Emotions across Languages and Cultures

Abstract

In this fascinating book, Anna Wierzbicka brings psychological, anthropological and linguistic insights to bear on our understanding of the way emotions are expressed and experienced in different cultures, languages, and culturally-shaped social relations. The expression of emotion in the face, body and modes of speech are all explored and Wierzbicka shows how the bodily expression of emotion varies across cultures and challenges traditional approaches to the study of facial expressions. As well as offering a perspective on human emotions based on the analysis of language and ways of talking about emotion, this intriguing and controversial book attempts to identify universals of human emotion by analysing empirical evidence from different languages and cultures. This book will be invaluable to academics and students of emotion across the social sciences.

The Design of Everyday Hate: A Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis

“…This younger population should also be considered for additional analyses concerning hate, since one's experience with hate may change as one gets older or as one becomes more indoctrinated with the idea that-as many participants pointed out-hate is socially unacceptable or the word itself should not be used. Given the current results, it seems necessary to consider how language use may affect emotional experience with hatred, especially when one considers that 30% of participants reported never experiencing hatred towards another individual (c.f., Pennebaker, 1995;Wierzbicka, 1999). What may explain this finding is that participants-as many noted-may have felt uncomfortable with the word "hate" or "hatred" in general and although some participants may have felt some type of hatred, would have preferred using terms like "extremely disliked" the person in order to work their way around certain social conventions that condemn feeling hatred.…”

Comparison of alexithymia in somatoform and chronic physical disorders: a cross sectional study

“…Some cultures encourage talking about feelings whereas other cultures avoid such talk. (13) Around 57% subjects were from lower and 43% were from middle socioeconomic status in Group I while 77% subjects were from lower and 23% were from middle socioeconomic status in Group II. Majority of respondents belonged to the low socioeconomic status because somatoform disorder is inversely related to social position and occurs most often among peoples of low income.…”

Conceptualizing Emotions through Metaphors in Fortress Besieged

“…Studies on emotion have increased substantially in recent years and have become part of the subject matter of various scientific disciplines, including anthropology (Lutz, 1988;Lutz & White, 1986;Milton & Svašek, 2005), neurobiology (Heberlein & Adolphs, 2007;LeDoux, 1986LeDoux, , 1996, psychology (Bowles, 2006;Plutchik, 1994), philosophy (Goldie, 2000(Goldie, , 2010Solomon, 1993) and linguistics (Athanasiadou & Tabakowska, 1998;Barcelona, 1986Barcelona, , 1995J. Chen, 2007;King, 1989;Kövecses, 1986Kövecses, , 1988Kövecses, , 1990Kövecses, , 1991Kövecses, , 1995aKövecses, , 1995bKövecses, , 1998Kövecses, , 2000Kövecses, , 2002Kövecses, , 2005Kövecses, , 2008Lakoff and Johnson, 1980;Lakoff & Kövecses, 1987;Niemeier & Dirven, 1997;Palmer & Occhi, 1999;Tissari, 2001Tissari, , 2006aTissari, , 2006bTissari, , 2008Tissari, , 2010Wierzbicka, 1992Wierzbicka, , 1998Wierzbicka, , 1999Wierzbicka, , 2009Yu, 1995Yu, , 1998…”