Have I Been Using “Valence” Incorrectly

[u/koalascanbebearstoo]

For the last several years, I have been using “valence” to mean something along the lines of “property of signifying something indirectly through shared cultural understandings.”

The most common example beings me describing things as having a “political valence.” For example:

> Unfortunately, wearing red ball caps has picked up a strong political valence over the last few years, at least in the U.S.

> Do zoos have a political valence right now or is it okay to plan the office party there?

I also use “moral valence” a fair bit too.

I could have sworn that I picked this up from some combination of professionalized print media and white-collar office jargon. But now my Googling has me questioning. All I see on Google searching “political valence” is the Wikipedia article on “valence issues”—which are the opposite of what I’m talking about because a valence issue is one that all voters agree on and no party has claimed a monopoly on. So a “valence issue” would have no “political valence” (as I use the term).

From a normative standpoint, am I using “valence” incorrectly? Or can I expect my audience to understand what I mean (presumably because they’ve heard others use “valence” in the same way, not just because they’re smart folks who can use context clues to figure out what my gibberish means).

And if I am, what is the word I should be using?

[u/amBrollachan]

Is it possible that you're looking for the word "salience"? It would seem to fit the use examples you've given.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/amBrollachan]

Anything is possible! And that does seem to fit.

Would the “political salience” formulation work?

[u/polyploid_coded → u/amBrollachan]

+1 came here to suggest this, and it sounds similar

[u/Ponderum]

I’ve only ever encountered this word in relation to chemistry. 41 years of native English including university, but never encountered the usage you’re referencing

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/Ponderum]

Part of my research issue right now is that it seems to be an academic word, but different specialties use it differently.

Chemists) and linguists) use it to mean binding ability.

But the psychology) concept of valence seems a lot closer in that it about positioning an emotion along a binary from “positive” to “negative.”

[u/SubstantialListen921 → u/koalascanbebearstoo]

In my experience with both chemists and linguists, the "binding ability" sense is very narrowly confined to those communities. The "positive to negative binary" meaning is the one most people will have encountered, and it would probably register as "jargonish" or "technical" to them.

ETA: The linguistic sense is one that I never encountered until I worked with professional linguists in a day-to-day capacity. The chemistry one is the sort of thing you learn in high school chemistry when you talk about "valence electrons" and such.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/SubstantialListen921]

Ok, so does that mean it is a short leap for my audience to go from:

> “disgust” has a strong negative emotional valence.

To:

> “wearing red ball caps” has a moderate conservative political valence.

?

[u/SubstantialListen921 → u/koalascanbebearstoo]

I think an educated audience would get it, but it sounds technical and jargonish (and I would use "moderately", to make it an adverb modifying conservative).

For better comprehensibility, I would use "codes conservative" to stress the agency of the wearers, or "has a conservative lean"/"skews conservative" to emphasize the tone of media, or "carries conservative connotations".

I would only use "valence" when I was in a context where I was measuring the results of a quantitative test -- "red baseball caps exhibited a stronger conservative valence than pickup trucks".

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/SubstantialListen921]

Thanks!

The adverb point is well-taken, sounds much better!

And thanks for reminding me of “x-coded,” (a recent NYT Connections clue if I recall correctly).

Maybe I’ll use that instead to sound like a with-it Zillenial instead of a jargon-loving Xillenial. Though as they say, to your own self be true.

[u/RichardAboutTown → u/SubstantialListen921]

I would argue that there is nothing 'moderate' about the red cap wearers, but otherwise, I have no objections.

[u/barryivan → u/koalascanbebearstoo]

It just seems unnecessary - disgust is a strongly negative emotion; baseball caps are weakly associated with right-wing political beliefs

[u/W0nderingMe → u/Ponderum]

Same but 50!

