This paper addresses the question of how feelings are expressed in Kaytetye, a Central Australian language of the Pama-Nyugan family. It identifies three different formal constructions for expressing feelings, and explores the extent to which specific body part terms are associated with types of feelings, based on linguistic evidence in the form of lexical compounds, collocations and the way people talk about feelings. It is suggested that particular body part terms collocate with different feeling expressions for different reasons: either because (...) the body part is the perceived locus of the feeling, or because of a lexicalised polysemy of a body part term, or because of a metonymic association between a body part, a behaviour and a feeling. (shrink)

This paper describes several emotion expressions in Koromu, a language of Papua New Guinea. As in other languages, emotions can be expressed by reference to body events and processes. Bodily images are used for common and pertinent emotion expressions in Koromu and the alternative grammatical constructions in which some of these expressions occur enable speakers to express varying emotions while still indicating that there are shared semantic components between the expressions. In addition, as the emotion expressions are examined and their (...) meanings explicated, a number of universal concepts and components of meaning can be observed. A study of these language specific expressions therefore contributes to a cross-linguistic understanding of the relationship between emotion and the body. (shrink)

This article explores the correlations between linguistic figurative features and their corresponding conceptual representations, by considering their respective continuities and discontinuities in language shift. I compare the figurative encoding of emotions in Kriol, a creole of northern Australia, with those of Dalabon, one of the languages replaced by this creole, with a particular focus on evidence from metaphorical gestures. The conclusions are three-fold. Firstly, the prominent figurative association between the body and the emotions observed in Dalabon is, overall, not matched (...) in Kriol. Secondly, although this association is not prominent in Kriol, it is not entirely absent. It surfaces where speakers are less constrained by linguistic conventions: in non-conventionalized tropes, and gestures in particular. Indeed, some of the verbal emotion metaphors that have disappeared with language shift are preserved as gestural metaphors. Thus, Kriol speakers endorse the conceptual association between emotions and the body, in spite of the lower linguistic incidence of this association. The third conclusion is that therefore, in language shift, conceptual figurative representations and linguistic figurative representations are independent of each other. The former can persist when the latter largely disappear. Conversely, the fact that speakers endorse a certain type of conceptual representation does not entail that they will use corresponding linguistic forms in the new language. The transfer of linguistic figurative representations seems to depend, instead, upon purely linguistic parameters. (shrink)

Oneida has terms for emotions, as well as other mental activities, that include one of three noun roots referring to the mind: ¿mind, thought, spirit¿, ¿mind, thought¿, and ¿soul¿. There are no constructions in Oneida that describe emotions by referring to body organs, other than the mind, or characteristic bodily ¿symptoms¿, although some emotive interjections include the terms for ¿crack in the behind, anus¿ or ¿feces, excrement¿. Oneida speakers attribute their classification of diverse concepts as emotions to the idea that (...) all feelings reside in the mind. However, the issue of whether Oneida has an exponent for a semantic primitive feel is controversial. (shrink)

This contribution examines the use of body terms in expressions of emotion in Kuot, a non-Austronesian language of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. It is found that expressions involving the word for ‘stomach’, daləp, correspond mainly to what we would consider to be psychological states, while expressions making use of neip ‘skin; body’ are largely concerned with physical states. Some other body parts also form part of emotive expressions.

Various syntactical forms may be used for presenting an emotional event. The choice of a grammatical form may be related to cultural, social and personal attitudes towards the nature of emotions. One of the cases in which the consistency of choices is evident is the description of bodily changes during an emotional event. In one possible syntactic style, the human experiencer is in the center of attention when a somatic change takes place, or the experiencer actively produces the vocal or (...) facial communicative act. In a different syntactic style, the focus is on a body part or a physical sensation, which arises spontaneously and independently of the person’s will. Examples of translations from English into Hebrew and from Hebrew into English exemplify the syntactical alternatives. An empirical study is presented that links syntactic scripts to different emotion scenes. (shrink)

This paper examines the use and meaning of the body-part terms or quasi-body part terms associated with Japanese emotions. The terms analyzed are kokoro, mune, hara, ki, and mushi. In Japanese kokoro is regarded as the seat of emotions. Mune (roughly, ‘chest’) is the place where Japanese believe kokoro is located. Hara (roughly, ‘belly’) can be used to refer to the seat of ‘thinking’, for example in expression of anger-like feelings which entail a prior cognitive appraisal. The term ki (roughly, (...) ‘breath’) is also used for expressions dealing with emotions, temperament, and behaviour; among these, ki is mostly frequently used for referring to mental activity. Mushi — literally, a ‘worm’ which exists in the hara ‘belly’ — is also used for referring to specific emotion expressions. The tool for semantic analysis employed in this paper is the “Natural Semantic Metalanguage” method developed by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues. This metalanguage enables us to explicate concepts by means of simple words and grammar (easily translated across languages), and clarifies the similarities and dissimilarities between the components involved in semantically similar terms. The data used for analysis are from various sources; published literature both in Japanese and English, newspaper/magazine articles, film scripts, comic books, advertisements, dictionaries, and popular songs. (shrink)

Investigation of the emotions entails reference to words and expressions conventionally used for the description of emotion experience. Important methodological issues arise for emotion researchers, and the issues are of similarly central concern in linguistic semantics more generally. I argue that superficial and/or inconsistent description of linguistic meaning can have seriously misleading results. This paper is firstly a critique of standards in emotion research for its tendency to underrate and ill-understood linguistic semantics. It is secondly a critique of standards in (...) some approaches to linguistic semantics itself. Two major problems occur. The first is failure to distinguish between conceptually distinct meanings of single words, neglecting the well-established fact that a single phonological string can signify more than one conceptual category (i.e., that words can be polysemous). The second error involves failure to distinguish between two kinds of secondary uses of words: (1) those which are truly active “online” extensions, and (2) those which are conventionalised secondary meanings and not active (qua “extensions”) at all. These semantic considerations are crucial to conclusions one may draw about cognition and conceptualisation based on linguistic evidence. (shrink)

This study sets out to investigate the ¿poetry of grammar¿, more specifically the role of the body in figurative speech, in African languages mainly belonging to Nilotic and Bantu. Apprehending the semantics and pragmatics of metaphorical and metonymic expressions in these languages presupposes an interaction between a number of cognitive processes, as argued below. Interestingly, these languages seem to use these strategies involving figurative speech in tandem with alternative strategies involving on-record statements. This multivocality only makes sense if we place (...) language and language structure more in the social world in which it is used. (shrink)