Browsing results for Emotions
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Ye, Zhengdao (2014). The meaning of “happiness” (xìngfú) and “emotional pain” (tòngkŭ) in Chinese. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 194-215.
DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2.04ye
Abstract:
This paper undertakes detailed meaning analyses of 幸福 xìngfú, a concept central to contemporary Chinese discourse on “happiness”, and its opposite 痛苦 tòngkŭ (‘emotional anguish/suffering/pain’). Drawing data from five Chinese corpora and applying the semantic techniques developed by NSM researchers, the present study reveals a conceptualization of happiness that is markedly different from that encoded in the English concept of happiness. Particularly, the analysis shows that the Chinese conception of 幸福 xìngfú is relational in nature, being firmly anchored in interpersonal relationships. Loosely translatable as ‘a belief that one is loved and cared for’, 幸福 xìngfú reflects the Chinese idea of love, which places emphasis on actions over words and is intrinsically related to other core cultural values, such as 孝 xiào (‘filial piety’). The chapter relates semantic discussion directly to recent research on happiness and subjective well-being involving Chinese subjects, highlighting and problematizing the role of language in the emergent and fast-growing field of happiness research and stressing the important role of culture in global “happiness studies”.
More information:
Reissued as:
Ye, Zhengdao (2016). The meaning of “happiness” (xìngfú) and “emotional pain” (tòngkŭ) in Chinese. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 65-86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.04ye
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) tòngkŭ 痛苦, (E) xìngfú 幸福
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Vukoja, Vida (2014). Passion, a forgotten feeling. In Fabienne Baider, & Georgeta Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic perspectives on emotions in discourse (pp. 39-69). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.241.04vuk
When contemporary sciences and humanities use the term emotion while discussing human mental-sentient dynamics, they usually don’t question its supposed status of a conceptual universal. Yet, despite its frequent usage, the term is surprisingly ambiguous, and its universality status is highly dubious. For
instance, it shows not to be particularly adequate for the analysis of the Croatian Church Slavonic lexis that expresses phenomena linked to the human mental-sentient dynamics. Instead, this lexis seems to be in concordance with the concepts pertaining to the medieval paradigm relying on the Latin terms passio (Eng. equivalent: passion) and affectus (Eng. equivalent affect). The paradigm is articulated in the most interesting way by Thomas Aquinas and unfortunately almost forgotten or unwarrantably confounded with the paradigm of emotions.
The third option in conceptualizing human mental-sentient dynamics (besides those that rely on emotions on one hand, and passions and affect on the other) argues that the concept FEEL is the most convincing universal candidate. Namely, the researchers of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage hypothesis present substantial theoretical evidence and ample amounts of corroborating data from typologically different languages of the world that back up such a proposal. This paper benefits from this finding, since the word FEEL, and NSM in general, proved to be an adequate tool for delineating similarities and differences between concepts of ‘emotion’, Lat. ‘passio’ and Lat. ‘affectus’.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Levisen, Carsten (2014). The story of “Danish happiness”: Global discourse and local semantics. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 174-193.
DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2013.846455
Abstract:
According to a new global narrative, the Danes are the happiest people in the world. This paper takes a critical look at the international media discourse on “happiness”, tracing its roots and underlying assumptions. Adopting the NSM approach to linguistic and cultural analysis, a new in-depth semantic analysis of the story of “Danish happiness” is developed. It turns out that the allegedly happiest people on earth do not (usually) talk and think about life in terms of ”happiness”, but rather through a different set of cultural concepts and scripts, all guided by the Danish cultural key word lykke.
The semantics of lykke is explicated along with two related concepts livsglæde, roughly, ‘life joy’ and livslyst ‘life pleasure’, and based on semantic and ethnopragmatic analysis, a set of lykke-related cultural scripts is provided. With new evidence from Danish, it is argued that global Anglo-International “happiness discourse” misrepresents local meanings and values, and that the one-sided focus on “happiness across nations” in the social sciences is in dire need of cross-linguistic confrontation. The paper calls for a post-happiness turn in the study of words and values across languages, and for a new critical awareness of linguistic and conceptual biases in Anglo-international discourse.
