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Human Emotions: Universal or Culture‐Specific?
Author(s) -
Wierzbicka Anna
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1986.88.3.02a00030
Subject(s) - metalanguage , set (abstract data type) , linguistics , computer science , psychology , cognitive psychology , cognitive science , philosophy , programming language
The search for “fundamental human emotions” has been seriously impeded by the absence of a culture‐independent semantic metalanguage. The author proposes a metalanguage based on a postulated set of universal semantic primitives, and shows how language‐specific meanings of emotion terms can be captured and how rigorous cross‐cultural comparisons of emotion terms can be achieved.