Contrasting the semantic space of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ in English and Japanese
This article sheds light on the significant yet nuanced roles of shame and guilt in influencing moral behaviour, a phenomenon that became particularly prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic with the community’s heightened desire to be seen as moral. These emotions are central to human interactions,...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge University Press
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| Series: | Language and Cognition |
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| Online Access: | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1866980824000061/type/journal_article |
| _version_ | 1797257422306279424 |
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| author | Eugenia Diegoli Emily Öhman |
| author_facet | Eugenia Diegoli Emily Öhman |
| author_sort | Eugenia Diegoli |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This article sheds light on the significant yet nuanced roles of shame and guilt in influencing moral behaviour, a phenomenon that became particularly prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic with the community’s heightened desire to be seen as moral. These emotions are central to human interactions, and the question of how they are conveyed linguistically is a vast and important one. Our study contributes to this area by analysing the discourses around shame and guilt in English and Japanese online forums, focusing on the terms shame, guilt, haji (‘shame’) and zaiakukan (‘guilt’). We utilise a mix of corpus-based methods and natural language processing tools, including word embeddings, to examine the contexts of these emotion terms and identify semantically similar expressions. Our findings indicate both overlaps and distinct differences in the semantic landscapes of shame and guilt within and across the two languages, highlighting nuanced ways in which these emotions are expressed and distinguished. This investigation provides insights into the complex dynamics between emotion words and the internal states they denote, suggesting avenues for further research in this linguistically rich area. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-24T22:37:23Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-ebf5ed9e9dec4424903886b4fc963b5c |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1866-9808 1866-9859 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-24T22:37:23Z |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Language and Cognition |
| spelling | doaj.art-ebf5ed9e9dec4424903886b4fc963b5c2024-03-19T09:50:52ZengCambridge University PressLanguage and Cognition1866-98081866-985912310.1017/langcog.2024.6Contrasting the semantic space of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ in English and JapaneseEugenia Diegoli0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5986-2789Emily Öhman1Department of Interpreting and Translation, University of Bologna, Bologna, ItalyFaculty of International Research and Education, School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo, JapanThis article sheds light on the significant yet nuanced roles of shame and guilt in influencing moral behaviour, a phenomenon that became particularly prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic with the community’s heightened desire to be seen as moral. These emotions are central to human interactions, and the question of how they are conveyed linguistically is a vast and important one. Our study contributes to this area by analysing the discourses around shame and guilt in English and Japanese online forums, focusing on the terms shame, guilt, haji (‘shame’) and zaiakukan (‘guilt’). We utilise a mix of corpus-based methods and natural language processing tools, including word embeddings, to examine the contexts of these emotion terms and identify semantically similar expressions. Our findings indicate both overlaps and distinct differences in the semantic landscapes of shame and guilt within and across the two languages, highlighting nuanced ways in which these emotions are expressed and distinguished. This investigation provides insights into the complex dynamics between emotion words and the internal states they denote, suggesting avenues for further research in this linguistically rich area.https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1866980824000061/type/journal_articlecorpus-based contrastive analysiscorpus linguisticsemotion detectionguiltlanguage of emotionsmoral behaviournatural language processingsemantic similarityshameword embeddings |
| spellingShingle | Eugenia Diegoli Emily Öhman Contrasting the semantic space of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ in English and Japanese Language and Cognition corpus-based contrastive analysis corpus linguistics emotion detection guilt language of emotions moral behaviour natural language processing semantic similarity shame word embeddings |
| title | Contrasting the semantic space of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ in English and Japanese |
| title_full | Contrasting the semantic space of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ in English and Japanese |
| title_fullStr | Contrasting the semantic space of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ in English and Japanese |
| title_full_unstemmed | Contrasting the semantic space of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ in English and Japanese |
| title_short | Contrasting the semantic space of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ in English and Japanese |
| title_sort | contrasting the semantic space of shame and guilt in english and japanese |
| topic | corpus-based contrastive analysis corpus linguistics emotion detection guilt language of emotions moral behaviour natural language processing semantic similarity shame word embeddings |
| url | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1866980824000061/type/journal_article |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT eugeniadiegoli contrastingthesemanticspaceofshameandguiltinenglishandjapanese AT emilyohman contrastingthesemanticspaceofshameandguiltinenglishandjapanese |