Basic Emotion Prototypes in English and in Polish

Abstract

This paper explores the conceptualization differences between the prototypical categories of six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) in English and Polish lexicalizations of these concepts in noun, verb, and adjective forms. Measures of valence, arousal, and dominance were collected and analyzed across the six semantic categories, between parts of speech and depending on the gender of the study participants for both languages. The results indicate that the basic emotion prototypes in both languages have common characteristics hinging broadly on valence but have unique language-specific patterns of valence, arousal, and dominance across individual emotion categories. Conceptualizations of emotions were found to be different between men and women and across languages, while language-specific patterns were found in part-of-speech effects. These results have serious implications for future study designs and research methodology at the intersection of cognition, emotion, and language and in cross-linguistic contexts.