and collective practice both enabled and constrained by institutionalized structures of power and meaning.;

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