Emotion concepts in context: Figurative conceptualizations of hayâ 'self-restraint' in Persian (original) (raw)
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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Language, Communication and Culture Studies (ICLCCS 2022), 2022
Language is a manifestation of the imaginary system of the mind and the metaphors used in the language reflect our intellectual infrastructure. Understanding the metaphor and its cultural and sensory status is very useful in recognizing and understanding language and communication. One of the important roles of language is to convey each person's emotions to other people. Emotions are abstract concepts that can be objectified through metaphors. In this study, by examining the metaphors of sadness and happiness in the everyday speeches of Persian-speaking citizens, we found that, to express happiness, "good mental and physical condition" and "material" and to express sadness, "illness", "stress" and "burden" are the most frequent domains. As a matter of fact, metaphor is one of the most efficacious characteristic in strengthening the language that increases the reader's attention to the text as well as enhance language power in conveying emotions.
The structure of Persian emotion lexicon: A prototype approach
Emotion terminology of human languages has recently been the subject of a lot of linguistic investigations from many different ankles. In line with the previous studies dealing with prototype approach to emotion concepts on four languages-American English, Chinese, Indonesian, and Basque, this study was conducted in Shiraz, Iran, where an ancient language called Persian is spoken, to identify the mental state words that Persian speakers are mostly certain name emotions and to map the hierarchical and family resemblance structure of the most prototypical emotion concepts. Cluster analysis of the data collected from Persian revealed five basic level emotion categories (love, happiness, anger, sadness, and fear) similar to those found in the four other languages mentioned above, as well as another small positive emotion category mostly associated with religious ideas that had not been found in the four previous studies. Persian emotion concepts, in line with the other four languages, belonged to either negative or positive emotions. Major categories found at the basic level contained several terms that were semantically linked. Each of the five large basic level categories contained several subordinate level categories. The results suggest that the emotion lexicon, and corresponding conceptualizations of the emotion domain, for speakers of Persian, Indonesian, Chinese, Basque, and the American English, are similar, although there are some minor differences to be investigated in the light of culture-specific factors.
Emotion and sincerity in Persian discourse: accomplishing the representation of inner states
International Journal of The Sociology of Language, 2001
This paper deals with the presentation and evocation of emotion in performative face-to-face linguistic communication in Iran. Performance in linguistic communication is shown to involve the speaker's need to convey an impression of his or her own inner states. Since aectivity is one of the most dicult things to convey in face-to-face interaction, it is posited that a person employing successful linguistic performance skills must have a series of strategies available for demonstrating that he or she is truly conveying a speci®c intended emotion. This involves a two-stage process in which the speaker ®rst signals that a message conveys an emotion, then signals the nature of the emotion being conveyed. In order to accomplish this, culturally prescribed symbolic elements are presented by the speaker that must be performed for others to``read'' the emotional content of a communication. Added to the performative skills needed by the speaker is the requirement that the emotion conveyed be perceived as``sincere.'' This paper continues earlier research (Beeman 1986) demonstrating the eectiveness of speakers in Iran in creating the contexts for the interpretation of their own strategic communication.
Affectivity in Persian language use
Culture Medicine and Psychiatry, 1988
A sociolinguistic analysis of emotion in Iranian culture and language use is developed. The work of Friedrich, Bateson, and others is drawn on to indicate how emotion is represented though metacommunicative, paralinguistic, and stylistic elements of language use. Communicative contexts in Iranian culture are marked in terms of two continua: one of personal and communicative intimacy, from “inside” (baten) to “outside” (zaher), and another of social hierarchy, from contexts indicating hierarchical relationships to those indicating equality. Affectivity in Persian language use is represented through intensification of a statement in relation to its contextual frame, through transposition of a linguistic form appropriate for one frame into another, or through culturally marked withdrawal from social interaction. It is argued that since emotions and psychological characteristics of individuals cannot be observed directly, attention should be focused on the expressive rules of culture rather than on “character” or “personality.”
