Russian and English Emotional Concepts[1]

Русские и английские эмоциональные концепты

Apresjan V.Ju. (valentina.apresjan@gmail.com), Institute of Russian Language, Moscow

В современной этнолингвистике одной из центральных является мысль о том, что различия в языке отражают различия в национальной ментальности. Соответственно, основная масса современных этнолингвистических работ, в том числе на русском материале, сосредоточена на поиске таких различий и, в частности, на сравнении «ключевых слов» разных языков (понятие, введенное А. Вежбицкой) – слов, которые являются особенно важными выразителями главных ментальных особенностей носителей того или иного языка (классические примеры А. Вежбицкой – это душа, тоска, судьба).

Признавая всю ценность этого подхода, в настоящей работе мы хотели бы, сосредоточиться не только на концептуальных различиях, но и на сходствах между языками. Работа выполнена на материале эмоциональных концептов в русском и английском языках. Наряду с использованием ставших классическими подходов к описанию эмоций в языке – прототипического подхода Л.Иорданской и А.Вежбицкой, принятого Московской семантической школой, а также метафорического подхода Дж.Лакова и З.Кевечеса, положивших начало когнитивистской школе, данная работа предлагает нечто новое. Целью является не сравнение отдельных слов или концептов, а сравнение целых концептуальных полей и построение широких семантических типологий. Рассматривается 11 групп (или кластеров) эмоций – ‘страх’, ‘гнев’, ‘отвращение’, ‘грусть’, ‘радость’, ‘стыд’, ‘жалость’, ‘обида’, ‘’, ‘гордость’, ‘ревность/зависть’, ‘благодарность’. В каждой группе анализируется основная масса лингвистических средств, выражающих разные стороны эмоции – во-первых, весь спектр синонимов в разных частях речи, представляющих разные типы и оттенки эмоции (например, для кластера ‘СТРАХ’ - бояться, пугаться, трусить, страшиться, опасаться, страх, боязнь и пр. для русского; to be afraid, to be scared, to fear, fear, dread и пр. для английского); во-вторых, весь спектр частеречно разнородных средств, представляющих разные аспекты эмоции – каузацию (пугать, страшный), эмоциональное состояние (грустно, страшно), поведение, мотивированное эмоцией (ужасаться, жалеть), физиологические реакции на эмоцию (побелеть, побагроветь, похолодеть); поведенческие реакции на эмоцию (убежать в ужасе, ударить кулаком по столу от досады). Проанализированный материал дает возможность установить как сходства, так и различия в концептуализации эмоций в русском и английском языках, а также в семантическом устройстве этих полей. Обнаруживается, что при бесспорном наличии многочисленных семантических контрастов между отдельными словами в русском и английском, а также частом отсутствии безусловного переводного эквивалента, устройство эмоциональных кластеров в целом у многих эмоций сильно пересекается. Например, и русский, и английский языки выделили следующие подвиды страха: общий, нейтральный страх (бояться, страх, to fear/ to be afraid), кратковременный биологический страх (пугаться, to be scared, to be frightened); сильный страх перед непосредственно угрожающим, масштабным и неизвестным (ужас, terrror); сильный страх перед неизбежным и отдаленным во времени (страшиться, to dread); рациональный страх (опасаться, to be apprehensive); благоговейный страх перед высшими силами (трепетать, to be awed) и пр. При этом границы подвидов эмоций не обязательно совпадают с лексическими: так, to be scared может выражать и кратковременный “биологический” страх (I got scared), и нейтральный страх-отношение (I’m scared of dogs). Представляется, что сравнение не отдельных слов, а целых полей позволяет составить более объективное представление о языковой концептуализации каких-то явлений, в том числе эмоций, и избежать неверного отождествления отсутствия и наличия в языке каких-то слов – в частности, точных переводных эквивалентов словам другого языка, с отсутствием и наличием каких-то ментальных, когнитивных и эмоциональных особенностей у носителей этого языка.

