Theories that take as fundamental not the thought that we always use words to describe the world, but often to express attitudes, stances, habits of inference, and so on. Particularly in ethics, the term applies to any theory that locates the primary function of ethical sentences in the expression of attitudes, emotions, or other practical states, or in the issuing of commands, or the putting of pressure on action (see prescriptivism). The older term covering much of the ground was ‘emotivism’, but this doctrine became linked with naïve views about the state of mind expressed, and naïve views about the consequences of the theory for notions such as truth and objectivity. Expressivism is also applied to views in other domains that stress the practical function of uses of language rather than any function of representing facts. So there are expressive theories of causation, modality, knowledge, and truth. Pragmatism can itself be seen as a generalised expressivism. See also projectivism, quasi-realism.