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Language and Metalanguage: Key Issues in Emotion Research

School of Language Studies, The Australian National University, Australia, anna.wierzbicka{at}anu.edu.au

Building on the author's earlier work, this paper argues that language is a key issue in understanding human emotions and that treating English emotion terms as valid analytical tools continues to be a roadblock in the study of emotions. Further, it shows how the methodology developed by the author and colleagues, known as NSM (from Natural Semantic Metalanguage), allows us to break free of the "shackles" (Barrett, 2006) of English psychological terms and explore human emotions from a culture-independent perspective. The use of NSM makes it possible to study human emotions from a genuinely cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, as well as a psychological, perspective and thus "opens up new possibilities for the scientific understanding of subjectivity and psychological experience" (Goddard, 2007).

Key Words: "basic emotions," emotions and cultural scripts • language in emotion research • new ways of studying subjectivity • NSM methodology

Emotion Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, 3-14 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1754073908097175


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