Anna Wierzbicka

It is widely believed that there are some emotions which are universally associated with distinctive facial expressions and that one can recognize, universally, an angry face, a happy face, a sad face, and so on. The "basic emotions " are believed to be part of the biological makeup of human species and to be therefore "hardwired". In contrast to this view, Or tony and Turner have suggested that it is not emotions but some components of emotions which are universally linked with certain facial expressions, or rather with some components of facial expressions. Ortony and Turner have made a good case for this hypothesis. But the theory will be more convincing - and indeed more verifiable - if the postulated "dissociable components of emotions" are formulated in a rigorous, and culture-independent manner. The paper argues that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, based on universal semantic primitives and devised by the author and colleagues, provides a suitable culture-independent framework.

In this paper we try to crack one of the hardest and most intriguing chestnuts in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics and to identify the meaning of the celebrated Singaporean particle lah — the hallmark of Singapore English. In pursuing this goal, we investigate the use of lah and seek to identify its meaning by trying to find a paraphrase in ordinary language which would be substitutable for lah in any context. In doing so, we try to enter the speakers' minds, and as John Locke urged in his pioneering work on particles, “observe nicely“ the speakers' “postures of the mind in discoursing“. At the same time, we offer a general model for the investigation of discourse markers and show how the methodology based on the “NSM“ semantic theory allows the analyst to link pragmatics, via semantics, with the study of cognition.

Since English is not a neutral scientific language for the description of emotions (or anything else), then the key question is what (meta)language other than English can be used instead. I draw a distinction between “experiential meaning” which can only be acquired through lived experience, and “compositional meaning” which can be adequately portrayed in the mini-language of universal human concepts (NSM) developed through wide-ranging cross-linguistic investigations. The article rejects both the anglocentrism of emotion studies which take English concepts for granted and the “zoocentrism” which seeks to reduce human emotions to “mammalian responses,” behavioral patterns or neuro-physiological states. It argues that any discourse on emotions not anchored in universal human concepts is inherently ethnocentric (more often than not, anglocentric)

This paper points out that a major shift of paradigm is currently going on in the study of the human face and it seeks to articulate and to develop the fundamental assumptions underlying this shift. The main theses of the paper are: 1) Facial expressions can convey meanings comparable to the meanings of verbal utterances. 2) Semantic analysis (whether of verbal utterances or of facial expressions) must distinguish between the context-independent invariant and its contextual interpretations. 3) Certain components of facial behavior (¿facial gestures¿) do have constant context-independent meanings. 4) The meanings of facial components and configurations of components have an inherent first-person and present tense orientation. 5) The basis for the interpretation of facial gestures is, above all, experiential. 6) The meanings of some facial expressions are universally intelligible and can be interpreted without reference to any local conventions. 7) To be fruitful, the semantic analysis of facial expressions needs a methodology. This can be derived from the methodological experience of linguistic semantics. The author illustrates and supports these theses by analyzing a range of universally interpretable facial expressions such as the following ones: ¿brow furrowed¿ (i.e. eyebrows drawn together); eyebrows raised; eyes wide open; corners of the mouth raised; corners of the mouth lowered; mouth open (while not speaking); lips pressed together; upper lip and nose ¿raised¿ (and, consequently, nose wrinkled)

Building on the author's earlier work, this paper argues that language is a key issue in understanding human emotions and that treating English emotion terms as valid analytical tools continues to be a roadblock in the study of emotions. Further, it shows how the methodology developed by the author and colleagues, known as NSM (from Natural Semantic Metalanguage), allows us to break free of the “shackles” (Barrett, 2006) of English psychological terms and explore human emotions from a culture-independent perspective. The use of NSM makes it possible to study human emotions from a genuinely cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, as well as a psychological, perspective and thus “opens up new possibilities for the scientific understanding of subjectivity and psychological experience” (Goddard, 2007)

