........ published in NEWSLETTER # 57
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........ published in NEWSLETTER # 57
EVERYDAY CONCEPTIONS OF EMOTION
by Professor J.A. Russell, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada)
The topic of this book (NATO ASI SERIES D81) is the ordinary person's conceptualization of emotion - the categories and concepts of emotion, embedded within a broader network of knowledge, and used in everyday life. The book includes extensive discussion of how that conceptualization comes about and how it varies with culture. (The focus is thus not emotions themselves, nor scientific theories of emotion, but everyday "folk" theories of "cultural models" of emotion seen in different societies and at different ages). The ordinary understanding of emotion is at the center of how one person understands (and responds to, seeks to influence, and remembers) another. Some theories hold that understanding of emotion is at the center of the experience of emotion and emotion itself. The concepts of emotion (anger, fear, and the like) seem like natural categories. Many investigators assume that emotions are easily and naturally distinguished from non-emotions and that anger, fear, sadness, etc. are easily and naturally recognized as the types of emotion that exist. In contrast, anthropologists and linguists have obtained evidence that different languages recognize different categories of emotion - they carve up the domain differently - and that not all languages have a concept equivalent to emotion - that the borders around the domain are different.
Claims of variation in how emotions are categorized raise fundamental questions for the study of emotion. Is it possible that the emotions are categorized differently in different languages? If so, how large and widespread are the differences? What emotions might exist but go nameless in English? Might the concept expressed by our word -emotion- be culture-bound? What would such differences reveal about the nature of emotion categories, or about where those categories come from in the first place? What would such differences reveal about the emotions themselves? What would be the implications for scientific theories of emotion stated in English? Would we be justified in using in other cultures our English words for emotions? On the other hand is there good evidence of cultural differences, or are the reported differences isolated curiosities, or perhaps even mistranslations? Do lexical differences indicate any real differences in how people think? What about evidence familiar to all psychologists that recognition of facial expressions of emotion is universal - what does that evidence say about the role of culture in how emotions are categorized? Or vice versa? The relevant evidence, spread as it is across the literatures of psychology, linguistics, and anthropology, has not been brought together, and these questions have not been given the attention they deserve. Until now ...
Reference books: D44, D81