Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1147

Part of Session 129: Multilingualism and emotions in urban settings (Other abstracts in this session)

(Gendered) Bad feelings in a postcolonial setting

Authors: Baider, Fabienne Helene
Submitted by: Baider, Fabienne Helene (University of Cyprus, Cyprus)

Objective: As described in the rationale for this session, languages may become linked to the history of emotional trauma in the context of ethnic conflicts and post colonial societies. This paper looks at how the vocabulary of negative emotions such as hate, fear and anger manifests in an ethnic conflict setting and how ‘private feelings’ are grounded in public speech.

Methodology: Since negative emotions have been described as the most complex type of emotions (Smith, C. A. et al.1985), our study is based on a multimodal survey which encompasses a questionnaire given to informants, a web questionnaire to compare results when anonymity is guaranteed (Wilson and Dewaele 2010), semi-structured interviews and a group discussion to record more spontaneous and free flowing data. Although time consuming, interviews are considered to be the most valuable data collection method to investigate a complex phenomenon and process (Berenbaum, H. et al 1995). All oral data were recorded to allow revisiting and documenting for any relevant data at a later stage. The public speech was investigated through newspapers articles, traditional reference works such as dictionaries and television debates.

Results: Our data describes specifically how negative emotion vocabulary is shaped in the site of the Cypriot ethnic conflict. In particular, since concepts cannot be abstracted from the hegemonic context within which they are embedded (Besnier 1990; Pavlenko 2005), the more openly in conflict is the society, the more real becomes the target of bad feelings[1]. However hegemony has to be considered in all its aspects, affective meaning may also be gendered. Indeed, if we consider our results for hate and anger, the most intense the feeling, the biggest difference we found between affective meanings for men and women. Public discursive practices of ‘state violence’ seem to become more vested into the private affective meaning for men, where social fear and anxiety (well-known to govern subject cf. Adams et al 2009) dominate private affective meaning for women. This paper extends the radical feminist notion to the realm of emotions of how the personal is political.

References

Adams V., Murphy M. and Clarke A. (2009). Anticipation: Technoscience, Life, Affect, Temporality. Subjectivity 28, 246 – 65.

Baider F. (in print). Hate: feature saliency hypothesis in Linguistic Aspects of Intercultural Pragmatics (eds. I. Kecskes and J. Tromero), Mouton de Gruyter.

Besnier N. (1990). Language and affect. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, 419–51.

Berenbaum, H., & Williams, M. (1995). Personality and emotional reactivity. Journal of Research in Personality, 29, 24-34.

McElhinny, B. (2010) The audacity of affect: Gender, race, and history in linguistic accounts of legitimacy and belonging. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 309-328.

Pavlenko, A. (2005) Emotions and multilingualism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, C. A. and Ellsworth, P. C. (1985). Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 813- 838.

Wilson R. and J.-M. Dewaele (2010), The use of web questionnaires in second language acquisition and bilingualism research, Second Language research 26,1, 103-123 .

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

(Gendered) Bad feelings in a postcolonial setting