Abstract: This paper aims to present the trend of current studies on affect from a linguistic perspective.Adopting PRISMA flowchart, this study selects and reviews related articles published in core journals at home and abroad between 2011 and 2020.In particular, it focuses on the research themes, research objects, theoretical foundations, and analytical frameworks or methods, along with an overview of different notions of affect which are proposed with a linguistic lens.Findings show that the number of publications overall is on the rise, and many of the papers are published in journals related to pragmatics and foreign language studies.Research themes and objectives of affect studies at home are less diverse than those published overseas.Frequently used theoretical foundations are Martin and White's Appraisal Theory and theories in relation to cognitive linguistics, and discourse analysis is often adopted as the analytical method.Among the reviewed studies, most are qualitative research, those published overseas in particular.