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 msLocation: extrastriate area of visual cortexAmount 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)

stink- Ich 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)bloodyawful(ly)sinfullyterriblydreadfullyhorriblytremendously (stupendously)hellinsanely

German

verdammt sau- furchtbar schrecklich erschreckend tierisch irre wahnsinnig stink- sündhaft / 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

Diagram 1. Approx. frequencies of English "EI good" as found in Google

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

dam(n

/ed) g

.

darn(e

d) g.

bloody

g.

awfu

l(ly)

g.

terri

bly g

.

insa

nely

g.

trem

endousl

y g.

horribly

g.

sinfu

l(ly)

g.

dread

ful(l

y) g

.

beast

ly g

.

murd

erousl

y g.

Lexical item

Fre

qu

en

cy

frequency

Diagram 2. Approx. frequencies of German "EI gut" as found in Google

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

verd

amm

t g.

tieris

ch g

.

Saugut

wahnsin

nig g

.

irre

g.

ersc

hreck

end g

.

furc

htbar

g.

schre

cklic

h g.

Lexical item

Fre

qu

ency

frequency

Diagram 3. Approx. frequencies of Chinese "gaoxing/hao EI" as found in Baidu

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

Lexical item

Fre

qu

ency

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 worldviewConfucian concern with THIS World > mortality as ultimate fear factor

• Cultural display rulesunacceptability 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 rankof 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