Chapter 13 - Emotion Categories Across Languages

Abstract

In this chapter, I assess the degree to which emotions are biologically endowed or culturally constructed, explore the nature of the similarities and differences among cultural emotion systems, and compare methods of carrying out that exploration. Rejecting both extreme universalism and relativism, I insist that emotions are at once absolutely biologically endowed and completely locally culturally constructed. I distinguish two major strategies for investigating the similarities and differences among cultural emotion systems. In the “translation method,” one proceeds by finding equivalent sets of emotion terms in two languages, asking native speakers to judge the similarity of the meanings of the terms, and assessing the degree to which the semantic relationships among the terms are similar for the two languages. In this case, translation is a prerequisite of the analysis. Unfortunately, this method presumes the answer to the research question itself. The degree of correspondence between emotion systems cannot be assessed if one presumes to know the corresponding terms from the outset. In the alternative “mapping method,” one proceeds by presenting emotionally evocative stimuli to native speakers, asking them to identify the emotion expressed in the emotional stimuli, and assessing the degree to which the implied similarity of the stimuli is similar for the two languages. In this method, translation is a consequence rather than a prerequisite of the analysis. I present the results of employing the mapping method to study the similarities and differences in the naming of emotional states from facial expressions and from emotional scenarios across a number of languages. I close with an outline of a research design for continued exploration of the patterns of similarities and differences among cultural emotion systems.