More information:
Reissued as:
Levisen, Carsten (2016). The story of “Danish happiness”: Global discourse and local semantics. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 45-64). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.03lev
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) livsglæde, (E) livslyst, (E) lykke, (S) anti-materialism, (S) depression, (S) life dissatisfaction, (S) pessimism, (S) small things in life
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (2014). Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 131-148.
DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2.01god
Abstract:
This introduction to a special issue of the journal IJOLC argues that the cross-linguistic study of subjective experience as expressed, described and construed in language cannot be set on a sound footing without the aid of a systematic and non-Anglocentric approach to lexical semantic analysis. This conclusion follows from two facts, one theoretical and one empirical. The first is the crucial role of language in accessing and communicating about feelings. The second is the demonstrated existence of substantial, culture-related differences between the meanings of emotional expressions in the languages of the world.
The authors contend that the NSM approach to semantic and cultural analysis provides the necessary conceptual and analytical framework to come to grips with these facts. This is demonstrated in practice by the studies of happiness-related and pain-related expressions across eight languages, undertaken by the contributors to the special issue. At the same time as probing the precise meanings of these expressions, the authors provide extensive cultural contextualization, showing in some detail how the meanings they analyse are truly “cultural meanings”.
The project exemplified by the special issue can also be read as a linguistically-anchored contribution to cultural psychology, the quest to understand and appreciate the mental life of others in a full spirit of psychological pluralism.
More information:
Re-issued as:
Goddard, Cliff & Ye, Zhengdao (2016). Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 1-18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.01god
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). “Pain” and “suffering” in cross-linguistic perspective. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 149-173.
DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2.02wie
Abstract:
This paper builds on findings of the author’s 1999 book Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals, which tentatively identified eleven universals pertaining to human emotions. The paper probes some of those “emotional universals” further, especially in relation to ‘laughing’, ‘crying’, and ‘pain’. At the same time, the author continues her campaign against pseudo-universals, focusing in particular on the anthropological and philosophical discourse of “suffering”. The paper argues for the Christian origins of the concept of “suffering” lexically embodied in European languages, and contrasts it with the Buddhist concept of ‘dukkha’, usually rendered in Anglophone discussions of Buddhism with the word suffering.
More information:
Reissued as:
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). “Pain” and “suffering” in cross-linguistic perspective. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 19-43). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.02wie
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) cry, (E) douleur, (E) dukkha, (E) feel pain, (E) laugh, (E) suffer, (E) suffering, (E) weinen, (E) xiào 笑
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2014). On “disgust”. In Fabienne Baider, & Georgeta Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions in context (pp. 73-97). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: 10.1075/pbns.241.06god
Abstract:
This study relies on the NSM approach to explore conceptualisations of “disgust” in English via semantic analysis of descriptive adjectives (disgusted and disgusting) and interjections (Ugh! and Yuck!). As well as drawing out some subtle meaning differences between these expressions, the exercise establishes that there is no one-to-one mapping between the meanings of descriptive emotion lexemes, on the one hand, and expressive interjections, on the other.
More broadly, the study seeks to advance the semantic study of “disgust-like” concepts in a cross-linguistic perspective, first, by highlighting aspects of meaning that differ between the English expressions and their near-equivalents in other languages, such as German, French and Polish, and second, by proposing a set of touchstone semantic components that can help facilitate cross-linguistic investigation.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) disgusted, (E) disgusting, (E) Fu!, (E) pleased, (E) sad, (E) Ugh!, (E) Yuck!
