4. Approaches to
Emotions
Emotions are a subject which seems
to interest most people, because we
interested in our feelings and those
of the others.
In the last years, the nature and the
meaning of emotions have discussed
in anthropology psychology, and
semantics.
The relationship between emotions
and the body.
04 (Goddard,2011)
5. Approaches to
Emotions
Emotions are essentially physical.
The physical theory of emotion by
William James.
o Fear trembling and excitement.
Happiness do not have any
characteristics bodily signs associated
with them.
05 (Goddard,2011)
6. Approaches to
Emotions
Emotions are essentially physiological.
The basic emotions are inbuilt as part
of human neurophysiology.
‘Anger’, ‘fear’, ‘surprise’, ‘sadness’, ‘joy’,
and ‘disgust’.
o Delight = joy + surprise
06 (Goddard,2011)
7. Approaches to
Emotions
The basic emotions has its own
specific facial expression which can be
identifies across language and culture
barriers.
It has come under criticism for its
assumption that emotional variations
across culture is fairly limited .
07 (Goddard,2011)
8. Approaches to
Emotions
Natural semantic metalanguage (NSM)
linguists have contributed many studies
which demonstrate cross-linguistic
differences in the meaning of emotion
words and at the same time show that
many languages lack any words whose
meanings match those of the supposed
basic emotions.
There are two rival position to the basic
emotions theory :
A. Cognitive Approach
B. Social Constructivist Approach
08 (Goddard,2011)
9. Approaches to Emotions
• Emotions depend in large part on
cognitive process.
Anger that one has been wronged
with an urge to revenge.
• It stresses the cultural aspect
of emotional.
• Social judgments, cultural
values, and other cultural
practices shape and create
emotions.
Cognitive Approach
Social Constructivist
Approach
09 (Goddard,2011)
11. Approaches to
Emotions
One source of ethnocentrism in studies
of emotion is the practice of using
complex and English specific terms as
they were part of universal, culture-free
metalanguage.
We need to resort to simple English
words that have counterparts in other
languages.
FEEL, THINK, WANT, GOOD, AND BAD
11 (Goddard,2011)
14. Iordanskaja’s Work on
Russian Emotions
Iordanskaja sees the fundamental
requirement of semantics as ‘standardizing
the semantics description of language
units’.
The definition of emotion should consists
of two kinds of component:
A. ‘Internal description of the emotional
state’.
B. ‘The reason for its occurrence’.
14 (Goddard,2011)
15. Iordanskaja’s Work on
Russian Emotions
A. ‘Internal description of the emotional
state’
• Positive (good feeling)
• Negative (bad feeling)
• Active OR Passive
Examples:
o vosxis͂c͂enie ‘delight’ positive, active state.
o gnev ‘anger’ negative active state.
15 (Goddard,2011)
16. Iordanskaja’s Work on
Russian Emotions
B. ‘The reason for its occurrence’
Such a reason is always an evaluation of
some event by the subject of the emotion,
that is, an aggregate of opinion on this
event, is evaluation from the point of view of
its desirability, and for active state, a wish in
connection with this event.
15 (Goddard,2011)
17. Iordanskaja’s Work
on Russian Emotions
‘fear’
ogorc͂enie
‘grief’
strax nadez͂da
‘hope’
radost
‘joy’
gnev
‘anger’
udivlenie
‘surprise’
17 (Goddard,2011)
18. Iordanskaja’s Work on
Russian Emotions
The main features of the classifications:
1. The experiencer’s assessment of the
likelihood of trigging event.
2. The experiencer’s evaluate the event as
good or bad.
3. The experiencer wants to do anything in
relation to the trigger event.
Strax ‘fear’
gnev ‘anger
ogorc͂enie ‘grief’
18 (Goddard,2011)
19. Iordanskaja’s Work on
Russian Emotions
Radost ‘joy’ group
o vosxis͂c͂at’sja ‘be delight with’
An obsolute judgement of value.
o radovat’sja ‘be glad of’
Something has happened which the experiencer
wants.
gnev ‘anger, rage’ group
o vozmus͂c͂enie ‘indignation’
A judgment about how people in general should
act.
o Zavit ‘envy’
The experiencer’s concern is with the adverse
effect on him.
19 (Goddard,2011)
21. Wierzbicka on Emotion
Concept
Wierzbicka has employed the
concept of a prototypical scenario
from literature.
Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
The author conveys a great variety
of emotions by means of ingenious
hypothetical scenarios.
21 (Goddard,2011)
22. Wierzbicka on Emotion
Concept
o ‘From after dinner till early evening Kitty
felt as a young man does before battle’
o ‘He felt now rather as a man might do
returning home and finding his own
house locked up’
o ‘Vronsky … had such a disagreeable
sensation as a man tortured by thirst
might feel on reaching a spring and
finding a dog, sheep, or a pig in it,
drinking the water and making it
muddy’.
22 (Goddard,2011)
23. Wierzbicka on Emotion
Concept
References to imaginary situation of this
kind are individual not general.
Emotion’s words link with prototypical
cognitive scenarios involving thought
and wants.
o Sadness bad feeling ‘something
bad happened’.
o Joy good feeling ‘something very
good is happened now’.
23 (Goddard,2011)
25. Semantic Template for
Emotion Words
‘format’ Semantic Template
o She/he was happy.
o She/he is angry.
o She/he will be disappointed.
The basic idea is that being happy, angry,
or disappointed, means being in certain
state of mind and because of that
experiencing a certain kind of feeling
which is seen as normally linked with
such a mental state.
25
(Goddard,2011)
26. Semantic Template for
Emotion Words
The semantic template for English emotion
adjective with verb ‘to be’
a. Someone X thought like this at this time:
‘_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _’
b. because of this, this someone felt something
(very) good/bad at this time
c. like someone can feel when they think like this
(a). ‘someone X thought like this at this time’
(b). ‘feel tone’
(c). How people feel when they have such thoughts.
26
(Goddard,2011)
27. Semantic Template for
Emotion Words
The semantic template for English emotion
adjective with verb ‘to feel’
. Someone X felt happy/angry/disappointed at
this time
. this someone felt something (very) good/bad at
this time
. like someone can feel when they think like this:
‘_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _’
It explains why it is possible to ‘feel’ some
emotions without being aware of the cause.
27 (Goddard,2011)
28. Technical Terms
● Cognitive: It is relating to the mental processes of perception, memory,
judgment, and reasoning, as contrasted with emotional processes.
● Social constructivist: It emphasizes the importance of social interaction
and cooperative learning in constructing both cognitive and emotional
images of reality.
● Basic emotions: They are hypothesized to be a special class of emotions
out of which all other emotions are compounded.
● Ethnocentrism: The belief that the people, customs, and traditions of your
own race or country are better than those of other races or countries.
28
