This chapter elucidates the notion of self-expression by laying down twenty dicta about it. Among them are the claim that self-expression shows one's thought, feeling, or experience; that it is a signal, that it can be both voluntary and spontaneous, that it can occur unintentionally in a voluntary act, that it may but need not be overt, that it can occur in the course of a ‘saying in one's heart’, and that what is expressed must be the sort of thing that can be known by introspection. Self-expression and expressiveness are also distinguished. The chapter then offers a general gloss of self-expression intended as a working hypothesis in terms of which later chapters are framed.
Keywords: thought, feeling, experience, signal, introspection, expressiveness, intention