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Wierzbicka, Anna, & Harkins, Jean (2001). Introduction. In Jean Harkins, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.) (2001), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 1-34). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110880168.1

Abstract:

The purpose of the crosslinguistic studies presented in this volume is to demonstrate how the tools of linguistic analysis can be applied to produce more accurate descriptions of the meanings of emotion words and, more generally, ways of speaking about emotions in different languages. Such analyses of linguistic meaning not only complement findings from other approaches to the study of emotions, but help to resolve methodological problems that arise when these other approaches have to deal with data from different languages. Before proceeding to the language-specific studies, we draw readers’ attention to the relevance of language in the study of human emotions, and give some background to the approaches to analysing language data that are used in these studies.

By presenting detailed semantic descriptions of culturally-situated meanings of culturally salient words used in the “emotion talk” in different cultures, we can offer glimpses into other people’s emotional lives – without
imposing on those lives a perspective derived from the vocabulary and other resources of our own native language. Since the descriptions presented here are phrased in universal, that is, shared, concepts, they can be
both faithful to the perspective of the speaker whose emotions we purport to be talking about, and intelligible to others. (These others include scholars, who often don’t seem to realise that they too are speakers of another
language, with their own spectacles, tinted by their own native language.) We can combine the insiders’ point of view with intelligibility to outsiders.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners