Abstract concepts and emotion: cross-linguistic evidence and arguments against affective embodiment

Abstract

How are abstract concepts such as ‘freedom' and ‘democracy' represented in the mind? One prominent proposal suggests that abstract concepts are grounded in emotion. Supporting this ‘affective embodiment' account, abstract concepts are rated to be more strongly positive or more strongly negative than concrete concepts. This paper demonstrates that this finding generalizes across languages by synthesizing rating data from Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Polish and Spanish. However, a deeper look at the same data suggests that the idea of emotional grounding only characterizes a small subset of abstract concepts. Moreover, when the concreteness/abstractness dimension is not operationalized using concreteness ratings, it is actually found that concrete concepts are rated as more emotional than abstract ones. Altogether, these results suggest limitations to the idea that emotion is an important factor in the grounding of abstract concepts. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences’.

Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences

“…In his paper, Winter [ 42 ] addresses claims of the influential affective embodiment account, according to which abstract concepts are grounded in emotions. He shows that abstract concepts typically obtain more strongly negative or positive ratings than concrete ones across languages as diverse as Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Dutch and Spanish.…”

“…Other papers focus more explicitly on language and its relationship with concepts, showing the importance of inner language, verbal labels and word associations for concrete and abstract concepts, and highlighting the role of language in enhancing cognition. Across the various sections, the theme issue offers many insights into the differences between kinds of concepts, from the significant distinction between concrete and abstract ones [ 2 , 8 , 9 , 56 , 57 ], to specific concepts like the religious [ 58 ], the social [ 59 , 60 ], the olfactory [ 61 ] and the emotional ones [ 38 , 42 ].…”

“…[ 64 ]), new sophisticated data analysis techniques, including cross-linguistic analyses (e.g. [ 8 , 38 , 42 ]), new constructs and ways to investigate abstractness (e.g. [ 2 , 65 ]), and new neuroscience methodologies, including dual-person neuroscience (e.g.…”

“…In research on language use, cutting-edge approaches investigate dialogue as a form of joint action [30,31], and new tools allow researchers to explore the interactional dynamics underlying language use [32][33][34][35]. Studies show that interaction facilitates abstract thought and problem-solving [6,36,37] and reveal that emotions [38][39][40][41][42] and social interaction [43][44][45] are paramount for abstract concept acquisition and use.…”

Embodiment of color metaphor: an image-based visual analysis of the Chinese color terms hēi ‘black’ and bái ‘white’

“…For example, it was demonstrated that emotional valence plays a significant role in representing the semantics of abstract words (Kousta et al, 2011; Newcombe et al, 2012), abstract words are more emotional than concrete words regarding either valence or arousal (Vigliocco et al, 2014), and emotional valence can support the acquisition of abstract concepts (Ponari et al, 2020). However, Winter (2023) has cautioned about the limitations to the idea that emotion is an important factor in grounding abstract concepts, given the relatively narrow range of target concepts investigated in previous studies and the cross-language differences in the way that emotionality and abstractness are related.…”