Negativity bias in language
A cognitive-affective model
of
emotive intensifiers
Basic assumptions
• Language is not an autonomous mental
faculty independent of our general cognitive
ability;
• Language is an integral part of cognition; a
system of signs shared by a large group of
people for the purpose of communication.
• Cognition and emotion are inseparable
processes.
Methodology—
from mind to language
Employing
a cognitive-affective principle
to explain
a linguistic phenomenon
The psycho-semantics of three proverbs
• Lahu: If you’ve been stung by a bee, you fear
even a fly’s coming.
• Yiddish: If you’re scolded by the hot, you
blow even on the cold.
• Chinese: One day bitten by a snake, for ten
years you fear the well-rope.
Matisoff (1979/2000)
The negativity bias
Selective attention
in
information processing
The anger superiority effect
Hansen & Hansen 1988
Öhman et al 2001
Process-based experiments
ERPs: observations of attention allocation at
neural level
Time: within 100 ms
Location: extrastriate area of visual cortex
Amount of attention: P1 amplitude
Smith et al. (2003, 2006)
defining negativity bias
• Evaluation bias:
differential emphasis on negative stimuli
• Obligatory attention bias:
automatic (default) attention allocation to
negative stimuli
Smith et al. (2003; 2006)
Negativity bias is pervasive
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Self-concept;
Emotion;
Impression formation;
Learning;
Memory;
Information processing;
Neurological
processes;
• Reactions to social
events;
• Close relationships;
• Social interactions in
general;
• Child development;
• Social support;
• Media
Baumeister et al. (2001)
Explanations of negativity bias
Baumeister et al. (2001):
NB as “fitness enhancer”
Rozin and Royzman (2001):
NB as “contagion avoidance”
Pratto and John (1991):
NB as “automatic vigilance
strategy”
The role of emotion in selective
attention
What’s an emotion?
“a superordinate program that
orchestrates all the subordinate programs
of our mental processes and the related
physical reactions.”
(Cosmides & Tooby 2000)
The power of survival pressures
Threat related emotions activate
fight-or-flight response
Fear is a central component of the
system of defensive behavior
“When it comes to detecting and
responding to danger, the brain just
hasn’t changed much. In some
ways, we are emotional lizards.”
—LeDoux (1998)
Threat-relevant negative emotions
as motivation of NB
• Fear >>> >> flight
• Disgust >>> flight
• Anger >>> > fight
Negativity bias in language
the case of
emotive intensification
What‘s the meaning of bloody
here?
• * Lit. COVERED IN BLOOD
• HIGH ILLOCUTIONARY INTENSITY
What is bloody meant to do in
discourse?
• Getting attention from hearer
• Enhancing expressiveness in speech
• (Establishing rapport)
死了 si-le, die-ASP
認識她真是美死了!
Renshi ta zhenshi mei si-le!
‘To know her was wonderful to death!’
回家的感覺好死了!
Huijia de ganjue hao si-le!
‘The feeling of going home is good to death!’
(www. ynet.com/archiver)
(www.spaces.live.com/blog.cns)
要死 yao-si lit.‘will die’
遇到老朋友, 開心得要死.
Yudao lao pengyou, kaixin de yao-si.
I ran into an old friend and was happy to death.
www.spaces.live.com/blog
要命 yaoming
‘murderously’, lit. ‘demanding life’
買樓的時候對我們好得要命, 可住進來處處
是陷阱!
Mai lou shi dui women hao de yaoming,
ke zhu jinlai chuchu shi xianjing!
(www.junjing.net/forum)
帥呆了shuaidaile ‘shockingly good-looking’
酷呆了kudaile ‘shockingly cool’
• 你今天這身穿得帥呆了!
You look shockingly good in this outfit!
• 帥呆了的室內裝修
shockingly good interior furnishing
(www.baidu.com)
酷斃了kubi(le) ‘cool to death’
• 超科技靴子酷斃了, 穿上它可邊走邊上網.
Ultra-techno-boot is cool to death, wearing it
you can go on-line while walking.
• 最新酷斃造型
the newest cool-to-death styling
(www.baidu.com)
schrecklich
Das Essen muss heiß sein. Und wenn meine Latte
nicht genug Milchschaum hat, bin ich persönlich
beleidigt. Aber ansonsten bin eigentlich die meiste Zeit
über schrecklich gut gelaunt. Vor kurzem fragte
mich mein Freund, ob etwas nicht stimme. Ich sei so
normal ...
(Teleschau, der Mediendienst)
stinkIch bin stinksauer über Werbemails!
Der Film war stinklangweilig!
• damn(ed) / darn(ed)
It was a heady, exciting time in Washington. The
days had the tang of high adventure, and the
men around him found the President's
enthusiasm contagious. He had learned how to
take it and catch on quickly, explained Jack
Kennedy, for two reasons: "Going through that
campaign and being in the Senate." For the
young President it was the best of times. "This,"
he said, "is a damned good job."
(www.time.com/time/magazine)
sündhaft
Sündhaft lecker, aber keines Wegs sündhaft
teuer ist unser Torten- und Kuchensortiment.
(www.dahlback.de)
‘Sinfully delicious, but in no way sinfully expensive
is our offer of cakes and pies.’
Defining “emotive intensifiers”
• Nonliteral reading
• Subjectively evaluative, irrespective of
truth-conditional degree
• Signalling high illocutionary force
• Enacting speaker‘s attitude and
emotion
Chinese
-si-le ‘sterben-ASP’
-kepa EXT ‘furchterregend’,
-yaoming EXT ‘das Leben auffordernd’
-yaosi EXT ‘will-sterben’
-huai-le ‘kaputt-ASP’
Vgl. Mordskerl
English
damn(ed)/darn(ed)
bloody
awful(ly)
sinfully
terribly
dreadfully
horribly
tremendously (stupendously)
hell
insanely
German
verdammt
saufurchtbar
schrecklich
erschreckend
tierisch
irre
wahnsinnig
stinksündhaft / sünd-
Degree words
words describing measurement of degree
(very, quite, pretty, etc.)
• Viable literal reading
• Non-emotive evaluation
• Accountable and informative
Emotive intensifiers
versus
Common degree words
•
•
•
•
•
•
Nonliteral vs. literal
Lower vs. higher accountability
Higher vs. lower illocutionary force
Performative/expressive vs. descriptive
Attention-getter vs. evaluator
Register bound vs. register-unbound
• sehr ‘very’:
Alle diejenigen, die nur wenig abspecken
möchten und sich halbwegs gesund
ernähren, können das mit Hilfe solcher
Eiweißdrinks sehr gut erreichen.
(www.apotheke2u.de)
The diachrony of sehr ‘very’
OHG n. sēr ‘Schmerz’ cf. OE sār ‘sore’
• pain as conceptual source
• semantic bleaching: painfully >> very
(a) frequent uses
(b) obscurity of lexical origin
Diachronic continuum
emotive intensifier
>>>
degree word
How to explain EI as the
“thrillers”
in our mental lexicon?
• What are the lexical sources of EI?
• What are the conceptual sources of EI?
Conceptual sources of
emotive intensifiers
1. Concepts of negative emotions
2. Concepts of triggers of negative
emotions
3. Concepts of impacts of negative
emotions
Emotion concepts
Fear: terror, horror, awe, dread…
E.: terribly, horribly, awful(ly), dreadful(ly)
G.:schrecklich, furchtbar, erschreckend
C.: xiaren, kepa
Trigger/cause/impact of
negative emotions
• Fear: blood, sin (Sünde), beast (Tier),
hell (Hölle), insanity (Wahnsinn,
Irrsinn), death (si,Tod), giant (Riese),
strangeness (e.g. unheimlich) ……
• Disgust: stench, dirty pig
• Anger: damnation
Typological difference
in
Frequency-based prominence
da /ed
rn ) g
(e .
bl d) g
o
.
aw ody
fu g
l(l .
te y)
rr g.
i
i
ns bly
tr
em a
g
en nel .
do y g
us .
ho ly
rr g.
si ibl
y
n
dr fu g.
ea l(l
df y)
ul g.
