Complex Emotions And Grammatical Mismatches

Nominated for the Best contribution to Slavic Linguistics/AATSEEL book award 2011 The concept of complex emotions is obviously polysemous. On the one hand, we can interpret it as a non-basic, non-prototypical, or culture-specific notion, on the other - and this is the interpretation we propose in this work - a complex emotion concept can be looked upon as a concept whose complexity emerges in interaction, due to the complex nature of its object. Our interpretation is thus construction-based, one in which meaning is not to be found exclusively in the lexical semantics of the term, but also in the, clearly meaning-laden, grammatical construction, e.g. a complement clause, expressing the object or cause of the emotion. The construal of a scene mapped on the form of a complex sentence involves the emotion that is unambiguously complex and not necessarily universal or prototypical. We argue throughout this book that cross-linguistic grammatical mismatches are a visible sign of conceptual and categorizational distinctions between the conceptualization of emotion in different languages and cultures. They also signal differences in what individual speakers consider salient in a portrayed scene. We offer a contrastive corpus-based study of Polish and English emotion concepts and the linguistic patterns they enter. Our theoretical approach combines lexical semantics and cognitive linguistics and proposes a cognitive corpus linguistics methodology. It is a cognitive linguistic endeavor in which we analyze grammatical category mismatches and provide detailed semantic analyses of different complement choices of emotion predicates. We also discuss insights into Polish and English cultural values gleaned from the different underlying categorizations of emotions. Combining theoretical analyses with pedagogical theory and classroom applications, this work breaks new ground and will reach audiences of linguists, teachers and students of Polish, teachers and students of English, translators, and other language researchers and practitioners.

The series Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science is designed to illuminate a field which not only includes general linguistics and the study of linguistics as applied to specific languages, but also covers those more recent areas which have developed from the increasing body of research into the manifold forms of communicative action and interaction.

Interest in human emotion no longer equates to unscientific speculation. 21st-century humanities scholars are paying serious attention to our capacity to express emotions and giving rigorous explanations of affect in language. We are unquestionably witnessing an ‘emotional turn’ not only in linguistics, but also in other fields of scientific research. Emotion in Discourse follows from and reflects on this scholarly awakening to the world of emotion, and in particular, to its intricate relationship with human language. The book presents both the state of the art and the latest research in an effort to unravel the various workings of the expression of emotion in discourse. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, for emotion is a multifarious phenomenon whose functions in language are enlightened by such other disciplines as psychology, neurology, or communication studies. The volume shows not only how emotion manifests at different linguistic levels, but also how it relates to aspects like linguistic appraisal, emotional intelligence or humor, as well as covering its occurrence in various genres, including scientific discourse. As such, the book contributes to an emerging interdisciplinary field which could be labeled “emotionology”, transcending previous linguistic work and providing an updated characterization of how emotion functions in human discourse.

When using emotion terms such as anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and contempt, it is assumed that the terms used in the native language of the researchers, and translated into English, are completely equivalent in meaning. This is often not the case. This book presents an extensive cross-cultural/linguistic review of the meaning of emotion words

Publications on emotion (and the affective sciences in general) have exploded in the last decade. Numerous research teams and individual scholars from many different disciplines have published research papers or books about many different aspects of emotions and their role in behaviour and society. However, One aspect of emotional research that has been somewhat neglected, is the way in which emotional terms translate into other languages. When using terms like anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and joy for so-called basic emotions, as well as terms like shame, guilt, pride, regret and contempt for more complex emotions, it is naturally assumed that the emotion terms used for research in the native language of the researchers and translated into English are completely equivalent in meaning. However, this is not generally the case. In many cases there is no direct one to one relationship between an English term and a term in an alternative language. In fact, there can be significant differences in the way that these seemingly similar emotional terms can be applied across various languages, with important implications for how we review and appraise this work. This book presents an extensive cross-cultural and cross-linguistic review of the meaning of emotion words, adopting a novel methodological approach. Based on the Component Process Model, the authors developed a new instrument to assess the meaning of emotion terms. This instrument, the GRID questionnaire, consists of a grid of 24 emotion terms spanning the emotion domain and 142 emotion features that operationalize five emotion components (Appraisals, Bodily reactions, Expressions, Action tendencies, and Feelings). For the operationalization of these five emotion components, very different emotion models from the Western and the cultural-comparative emotion literature were taken into account. 'Components of Emotional Meaning' includes contributions from psychological, cultural-comparative, and linguistic perspectives demonstrating how this new instrument can be used to empirically study very different research questions on the meaning of emotion terms. The implications of the results for major theoretical debates on emotion are also discussed. For all researchers in the affective sciences, this book is an important new reference work.

The close relationship between motion (bodily movement) and emotion (feelings) is not an etymological coincidence. While moving ourselves, we move others; in observing others move – we are moved ourselves. The fundamentally interpersonal nature of mind and language has recently received due attention, but the key role of (e)motion in this context has remained something of a blind spot. The present book rectifies this gap by gathering contributions from leading philosophers, psychologists and linguists working in the area. Framed by an introducing prologue and a summarizing epilogue (written by Colwyn Trevarthen, who brought the phenomenological notion of intersubjectivity to a wider audience some 30 years ago) the volume elaborates a dynamical, active view of emotion, along with an affect-laden view of motion – and explores their significance for consciousness, intersubjectivity, and language. As such, it contributes to the emerging interdisciplinary field of mind science, transcending hitherto dominant computationalist and cognitivist approaches. Now Open Access as part of the Knowledge Unlatched 2017 Backlist Collection.

This book provides an overview of approaches to language and culture, and it outlines the broad interdisciplinary field of anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It identifies current and future directions of research, including language socialization, language reclamation, speech styles and genres, language ideology, verbal taboo, social indexicality, emotion, time, and many more. Furthermore, it offers areal perspectives on the study of language in cultural contexts (namely Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Europe), and it lays the foundation for future developments within the field. In this way, the book bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and linguistics and paves the way for the new book series Anthropological Linguistics.

This is a comprehensive guidebook to the quantitative methods needed for Corpus-Based Translation Studies (CBTS). It provides a systematic description of the various statistical tests used in Corpus Linguistics which can be used in translation research. In Part 1, Theoretical Explorations, the interplay between quantitative and qualitative methodologies is explored. Part 2, Essential Corpus Studies, describes how to undertake quantitative studies, with a suitable level of technical and relevant case studies. Part 3, Quantitative Explorations of Literary Translations, looks at translations of classic works by Cao Xueqin, James Joyce and other authors. Finally, Part 4 on Translation Lexis uses a variety of techniques new to translation studies, including multivariate analysis and game theory. This book is aimed at students and researchers of corpus linguistics, translation studies and quantitative linguistics. It will significantly advance current translation studies in terms of methodological innovation and will fill in an important gap in the development of quantitative methods for interdisciplinary translation studies.