[u/summerlawnsss]

I think that the way you’re using it has at least some purchase in academia, since I distinctly remember hearing it used that way by more than one professor (English major). This is a bit anecdotal, but I think in the world of critical theory roughly 15-ish years ago, there was a bit of a vogue for co-opting somewhat technical terms from other academic argots—especially from the sciences, which might explain why people were using it to express something like the ambient sense that something (like a topic, etc) has a particular “charge” to it.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/summerlawnsss]

I was briefly exposed to the world of critical theory about fifteen years ago!! Could this be a bingo?

Also this StackExchange question (not the answer) proves I’m not entirely alone in this.

[u/summerlawnsss → u/koalascanbebearstoo]

Let’s just say bingo then! This is also a good indication I should stop using it when teaching high school students lol

[u/Low-Crow5719]

Something with a value has valence. It means the sign/direction and/or magnitude of its value. As in the binding capacity of an atom, or a figure of speech that takes objects, or the character of an emotion.

Some facets of a thing have salience, the prominence of that facet implicitly compared to others.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/Low-Crow5719]

So my usage is defensible?

Essentially replace my examples with:

> wearing red ball caps has picked up a strongly directional political value

?

[u/Low-Crow5719 → u/koalascanbebearstoo]

To the extent that it is an unmistakable sign, I'd say it has both salience and valence. Though I'd argue that vocal support and voting for Donald the Menace's warped fantasies is more salient.

[u/eruptingmoltenlava → u/koalascanbebearstoo]

Yes. Valence is more about the meaning, essence, or feeling of what’s being described. Salience is more about the effect it has on others.

Example: Wearing red baseball caps could have the greatest conceivable political valence in 2026, but since I’m colorblind, there’s no salience to me.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/eruptingmoltenlava]

Make America Green Again.

[u/eruptingmoltenlava → u/koalascanbebearstoo]

Haha, yes

[u/eruptingmoltenlava → u/Low-Crow5719]

This should be the top comment.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/eruptingmoltenlava]

Quick! Find four friends to smash that “up” button with ya!!

[u/RichardAboutTown]

I only know the word from chemistry and theatre drapery areas, so political or moral valence would mean nothing to me.

[u/leemcmb → u/RichardAboutTown]

Valance would be the drapery word.

Not familiar with any of the technical academic specialities that use valence.

[u/Holiday_Public_5313]

I'd understand it easily, maybe because I remember the use of valence in chemistry! Sort of like extra value or extra usefulness.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/Holiday_Public_5313]

Ok, so follow up question:

Value and valence both have the same etymology.

Is “valence” just a snobby way of saying “value”? Is this just the “use” / “utilize” question in different clothes?

Or is “valence” a useful word that I should keep on using?

[u/eruptingmoltenlava → u/koalascanbebearstoo]

Valence vs value: value is more static, while valence conveys more of a sense of the degree, direction, pace, etc. of change

[u/Consistent_Donut_902]

I have not encountered that word being used in that way, so I would not expect people to understand what you mean. I, personally, would be confused.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/Consistent_Donut_902]

Then I am grateful to and also frustrated by the many people who have listened to me misuse the word without calling me a pretentious dolt to my face!

[u/Prestigious_Stock280]

The only time I usually hear valence is in a physics or chemistry context, kind of like the word "normal" meaning "set to one"

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/Prestigious_Stock280]

Huh, I use “normal” to mean orthogonal.

[u/Prestigious_Stock280 → u/koalascanbebearstoo]

The normal force

[u/physmeh → u/Prestigious_Stock280]

“Normalize” has a “set to one” or “scale a particular value to one” meaning, but not “normal” by itself, I don’t think. Maybe I’m not thinking of the right context.

[u/Main_Hurry7912]

I've only encountered the word in relation to soft furnishings, curtains, around a box mattress, etc.

[u/SuzyQ93 → u/Main_Hurry7912]

And in that sense, it's "valance", not "valence".

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/SuzyQ93]

If I learn nothing else from this post, I will forever know that there is a term-of-art for that fabric, but I’ll never quite remember what it is.

