What impact will filling in lexical gaps and developing sorrow language have on the way we talk about sadness, as well as our attitudes towards it

The focus of this research is on the efficacy of developing ‘sorrow language’ in order to better communicate complex emotions. This research will explore whether new words that capture these emotions of sorrow make expressing our emotions easier, and whether people's attitudes towards this will change. The field of language and emotion seems underdeveloped, and amidst a culture of reluctance to express emotions, having new words that capture these emotions could allow us to better express everything we feel with greater ease. in the worst case scenario, all we will gain is a vocabulary that, due to a resistant attitude towards neologisms, few people will find useful. This resistance to neologisms is also something that will be explored in this paper. This research also intends to explore the impact of filling these lexical gaps through the use of open question surveys, in which respondents (university students) are asked to gauge the efficiency and application of these neologisms for their own language use. University students have been chosen specifically due to them being a demographic of individuals who are likely to find themselves in a situation which simultaneously involves stress, expectation, and a time-pressured desire to succeed. This situation therefore puts them in a position of potentially lowered emotional well-being, for which, I argue, enhanced expression can only help. The data, being qualitative, are analysed thematically, according to the impressions participants give to the new words. For example, do they adequately express, for them, the complex emotions that they previously had no words for? Would they want to use them in their own speech or writing? It is hoped that the data should answer these questions and more.