ABSTRACT

Research on emotional expressions has focused on our expressions for utilitarian emotions. Little is known about how speakers express aesthetic emotions. Aesthetic emotions, in fact, have been traditionally considered as lacking specific patterns of metaphoric and metonymic representation, so that our linguistic and gestural expressions for art-related emotions are frequently considered arbitrary and unsystematic. Recent research shows the existence of characteristic embodiment for most aesthetic emotions. Using this embodied understanding of aesthetic emotions, I have analysed a corpus of travellers’ reviews by native speakers of Japanese and English. The study of these expressions shows that both Japanese- and English-speaking travellers frequently rely on similar conceptual patterns. However, this study also indicates the existence of cultural differences in the way these emotions are described by speakers from each linguistic area. Furthermore, the use of expressions for some of these emotions is restricted to one sub-corpus, which might be revealing a cultural disposition to experience these emotions in the context of this historic site. In sum, this research contributes to a better understanding of how aesthetic emotions may be influenced by culture.

摘要

对情感表达的研究集中在我们对功利情感的表达上。人们对演讲者如何表达审美情感知之甚少。事实上，审美情感在传统上一直被认为缺乏隐喻和转喻表征的特定模式，因此我们对艺术相关情感的语言和手势表达经常被认为是随意和不系统的。最近的研究表明，大多数审美情感都存在特征体现。利用这种对审美情感的具体理解，我分析了以日语和英语为母语的旅行者的评论语料库。对这些表达的研究表明，说日语和英语的旅行者经常依赖相似的概念模式。然而，这项研究还表明，每个语言区域的说话者描述这些情绪的方式存在文化差异。此外，其中一些情绪的表达仅限于一个子语料库，这可能揭示了在这个历史遗址的背景下体验这些情绪的文化倾向。总而言之，这项研究有助于更好地理解审美情感如何受到文化的影响。