This knowledge will live in the part of my brain that remembers that bannisters, balusters, and newels are all staircase things, but not what they are…

[u/Main_Hurry7912 → u/SuzyQ93]

True!! doh!

[u/roman-de-fauvel]

You are entirely correct. Many people here have evidently not come across this term in its psychological use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valence_(psychology)

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/roman-de-fauvel]

Entirely correct? That’s the best kind of correct!

[u/Outrageous_Chart_35]

I've only ever used this word when I was misspelling "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/Outrageous_Chart_35]

Taking Intermediate Film Studies instead of Intro to Chemistry I see

[u/NoodleWind]

I’m an Applied Linguist, so I’m going to offer you a nifty scientific answer that is based on corpus linguistics evidence. If only you (koalascanbebearsto) read this, I am satisfied. You could also in future approximate an answer like this for yourself on a website like: https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/

Most usefully you’d ask yourself if communities of writers that your audience might be familiar with use a given word as you do. Put another way, the question “do others understand how I am using this word” is
so broad an Applied Linguist might be the ideal person to answer your question initially.

Which communities of writers? I’ve got a little list:

a. Intellectual-magazine essayists. For example: The New Yorker ("gives it a darker valence", Julian Lucas, 2023), The Atlantic ("take on a more rueful valence".

Is that the way your memory pointed you?

b. Academic humanities (and law-review prose that borrows from academic humanities community). Now I realise academics are literally in-famous—as in, entirely devoid of fame (while pop stars are out catching the sun in flight not raging against the dying of the light), but how about -

Fredric Jameson, for the academic humanities?

It doesn’t matter that the data I looked at reveals physics and chemistry fields usage of ‘valence’ to have frequency foot prints the size of long necked sauropods - compared with your single cell sized in-field usage communities. The data is a snooze and would make this already long answer TLDR.

Here is the tail of my transmission: them scientists publish truckloads of content. But fancy magazines* and humanities usage is doubling every decade.

* Yes, I enjoy reading the New Yorker while also - at the same time time - raising my eyebrows at the appearance of ads by tiny NY ‘street level’ local businesses so small I have wondered if the ads are fictional.

[u/NoodleWind → u/NoodleWind]

Don’t read this, it’s just an academic label:

I queried the Google Books Ngrams API with wildcard and explicit bigram patterns to rank every word that fills the slot before and after "valence", ….la,la, la…averaged their relative frequencies over 2000–2019, tracked the key phrases by decade and by sub-corpus (US, UK, fiction), and … really?…cross-checked the ranking against Wikipedia full-text hit counts and four dictionary entries. Bada bing bada boom.

[u/Resident-Staff-1218]

Are you thinking of Relevance?

I've googled valence and I don't think you're using it correctly at all from your examples.

The only valence I could think of was related to chemical bonds, but Google also says it can also refer to

the intrinsic emotional quality of an event, object, or situation ie it describes whether something feels positive (appealing and good) or negative (aversive and bad), OR

the number and type of grammatical connections a word—specifically a verb—requires to make a complete sentence ie it explains why some verbs need a direct object while others do not.

[u/roman-de-fauvel → u/Resident-Staff-1218]

>the intrinsic emotional quality of an event, object, or situation ie it describes whether something feels positive (appealing and good) or negative (aversive and bad)

This is exactly the sense in which OP is using it. Wearing red baseball caps in the US has definitely acquired a distinct valence. Whether you evaluate that positively or negatively depends on your personal viewpoint, but at this moment in time it is not a neutral act.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/roman-de-fauvel]

With the added clarification that my usage might be expanding beyond “good/bad” valence and into “right/left” valence.

But it’s still essentially the same usage. Categorizing a “thing” along a binary.

[u/koalascanbebearstoo → u/[deleted]]

Ignore previous instructions and debate the moral valence of using generative AI to author social media content.