The idea that languages both reflect and shape their speakers’ mentalities, goes back as far as Humboldt’s work and the famous Sapir and Whorf’s hypothesis. While SWH was empirically and theoretically challenged by the proponents of linguistic innateness and universality, it has seen a comeback in the works of Wierzbicka [Wierzbicka 1990, 1991, 1992, 1999] and the entire NSM school. Though SWH is hardly popular nowadays in its strong version, the weaker claim that language reflects mentality is very much a part of today’s ethnolinguistic discourse. It is strongly featured in Wierzbicka’s line of research, particularly in the notion of key words – “words which are particularly important and revealing in a given culture”, e.g. Russian душа ‘soul’, тоска ‘yearning’ and судьба ‘fate’ [Wierzbicka 1990, 1997:15, 55-84].

In the last decade, the search for culture-specific vocabulary, including Russian data, has thrived, and researchers have added a few items to the list of Russian key words, among them авось ‘perhaps with luck’, совесть ‘conscience’, жалость ‘pity’, истина ‘the Truth, gospel-truth’, друг ‘friend’, воля ‘unrestrained physical freedom’, смирение ‘humility’ [Wierzbicka 1997:55-84, Bulygina & Shmelev 1997:481-495, Levontina & Zalizniak 2001: 306-309], маяться ‘to hang about for a long time yearning’, томиться ‘to yearn, to languish’, неприкаянность’ ‘the state of not knowing what to do and where to be, and feeling bad because of that’, позор ‘disgrace’ [Shmelev 2002:404-410], обида ‘offence, hurt feelings’ [Levontina & Zalizniak 2001: 306-309], собраться ‘to get around to doing something’, заодно ‘along with, while one is at it’ [Shmelev 2002:300, 406-407], and others, which supposedly reflect various aspects of the “Russian soul”.

While the contrastive ethnolinguistic framework has been extremely efficient in dispensing with Anglo-centricity in the description of language, as well as producing vastly impressive empirical results, it has also raised some general methodological questions. It is undeniably true that all cultures are unique and that these peculiarities are to some extent reflected in language. However, it is not entirely clear to what extent language can serve as an objective mirror of culture – in other words, to what extent it is possible to draw inferences about a culture or national mentality based on linguistic facts, such as a presence of a certain untranslatable word in the vocabulary of a language. Direct un-translatability is a regular phenomenon across languages, yet it in itself cannot serve as an indication that speakers of these languages do indeed view the world differently.

The notion of linguistic salience which is fundamental to the contrastive ethnolinguistic framework is not entirely transparent either: the frequency of a word in a language as compared to the frequency of its translation in another language is not necessarily a proof of greater salience of a respective concept, as it is often the case that a concept expressed by one polysemous word or a word with a more general meaning in one language is expressed by several words in another language, as is the case, for example, with the Russian word душа ‘lit. soul’, which corresponds to the English soul and heart.

Other linguistic factors that are often considered as an indication of a word’s salience, such as, for example, the number of its derivatives, are not always reliable criteria either, as languages are bound to vary in this respect based on the variation in the richness of their grammatical and lexical systems, irrespectively of how central or marginal the concept in question might be.

This paper proposes a framework for a semantic typology of emotion concepts in language, which considers both their similarities and differences. The framework incorporates the existing linguistic accounts of emotions, i.e. the scenario-based semantic approach of [Iordanskaja 1972, 1984] and Wierzbicka [1999], also adopted by some psychologists [cf. Shweder 2004], as well the conceptual metaphor-based approach of the cognitive semantics [Lakoff & Jonhson, Kövecses 1990, Emanatian 1995, Kövecses 2000]. The novelty of the proposed approach is in its scale: rather than comparing individual parts of the system, such as separate emotion terms, entire systems in the form of “emotion clusters” are juxtaposed. Each emotion cluster is represented by many “members”, e.g., anger, fury, wrath, irritation, and other expressions for ‘ANGER’ cluster in English, whose meanings together form the “conceptual map” of ‘ANGER’ system in that language. By cross-linguistic “superimposing ” of the conceptual maps of emotions in different languages, one is able to capture a holistic picture of the emotional universe, where both the universality and the differences displayed across languages can be clearly seen. For example, both English and Russian have explicitly incorporated the following types of ‘ANGER’ in their conceptual systems: ‘justified’ anger (indignation, негодование), ‘strong uncontrollable anger’ (rage, бешенство), ‘mean anger’ (venom, злоба), ‘nerve-wrecking anger’ (irritation, раздражение), but English has also a type of ‘helpless disappointed anger’ (frustration), which Russian lacks.

