Tag: (E) heart

(2007) Korean – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2007). Contrastive semantics of Korean ‘maum’ vs. English ‘heart’ and ‘mind’. The Journal of Studies in Language, 22(3), 171-197.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18627/jslg.22.3.200702.171 / Open access

Abstract:

This paper uses the semantic framework provided by the NSM approach to contrast three ethnopsychological constructs: 몸 maum in Korean, and heart and mind in English. The latter are the most common translational equivalents of the Korean term. There is no semantic equivalence: which of the two English words is used to translate 몸 maum in any particular context is contextually driven. All three play a significant role in expressing emotions and thoughts, but no contrastive semantic analysis of the terms is found in the literature. This study shows it is possible to compare culturally loaded and complex concepts in terms of semantic similarities and differences by using an appropriate tertium comparationis. At the same time it indicates that NSM can endow ethnopsychology with a practical and descriptive tool.

More information:

An earlier version of this paper was published as:

Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2004). Korean maum vs. English heart and mind: Contrastive semantics of cultural concepts. In Christo Moskovsky (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2003.html.

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(1992) Semantics, culture, and cognition [BOOK]

Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract:

To what extent are languages essentially the same? Is every word in our language translatable into every other language or are some of our words and concepts culture-specific? Rejecting analytical tools derived from the English language and Anglo culture and replacing them with NSM, this innovative study argues that every language constitutes a different guide to reality. The lexicons of different languages do indeed seem to suggest different conceptual universes. Not everything that can be said in one language can be said in another, and this is not just a matter of certain things being easier to say in one language than in another.

The book investigates a wide variety of languages and cultures from a universal, language-independent perspective and integrates insights from linguistics, cultural anthropology and cognitive psychology.

Table of contents:

Introduction

I. Linguistic evidence for ethnopsychology

1. Soul, mind, and heart
2. Fate and destiny

II. Emotions across cultures

3. Are emotions universal or culture-specific?
4. Describing the indescribable

III. Moral concepts across cultures

5. Apatheia, smirenie, humility
6. Courage, bravery, recklessness

IV. Names and titles

7. Personal names and expressive derivation
8. Titles and other forms of address

V. Kinship semantics

9. Lexical universals and psychological reality
10. ‘Alternate generations’ in Australian Aboriginal languages

VI. Language as a mirror of culture and ‘national character’

11. Australian English
12. The Russian language

Translations:

Into Polish (Introduction only):

Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Uniwersalne pojęcia ludzkie i ich konfiguracje w różnych kulturach. Etnolingwistyka, 4, 7-40.

Into Russian:

[Introduction]: Вежбицкая, Анна [Wierzbicka, Anna] (1993). СЕМАНТИКА, КУЛЬТУРА И ПОЗНАНИЕ: ОБЩЕЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСКИЕ ПОНЯТИЯ В КУЛЬТУРОСПЕЦИФИЧНЫХ КОНТЕКСТАХ*. THESIS, 1993 vol 3, pp. 185–206.

[Chapters 2 and 12]: Chapters 12 (pp. 424-497) and 10 (pp. 331-388) of Вежбицкая, Анна [Wierzbicka, Anna] (2011). Семантические универсалии и базисные концепты, под ред. А.Д. Кошелев [Semantic universals and basic concepts, ed. A.D. Koshelev]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянских культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].

More information:

Chapter 1 builds on: Soul and mind: Linguistic evidence for ethnopsychology and cultural history (1989)

Chapter 3 builds on: Human emotions: Universal or culture-specific? (1986)

Chapters 7 and 8 build on: Prototypes in semantics and pragmatics: Explicating attitudinal meanings in terms of prototypes (1989)

Chapter 9 builds on: Kinship semantics: Lexical universals as a key to psychological reality (1987)

Chapter 10 builds on: Semantics and the interpretation of cultures: The meaning of ‘alternate generations’ devices in Australian languages (1986)

Chapter 11 builds on: Does language reflect culture? Evidence from Australian English (1986)

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(2001) Malay – Cultural key words / Emotions / Ethnopsychology and personhood

Goddard, Cliff (2001). Hati: A key word in the Malay vocabulary of emotion. In Jean Harkins, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 167-195). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110880168.167

Abstract:

The word hati is one of the key words of Malay culture: it functions as a conceptual focal point for an entire complex of characteristically Malay values, attitudes and expectations. By studying the meaning and uses of this one word we can learn a surprising amount about Malay culture – in particular, about the conceptualization of emotion in Malay culture.

