A Corpus-Based Study of the Externality of Emotions in Swahili and Japanese

This chapter discusses cultural conceptualization of emotions. Specifically, we examine various ways in which emotions are metaphorically conceptualized as external entities such as an outer force or an entity coming into an experiencer (Kahumburu in Rev Cogn Linguist 14:416–441, 2016). Based on corpus data retrieved for five different Swahili and Japanese nouns of emotion, we show that in both languages, many emotions are depicted as externally originating. At the same time, these two languages differ in the way such expressions are adopted for particular emotions (e.g., anger can be conceptualized primarily as externally originating in Swahili and internally originating in Japanese). Moreover, the two languages differ in adopting different types of external entities (e.g., sadness is typically conceptualized as an entity moving into an experiencer in Swahili, but frequently as liquid surrounding an experiencer in Japanese). We further suggest some cultural/environmental backgrounds for the preferred use of certain types in Swahili and Japanese.