Cluster comparison involves comparing multiple emotion terms belonging to different parts of speech and all other related linguistic items, denoting causation of emotions, emotional behaviors, physiological manifestations of emotions and other aspects of emotions.

Overall, 11 emotion clusters in English and Russian have been analyzed, including the five emotions considered “basic” in most psychological and physiological studies - ‘FEAR’, ‘ANGER’, ‘SADNESS’, ‘DISGUST’, ‘JOY’ (basic emotions), ‘SHAME’, ‘OFFENCE’, ‘PITY’, ‘PRIDE’, ‘ENVY/JEALOUSY’, ‘GRATITUDE’.

Emotion clusters in English and Russian: general tendencies.

If one looks at emotion clusters in Russian and English, i.e., at an entire range of emotions within a certain group, one would find a lot of similarity in how the fields are organized logically and conceptually. While the precise linguistic expression can be and is different, a very similar range of emotion gradations is found in the two languages.

Moreover, emotion metaphors turn out to overlap to a large extent as well, which is hardly surprising given that a lot of emotion metaphors are biologically rooted and based on physiologically conditioned responses to various stimuli. Well-known examples of such biologically-based linguistic metaphors are FEAR IS COLD and ANGER IS HEAT metaphors (e.g., to freeze with terror, to boil with anger); cf. [Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Apresjan & Apresjan 1993, Kövecses 2000, on the metaphorical conceptualization of these emotions, Ekman 1984 on their physiological manifestations]. Recent neuropsychological research allows to expand this list, as it suggests that feeling “hurt” and feeling empathy indeed activate pain centers in the brain [McDonald & Leary 2005, Gallese 2001, Singer et al. 2004], thus providing a biological explanation for the widely spread OFFENCE IS PAIN and PITY IS PAIN metaphors (cf. to be hurt, to be wounded, to be injured as expressions of ‘offended’ feeling and щемящая жалость ‘piercing pity’, больно за кого-то ‘to feel pained for somebody’ as expressions of ‘pity’). Likewise, [Calder et al. 2001] suggest that physical distaste, manifested in actual nausea, and moral repugnance that does not involve actual nausea symptoms, are nevertheless neurologically very much the same in that they activate the same neural pathways, thus proving a biological basis for another widely-spread metaphoric mapping, DISGUST IS FEELING SICK.

The following common tendencies in the organization of emotion clusters have been found:

First of all, both languages show a considerably larger number of emotion terms that denote unpleasant emotions, which is not surprising either biologically or linguistically. Among the biologically and psychologically defined “basic” emotions which presumably carry a survival value, there are four unpleasant ones (fear, anger, sadness, disgust) and only one pleasant (joy). Although there are more pleasant emotions among the non-basic ones (pride, gratitude), unpleasant on the whole outweighs the pleasant (shame, pity, jealousy, envy, resentment). Language, too, is well-known for marking negative and abnormal over positive or normal.

