Tag: (E) amae 甘え

(2019) Finnish – Emotions

Vanhatalo, Ulla; Tissari, Heli; Lilja, Taru; Vehkalahti, Kimmo; & Siiroinen, Mari. (2019). “Something bad can now happen to me here”: Meaning components of emotion words. SKY Journal of Linguistics 32 (2019), 145–179

 

Abstract:

This paper reports on how people connect explications of emotion words to the terms they are meant to explicate. We focused on the Finnish counterparts to the following words: anger, disgust, fear, joy, love, sadness, and surprise. Our primary findings show that our participants, who were native speakers of Finnish, made the expected matches between Natural Semantic Metalanguage-based explications and the corresponding emotion words. However, there were significant differences between the emotion words, with the match rate ranging from 93% for ‘love’ to 51% for ‘sadness’. This research also contributes to our understanding of the meaning components of emotion concepts, and it may help people to talk about emotions in depth without using the conventional vocabulary for emotions.

 


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(2014) Japanese – SEE

Purnawati, Ketut Widya (2014). Japanese mental predicate ‘see’ in kanji: 見る miru, 観る miru, 視る miru, 看る miru: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. Lingual: Journal of Language and Culture, 3(2).

DOI: 10.24843/LJLC.2014.v03.i02.p07 / Open access

Abstract:

The semantic prime SEE is lexicalized in Japanese as MIRU, which is written as 見る in Japanese kanji and kana. Within the Japanese version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, MIRU 見る belongs to the group of Mental Predicates. In Japanese itself, though, the verb miru is not written only in one way as mentioned above, but may also be written in other ways, such as 観る miru, 視る miru, and 看る miru. In general, these kanji denote the semantic prime SEE – or MIRU in Japanese. However, each of them has actually its own specific meaning as well. This paper is aimed at defining the differences between the miru verbs in Japanese.

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(1991) Japanese – Cultural key words

Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Japanese key words and core cultural values. Language in Society, 20(3), 333-385.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500016535

Abstract:

Every language has its own key words, which reflect the core values of the culture. Consequently, cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key words. However, to be able to study, compare, and explain cultures in terms of their key words, we need a culture-independent analytical framework. A framework of this kind is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. This paper explores and analyses six Japanese concepts widely regarded as being almost more than any others culture-specific and culturally revealing – 甘え amae, 遠慮 enryo, 和 wa, 恩 on, 義理 giri, and 精神 seishin – and shows how the use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage helps to make these concepts clear, affording better insight into Japanese culture and society.

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A more recent publication building on this one is:

Chapter 6 (pp. 235-280) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1997), Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.

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(1992) Definitions

Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Back to definitions: Cognition, semantics, and lexicography. Lexicographica, 8, 146-174.

DOI: 10.1515/9783110244120.146

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 8 (pp. 237-257) of:

Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abstract:

Different words mean different things; they make different contributions to the communicative acts humans engage in. The contributions made by different words can be compared if we have some standard of measure for describing their communicative potential (i.e., their meaning). As pointed out by Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and others, such a common measure can be found in a set of words regarded as conceptual primes. We can single out in any language a group of words in terms of which the meaning (that is, the communicative potential) of all other words in that language can be described and compared. On this view of language, semantic description makes sense and will indeed be illuminating if it is anchored in a set of conceptual primes linked with lexical indefinables, that is, words (or morphemes, or expressions) whose meaning is relatively clear and intelligible, and in terms of which all the other words in the lexicon can be characterized revealingly and accurately.

This paper argues that the distinction between definable and indefinable concepts (and words) must be the cornerstone of any fruitful and linguistically relevant theory of definitions. It shows that meanings can be rigorously described and compared if they are recognized for what they are: unique and culture-specific configurations of universal semantic primitives.


