Tag: (E) shocked

(1992) Various languages – Emotion concepts

Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Defining emotion concepts. Cognitive Science, 16(4), 539-581. DOI: 10.1207/s15516709cog1604_4

This article demonstrates that emotion concepts – including the so-called basic ones, such as anger or sadness – 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 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 (not for emotions as such, but for emotion concepts), and they do not support the idea that boundaries between emotion concepts are “fuzzy”. On the contrary, the small set of universal semantic primitives employed here (which has emerged from two decades of empirical investigations by the author and colleagues) demonstrates that even apparent synonyms such as sad and unhappy embody different – and fully specifiable – conceptual structures.


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(1997) English, Malay – ‘Surprise’

Goddard, Cliff (1997). Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: ‘Surprise’ in Malay and English. Culture & Psychology, 3(2), 153-181. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X9700300204

This paper argues that psychology has yet to come fully to grips with the extent of semantic variation between languages, and that it can benefit, in this regard, from certain developments in linguistic semantics. It outlines Anna Wierzbicka’s ‘Natural Semantic Metalanguage’ (NSM) approach to cross-cultural semantics, and demonstrates the approach through a contrastive study of ‘surprise-like’ words from two languages: Malay (terkejut, terperanjat, hairan) and English (surprised, amazed, shocked, startled). It is shown that there is no exact Malay equivalent to English surprise; and also that there is no semantic core shared by the various terms, only a loose set of cross-cutting and overlapping semantic correspondences. These results are at odds with the classic “basic emotions” position, which would have it that ‘surprise’ is a universal and discrete biological syndrome. The overriding contention of the paper is that Wierzbicka’s approach to linguistic semantics can furnish psychology with valuable new analytical and descriptive tools.


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(2007) English, Korean, Malay, Swedish – Mental states

Goddard, Cliff (2007). A culture-neutral metalanguage for mental state concepts. In Andrea C. Schalley, & Drew Khlentzos (Eds.), Mental states: Vol. 2. Language and cognitive structure (pp. 11-35). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.93.04god

Abstract:

In contemporary cognitive science, mental state concepts from diverse cultures are typically described via English-specific words for emotions, cognitive processes, and the like. This is terminological ethnocentrism, which produces inaccurate representations of indigenous meanings. The problem can be overcome by employing a metalanguage of conceptual analysis based on simple meanings such as KNOW, THINK, WANT and FEEL. Cross-linguistic semantic research suggests that these and other semantic primes are shared across all languages and cultures. After summarizing this research, the chapter shows how complex mental state concepts from English, Malay, Swedish, and Korean can be revealingly analysed into terms that are simple, clear and transposable across languages.

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(2015) English, Malay – Emotions

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.

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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

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