(l
m be y) g
ur as .
de tl
ro y g
us .
ly
g.
(n
da
m
Frequency
Diagram 1. Approx. frequencies of English "EI good"
as found in Google
3000
2500
2000
1500
frequency
1000
500
0
Lexical item
Diagram 3. Approx. frequencies of Chinese
"gaoxing/hao EI"
as found in Baidu
400
350
250
200
150
100
50
ke
pa
ya
os
i
xi
ar
en
ya
om
in
g
0
-s
ile
Frequency
300
Lexical item
frequency
Typological differences
A. English and German: anger (damnation) as
prominent source;
B. Chinese: unavailability of anger
(damnation/sin) as lexical source: gaisi
‘deserving death’;
C. Chinese: death as prominent lexical source;
D. German: trigger of disgust as source.
Cultural inferences
• Religion
damnation as keywords of Judeo-Christian approach.
• Philosophy and worldview
Confucian concern with THIS World >
mortality as ultimate fear factor
• Cultural display rules
unacceptability of anger (face)
Mapping emotion into language
1. Metonymic highlighting
2. Metaphorical mapping
Metonymic highlighting I
EMOTION = EMOTIONAL INTENSITY
fear (terror, dread,…) = intensity of fear
Metonymic highlighting III
MEANING of a certain negative word
=
INTENSITY OF MEANING
Metonymic highlighting II
TRIGGER/CAUSE/IMPACT OF EMOTION
=
EMOTION
=
EMOTIONAL INTENSITY
Metaphorical mapping
EMOTIONAL INTENSITY
=
LINGUISTIC INTENSITY
The Pollyanna effect
Boucher & Osgood (1969)
• Size of vocabulary
• Frequency of use
• Order of acquisition
A quote
“[H]umans tend to look on (and talk
about) the bright side of life”.
Warum?
In search of an explanation of PE
• The optimism view
• The normality view
An alternative view
The avoidance of threat
as motivation of PE
The advantage of risk avoidance
• NB: biological heritage: adaptive behavior
• PE: cultural heritage: adaptive behavior
Level of observation-PE
Language use: social semiotic
-symbolic
interaction-
PE, euphemism, and lang. of P.C.
Brown & Levinson (1978)
Goffman (1959, 1967, 1981)
Threatening Words
• Harmful (e.g. falling asleep > dying)
• Offensive (e.g. nett ‘nice’)
• Embarrassing (e.g. talents)
“Wordrisks”
“Which of us would call our new boat
‘Titanic’?”
—D. Crystal (2006)
Change in popularity rank
of Adolf as a given name 1890-1953
The truth of euphemism
• German: “Nett” ist die kleine Schwester
von “Scheiße”.
• English: to damn with faint praise
The positivity bias is
derivational
the presupposition of
negativity
Because of NB, PE facilitates
linguistic intensification
The shock-and-awe approach to
attention
in language
Summary
• Negativity bias as cognitive-affective pattern
of information processing;
• Emotive intensification exhibits negativity
bias—threat-relevant negative emotions as
conceptual sources of EI;
• Mapping from emotional domain into
language: metonymy and metaphor;
• Vigilance (towards threat/risk) motivates
both Negativity bias and Pollyanna effect
Theoretical implications
Strengths of a new research paradigm:
• Empirical plausibility;
• Discovering the embodiment of
linguistic behavior—nature-culture
continuum;
• Seeing language in light of adaptive
behavior and cultural priorities
Cognition and language as
dynamical systems that
cut across mind-body-world
divisions
rather than as the representations
of the external world in the mind