The article presents a survey of different interpretations of expressive meaning in the foreign linguistics of the XX and beginning of the XXI century, and also the methodologies of its studying. The paper emphasizes the distinction of descriptive, expressive and social types of meaning. The authors justify the necessity for studying expressiveness as a feature of linguistic units closely related to the communicative behaviour of a human being. The paper focuses on the productivity of interdisciplinary approach in the studies of the linguistic category of expressiveness.