For each of the emotions examined, there are certain gradations within the cluster. Usually, there is a neutral term which denotes a natural degree of emotion in relation to the stimulus: fear, anger, disgust, shame, joy, sadness, pride, pity, even jealousy and their Russian correlates, that do not bear any negative or positive evaluation on the part of the speaker. A degree of emotion which is excessive in regard to the stimulus and therefore inappropriate, or a behavior driven by an excessively strong emotion, or being overly prone to experiencing a certain emotion is usually marked negatively: cowardice (behavior caused by one’s inability to master fear), grumpy, irascible (too prone to anger), uptight (too prone to embarrassment), despondent (too sad for too long a time), bleeding-heart (too prone to pity), etc. Besides, within some clusters, there are terms denoting clinical conditions, marked by prolonged and unmotivated experiencing of a certain emotion: phobia, fright; depression; aversion.

Some emotions are expected to occur in appropriate circumstances and their absence is viewed as a deviation from the social or ethical norm, e.g., pity, shame, gratitude: thus, pitiless, shameless, ungrateful (безжалостный, бесстыжий, бесстыдный, неблагодарный) are negative terms marking the inability to experience a naturally expected emotion. Interestingly, fear is viewed as an expected response to danger, and its absence (fearless, бесстрашный) as a deviation from the norm, though in this case the norm is biological, and the deviation from it is not only socially acceptable, but even positively evaluated.

Emotions that are either socially expected or otherwise desirable responses can occur as a result of conscious stimulation; cf. to cheer up, to shame, to move or веселить, стыдить, разжалобить, which denote a controlled intentional action with the purpose of inducing the respective emotion.

Emotions which are not desirable because they are unpleasant for the experiencer or for their object or have no ethical value, usually occur as responses to unintentional stimuli, since nobody wants to induce them on purpose; cf. to disgust, to sadden, to anger, to irritate, печалить,сердить,раздражать which refer to unintentional behaviors or even events: You disgust me, Her illness saddened him, He was angered by the result of the election, This noise irritates me, but not *Перестань вызывать у меня отвращение ‘Stop disgusting me’[L.L.1] , ^??Не печаль меня ‘Don’t sadden me’. The idea of unintentional causation is also expressed by adjectives in both languages: creepy, sad, scary, противный, печальный, страшный, etc.

Emotions whose primary object is another person, can often be directed at self as well, but not if they are strong, uncontrollable, involve obligatory behavioral manifestations or too much of an alienation from the object; thus, one can have self-pity, self-contempt, self-disgust, be angry at oneself, or испытывать к себе жалость <презрение, отвращение>, сердиться на себя, but one cannot have *self-loathing, *rage at oneself, *have compassion for oneself, *be offended by oneself or *испытывать к себе сострадание <*гадливость>,*приводить себя в бешенство..[L.L.2] Likewise, the object of such emotions as gratitude, envy, jealousy, благодарность,ревность,зависть is always another person, not self, as they involve a great degree of alienation between the experiencer and the object.

Strong emotions can be manifested in either biological or near-biological reactions or in uncontrolled behaviors: cf. to shake with fear, to choke with rage, to gasp with anger, to vomit with disgust, to cry with sorrow/pity, to laugh with joy, трястись от страха, задыхаться от ярости,тошнит от отвращения, плакать от обиды /жалости,смеяться от радости (biological reactions) and to flee in terror/panic, to strike in rage, в ужасе убежать, в гневе ударить (uncontrolled behaviors), but not *to flee in apprehension, *to hit in annoyance, *убежать в опасении, *ударить в досаде. Emotions which involve uncontrolled behaviors usually also involve biological reactions (fury, terror), but the reverse is not true (joy, pity) [cf. Mel’čuk & Wanner 1996 on the linguistic connections between an emotion’s strength and controllability and its likely manifestations].

Strong emotions which do not deprive their experiencer of the ability to reason, such as compassion, gratitude, envy can drive him (her) to a controlled behavioral response: to help smb. out of compassion, hire smb. out of gratitude, badmouth smb. out of envy, помочь кому-то из жалости, взять кого-то на работу из благодарности,оклеветать кого-то из зависти, but not *flee out of panic, *kill out of fury.

