Anthropologists and linguists have long been aware that the body is explicitly referred to in conventional description of emotion
in languages around the world. There is abundant linguistic data showing expression of emotions in terms of their imagined ‘locus’
in the physical body. The most important methodological issue in the study of emotions is language, for the ways people talk give
us access to ‘folk descriptions’ of the emotions. ‘Technical terminology’, whether based on English or otherwise, is not excluded
from this ‘folk’ status. It may appear to be safely ‘scientific’ and thus culturally neutral, but in fact it is not: technical
English is a variety of English and reflects, to some extent, culture-specific ways of thinking (and categorising) associated with
the English language. People — as researchers studying other people, or as people in real-life social association — cannot
directly access the emotional experience of others, and language is the usual mode of ‘packaging’ one’s experience so it may be
accessible to others. Careful description of linguistic data from as broad as possible a cross-linguistic base is thus an
important part of emotion research. All people experience biological events and processes associated with certain thoughts (or, as
psychologists say, ‘appraisals’), but there is more to ‘emotion’ than just these physiological phenomena. Speakers of some
languages talk about their emotional experiences as if they are located in some internal organ such as ‘the liver’, yet they
cannot localise feeling in this physical organ. This phenomenon needs to be understood better, and one of the problems is finding
a method of comparison that allows us to compare descriptions from different languages which show apparently great formal and
semantic variation. Some simple concepts including feel and body are universal or near-universal, and as such are good candidates
for terms of description which may help to eradicate confusion and exoticism from cross-linguistic comparison and semantic
typology. Semantic analysis reveals great variation in concepts of emotion across languages and cultures — but such analysis
requires a sound and well-founded methodology. While leaving room for different approaches to the task, we suggest that such a
methodology can be based on empirically established linguistic universal (or near-universal) concepts, and on ‘cognitive
scenarios’ articulated in terms of these concepts. Also, we warn against the danger of exoticism involved in taking all body part
references ‘literally’. Above all, we argue that what is needed is a combination of empirical cross-linguistic investigations and
a theoretical and methodological awareness, recognising the impossibility of exploring other people’s emotions without keeping
language in focus: both as an object and as a tool of study.
2023. APPROCHES PHILOSOPHIQUES ET LINGUISTIQUES DU SENS : LES ÉMOTIONS. Analele Universității din Craiova Seria Ştiinte Filologice Langues et littératures romanes 26:1 ► pp. 78 ff.
Santos, Diana & Alberto Simões
2022. Clustering emotions in Portuguese. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 21:1
Zhou, Pin, Hugo Critchley, Yoko Nagai & Chao Wang
2022. Divergent Conceptualization of Embodied Emotions in the English and Chinese Languages. Brain Sciences 12:7 ► pp. 911 ff.
Huisman, John L. A., Roeland van Hout & Asifa Majid
2021. Patterns of semantic variation differ across body parts: evidence from the Japonic languages. Cognitive Linguistics 32:3 ► pp. 455 ff.
Kubitsch, Rebeka
2021. Proceedings of the 5th Mikola Conference [Proceedings of the 5th Mikola Conference, 54], ► pp. 149 ff.
Tordesillas Colado, Marta
2021. Regards croisés sur la conception émotionnelle du langage. Les émotions linguistiques. Bulletin hispanique :123-2 ► pp. 77 ff.
2016. Their Hands Have Lost Their Bones: Exploring Cultural Scripts in Two West African Affect Lexica. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 45:6 ► pp. 1473 ff.
2015. Scandinavian semantics and the human body: an ethnolinguistic study in diversity and change. Language Sciences 49 ► pp. 51 ff.
Majid, Asifa & Miriam van Staden
2015. Can Nomenclature for the Body be Explained by Embodiment Theories?. Topics in Cognitive Science 7:4 ► pp. 570 ff.
Enfield, N. J.
2012. Paul Kockelman, Language, culture, and mind: Natural constructions and social kinds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. ix, 246. Hb. $106.. Language in Society 41:5 ► pp. 674 ff.
Collomb, Natacha
2011. Ce que le cœur sert à penser.. L'Homme :197 ► pp. 25 ff.
Argaman, Osnat
2010. Linguistic Markers and Emotional Intensity. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 39:2 ► pp. 89 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 december 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.