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H2020Individual fellowship2018–2020

HG-Emo · How sociocultural forces shape the emotion lexicon in hunter-gatherer languages

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2018-06-15 → 2020-06-14
EU contribution
€183,455
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

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Results in brief

How sociocultural forces shape the emotion lexicon in hunter-gatherer languages

Recent years saw a revival of interest in cross-cultural emotion research and—while a Western-centric perspective is being increasingly questioned—there are growing efforts to better understand how culture-specific factors differentially shape emotion across cultures. HG-Emo provides unique insights to this question from hunter-gatherer societies, a rare type of society today, but a dominant one for 95% of human existence, examining emotion through the lens of language. More specifically, the project addresses the question of how sociocultural characteristics, especially those related to residential mobility in hunter-gatherer societies shape emotion lexica. Although there is compelling evidence that abandonment of mobile lifestyle leads to gradual social change in hunter-gatherer societies, prior to this project there had been no investigations dedicated to emotion in this context. Using insights from linguistics, anthropology, and psychology, HG-Emo documents the emotion lexica in two related Austroasiatic languages of Thailand—Maniq spoken by mobile, and Mlabri recently settled, hunter-gatherer groups—and reveals how aspects of emotion language link to sociocultural factors. Understanding emotions in different cultures as expressed in different languages is crucial for revealing how much emotion systems vary, and what the critical properties of human emotion are. Such knowledge may deepen our understanding of emotional well-being across different sociocultural contexts and help us respond to rapid social change across the EU and beyond in more informed ways. The general objectives of the project were to: (1) document emotion vocabulary in two related hunter-gatherer languages, (2) relate the language of emotion in each group to its sociocultural background, (3) extract similarities and differences between groups, identifying possible forces shaping the emotion lexicon in each context.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Although human emotions have a common biological basis, different cultures elaborate different aspects of their emotional world. This variation is reflected in the emotion lexicon, which, despite being well-studied among industrialized societies, remains under-researched in smaller cultural niches. This project focuses on emotion among hunter-gatherers, a rare type of society today, but a dominant one for 95% of human existence. Hosted by the UCL Anthropology Department—a world leader in hunter-gatherer studies—I will investigate the emotion lexicon in two hunter-gatherer languages to uncover the relationship between the semantic domain of emotion and sociocultural characteristics associated with different settlement patterns (mobile vs. sedentary), e.g., group size and social structure. Using methods from linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cultural anthropology, I will document the emotion lexicon among the closely related mobile Maniq and the sedentary Kentaq (Aslian, Austroasiatic) and examine it against the sociocultural background of each group. Via systematic comparison, I will identify forces shaping the emotion lexicon in each language, ultimately revealing how emotion language may coevolve with sociocultural change triggered by sedentarization. The findings will speak to the fundamental question of how meaning is shaped in our languages and will be of value to semantic typology, hunter-gatherer studies, and psychology.

Original text from CORDIS.

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union