Does emotion terms have the same meaning across cultures?

By mapping the meanings of the words used to communicate emotions across more than one-third of the planet’s spoken languages, researchers found that there is significant variation in how emotions are expressed across cultures.

The authors examined nearly 2500 languages to determine the degree of similarity in linguistic networks of 24 emotion terms across cultures . There were low levels of similarity, and thus high variability, in the meaning of emotion terms across cultures.

Similarity of emotion terms could be predicted on the basis of the geographic proximity of the languages they originate from, their hedonic valence, and the physiological arousal they evoke.

Cultural variation in the meaning of emotions

The results of this latest research highlight both

biological and cultural processes that influence the way we think about and

experience emotions. The cross-cultural variation in the meaning of emotions

suggests that people around the world may experience emotions differently. For

example, while the concept of love was more related to happy in Indo-European

languages, it was more related to pity in Austronesian languages. And while the

concept of anxiety was more related to fear in Tai-Kadai languages, it was more

often paired with grief in Austroasiatic languages.

The colexification patterns of emotions depended on the

geographic proximity of the languages. Those language families that were closer

to each other tended to group emotion concepts more similarly than those

increased opportunities for contact between speakers of those languages—through

languages that were far apart. According to the researchers, this may be due to

their emotions.

trade, migration, or shared ancestry—which, in time, influenced the way they conceptualized

 Universal structure in the meaning of emotions

The study also found universals in the way people mapped

meaning to emotions across languages. For example, in almost all languages,

positively valenced (pleasant) emotions belonged to different colexification

communities than negatively valenced (unpleasant) emotions, and there was a

activation. In other words, “all humans appear to feel and express feelings of

similar separation between emotions that were high or low in physiological

author Joshua Conrad Jackson, since valence and arousal highlight biological

positivity versus negativity and feelings of arousal versus calm,” says lead

systems that help maintain homeostasis.  

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6472/1517

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