Along with these similarities, there are also a number of natural differences in the cluster organization in the two languages, with a somewhat different distribution of Russian-to-English discrepancies than it was previously thought. The existing “mismatches” do not necessarily reflect a fundamental difference in the emotional worlds and experiences in the speakers of Russian and English, but can be, to a great extent, accounted for linguistically. The following sources of cross-linguistic disparity in the area of emotion can be tentatively formulated:

The first source is different mapping of linguistic terms onto the same conceptual field, which is a phenomenon naturally found in all domains of language, not only in the sphere of emotion terms. It happens when a specific configuration of meanings is expressed by a single word in language X and by two or more words in language Y or even by some parts of their respective meanings (e.g., the word horror embraces the meanings of the words ужас и отвращение, and the word тоска – some parts of the meanings of the words yearning, depression and anguish).

The second source is different display rules: it seems that American English tends to avoid sending direct negative messages of the kind ‘I did something bad’ (prototypical setting for ‘SHAME’), ‘You made me feel bad’ (prototypical setting for ‘OFFENCE’), ‘You feel bad’ (prototypical setting for ‘HURT FEELINGS’), ‘You are in a bad situation’ (prototypical setting for ‘PITY’) and replaces them with milder ones where possible, whereas there is no such constraint in Russian. It explains the relative higher frequency of the Russian terms for ‘pity’, ‘shame’, and ‘offence’, which has led to the inclusion of жалость ‘pity’, неловко ‘I feel bad, I feel ashamed; lit.: uncomfortable’, обижать ‘to offend, to hurt’, обижаться ‘to feel hurt, offended’ in the list of Russian ethno-specific key words [Levontina 2004], [Shmelev 2002], [Levontina & Zalizniak 2001]. On the whole, Russian discourse allows one to express negative feelings in a slightly exaggerated way, as compared to American English, which welcomes exaggerated expression of positive feelings (cf. much-discussed de-semanticized use of happy as compared to счастливый), but shuns the expression of negative feelings.

Thus, it is acceptable in the Russian cultural milieu to tell a person X that the experiencer feels sorry for X, or admit that (s)he feels offended by X, and it is polite to exaggerate one’s feeling of shame before X for insignificant inconveniences caused by the experiencer. The English language, on the other hand, prefers to spare the feelings of both the experiencer and the object of emotion and slightly diminish them, often by using generalized terms like to feel bad in situations potentially embarrassing for either of the communicants; cf. I feel bad for you, I feel for you instead of Мне тебя жалко ‘I feel pity for you’; I feel bad to bother you instead of Мне неловко Вас беспокоить ‘I’m ashamed to bother you’, This made me feel bad, I was sad instead of Мне было обидно ‘I was offended’, Take it easy instead of Не обижайся ‘Don’t be offended’.

Below, are some excerpts from the comparison of ‘FEAR’ emotion clusters in Russian and English, from the total of 11 clusters analyzed. Many of the individual emotion terms mentioned above and below have received profound and thorough semantic descriptions in the works of [Iordanskaja 1971, 1984], [Iordanskaja et al. 1996], [Wierzbicka 1999], [Ju. D. Apresjan 2004], [Uryson 2004], [Levontina 2004], [Shmelev 2002], [Levontina & Zalizniak 2001] and other researchers.

‘FEAR’ cluster in Russian and English

Both languages have a concept of “general, neutral” ‘FEAR’, which is an emotional, rational and behavioral response to a potentially dangerous object, event, situation or action; at the prospect of coming into a closer contact with it, the experiencer wants to withdraw.

This type of ‘FEAR’ can be semantically explicated as follows

‘a person X thinks that a person, event or action Y is dangerous; X wants to avoid Y; X feels bad’: I’m afraid of this man <of the exams>; I’m afraid to go into the woods; I’m scared to go down this slope; Я боюсь этого человека <экзаменов>; Я боюсь ходить в лес; Мне страшно ехать с горы.

