Chapter 3 :Folk emotion concepts: Lexicalization of emotional experiences across languages and cultures

Authors : A. Ogarkova

Abstract : The chapter overviews an expansive research area spanning several disciplines in the affective sciences (such as emotion psychology, anthropology, and linguistics) where emotion words are assumed to be good entry points for the study of culture-embedded (‘folk’) emotion concepts. On outlining major dimensions in current theorizing of the interrelationship between emotion words, concepts, and experiences, the chapter proceeds to discuss the state-of-the-art empirical evidence on emotion lexicalization in different languages of the world, focusing on both the similarities and the differences therein. This literature review convincingly suggests the saliency of emotion components (such as the emotion-eliciting events, emotional expression, regulation, and so on) which appear to not only discriminate individual emotion words across languages, but also clusters of terms, or even entire emotion vocabularies. The chapter concludes with the discussion of the implications of this evidence for cross-cultural research on the emotion lexicon.

Keywords : folk emotion concepts emotion lexicalization cross-cultural differences emotion universals