Wierzbicka, Anna (1995). Everyday conceptions of emotion: A semantic perspective. In James A. Russell, José-Miguel Fernández-Dols, Antony S. R. Manstead, & J. C. Wellenkamp (Eds.), Everyday conceptions of emotion: An introduction to the psychology, anthropology and linguistics of emotion (pp. 17-47). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
The most important controversy in the study of emotions is that between “universalists” like Spiro and “culturalists” like Lutz. This paper argues that both sides in the debate are defending an important aspect of the truth; but that they both err in taking a partial truth for the whole truth, and that this is where their conflict arises. The important truth that Spiro (among many others) is defending is that of the “psychic unity of humankind”. The important truth that Lutz (among many others) is defending is that “universal human nature” must not be identified, unwittingly, with Anglo culture reflected in the English language.
The emotional intensity of the “Spiro-Lutz” controversy stems no doubt from the fact that both sides feel they are defending an important truth. And so they are. But Spiro errs when he thinks that to defend the “universal human nature” he must defend the universality of concepts such as ‘anger’ or ‘sadness’ (or, for that matter, ’emotion’), and Lutz errs when she thinks that to combat ethnocentrism she must question the validity of concepts such as FEEL or THINK as basic conceptual tools in describing and comparing cultures; and also, when she implies that psychology is doomed to remaining, for ever, an “ethnopsychology” since there are no universals in which a genuinely culture-independent psychology could find a foothold.
Any meaningful comparison presupposes the existence of a tertium comparationis. Different cultures reflect and promote different conceptions of ’emotion’ (that is, of those aspects of human life that are defined with reference to the concept FEEL); but all these different conceptions can all be meaningfully compared in terms of human universals encoded in all human languages.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