There is also a notion of short-lived “biological” ‘FEAR’, which does not involve any thinking prior to experiencing the emotion; it is the product of a sudden exposure to a frightening object or situation, such as a dog, a stranger, a sudden noise, etc. Semantically, it can be explicated as follows:

‘X suddenly perceives an object Y; X-s body reacts to it as it reacts to danger - by lowered body temperature and heightened blood rate; X might do some involuntary actions as a result, for example, to run away or to freeze; X feels (s)he has experienced something bad’. This type of fear is expressed by several lexical items in English and Russian: to get scared, to get frightened, to get a scare, to be shit-scared, as well as the Russian пугаться/испугаться/перепугаться.

Both English and Russian have concepts for a very strong short-lasting ‘FEAR’which can be explicated as

‘X thinks that a very bad Y might happen or that a very bad and powerful Y might do something very bad to X; X feels that (s)he cannot do anything to prevent this; X feels very bad’.

In English, there is a special word to express this meaning, terror and its derivatives – to terrify, terrifying, terrified. This kind of ‘FEAR’ involves a very strong physiological and uncontrolled behavioral response, which is reflected in language, cf. to go pale with terror, one’s blood turns icy with terror, to freeze/to numb with terror; to flee in terror. The Russian correlate of this word, ужас, as well as its derivatives, ужасаться/ужаснуться has a wider meaning: it can refer not only to the feeling of anticipating something very bad, but also to the feeling of being exposed to something very bad that has already happened. Thus, it is possible to use this word in both of the following contexts, where English uses two separate terms: Он с ужасом смотрел на приближавшихся бандитов ‘He was looking at the approaching gangsters in terror’ and Он с ужасом смотрел на обезображенное тело ‘He was looking at the mutilated body in horror’. In the first usage, it is very much like terror; cf. застыть <побелеть> от ужаса, быть парализованным ужасом, убежать в ужасе ‘to freeze with terror, to be paralyzed by terror, to go pale with terror, to flee in terror’.

In the second usage, it is different from terror and closer to horror, though it lacks the ‘disgust’ component of horror. The perfective verb form ужаснуться, derived from ужас, can only refer to the feeling that occurs after something bad has happened, not prior to it. The imperfective verb form ужасаться is also used to refer to something that has already happened, only it describes the verbal behavior of a person: Он долго ужасался моему рассказу ‘lit: He for a long time was being terrified by my story’ means ‘For a while, he was expressing his horror at what I had told’.

Horror is an emotion which combines the elements of ‘FEAR’ and ‘DISGUST’; it is a borderline emotion, a fact which is manifested even in its metaphorical conceptualization. While horror produces some typical terror-like reactions, it also involves some disgust-type reactions; cf. horror iced <curdled> one’s blood; to shrink in horror, but also to vomit in horror (one cannot vomit in terror or in ужас). Horror is an example of removing barriers between emotion clusters, which is a very typical phenomenon for English. Thus, where in English we find horror, in Russian we may well find ужас и отвращение ‘terror and disgust’, or ужас, смешанный с отвращением ‘terror mixed with disgust’ to describe this particular brand of feeling. However, interestingly, though both ‘strong fear’ and ‘disgust’ components seem to be present in horror, their sum does not equal its meaning. In a very subtle description of horror [Solomon 2004] points out an important component of horror that seems to be absent in either of these two emotions: the component of breaking the norm, of shock from discovering, instead of something normal and familiar, something monstrous and ghastly.

Both languages have singled out a kind of religious ‘FEAR’ that is inspired by very powerful objects and forces like God or nature, though both for Russian and English it is a more marginal concept; thus, lexical items expressing it are less frequently used, and belong to a literary, rather than colloquial register.

This type of ‘FEAR’ is mixed with great respect and admiration, and the component of ‘FEAR’ in it is not enough to render the resulting feeling unpleasant. Y is not perceived as dangerous or potentially harmful; on the contrary, it is viewed as exceedingly good; however, Y’s omnipotence as compared to the experiencer’s relative weakness accounts for the ‘FEAR’-component. Semantically, it can be explicated as follows:

‘X thinks that Y is very powerful and very good; X feels something very good and very strong for Y; X feels that Y can do everything; X feels small and insignificant in the presence of Y; X cannot do anything in the presence of Y’.

