A Culturally salient Polish Emotion: Przykro (pron. pshickro)

Abstract

The author analyzes, on the basis of naturally occurring examples, the Polish word przykro, which, she argues, plays an important role in Polish “emotion talk.” She compares and contrasts this word with its closest English counterparts, such as hurt, offended, sorry, and sad, and she shows how each of these English words differs in meaning from the Polish key word przykro. To be able to show, clearly and precisely, what these differences are, she relies on the “Natural Semantic Metalanguage” (“NSM”), based on a set of empirically established lexical and grammatical universals. In doing so, she seeks to demonstrate the explanatory power of the proposed methodological framework (the “NSM” semantic theory). At the same time the author shows how language-specific lexical categories such as the Polish word przykro are linked with a culture's core values. She also shows the cultural implications of the lexical category “hurt” in Anglo culture, and discusses the cultural implications of the absence of a word like przykro in English, and of a word like hurt in Polish.