Cristina Soriano

The conceptualisation of despair in Basque, Spanish, and English

The present book reports an extensive cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study on the meaning of emotion words adopting a novel methodological approach. Based on the Component Process Model a new instrument was developed to assess the meaning of emotion terms. This instrument, the GRID questionnaire, consists of a grid of 24 emotion terms spanning the emotion domain and 142 emotion features that operationalize five emotion components (Appraisals, Bodily Reactions, Expressions, Action Tendencies, and Feelings). For the operationalization of these five emotion components very different emotion models from the Western and the cultural-comparative emotion literature have been taken into account. The book reports the empirical results obtained with this instrument in 34 samples representing 27 countries and 24 languages. It is demonstrated that the semantic space covered by the emotion terms can be adequately represented by a four-dimensional structure, namely by valence, power, arousal, and novelty. This factor structure can be used as a point of reference to study meaning differences between cultural and linguistic groups. As the GRID instrument integrates very different emotion theories from different scientific disciplines, the instrument lends itself to multidisciplinary exchange and research. In addition to a presentation of the overall emotion meaning structure emerging across the cultural and linguistic groups, contributions from psychological, cultural-comparative, and linguistic perspectives demonstrate how the new instrument can be used to empirically study very different research questions on the meaning of emotion terms. The implications of the results for major theoretical debates on emotion are discussed.The present book reports an extensive cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study on the meaning of emotion words adopting a novel methodological approach. Based on the Component Process Model a new instrument was developed to assess the meaning of emotion terms. This instrument, the GRID questionnaire, consists of a grid of 24 emotion terms spanning the emotion domain and 142 emotion features that operationalize five emotion components (Appraisals, Bodily Reactions, Expressions, Action Tendencies, and Feelings). For the operationalization of these five emotion components very different emotion models from the Western and the cultural-comparative emotion literature have been taken into account. The book reports the empirical results obtained with this instrument in 34 samples representing 27 countries and 24 languages. It is demonstrated that the semantic space covered by the emotion terms can be adequately represented by a four-dimensional structure, namely by valence, power, arousal, and novelty. This factor structure can be used as a point of reference to study meaning differences between cultural and linguistic groups. As the GRID instrument integrates very different emotion theories from different scientific disciplines, the instrument lends itself to multidisciplinary exchange and research. In addition to a presentation of the overall emotion meaning structure emerging across the cultural and linguistic groups, contributions from psychological, cultural-comparative, and linguistic perspectives demonstrate how the new instrument can be used to empirically study very different research questions on the meaning of emotion terms. The implications of the results for major theoretical debates on emotion are discussed.

Effects of achievement contexts on the meaning structure of emotion words

ABSTRACT Little is known about the impact of context on the meaning of emotion words. In the present study, we used a semantic profiling instrument (GRID) to investigate features representing five emotion components (appraisal, bodily reaction, expression, action tendencies, and feeling) of 11 emotion words in situational contexts involving success or failure. We compared these to the data from an earlier study in which participants evaluated the typicality of features out of context. Profile analyses identified features for which typicality changed as a function of context for all emotion words, except contentment, with appraisal features being most frequently affected. Those context effects occurred for both hypothesised basic and non-basic emotion words. Moreover, both data sets revealed a four-dimensional structure. The four dimensions were largely similar (valence, power, arousal, and novelty). The results suggest that context may not change the underlying dimensionality but affects facets of the meaning of emotion words.

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.