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Baider, Fabienne (2014). Bad feelings in context. In Fabienne Baider, & Georgeta Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions in context (pp. 189-212). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: 10.1075/pbns.241.11bai
Abstract:
This study revisits some earlier explications for anger-like words in English and Russian, then calls for the NSM approach to be combined with the socio-cognitive approach advocated by Rachel Giora and Istvan Kecskes. Oral and written data are used to define the salient features of the main hatred- and anger-like words in two languages: French (as spoken in France) and Greek (as spoken on Cyprus). The analysis reveals some differences regarding the referential dimension of the selected words, highlighting the fact that revenge occurs by default with hatred, but not (unlike previously suggested) with anger. Cypriot Greek μισός misos is equated with English anger, and θυμός thymos with French colère, and explications are proposed for each.
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In spite of some good insights and an interesting proposal to bring Giora’s concept of salience to bear on NSM data gathering practices, the paper does not live up to expectation. It remains an open question whether μισός misos can indeed be equated with English anger, and θυμός thymos with French colère. The author’s explications of these terms are problematical in more ways than one. |
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Rating:
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) anger, (E) colère, (E) misos μισός, (E) thymos θυμός
Published on August 17, 2018. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2014). Some remarks on “pain” in Latin American Spanish. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 239-252.
DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2.06bul
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to examine the Spanish counterpart of pain, that is, the lexeme dolor. It seems that dolor, different from both English pain and French douleur, has two clearly distinguishable meanings, dolor1 referring to physical (and emotional) sensation of pain, and dolor2, a quite frequent emotion term belonging to the domain of “sadness”. To support the above hypothesis, this article examines different lexical occurrences of the word dolor, coming inter alia from tango lyrics.
More information:
Reissued as:
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2016). Some remarks on “pain” in Latin American Spanish. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 109-122). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.06bul
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dolor, (E) me duele
Published on August 5, 2018. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Umiyati, Mirsa (2015). Verba emosi Bahasa Rote Dialek Dengka: Suatu Tinjauan MSA [Verbs of emotion in the Dengka dialect of the Rote language: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage analysis]. Jurnal Linguistik Terapan, 5(2), 47-55.
Open access
Abstract:
This paper applies the NSM approach to the Dengka dialect of the Rote language, a Central Malayo-Polynesian language spoken on Roti Island, off Timor, to explicate one positive and one negative emotion verb. The exponent for FEEL in this dialect is lasa, which will be used in the Dengka versions of the explications formulated here in Indonesian for the positive emotion verb umuho-o ‘be happy’ and the negative emotion verb nggahisa ‘be not-happy’.
More information:
Written in Indonesian.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) nggahisa, (E) umuho'o
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 13(2), 291-313.
DOI: 10.1075/rcl.13.2.02god
Abstract:
This study has three main dimensions. It begins by turning the lens of NSM semantic analysis onto a set of words that are central to the “discourse of the unexpected” in English: surprised, amazed, astonished and shocked. By elucidating their precise meanings, we can gain an improved picture of the English folk model in this domain. A comparison with Malay (Bahasa Melayu) shows that the “surprise words” of English lack precise equivalents in other languages.
The second dimension involves grammatical semantics: it seeks to identify the semantic relationships between agnate word-sets such as: surprised, surprising, to surprise; amazed, amazing, to amaze.
The third dimension is a theoretical one and is concerned with the development of a typology of “surprise-like” concepts. It is argued that adopting English-specific words, such as surprise or unexpected, as descriptive categories inevitably leads to conceptual Anglocentrism. The alternative, non-Anglocentric strategy relies on components phrased in terms of universal semantic primes, such as ‘something happened’ and ‘this someone didn’t know that it will happen’, and the like.
More information:
Reissued as:
Goddard, Cliff (2017). The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. In Agnès Celle, & Laure Lansari (Eds.), Expressing and describing surprise (pp. 27-49). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.92.02god
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amazed, (E) astonished, (E) hairan, (E) shocked, (E) shocking, (E) surprise, (E) surprised, (E) surprising, (E) terkejut, (E) terperanjat
Published on July 29, 2018. Last updated on June 25, 2019.