The aims of this paper are threefold: first, to outline the range of use and collocational possibilities of hati, informally comparing and contrasting it with English heart; second, to advance and argue for an explicit semantic explication of hati in its core or central meaning (as in an expression like hati orang ‘a person’s hati‘); third, to explicate the semantics of five common fixed expressions involving hati, all of which designate what we might term feeling states or emotional reactions: susah hati ‘troubled, worried’, senang hati ‘relaxed, easy at heart’; sakit hati ‘annoyed, offended’, puas hati ‘satisfied (with someone)’, and kecil hati ‘feel hurt’.

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(2008) English, Malay – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Goddard, Cliff (2008). Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: English heart vs. Malay hati. In Farzad Sharifian, René Dirven, Ning Yu, & Susanne Niemeier (Eds.), Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 75-102). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199109.2.75

Abstract:

This is a contrastive NSM analysis of two ethnopsychological constructs (English heart, Malay hati). Rejecting the use of English-specific metaterminology, such as mind, cognition, affect, etc., as both ethnocentric and inaccurate, the study seeks to articulate the conceptual content of the words under investigation in terms of simple universal concepts such as FEEL, THINK, WANT, KNOW, PEOPLE, SOMEONE, PART, BODY, HAPPEN, GOOD and BAD.

For both words, the physical body-part meaning is first explicated, and then the ethnopsychological sense or senses (it is claimed that English heart has two distinct ethnopsychological senses). The chapter also reviews the phraseology associated with each word, and in the case of English heart, proposes explications for a number of prominent collocations: a broken heart, listening to your heart, losing heart and having your heart in it.

The concluding discussion makes some suggestions about experiential/semantic principles whereby body parts can come to be associated with cultural models of feeling, thinking, wanting and knowing. At a theoretical level, the study seeks to draw links between culturally informed cognitive semantics, on the one hand, and the field of cultural psychology, on the other.

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(2010) English, Chinese, Korean, Russian – Ethnopsychology and personhood / Mental states

Goddard, Cliff (2010). Universals and variation in the lexicon of mental state concepts. In Barbara C. Malt, & Phillip Wolff (Eds.), Words and the mind: How words capture human experience (pp. 72-92). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195311129.003.0005

Abstract:

The first two sections of this chapter provide an overview of NSM research and findings, with a particular focus on mental state concepts. The next two sections show how NSM techniques make it possible to reveal complex and culture-specific meanings in detail and in terms that are readily transposable across languages. Examples include emotion terms, epistemic verbs, and ethnopsychological constructs in English, Chinese, Russian, and Korean. The next section discusses the relationship between linguistic meanings (word meanings) and cognition and elucidates the theoretical and methodological implications for cognitive science. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that people’s subjective emotional experience can be shaped or coloured to some extent by the lexical categories of their language.

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(2004) Korean – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2004). Korean maum vs. English heart and mind: Contrastive semantics of cultural concepts. In Christo Moskovsky (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2003.html.

Open access

Abstract:

In this paper, an attempt is made to compare three highly distinct concepts, the Anglo concepts of ‘heart’ and ‘mind’, as well as the Korean concept of 몸 maum. An appropriate analysis of 몸 maum appears to be essential for understanding Korean folk psychology. The attempt is underpinned by the principles of the NSM approach so as to enable outsiders to see the cognitive structure of the analysed concepts through the same window as native speakers. Similarities and differences between the three concepts reflect different folk views on similar psychological entities. The overlap and discrepancies between the NSM explications explain why the Anglo terms can serve as translational equivalents in some contexts but not in others. The Anglo concepts reflect the Anglo culture-specific way of conceptualizing while the Korean concept 몸 maum reflects the Korean way.

More information:

A more recent publication building on this one is:

Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2007). Contrastive semantics of Korean ‘maum’ vs. English ‘heart’ and ‘mind’. The Journal of Studies in Language, 22(3), 171-197.


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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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(2013) Chinese – Cultural key words / Ethnopsychology and personhood

Li, Jing; Ericsson, Christer; & Quennerstedt, Mikael (2013). The meaning of the Chinese cultural keyword xin. Journal of Languages and Culture, 4(5), 75-89.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5897/JLC12.054 / Open access

Abstract:

In China, the word 心 xīn (often translated as heart) is frequently used and its concept is central to Chinese culture. However, its meaning is not exactly the same as that of the English word heart. Using qigong as the context, this article aims to explore the meaning of 心 xīn as a cultural key word to gain an in-depth understanding of Chinese culture and knowledge within that cultural system. Qigong is a Chinese health maintenance system and healing tradition that integrates physical activity with training of the mind and self-cultivation. One of qigong’s basic components is 心 xīn adjustment. It is impossible to convey the full meaning of this concept without understanding the meaning of 心 xīn. In Chinese culture, 心 xīn is the root of physical and mental life. It is the seat of all emotions, and embodies the inherent goodness of human nature and wisdom. 心 xīn helps to guide the individual’s way of life and attitude, and can lead one to deep contentment.

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