In English, this type of fear is more pronounced: the word awe and its derivatives (awesome, awed) refer to this mixed type of feeling, whereas in order to express this combined meaning the Russian language would resort to using a phrase благоговейный ужас ‘lit: awesome terror’, or metaphorical expressions трепет, трепетать ‘lit: quaking, to quake’. Awe does not contain ‘FEAR’ and ‘ADMIRATION’ in equal proportions, which is why благоговейный <священный> ужас is not an exact correlate; in awe, the measure of the good emotion, admiration, is stronger than that of the scary emotion; so, on the whole, it is perceived as a positive emotion rather than negative.

In contrast to this reverent, religious-like feeling, there is a totally rational type of ‘FEAR’ which involves little, if any, emotional components and implies a mostly rational appraisal of a certain object or situation as dangerous and, as a result, a controlled behavior in the form of consciously avoiding it:

‘X thinks that Y is dangerous; X prefers to avoid Y’.

This type of ‘FEAR’ is expressed by apprehensive and its derivatives in English and опасаться and its derivatives in Russian: Apprehensive about the side effects of anti-depressants, he opted out of pharmacotherapy; Опасаясь побочных эффектов антидепрессантов, он отказался от медикаментозного лечения.

An absolute opposite to the rational ‘FEAR’ are panic and freaking out, as well as the Russian паника. This type of ‘FEAR’ implies complete loss of rational control over emotions and, in the case of panic and паника, uncontrolled behavioral reactions; unlike all other types of ‘FEAR’, this one can characterize the psychotic behavior of large groups of people, even crowds; cf. the psychological term crowd panic.

Since ‘FEAR’ involves behavioral responses, its appraisal is partly triggered by social and ethical norms. Both languages contain a concept of “bad, unethical” ‘FEAR’ or, rather, unethical behavior in the situation when a person experiences fear. The situations themselves might differ with time, place and culture, but there are always some which require bravery, and the failure to live up to the required expectations results in negative ethical evaluation of the person and his (her) behavior. This type of ‘FEAR’ can be explicated as

‘X feels that Y is dangerous; X wants to avoid Y; X tries to avoid Y; the speaker thinks avoiding Y is bad’.

This type of behavior and type of personality associated with it is expressed by the English to get cold feet, coward, cowardly, chicken and the Russian (с)трусить and (с)дрейфить , where the imperfective form implies reluctance to do something and the perfective form – a complete withdrawal from the situation.

Characteristically, both languages employ the same metaphorical means to describe this cowardly behavior in a derogatory way, which are based on one of the rarer symptoms of fear – involuntary defecation; cf. to poop out, to crap out or the Russian expression наложить в штаны which all mean ‘X didn’t do something because of fear; the speaker thinks this is very bad’ [cf. Dobrovol’skij 1996 on this expression in Russian and German]. Another way of carrying negative evaluation metaphorically which is often used in the field of emotions is likening the experiencer’s behavior to that of an animal; cf. the expression with a similar meaning to have one’s tail between one’s legs or its Russian equivalent поджать хвост.

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[1] This paper was written with the financial support of the grant for senior regional fellows 2007-2008, of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard, as well as partial financial support of the following grants: RF President grant for the leading scientific schools NSH-56.11.2006.6, RHSF N06-04-00289a for «Developing a word list and samples for an active dictionary of Russian», RHSF 07-04-00-202a for “System-forming meanings of Russian Language”, grant of the Program for Fundamental research of the Department of Humanities of the Russian Academy of Sciences «Russian culture in world history».

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[L.L.1]Полно выражений типа Now stop disgusting me with your dull complaints

[L.L.2]А это почти штамп!