Buyankina, A. S. (2015). Sympathy and empathy in English and Russian: A linguistic and cultural analysis. In С. А. Песоцкая [S. A. Pesotskaya] (Ed.), Коммуникативные аспекты языка и культуры: сборник материалов XV Международной научно-практической конференции студентов и молодых ученых [Communicative aspects of language and culture: A collection of materials of the XVth International Scientific and Practical Conference of Students and Young Scientists]: Vol. 3 (pp. 70-72). Томск [Tomsk]: Изд-во ТПУ [TPU Publishing House].
Open access
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This paper is a quasi verbatim reproduction of selected paragraphs of:
Gladkova, Anna (2010). Sympathy, compassion, and empathy in English and Russian: A linguistic and cultural analysis. Culture & Psychology, 16(2), 267-285. |
| The NSM explications are slightly different and may be imperfect translations from the Russian explications in chapter 6 of:Гладкова, А. Н. [Gladkova, Anna] (2010). Русская культурная семантика: эмоции ценности, жизненные установк [Russian cultural semantics: Emotions, values, attitudes]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянской культуры [Languages of Slavic Cultures]. |
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Tags: (E) empathy, (E) sočuvstvie сочувствие, (E) sopereživanie сопереживание, (E) sympathy
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 5, 2019.
Levisen, Carsten (2016). Postcolonial lexicography: Defining creole emotion words with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Cahiers de lexicologie, 109, 35-60.
DOI: 10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0035
Abstract:
The lexicographical study of postcolonial language varieties is severely undertheorized and underdeveloped. Postcolonial Lexicography is a new framework that seeks to go some way towards filling the gap. It aims at providing a new praxis of word definition for the study of creoles, world Englishes, and other languages spoken in postcolonial contexts. NSM is used as an interpretative technique for the definition of meaning. The NSM approach allows for a fine-grained lexical-semantic analysis, and at the same time helps circumvent ‘conceptual colonialism’ and the related vices of Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism, all of which hamper advances in lexicographical studies in a postcolonial context.
More specifically, drawing on advances in lexical semantics, linguistic ethnography and postcolonial language studies, the paper offers an original analysis of emotion words in Urban Bislama, a creole language spoken in Port Vila, Vanuatu. The author develops a sketch of the Bislama lexicon of emotion and provides new definitions of kros, roughly ‘angry’, les, roughly ‘annoyed’ and sem, roughly ‘ashamed’. A table of Bislama exponents of NSM primes is included, as well as some discussion on the exponents for FEEL, GOOD, and BAD.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kros, (E) les, (E) sem, (T) Bislama
Published on July 26, 2018. Last updated on May 5, 2019.
Tokula, Lillian & Pütz, Martin (2016). Emotion concepts in Igala language (Nigeria): A view from NSM theory. In Gratien G. Atindogbé & Evelyn Fogwe Chibaka (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th World Congress on African linguistics: Vol. 2 (pp. 948-976). Bamenda (Cameroon): Langaa.
