FEAR across languages: Universal vs. culture-specific? | SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2022-11-10

Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.

SOAS Linguistics Seminars
FEAR across languages: Universal vs culture-specific?

Tania Kuteva
Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf
SOAS University of London

Jointly with: Seongha Rhee (Mahidol University/Hankuk University), Sunhee Yae (Chung-Ang University), Zahra Ghane (Isfahan University/Heinrich-Heine University) and Danna Chandra-Menendez (Heinrich-Heine University)

Abstract: According to the Classical View of emotions (Paul Ekman 2012, 2014 and associates), there is a limited number of so called “basic” emotions (anger, fear, disgust, sadness, enjoyment) that are universal, built-in reflexes, i.e. automatic reactions to various experiences that all human beings share. Each of these emotions has a distinct “fingerprint”. In other words, not only are these emotions universal but their representations, too, are universal: the same facial reaction to express one specific emotion can be found everywhere in the world, and it can be recognized by everyone. It is predictable – on this view – that each basic emotion correlates with a particular body-related physiological pattern as well as a particular brain activity circuitry.

On a much more recent view of emotions, the Construction View (Lisa Feldman Barrett and associates), emotions are regarded in a radically different way. On this view, emotions are not universal; what an emotion is, is different for different people, and cultures.. Even more shockingly, in some cultures there´s no real distinction between thinking and feeling. Within the framework of the Construction Theory of Emotions, it is this standpoint that is argued to be supported by the neuroscience.

In Barrett´s (2017, 2020) work, an attempt is made to build a “window” on emotions from the perspective of psychological neuroscience. In the current – pilot – study, our goal is to put to the test both the Classical and the Construction Theory of Emotions from a linguistic perspective.

The question we ask is: Does the linguistic realization of emotions support the view that they are universal and that each of them has a distinct fingerprint, as the Classical View would have it, or does it rather indicate that emotions are cultural constructs as proposed by the Construction View?

Here we focus on the expression of an emotion that has been traditionally assumed to be basic, universal, and automatically triggered, fear. Our starting point is the assumption that cognition and emotion work in tandem and that they are manifested in language.

We conclude, however, that this is only half of the story. The other half is, we argue, that language – and the culture it is embedded in – plays a crucial role in how we conceptualize the world and how we experience – or rather, how we construct – emotions, too.

Our claim is that – from a linguistic point of view – the expression of fear in language is compatible with the corollaries of the hypothesis proposed in the Construction Theory of Emotions.

On the other hand, we can neither prove nor disprove the Classical Theory of Emotions since the hypothesis it proposes is not verifiable from a linguistic point of view.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7257396