Edited by Hans-Georg Wolf, Denisa Latić and Anna Finzel
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 14] 2021
► pp. 79–104
The chapter deals with the conceptualization of a social-moral emotion, ruşine [shame], in Old Romanian (16th–18th centuries). Within an integrative theoretical and methodological framework (combining elements of Cultural Linguistics, Textual and Cognitive Lexical Semantics, Cultural Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology of Emotions), I tackle the patterns of conceptualizing shame, delineating the prototypical feature profile, together with its contextual variation, as highlighted by the counterpart lexicalization. The corpus data bring forward a complex componential grid. Certain types of shame can be outlined: (a) dysphoric prototypical shame; (b) contiguous shame, contextually intersecting with disrespect, dishonor or fear; (c) religious shame, hedonically hybrid, both euphoric and dysphoric, overlapping with respect and fear; (d) positive shame, socially validated and decoded as shyness, modesty, or, in a romantic love context, as pudor.