Abstract:
This study highlights the various characteristics of emotion concepts in Igala and shows the areas of overlap among the members of different categories of emotion concepts. The absence of a lexical exponent for FEEL in Igala is shown not to have any relevance to the expression and comprehension of emotive language in Igala, as shown by the side by side explication done simultaneously in both languages for happiness-, love- and fear-like emotions. The authors submit that, contrary to the claims made by the leading developers of the theory, FEEL is not necessary to the semantic explication of emotion concepts universally. They therefore recommend a review of the status of FEEL. In the face of evidence to the contrary from languages such as Igala and Sidaama, its present status as a semantic prime points to (unintended and paradoxical) ethnocentric bias on the part of the developers of the theory – a phenomenon, among others, that motivated the development of the theory in the first place. A re-evaluation of the status of the concept FEEL as a semantic molecule necessary for the semantic explication of emotion concepts in English and some other languages but not as a semantic prime found in ALL languages of the world may be more fitting to the data.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) àyìlò, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ ɛ̀bɔ́, (E) òkpò, (E) ufɛ́dɔ̀, (E) ùyɔ̀, (T) Igala
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco (2016). The cultural semantics of the Japanese emotion terms ‘haji’ and ‘hazukashii’. New Voices in Japanese Studies, 8, 32-54.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21159/nvjs.08.02 / Open access
Abstract:
This paper presents a cultural semantic analysis of the Japanese emotion terms 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii. The paper has three aims: (i) to pinpoint the conceptions of 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii as emotion terms in Japanese language and culture; (ii) to highlight the differences in meaning with their typical English translations shame and embarrassing, and show that 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii reflect two different, culture-specific emotion conceptions; (iii) to emphasize the suitability of NSM for cross-cultural comparisons of emotion terms in different languages and, in turn, for cross-cultural training.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) embarrassment, (E) haji 恥, (E) hazukashii 恥ずかしい, (E) shame, (T) Japanese
Published on August 4, 2018. Last updated on May 5, 2019.
Putri, Darni Enzimar (2016). Struktur semantis idiom yang bermakna emosi dalam Bahasa Jepang [Semantic structure of idioms referring to emotions in Japanese]. 言葉ジャーナル / Jurnal Kotoba (Andalas University, Indonesia), 3.
Open access
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to describe the literal meaning, using NSM, of a number of Japanese idioms that refer to emotions and include body part terms.
Explications (in Indonesian) are provided for the following phrases: 頭を冷やし atama o hiyasu (‘calm’, lit. ‘cool-headed’), 顔をほころばせた kao o hokorobaseru (‘happy’, lit. ‘with a flinch on one’s face’), 肩の荷 がおり kata no ni ga oriru (‘relieved’, lit. ‘a load off one’s shoulders’), 鼻が高い hana ga takai (‘proud’, lit. ‘long-nosed’), 舌を巻いた shita o maku (‘amazed’, lit. ‘tongue rolled up’), 顔 が 赤くなり kao ga akakunaru (‘ashamed’, lit. ‘red-faced’), 顔をくもらせた kao o kumoraseru (‘sad’, lit. ‘cloud-faced’), 親の顔が見たい oya no kao ga mitai (‘dumbfounded’, lit. ‘I want to see their parents’ face’), 耳が痛い mimi ga itai (‘offended’, lit. ‘my ear hurts’), 目のかたきにし me no kataki ni suru (‘hate’, lit. ‘make an eye-enemy of someone’), 鼻 に ついて hana ni tsuku (‘sick and tired’, lit. ‘hit in the nose’), 唇をかむ kuchibiru o kamu (‘disappointed’, lit. ‘biting one’s lip’), 首をひねった kubi o hineru (‘confused’, lit. ‘head leaning to one side’), 胸が潰れる mune ga tsubureru (‘totally shocked’, lit. ‘heart-no-longer-beating’), 腹が立つ hara ga tatsu (‘angry’, lit. ‘stomach standing up’), 頭にき atama ni kuru (‘get mad’, lit. ‘come to one’s head’), 腰が抜け koshi ga nukeru (‘go weak on the knees’, lit. ‘ have one’s hips fall out from under one’), 目を白黒させ me o shirokurosaseru (‘surprised’, lit. ‘eyes made black and white’), 尻に火が付い shiri ni hi ga tsuku (‘restless’, lit. ‘a fire lit on one’s butt’), 二の足を踏ん ni no ashi o fumu (‘hesitant’, lit. ‘stepping on one’s second foot’), 大きな顔をし ookiina kao o suru (‘arrogant’, lit. ‘making a big face’).
More information:
Written in Indonesian.
