This paper builds on findings of the author’s 1999 book Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals, which tentatively identified eleven universals pertaining to human emotions. The paper probes some of those “emotional universals” further, especially in relation to ‘laughing’, ‘crying’, and ‘pain’. At the same time, the author continues her campaign against pseudo-universals, focussing in particular on the anthropological and philosophical discourse of “suffering”. The paper argues for the Christian origins of the concept of “suffering” lexically embodied in European languages, and contrasts it with the Buddhist concept of ‘dukkha’, usually rendered in Anglophone discussions of Buddhism with the word suffering.
(1979) A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature. Translated by W.F. Arndt & F.W. Gingrich. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
(2014) Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jamison, Kay
(1997) An unquiet mind: A memoir of moods and madness. London: Picador.
John Paul II
(1984) Salvifici Doloris: On the Christian meaning of suffering. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
Kittel, G., & Friedrich, G
(1985) Theological dictionary of the New Testament. (Abridged in one volume by Geoffrey W. Bromiley). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans.
Laughren, M., Hale, K., & Warlpiri Lexicography Group
(2006) Warlpiri-English encyclopaedic dictionary. Electronic files. St. Lucia: University of Queensland.
Lewis, C., & Short, C
(1962) A Latin dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Michaelis, W
(1985) Pathema. In Kittel & Friedrich (Eds.), 802.
Moore, C
(2005) George and Sam. London: Penguin.
Obeyesekere, G
(1985) Depression, Buddhism, and the work of culture in Sri Lanka. In A. Kleinman & B. Good (Eds.), Culture and depression: Studies in the anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry of affect and disorder (pp. 134–152). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Oxford English Dictionary
weep, v.”. OED Online [accessed December 2013]. Oxford University Press.
Park, L
(1992) Cross-cultural explanations of illness: Murdock revisited. Committee on Human Development, Lawrence Park, Chicago, IL.
Plessner, H
(1970) Laughing and crying: A study of the limits of human behavior. Evanston: North Western University Press.
Price, R
(1996) Three Gospels. New York: Touchstone.
Rahula, W
(1974) What the Buddha taught. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
Sainte Thérèse
(2012) Histoire d’une âme. n.p.: Cerf et Desclée De Brouwer.
Sawyer, J.F
(1986) Isaiah, Volume 21. Edinburgh: The Saint Andrews Press.
Shweder, R
(2003) Why do men barbecue?: Recipes for cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Smart, N
(1989) The world’s religions: Old traditions and modern transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thérèse de Lisieux, Saint
(1977) Autobiography of a saint: The complete and authorized text of ‘L’histoire d’une âme’. Translated by Ronald Knox. London: Fontana.
Wierzbicka, A
(1999) Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wierzbicka, A
(2012a) Is pain a human universal?: A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective on pain. Emotion Review, 4(3), 307–317.
Wierzbicka, A
(2012b) Is “pain” a human universal? Conceptualization of “pain” in English, French and Polish. Colloquia Communia, 1(92), 29–53.
Ye, Z
(2006) Why the ‘inscrutable’ Chinese face? Emotionality and facial expression in Chinese. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 127–170). New York/Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Cited by
Cited by 15 other publications
Casacuberta, David & Jordi Vallverdú
2022. Biases in Assigning Emotions in Patients Due to Multicultural Issues. In Handbook of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare [Intelligent Systems Reference Library, 212], ► pp. 215 ff.
Goddard, Cliff
2017. Ethnopragmatic perspectives on conversational humour, with special reference to Australian English. Language & Communication 55 ► pp. 55 ff.
Goddard, Cliff
2018. “Joking, kidding, teasing”: Slippery categories for cross-cultural comparison but key words for understanding Anglo conversational humor. Intercultural Pragmatics 15:4 ► pp. 487 ff.
Goddard, Cliff & Kerry Mullan
2020. Explicating verbs for “laughing with other people” in French and English (and why it matters for humour studies)
. HUMOR 33:1 ► pp. 55 ff.
2018. Intercultural Communication About Pain. In Intercultural Communication in Asia: Education, Language and Values [Multilingual Education, 24], ► pp. 181 ff.
Sánchez-Guardiola Paredes, Carmen, Eva María Aguaded Ramírez & Clemente Rodríguez-Sabiote
2021. Content Validation of a Semi-Structured Interview to Analyze the Management of Suffering. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18:21 ► pp. 11393 ff.
Trnavac, Radoslava & Maite Taboada
2020. Positive Appraisal in Online News Comments. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, ► pp. 185 ff.
허윤지
2015. Cross-linguistic View on Pain Language between English and Korean. Discourse and Cognition 22:3 ► pp. 79 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.