Cross-language comparisons of emotional terms with special reference to the concept of anxiety.

概要

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The Japanese equivalents of anxiety (FU·AN), fear (KYO·FU) and depression (YU·UTSU) were empirically defined by the method used by Davitz (1969) and the results were compared with those obtained by Davitz for anxiety, fear and depression. For Japanese, experiences of FU·AN (anxiety) were found to be more similar to those of YU·UTSU (depression) than to those of KYO·FU (fear), whereas Davitz found that, in English, experiences of anxiety were more similar to those of fear than to those of depression. Experiences of FU·AN overlapped very little with those of anxiety, the latter being more physical than the former. Specific instances of anxiety and FU·AN written by American and Japanese students, respectively, were subjected to the semantic differential method and the results revealed that the experiences of FU·AN were more distressing, more ambiguous, more inactive, and so on, than those of anxiety. The importance of recognizing discrepancies in the connotative meanings of formally equivalent concepts across languages is emphasized.
公益社団法人日本心理学会の論文