Happiness and Sadness in Iranian Society: A Linguistic and Cognitive View
Handbook of Cultural linguistics, 2024
This chapter aims to show the rate of sadness and happiness reflected in Persian language in Iranian society in the last 50 years. Language could represent widespread emotions in a society-among them happiness and sadness. These emotions are encoded in language by using cognitive mechanisms such as conceptual metaphors. Based on the corpus of the past five decades (1970s up until now), feelings of sadness and happiness have experienced a roller coaster of rates of occurrence in the Iranian society. This research is based on the written and spoken corpus including movies, stories, lyrics, headlines, and news within the mentioned five decades. The five decades are chosen due to important political and social events such as the Islamic revolution of Iran, the Iran-Iraq war, the reformation era, etc. The findings show that Iranians are increasingly more sad, particularly in the last two decades, and this phenomenon are reflected in different linguistics outputs.
The Idea of Sadness. The Richness of Persian Experiences and Expressions
2014
One of the most important notions permeating the culture of Iran is the idea of sadness. It is testified by the fact that, among other things, the idea of sorrow is everpresent in Iranians’ everyday life, where it manifests itself in the propensity for tears, nostalgia, longing and succumbing to overwhelming emotion (also in the social and political sphere). Iranians themselves knowingly admit that sadness is part and parcel of the Iranian identity and they wonder why it is so. To answer that question, one should start with tracing the manifestations of sadness in different areas of the culture. In this paper, I shall attempt to identify the spheres of the Persian culture (language, religious rituals, literature, art and behaviour of Iranian people) where sorrow manifests itself in various guise, and I will strive demonstrate the richness of Persian experiences and expressions of sadness in Iranian culture. Persian literature represents the main source material used in the paper.
Cultural Basis of Metaphors Translation Case of Emotions in Persian and English
Metaphorical expressions often involve culturally-specific concepts, embodying associations related to a particular cultural community. Metaphor translation poses the problems of switching between different cultural references, as well as conceptual and linguistic perspectives. Dealing with metaphors in translation, thus, is not simply a matter of identifying the linguistic correspondences in two languages under study, but of identifying correspondences between their conceptual systems corresponding to their different cultural models. The main purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study that investigated emotive metaphoric conceptualizations and their dominant patterns in Persian and English. The emotions under study are metaphorical expressions of happiness and sadness which have been compiled from a literary source text and its two corresponding target texts. The Metaphor Identification Procedures (MIP), proposed by the Pragglejazz group , and Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) were adopted as the framework for analysis. Our findings revealed that there are many cultural similarities and differences between emotive metaphorical concepts in Persian and English.
Journal of Universal Language
Johnson-Laird & Oatley's analysis of emotion terms in English reveals that these terms are organised in a semantic field encompassing categories that denote generic emotions, basic (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 86 The Universality and Cultural Specificity of Emotions through ~ emotions, emotional relations, caused emotions, causatives, emotional goals, and complex emotions. All the emotions are based on five modes: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. This approach, termed 'a theory of communication', served a communicative function both within the brain and within social groups. However, whether this theory is applicable to all languages remains unspecified, that is, whether emotions of all languages are organized across these five modes, thereby rendering these modes universal, is not yet clear. Therefore, the present study attempts to assess the universality of this theory by investigating the emotion lexicon of Moroccan Arabic (MA) through a corpus including examples given by 29 native speakers of this language. A semantic analysis of the emotion terms shows that they are organized in the same categories found in the English language. Nevertheless, the highest category in MA consists of causative emotions, indicating that, unlike English, emotions in MA arise as relational phenomena, embedded in social situations.
ANTH 622 Anthropology of Emotions
Emotions are not only psychological states but are also social and cultural practices. This course examines how we anthropologically and sociologically investigate and think about emotions as both subjective and collective experiences. As a graduate seminar, the course aims to introduce graduate students some selected theoretical discussions and ethnographic studies on emotions as social and cultural practices. During the course, the class will focus on diverse aspects of emotions of hate, violence, fear, pain, death, love, trust, happiness, and hope in a comparative ways by including perspectives from both Western and non-Western traditions, particularly from the Islamic traditions. This course will help students to develop their skills for a deeper understanding of emotions not only as intimate experiences but also as social and cultural phenomena. The course will run as a seminar with participation of students, discussions on critical questions related to reading materials including some selected films.