Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Language and Emotion
The role of named emotional concepts in emotional experience is really interesting. I agree with James' argument that "People describe their emotions in the language they know, and the categories of their culture undoubtedly influence the emotions they feel" (Yamaguchi, p.21). I feel that culturally unique emotions (Amae, Fago, Iajya, etc.) are in fact experienced by all cultures whether or not they are defined in language. The fact that the Japanese experience Amae positively while Americans find Amae-situations offensive (and only positive in that they have control) does not seem to be a difference in Japanese/American emotions themselves but a difference in cultural responses to a given situation. The role of language in the recognition of emotional experience seems almost deceptive because these same Americans, had Japanese been their first language/culture (and here we get into the "bilingual minds" theory), would test positively when faced with Amae-situations because their cultural responses (and not their emotional capacities) are activated/inhibited by different situations than an American from the US.
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2 comments:
I appreciated the discussion in this article of universality vs. cultural relativity. It is very interesting that while Americans do experience the emotion of Amae though there is no word for it, their "reactions" to it are different. Does this mean, using our more basic definition of feeling as what we are aware of about our emotions, that the emotion is universal and the feeling is not? As stated in the article "Control is important in American emotional experience, but less so in Japan." While for the Japanese amae fostered feelings of trust, closeness, relationship security, etc., in Americans the same emotion showed heightened sensitivity to to issues of control and power. Niiya Ellsworth, and Yamaguchi use the terms "the threshold between pleasant Amae and unpleasant Amae". It seems to me these are different feelings or experiences of what they are claiming is a universal emotion.
The more I read the more I just feel like we have no idea what we're talking about and the layman's current way of thinking about highly complex feelings and behaviors needs to be adjusted. Matsumoto describes the findings on the differences between Japanese and American external/internal displays as "totally unexpected." We had just been assuming that the Japanese suppressed their external display rating relative to subjective experience, when really it was the Americans exaggerating it. He says this and other findings are "wake-up calls," and force cross-culture researchers to ask more questions. I think it's interesting how we can get caught up on language when discussing and interpreting subjective experiences and behaviors. For example, when first reading the article and ideas about Amae, I was thrown off by what the emotion was that we were talking about it because we don't have a word for it exactly. But the more the idea was discussed, the more I realized that I've experienced and witnessed that emotion many times. Just because we don't have a word for it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I also thought it was interested how many bilinguals have reported different personalities and judgments and appraisals differently based on the language used.
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