The explication provided for 目に沁みた me ni shimita (‘mesmerized’, lit. ‘my eyes smart’) is unreliable. There is no evidence that the phrase has the indicated metaphorical meaning.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) atama ni kuru 頭にき, (E) atama o hiyasu 頭を冷やし, (E) hana ga takai 鼻が高い, (E) hana ni tsuku 鼻 に ついて, (E) hara ga tatsu 腹が立っ, (E) kao ga akakunaru 顔 が 赤くなり, (E) kao o hokorobaseru 顔を綻ばせた, (E) kao o kumoraseru 顔をくもらせた, (E) kata no ni ga oriru 肩の荷 がおり, (E) koshi ga nukeru 腰が抜け, (E) kubi o hineru 首をひねった, (E) kuchibiru o kamu 唇をかむ, (E) me ni shimita 目に沁みた, (E) me no kataki ni suru 目のかたきにし, (E) me o shirokurosaseru 目を白黒させ, (E) mimi ga itai 耳が痛い, (E) mune ga tsubureru 胸が潰れる, (E) ni no ashi o fumu 二の足を踏ん, (E) ookiina kao o suru 大きいな顔をし, (E) oya no kao ga mitai 親の顔が見たい, (E) shiri ni hi ga tsuku 尻に火が付い, (E) shita o maku 舌を巻いた, (T) Indonesian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 5, 2019.
Romero-Trillo, Jesús & Avila-Ledesma, Nancy E. (2017). The ethnopragmatic representation of positive and negative emotions in Irish immigrants’ letters. In Keith Allan, Alessandro Capone & Istvan Kecskes (Eds.), Pragmemes and theories of language use (pp. 393-420). Cham: Springer.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-43491-9_21
Abstract:
This chapter explores the ethnopragmatic conceptualization of happiness and sadness in the language of the Irish citizens who immigrated to North America between 1811 and 1880, on the basis of a corpus of Irish emigrants’ personal correspondence. In particular, this study proposes a Natural Semantic Metalanguage examination of the emotional load of the positive adjectives happy and glad, and their negative counterparts, unhappy and sad, to elucidate Irish emigrants’ psychological states of mind and emotional responses to transatlantic migrations and life abroad. It investigates the pragmatic uses of key emotion terms in the corpus based upon the semantic explications developed by Wierzbicka and adds to these an explication of the adjective glad. It is shown that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework can be fruitfully used as an analytic tool to unveil the linguistic specificities embedded in the conceptualization of psychological acts such as emotions.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) delighted, (E) glad, (E) happy, (E) sad, (E) unhappy
Published on August 19, 2018. Last updated on June 29, 2019.
Karaaslan, Hatice (2017). A contrastive analysis of English anger-fury and Turkish kızgınlık-öfke. Karadeniz, 36, 119-136.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17498/kdeniz.357575 / Open access
Abstract:
This study investigates one particular area within the emotion lexicon of English and Turkish, focusing on two anger-related emotion terms in each of the two languages. It explores how the terms relate to each other intra-linguistically and whether, from a contrastive point of view, their cognitive scenarios match. The core meanings of the target concepts are claimed to show a high degree of correspondence; differences in immediacy and intensity do not (according to the author) appear to prompt the need for differentiation. The English emotion concept anger is said to match the Turkish emotion concept kızgınlık, and likewise for fury and öfke. Accordingly, the same reductive paraphrases can be used for the English words and for their Turkish counterparts.
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The claims contained in this paper need to be approached with caution: the so-called “high degree of correspondence” may not be high enough to warrant identical explications across the two languages. |
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Rating:
Crude application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) angry, (E) furious, (E) kızgınlık, (E) öfke
Published on July 29, 2018. Last updated on June 29, 2019.
Brise, Lillian (2017). Eating regret and seeing contempt: A Cognitive Linguistic approach to the language of emotions in Igala (Nigeria). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/b11354
Abstract:
This book, which deals with emotions and their expression in Igala, a Nigerian minority language with about two million speakers, calls for significant revisions within the NSM framework, its universal lexicon and its universal syntax, especially with respect to the prime FEEL. It challenges the claim that, in its present form, NSM is adequate for the analysis of emotion concepts universally. The challenge is based on the way emotions are conceptualized in Igala as well as on the absence of certain semantic primes that the NSM approach considers necessary for the analysis of emotions.
