Russian Emotional Concepts in the Multilingual Technological Environment

Abstract

AbstractWhat happens to specific linguocultural emotional concepts in the contemporary multilingual technological environment? This issue is discussed on the example of several Russian emotional concepts described by A.Wierzbicka in the framework of the NSM approach. The NSM descriptions are compared to representations of the same concepts in IT applications explicitly related to the theory of basic emotions, and to their representations in RuWordNet. Both NSM descriptions of emotional concepts and their representations in RuWordNet retain their linguocultural specificity, although in different ways. Both of these ways of embedding specific emotional concepts in the multilingual environment are incompatible with the theory of basic emotions, but quite consistent with the Conceptual Act Theory of Emotion, which is more promising from a methodological point of view. If these methods prevail in the future, then the global multilingual environment will become semantically richer, because it will be able to absorb the semantic specifics of individual cultures. On the other hand, the uncritical use in computer applications of universalist ideas associated with the theory of basic emotions creates the illusion that these emotions are indeed universal. That is why, in the multilingual technological environment, the theory of basic emotions can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If this scenario dominates in the future, then the global multilingual culture will become semantically more primitive compared to the diversity of cultures that exists today.KeywordsLinguocultural conceptsEmotionsSemanticsNSMITWordNet