EMOTIONS, EMOTION TERMS AND EMOTION CONCEPTS IN AN ESTONIAN FOLK MODEL

Abstract

Introduction Emotions can be treated as a natural part of human experience. It is equally natural to constantly experience and to think and talk about this experience. Words and concepts can be treated as the main tools of talking and thinking, respectively. Yet what are the interrelations of ubiquitous experiential units (emotions), units of cognitive processing (concepts) and units of verbal communication (words) is far from obvious. There are figurative and literal expressions in languages for both expressing and describing emotional experience (Kovesces 2000). Though there are differences across languages in the range and scope of specific emotion terms, the very principles of conceptualising have been claimed to be universal (Wierzbicka 1999). Some cognitive linguists have argued that in the vocabulary of a specific domain a folk theory or layperson's model of the domain is built up (Oim 1999). A layperson's model represents the socially relevant common sense of a topic in a given culture, the basic level knowledge that most people share and by which most part of their everyday experience is interpreted. It is not clear, however, whether a layperson's model is mostly influenced by the realm it intermediates (e.g. emotions), the realm it serves (social norms and interactions) or the realm it is carried by (a specific language). The universality vs specificity of emotions, emotion terms and emotion concepts across cultures and languages is a topic of interdisciplinary interest to anthropologists, psychologists and linguists (e.g. Scherer & Wallbott 1994, Russell et al 1995, Hupka et al 1999, Wiercbicka 1999). The field methods originally used in anthropology and psychology have been introduced into linguistics. A tradition of empirical studies based on field methods and reliable data was derived from the cross-cultural study of folk colour terms by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay emphasising the evolutionary universality of vocabularies (Berlin & Kay 1969). Different semantic fields have been studied with similar methodology, e.g. terms of botanical and zoological life-forms (C. H. Brown, 1977, 1979), etc. Also an attempt has been made to demonstrate the universal development of emotion categories in 64 natural languages (Hupka et al 1999). The present study explores the folk model of as it presents itself in the Estonian emotion vocabulary. Two interrelated topics are discussed: the role of emotions, emotion terms and concepts in the layperson's model and the relevant facets of the popular emotion category in Estonian. 2. A case study: emotion vocabulary of Estonians 2.1. Background Estonians are a nation of about 1 million situated on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland. Although they speak a Finno-Ugric language, relation to Western cultures (especially German) is supposed to be dominant by some researchers (e.g. Ross 2002). As in any other language there are plenty of words in Estonian, referring to and differentiating between the qualitative and quantitative aspects of emotional experience. The boundaries of the natural category emotions itself are yet not clear in Estonian as this category seems to be mixed and blended with another closely related natural category feelings. (2) There is no linguistic nor anthropological analysis of Estonian emotion terms available so far. The earlier attempts to explore the Estonian vocabulary referring to emotional experience (Veski 1996, Allik 1997, Kastik 2000) belong to the field of psychology. The goal of these investigations has been to ascertain not a layperson's emotion vocabulary per se, but the use of the vocabulary for the description of experience. Juri Allik has found out that most of the variation of emotion vocabulary is accounted for by two dimensions: Positive Affect and Negative Affect, which are claimed to be unipolar dimensions, not to be regarded as opposites (Allik 1997, Allik & Realo 1997). …