The author argues that NSM’s rigid claims to universality (of its syntax, for example) hinder the elegant description of emotion concepts in Igala and that the status of FEEL has to be re-evaluated. Igala does not have a generic lexical item that fits into the allegedly universal syntax specifications for FEEL and that lends itself to the explication of both physical and emotional (mental) states. FEEL must therefore possibly be downgraded and accorded the status of a semantic molecule rather than a prime. This would make it a language-specific concept, required for the explication of emotion concepts in some languages (e.g. English) but unnecessary in others (e.g. Igala).
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) àjìlò, (E) áɲó, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ dúdú, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ ɛ̀bɔ́, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ ɛ́kpabíe, (E) ɛ̀dɔ̀ ɛ̀kpabíɛ́, (E) ìhìɛ̀nɛ̀, (E) ìmélí, (E) ìwɔ̀, (E) òkpò, (E) ɔ́la ɟìɟìlì, (E) ufɛ́dɔ̀, (E) ùgɛ́dɔ̀, (E) ùgójì, (E) ùkàtà, (E) ùlàkà, (E) ùwɛ́dɔ̀, (E) ùyɔ̀, (T) Igala
Published on August 10, 2017. Last updated on June 29, 2019.
Hanczakowski, Allira (2017). Translating emotion: A lexical-semantic analysis of translating emotion words from Italian to English in Marco Braico’s novel La festa dei limoni (2011). Master of Translation thesis, University of Western Australia.
Open access
Abstract:
Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural differences are particularly evident within expressions of emotion, creating a challenging task for translators who are required to find the closest possible equivalent term in the target language. The context in which emotion words are used plays a crucial role in determining the most accurate translatant. This study explores how context influences and governs the selection of translatant within the novel La festa dei limoni by Marco Braico. Based on a select list of Italian emotion words, the author demonstrates that while Italian can employ the same emotion word in a variety of contexts, English requires different terms depending on textual context, linguistic context and the sociolinguistic identity of the person employing the term.
The NSM approach is adopted in Chapter Three of the thesis to create a systematic method for the translation of emotion words. Employing NSM facilitates a cross-linguistic analysis to be carried out from a language independent stance. Semantic primes are used to create semantic explications of five Italian emotion terms identified in Chapter Two as problematic from a translational point of view: affetto, rabbia, ansia, fastidio and meraviglia. The explications achieve the aim of demonstrating how to select the most accurate English translatant of Italian emotion terms, depending on the specific context within the novel.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) affetto, (E) ansia, (E) fastidio, (E) meraviglia, (E) rabbia, (T) Italian
Published on August 17, 2017. Last updated on June 29, 2019.
Effendi, Diyan Ermawan & Muchammadun (2018). “Happiness” in Bahasa Indonesia and its implication to health and community well-being. The Asian EFL Journal, 20(8), 279-291.
Open access
Abstract:
“Happiness” has become an important aspect in Indonesia’s well-being as well as in the health and longevity of its population. This paper examines the meaning of three closely related Indonesian emotion words encountered in happiness-related discourse: bahagia, senang, and gembira. Using NSM to describe the native Indonesian experience on the three emotions, the authors depict bahagia, senang, and gembira as personal feelings that last for different lengths of time. Another difference they capture relates to the “otherness” characteristics of each emotion. Finally, the paper suggests studies on emotions and happiness to promote community well-being and health as an emerging research domain for applied linguists.
More information:
Also published (open access) as:
Effendi, Diyan Ermawan & Muchammadun (2017). “Happiness” in Bahasa Indonesia and its implication to health and community well-being. The Asian EFL Journal, TESOL Indonesia Special Conference Edition, 7, 109-121.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) bahagia, (E) gembira, (E) senang