This study investigated semantic aspects of children's language as it is related to emotional expression. Children's ratings of vocabulary items categorized as expressing happy, sad, loving, angry, confident, and scared feelings were examined in three different ways: in isolation, in verbal contexts, and accompanying pictures of emotional situations. Two groups of 40 students, randomly selected from eight fourth- and sixth-grade classrooms in two suburban Indianapolis schools, rated the test words according to intensity of feeling. The results indicated that children do have significantly more intense reactions to some words than to others; their feelings about specific words are changed by the addition of vocabulary items; and their understanding of specific words is influenced by their cognition of certain emotional events accompanying them. Ratings of words in isolation differed significantly from the other two modes of presentation. Analysis of differences according to age, sex, and race indicated that fourth graders gave stronger ratings than did sixth graders; white children often responded with greater intensity than did black children; and, at the same grade level, girls gave higher ratings of emotionality than did boys. (Author/LL)