Anthropologists and linguists have long been aware that the body is explicitly referred to in conventional description of emotion in languages around the world. There is abundant linguistic data showing expression of emotions in terms of their imagined ¿locus¿ in the physical body. The most important methodological issue in the study of emotions is language, for the ways people talk give us access to ¿folk descriptions¿ of the emotions. ¿Technical terminology¿, whether based on English or otherwise, is not excluded from this ¿folk¿ status. It may appear to be safely ¿scientific¿ and thus culturally neutral, but in fact it is not: technical English is a variety of English and reflects, to some extent, culture-specific ways of thinking (and categorising) associated with the English language. People ¿ as researchers studying other people, or as people in real-life social association ¿ cannot directly access the emotional experience of others, and language is the usual mode of ¿packaging¿ one¿s experience so it may be accessible to others. Careful description of linguistic data from as broad as possible a cross-linguistic base is thus an important part of emotion research. All people experience biological events and processes associated with certain thoughts (or, as psychologists say, ¿appraisals¿), but there is more to ¿emotion¿ than just these physiological phenomena. Speakers of some languages talk about their emotional experiences as if they are located in some internal organ such as ¿the liver¿, yet they cannot localise feeling in this physical organ. This phenomenon needs to be understood better, and one of the problems is finding a method of comparison that allows us to compare descriptions from different languages which show apparently great formal and semantic variation. Some simple concepts including feel and body are universal or near-universal, and as such are good candidates for terms of description which may help to eradicate confusion and exoticism from cross-linguistic comparison and semantic typology. Semantic analysis reveals great variation in concepts of emotion across languages and cultures ¿ but such analysis requires a sound and well-founded methodology. While leaving room for different approaches to the task, we suggest that such a methodology can be based on empirically established linguistic universal (or near-universal) concepts, and on ¿cognitive scenarios¿ articulated in terms of these concepts. Also, we warn against the danger of exoticism involved in taking all body part references ¿literally¿. Above all, we argue that what is needed is a combination of empirical cross-linguistic investigations and a theoretical and methodological awareness, recognising the impossibility of exploring other people¿s emotions without keeping language in focus: both as an object and as a tool of study

“It is a noble task to try to understand others, and to have them understand you but it is never an easy one”, says Everett. This paper argues that a basic prerequisite for understanding others is to have some shared concepts on which this understanding can build. If speakers of different languages didn’t share some concepts to begin with then cross-cultural understanding would not be possible even with the best of will on all sides. Current Anthropology For example, Everett claims that Pirahã has no word for “mother”, no words for “before’ and “after”, no words for “one”, “two” and “all” and no words comparable to ‘think” and “want”. These claims are based, I believe, on faulty semantic analysis, and in particular, on a determination not to recognize polysemy under any circumstances. As I see it, at many points this stance makes nonsense of Everett’s own data and distorts the conceptual world of the Pirahã. Since he does not want to recognize the existence of any shared concepts, Everett is also not prepared to address the question of a culture-neutral metalanguage in which Pirahã and English conceptual categories could be compared. This often leads him to imposing cultural categories of English on the conceptual world of the Pirahã. The result is a combination of exoticism and Anglocentrism which doesn’t do justice to Everett’s long and intimate engagement with the Pirahã people and their language. Sadly, it blinds him to what Franz Boas called “the psychic unity of mankind”, reflected in the common semantic features of human languages and fully compatible with the cultural shaping of their lexicons and grammars.

This article focuses on the emergence of a new subfield of emotion research known as “history of emotions.” People’s emotional lives depend on the construals which they impose on events, situations, and human actions. Different cultures and different languages suggest different habitual construals, and since habitual construals change over time, as a result, habitual feelings change, too. But to study construals we need a suitable methodology. The article assumes that such a methodology is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and it applies the NSM approach to the history of “happiness,” an emotion which is very much at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines. The article shows how the “history of emotions” can be combined with cultural semantics and why this combination opens new perspectives before the whole interdisciplinary field of emotion research