Click here to listen to ‘Love and fury at the linguistics of emotions’
Emotions are a universal part of the human experience, but the specific ways we express them are mediated through language. For example, English uses the one word “love” for several distinct feelings: familial love, romantic love, platonic love, and loving things (I love this ice cream!), whereas Spanish distinguishes lexically between the less intense querer and the stronger amar. Conversely, many Austronesian languages use the same word for the concepts that English would split as “fear” and “surprise”, while many Nakh-Daghestani (Northeast Caucasian) languages use the same word for the cluster that English splits into “fear”, “anxiety”, and “grief”.
In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the layers of language that are involved in emotions, from how emotion words form different clusters of related meaning in different language families to how the way your face shape changes when you smile affects the pitch of your voice. We also talk about how our understanding of how to talk about emotion changes throughout history and our lifespan, and how bilingual people feel differently about emotional words in their different languages.
Here are the links mentioned in the episode:
Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure
‘Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?’ - Nautilus article
‘Language Development and Emotional Expression’ by Lois Bloom
‘'Stop Doing That, Ia Komu Skazala!': Language Choice and Emotions in Parent—Child Communication’ by Aneta Pavlenko
Lingthusiasm Episode ‘Making machines learn language - Interview with Janelle Shane’
‘‘Happy talk: Perceptual and acoustic effects of smiling on speech’ by V. C. Tartter
‘The voices of anger and disgust: Acoustic correlates in three languages’ by Marc D. Pell & Areej Alasseri
‘Relevant Angry Affect Slows Response Time To Commands’ by Aleah Combs
You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.
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Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com
Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, and our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
Here’s the link again to ‘Love and fury at the linguistics of emotions’
Thanks for listening, and stay Lingthusiastic!
Lauren & Gretchen