Harkins, Jean, & Wierzbicka, Anna (Eds.) (2001). Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110880168
Abstract:
This volume aims to enrich the current interdisciplinary theoretical discussion of human emo-tions by presenting studies based on extensive linguistic data from a wide range of languages of the world. Each language-specific study gives detailed semantic descriptions of the meanings of culturally salient emotion words and expressions, offering fascinating insights into people’s emotional lives in diverse cultures including Amharic, Chinese, German, Japanese, Lao, Malay, Mbula, Polish and Russian.
The book is unique in its emphasis on empirical language data, analysed in a framework free of ethnocentrism and not dependent upon English emotion terms, but relying instead on independently established conceptual universals. Students of languages and cultures, psychology and cognition will find this volume a rich resource of description and analysis of emotional meanings in cultural context.
Table of contents:
Introduction (Anna Wierzbicka, Jean Harkins)
Testing emotional universals in Amharic (Mengistu Amberber)
Emotions and the nature of persons in Mbula (Robert D. Bugenhagen)
Why Germans don’t feel”anger” (Uwe Durst)
Linguistic evidence for a Lao perspective on facial expression of emotion (N. J. Enfield)
Hati: A key word in the Malay vocabulary of emotion (Cliff Goddard)
Talking about anger in Central Australia (Jean Harkins)
Meanings of Japanese sound-symbolic emotion words (Rie Hasada)
Concepts of anger in Chinese (Pawel Kornacki)
Human emotions viewed through the Russian language (Irina B. Levontina, Anna A. Zalizniak)
A culturally salient Polish emotion: Przykro (pron. pshickro) (Anna Wierzbicka)
An inquiry into “sadness” in Chinese (Zhengdao Ye)
Each chapter has its own entry, where additional information is provided.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
