Tag: (E) joy

(2000) English (Middle) – Emotions (joy)

Fabiszak, Małgorzata (2000). An application of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage to diachronic semantics. In Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta, & Matti Rissanen (Eds.), Placing Middle English in context (pp. 293-312). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110869514.293

This paper is a methodological exercise in which Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), developed as a method of objective description in cross-cultural research, is applied to diachronic data concerning four Middle English emotion terms from the semantic field of ‘joy’. Wierzbicka’s framework provides the means for describing the data neatly, improves their processing, and contributes to the efficiency of their presentation. The application of her formal methodology has made the usage patterns characteristic of the analysed emotion terms more transparent and easier to generalise over.


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

 

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(1990) English – ‘Fear’

Wierzbicka, Anna (1990). The semantics of emotions: Fear and its relatives in English. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 359-375. DOI: 10.1080/07268609008599447

This paper demonstrates that emotion concepts – including the so-called basic ones, such as anger, sadness or fear – can be defined in terms of universal semantic primitives such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘do’, ‘happen’, ‘know’ and ‘want’, in terms of which all areas of meaning, in all languages, can be rigorously and revealingly portrayed.

The definitions proposed here differ in various respects from so-called ‘classical definitions’; in particular, they do not adhere to the Aristotelian model based on a ‘genus proximum’ and ‘differentia specifica’. Rather, they take the form of certain prototypical scripts or scenarios, formulated in terms of thoughts, ‘wants’ and feelings. These scripts, however, can be seen as formulas providing rigorous specifications of necessary and sufficient conditions, and they do not support the idea that emotion concepts are ‘fuzzy’. On the contrary, the small set of universal semantic primitives employed here allows us to show that even apparent synonyms such as afraid and scared embody different – and fully specifiable – conceptual structures, and to reveal the remarkable precision with which boundaries between concepts are drawn – even between those concepts which at first sight appear to be identical or only “stylistically” different. Upon closer investigation, human conceptualization of emotions reveals itself as a system of unconscious distinctions of incredible delicacy, subtlety, and precision.

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(1992) Emotions

Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Talking about emotions: Semantics, culture, and cognition. Cognition and Emotion, 6(3/4), 285-319. DOI: 10.1080/02699939208411073

Translated into Polish as chapter 4 of:

Wierzbicka, Anna (1999). Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

The author argues that the so-called “basic emotions”, such as happiness, fear or anger, are in fact cultural artifacts of the English language, just as the Ilongot concept of liger, or the Ifaluk concept of song, are the cultural artifacts of Ilongot and Ifaluk. It is therefore as inappropriate to talk about human emotions in general in terms of happiness, fear, or anger as it would be to talk about them in terms of liget or song. However, this does not mean that we cannot penetrate into the emotional world of speakers of languages other than our own. Nor does it mean that there cannot be any universal human emotions. Universality of emotions is an open issue which requires further investigation. For this further investigation to be fully productive, it has to be undertaken from a universal, language and culture-independent perspective; and it has to be carried out in a universalist framework that is language and culture-independent. The author proposes for this purpose the Natural Semantic Metalanguage based on universal (or near-universal) semantic primitives (or near-primitives), developed over two decades by herself and colleagues, and she argues that the use of this metalanguage facilitates such a perspective and offers such a framework.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(1997) Biblical Hebrew – Emotion words

Myhill, John (1997). What is universal and what is language-specific in emotion words: Evidence from Biblical Hebrew. Pragmatics and Cognition, 5(1), 79-129. DOI: 10.1075/pc.5.1.07myh

This paper proposes a model for the analysis of emotions in which each emotion word in each language is made up of a universal component and a language-specific component; the universal component is drawn from a set of universal human emotions which underlie all emotion words in all languages, and the language-specific component involves a language-particular thought pattern which is expressed as part of the meanings of a variety of different words in the language. The meanings of a variety of emotion words of Biblical Hebrew are discussed and compared with the meanings of English words with the same general meaning; it is shown that a number of the Biblical Hebrew words (though by no means all) directly represent the biblical conception of God and the role of God combined with one or another of the proposed universal emotions.


Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

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