Cultural perspectives on the linguistic representation of emotion and emotion events

Abstract

It is argued that the linguistic representation of emotions and events giving rise to them is influenced by the cultural regulation of the relationship between a person and others. Such cultural variations are expected to be reflected in how emotions and emotion events are represented in language. The two studies provide support for the hypothesis that in a culture where relationships and interdependence are valued emotion terms function as relationship-markers and emotion events are represented by the use of concrete linguistic terms when compared with cultures that emphasise the value of the individual. Moreover, we also found support for the argument that emotion terms function predominantly as self-markers in cultures that value individuality and that they are represented by more abstract terms (adjectives, nouns). The implications of these findings are discussed.

Emotion Representation and Perception Across Cultures

“…This seems to beg the question, "Why do emotion lexicons vary across cultures?" It has been suggested that emotion lexicons may differ across cultures because of cultural regulations and the relationship between a person and others (Semin, Gorts, Nandram, & Semin-Goossens, 2002). It is believed that such cultural variations may reflect how emotions and emotion events are represented in language.…”

“…It is believed that such cultural variations may reflect how emotions and emotion events are represented in language. Semin et al (2002) studied cultural variations in the representation of emotions by investigating how people in different cultures talked about emotions and emotional events. It is believed that differences in emotion terms and events may reflect the social differences across cultures.…”

“…In the first study, Semin et al (2002) focused on the relative prominence of different linguistic categories in the spontaneous listing of emotion terms, as well as examining whether the causes of emotional events were perceived to be individual or interpersonal, and the degree to which significant others were perceived to shape emotion events. Hindustani-Surinamese (group-focused culture) and Dutch (individually-focused culture) participants were given four tasks: (a) an emotion term generation task, (b) generate five examples of critical life events or five critical emotions that one might experience, (c) generate emotions that are likely to occur in those critical life events or the types of situations that gave rise to the critical emotions, and (d) judge the relative contribution that others made to shape the events they had listed.…”

“…The second study conducted by Semin et al (2002) addressed the structure of emotion events by examining the overall pattern of predicate use as a function of cultural background. Again, the researchers expected that the language used to represent emotion events would be more abstract in cultures where individual goals prevail over group goals and concrete language would be used more often in cultures that value group goals over individual goals.…”

“…Semin et al suggested that one way of determining whether emotions are used as self-markers or relationship-markers is by means of the relative frequency of different grammatical categories, such as verbs and nouns, which are spontaneously mentioned. Semin et al (2002) used the Linguistic Category Model or LCM (Semin & Fiedler, 1988) as a framework to examine the relative prominence of different emotion terms and the linguistic characteristics of emotion event descriptions. The researchers hypothesized that in cultures where group goals are predominant, the use of concrete language, mostly interpersonal verbs, would be more accessible than abstract language, such as adjectives and nouns, because concrete language marks relationships.…”