Somatic and Social: Chinese Americans Talk about Emotion

Empirical findings suggest that Chinese and Americans differ in the ways that they describe emotional experience, with Chinese using more somatic and social words than Americans. No one, however, has investigated whether this variation is related to differences between Chinese and American conceptio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality & social psychology bulletin 2004-09, Vol.30 (9), p.1226-1238
Main Authors: Tsai, Jeanne L., Simeonova, Diana I., Watanabe, Jamie T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acculturation
Adolescent
Adult
Asian Americans - psychology
Chinese American people
Chinese languages
Conflict (Psychology)
Courtship
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Cultural aspects
Culture
Description
Emotional experiences
Emotional words
Emotions
English language
European Continental Ancestry Group - psychology
Humans
Interview, Psychological
Linguistics
Multilingualism
Object Attachment
Psycholinguistics
Semantics
Somatic symptoms
USA
Verbal Behavior
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Summary:Empirical findings suggest that Chinese and Americans differ in the ways that they describe emotional experience, with Chinese using more somatic and social words than Americans. No one, however, has investigated whether this variation is related to differences between Chinese and American conceptions of emotion or to linguistic differences between the English and Chinese languages. Therefore, in two studies, the authors compared the word use of individuals who varied in their orientation to Chinese and American cultures (European Americans [EA], more acculturated Chinese Americans [CA], and less acculturated CA) when they were speaking English during emotional events. Across both studies, less acculturated CA used more somatic (e.g., dizzy) and more social (e.g., friend) words than EA. These findings suggest that even when controlling for language spoken, cultural conceptions of emotion may shape how people talk about emotion.
ISSN:0146-1672
1552-7433
DOI:10.1177/0146167204264014