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(1995) Japanese, Malay, Polish – Emotion words

Goddard, Cliff (1995). Conceptual and cultural issues in emotion research. Culture & Psychology, 1(2), 289-298. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X9512009

As suggested by its title, Wierzbicka’s 1995 paper ‘Emotion and facial expression: A semantic perspective’ is an attempt to apply a uniform framework for semantic analysis to two domains of emotional expression – words and facial expressions – and to advance some hypotheses about how they are related. Wierzbicka argues that linguistic research shows that no emotion word of English (or any other language) has a simple and undecomposable meaning; rather, the emotion words of different languages encode complex and largely culture-specific perspectives on ‘ways of feeling’, linking feelings with specific kinds of thoughts and wants (prototypical cognitive scenarios). Essentially, the claim is that the meanings of words like angry, proud, lonesome, etc., embody little ‘cultural stories’ about human nature and human interaction. To uncover and state such stories in non-ethnocentric terms, however, requires a framework of semantic universals. We need to go beyond the ‘either-or’ question and seek both the universal core of communication, as well as the precise role of culture. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage is a new method that will assist us to reach that goal.


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(2002) Emotions

Goddard, Cliff (2002). Explicating emotions across languages and cultures: A semantic approach. In Susan R. Fussell (Ed.), The verbal communication of emotions: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 19-53). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

This chapter sketches out the integrated and meaning-based approach to the study of emotions that has been pioneered by Anna Wierzbicka. It seeks to bring together the study of the emotion lexicon of different languages with the study of different “cultural scripts” that are one factor (among others, of course) influencing the expression of emotions in discourse. More than this, it also aims to take in the encoding of emotional meanings by means of other linguistic devices, such as exclamations and specialized grammatical constructions, and even the encoding of emotional meanings in facial expressions and kinaesthetics. Because the Natural Semantic Metalanguage is based on simple, universally available meanings, it provides a tool that enables us to undertake this very broad range of investigations across languages and cultures, while minimizing the risk of ethnocentrism creeping into the very terms of description.


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(2014) Old Norse-Icelandic, Old English – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Mackenzie, Colin Peter (2014). Vernacular psychologies in Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Open access

Abstract:

This thesis examines the vernacular psychology presented in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. It focuses on the concept ‘hugr’, generally rendered in English as ‘mind, soul, spirit’, and explores the conceptual relationships between emotion, cognition and the body. It argues that despite broad similarities, Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English vernacular psychology differ more than has previously been acknowledged. Furthermore, it shows that the psychology of Old Norse-Icelandic has less in common with its circumpolar neighbours than proposed by advocates of Old Norse-Icelandic shamanism.

The thesis offers a fresh interpretation of Old Norse-Icelandic psychology that does not rely on cross-cultural evidence from other Germanic or circumpolar traditions. It argues that emotion and cognition were not conceived of ‘hydraulically’ as was the case in Old English, and that ‘hugr’ was not thought to leave the body either in animal form or as a person’s breath. Old Norse-Icelandic psychology differs from the Old English tradition; it is argued that the Old English psychological model is a specific elaboration of the shared psychological inheritance of Germanic whose origins require further study. These differences between the two languages have implications for the study of psychological concepts in Proto-Germanic: there are fewer semantic components that can be reliably reconstructed for the common ancestor of the North and West Germanic languages.

As a whole, the thesis applies insights from cross-cultural linguistics and psychology to show how Old Norse-Icelandic psychological concepts differ not only from contemporary Germanic and circumpolar traditions but also from the present-day English concepts used to describe them.

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(2012) Translatability

Afrashi, Azita & Taheri Ardali, Mortaza (2012). A look at universal concepts and the possibility of translatability. Translation Studies Quarterly [http://journal.translationstudies.ir], 10(37), 73-85.

Abstract:

After introducing the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, the authors investigate the use of this approach in translation theory, focusing on the possibility of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic translatability. They conclude that universal human concepts ensure translatability of our thoughts from one language into another since they constitute a basis for genuine human understanding.

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Written in Persian.

This paper contains explications of the Persian words شرم sharm ‘shame’, قهر qahr ‘not on speaking terms’, and غیرت qeyrat ‘zeal in defense of honour‘. It also proposes a shorter explication of the Polish verb tęsknić ‘feel the pain of distance’ than the one in Goddard’s Semantic Analysis (2nd edition, 2011).

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