Emotivism

The view first articulated by A.J. Ayer (1910-1989) in Language, Truth and Logic that normative sentences convey no propositional content and are therefore literally meaningless. However, Ayer maintained that such sentences served two distinct functions: 1) they could 'evince' the emotions of the speaker, and 2) they could arouse an emotional response in others. Hence, normative language is emotive language.