Conceptual and Cultural Issues in Emotion Research

Abstract

The main points of Wierzbicka's (1995) article are summarized, followed by an analysis of some of the concerns that were raised by the commentators. As suggested by its title, 'Emotion and Facial Expression: A Semantic Perspective' is an attempt to apply a uniform framework for semantic analysis to two domains of emotional expression-words and facial expressions-and to advance some hypotheses about how they are related. Wierzbicka argues that linguistic research shows that no emotion word of English (or any other language) has a simple and undecomposable meaning; rather, the emotion words of different languages encode complex and largely culture-specific perspectives on 'ways of feeling', linking feelings with specific kinds of thoughts and wants (prototypical cognitive scenarios). Essentially, the claim is that the meanings of words like angry, proud, lonesome, etc., embody little 'cultural stories' about human nature and human interaction. To uncover and state such stories in non-ethnocentric terms, however, requires a framework of semantic universals. We need to go beyond the 'either-or' question and seek both the universal core of communication, as well as the precise role of culture. Like Wierzbicka, I believe that the natural semantic metalanguage is a new method which will assist us to reach that goal.