Metaphorical and literal profiling in the study of emotions

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the conceptualization of anger as viewed from two disciplinary perspectives: Conceptual Metaphor Theory and emotion psychology. In the first study, twenty varieties of anger lexicalized in three languages (English, Russian, and Spanish) are characterized using the Metaphorical Profile Approach, a quantitative corpus-based assessment of the meaning of emotion words in metaphorical contexts. In the second study, the same set of lexemes is analyzed using a psycholinguistic feature-rating instrument adapted to the study of near-synonyms. Our results demonstrate congruence of the two methods in unveiling the internal organization of the anger family of terms in each language, and the reasons for this organization. In particular, the metaphorical and the feature-based profiles provide consistent insight about variation in bodily heat, expressiveness, regulation, action tendencies (aggression and drive to act), regulation, and the temporal characteristics of anger experiences. To conclude, we discuss the mutual complementarity of the two profiling methodologies and their relevance for a wider research context.

Notes

¹ See also Niedenthal et al. (2004) and Zammuner (1998) for intensity as the strongest predictor of prototypicality in the emotion lexicon.

² In English, 594 additional KWIC citations were extracted from the Bank of English for indignation. In Spanish, additional contexts of use were sought in CREA for furia (107), frustración (796), indignación (250), and irritación (828).

³ The complete version of the questionnaire can be retrieved from http://www.affective-sciences.org/files/9614/9372/8273/Ch_22_-http://www.affective-sciences.org/files/9614/9372/8273/Ch_22_-_Table_SM_1.pdf

⁴ Centering means that for each term the average score was computed across the 95 features in a language sample and then subtracted from each feature score in that sample.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) and Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences (financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (51NF40-104897) and hosted by the University of Geneva). The authors gratefully acknowledge Galina Elizarova, Natalia Sigareva, Tatiana Yudina (Herzen State Pedagogical University), Yana Volkova, Svetlana Ionova, Viktor I. Shakhovskyy (University of Volgograd), Nicole Lord (Case Western Reserve University, USA), Ms. M. de Saint Robert, and C. Pinali Poltera (the United Nations Office, Geneva), for their valuable assistance in obtaining some of the data samples.