Niiya, Ellsworth, and Yamaguchi’s “Amae in Japan and the United States: An Exploration of a ‘Culturally Unique’ Emotion” investigated cross-cultural similarities and differences within language and emotion and how they affect each other. It focused on Amae, a word in Japanese roughly meaning (according to Doi) ‘to depend and presume upon another’s love or bask in another’s indulgence’ (280), which we have no word for in English. The article grounded us with a brief history of the study of emotion and expression (Darwin, Ekman, Izard, etc.) and then began questioning the possibility of emotions only existing in certain cultures or the possibility of all emotions being universal but merely emphasized in some societies by language and culture. The article introduces Levy’s theory of ‘hypercognized’ or ‘hypocognized’ emotions, which ‘suggests that emotional lives vary across cultures because of differences in emphasis, not fundamental differences in capacity, and that the emotions of one culture may not be completely incomprehensible to members of another culture’ (279). At this point I remembered a conversation I had had with my host sister when I went abroad to China. I had been sharing a small room with her (one out of two rooms in the apartment), and I mentioned how I needed some privacy or missed having privacy sometimes. She knew English pretty well, but had never heard the word privacy before. I explained the definition to her, and at first she didn’t understand why I would want privacy (why would I want to be alone?). Later she understood exactly what I meant, but told me they had no word for privacy in Mandarin. This example matches Levy’s theory of ‘hypocognized’ emotions as well as Averill’s “claim that ‘most standard emotional reactions are socially constructed or institutionalized patterns of response’ rather than biologically determined events” (Ledoux 116). The fact that there is no word for privacy in Mandarin boggled my mind, but the fact that my host sister could understand what I meant demonstrates that she must have felt the need for privacy or had privacy before. This verifies the difference of the Chinese and American cultures but also the similarity of the capacity of emotion in people, which is exactly what this article is attempting to prove with the Amae example. Perhaps America’s ‘hypocognized’ use of privacy relates to the ‘independence’ that Niiya, Ellsworth, and Yamaguchi discuss later in the article.
Understanding the exact meaning of Amae was slightly challenging partly because it describes an emotion that two people are mutually (or not mutually) feeling during an interaction experience—it is not a feeling that one feels on their own. Doi’s definition quoted above captures the more emotional sense of Amae, while Yamaguchi focuses on the behavioral aspects of the term. Amae is only felt in very specific situational instances—when one person asks someone else a favor expecting their wish to be granted and because of their close relationship it is okay, but if their relationship were not so close asking the favor would be considered ‘inappropriate.’ It is when the inappropriateness of asking the favor becomes appropriate because of the close relationship between the two people, and one or both people involved realize it. What is interesting is that both the ‘requester’ and the ‘receiver’ can experience Amae, which seems to be a mix of many different feelings, and this combination of feelings can be both positive and negative depending on the situation and the balancing of the positive and negative feelings. What this study proved was that because of the difference in cultures between the U.S. and Japan, Japan is more likely to feel positive Amae because of Japan’s tendency toward interdependence, while the U.S. leans toward experiencing negative Amae because of our ‘hypocognized’ use of independence and autonomy. The positive feelings of Amae can include a mix of affection, love, reaffirmation, acceptance, furthering the closeness of the relationship, getting helped, helping, getting attention, feeling in control, etc. It is when these emotions are over-indulged that positive Amae can turn to negative Amae—nagging, whining, using, being used, manipulating, getting manipulated, using power to one’s own advantage, etc. One negative Amae feeling that the authors did not discuss is guilt—the ‘requester’ may feel guilty or ashamed for having to ask for help while the ‘receiver’ may feel guilty for not wanting to help but feeling like they have to, even if they don’t feel like they’re being manipulated.
What I think we need to remember is the William James quote mentioned at the end of the article: “the trouble with emotions in psychology is that they are regarded too much as absolutely individual things” (293). We have to remember the consequences of language: “the names are categorical, but the feelings are not; they shade from one to another, and in any culture the one and the other are defined by language. People describe their emotions in the language they know, and the categories of their culture undoubtedly influence the emotions they feel” (293).
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I too was very intrigued by Niiya, Ellsworth and Yamaguchi's article "Amae in Japan and the United States: An Exploration of a “Culturally Unique” Emotion," having recognized a distinct difference between universally recognized emotions and emotions that are seen as specific to certian cultures. It seems as though there are the innate emotions that have developed out of a need to survive, a means of species and inter-species communication, etc. as well as emotions that developed out of cultural necessity. Amae, and other culturally based emotions develop according to different lifestyles, expectations and interactions, however, according to the studies in this paper, it is not impossible for people from other cultures to recognize or feel these emotions. This gives reason to believe that there are relatively little differences in the biological aspect of the emotion felt, and that the main difference lies in the stimulant as well as the culture in which the subject is brought up in. I found it particularly interesting that Amae is an emotion that 'is not felt on one's own,' in American culture we are so culturally focused on being an individual that we have almost no emotions similar to Amae and in a situation in which the Japanese would feel Amae (a generally positive emotion) we would generally feel a more negative emotion such as guilt or annoyance. What other cultures have emotions similar to Amae? Are there emotions that some cultures are incapable of feeling?
The question of whether emotions are tied directly to language is an interesting one. Could a person experience a feeling without having a word to define that feeling? I think it is fascinating to unravel the connections between language and emotional understanding, however there seems to be something missing in the process. Emotions are undoubtedly tied to language— as everything is, because language is our primary means of expression. Emotions, as I’m coming to learn, are multifaceted. Just as there is no simple place in the brain where emotions are controlled, there is no single, descriptive word for an emotion. Happiness is a subjective state, a biological state, and a universal state— all at once. Cultural contexts and language mirror each other. Language influences the way we express our emotions, but does it also limit us from experiencing something novel, something we cannot define by a single word?
A question I would like to discuss would be:
Can we experience something novel, something that our language has failed to define?
With regard to these issues of language and emotion, I have to admit that I was surprised that Japanese and American studies on Amae both found people would be displeased if not asked for help. I suppose I thought that knowing what we know about the two cultures, the ideals of Japanese would be more oriented in the "Amae" direction. On the contrary, the study certainly found Americans were just as capable of feeling this, despite whether or not we have a word for it. Thinking about how closely emotions are tied to language is certainly very, very interesting because as we have established, the emotions will be present regardless of what we decide to label them. However, one must ask if the information as attached to the emotion through language has any effect on how we respond to it. (?) These are certainly compelling ideas that I'd like to discuss more in class, though I have no doubt we will.
The Amae article got me thinking about cultural definitions of emotion as pertaining to history, and if some "undefinable" languages, in western terms, can be considered as different because of previous emotional experience within a culture. My own personal experience is with certain Yiddish words, such as "kvelling" which means to be very proud of someone, but more specifically with your children's acheivements. Or acheivements made after a struggle. I kind of feel like this word has significance within a kind of Eastern European Jewish culture which relates directly to an emotional past. Can anyone else think of any other examples like this?
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