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Part of
Cultural-Linguistic Explorations into Spirituality, Emotionality, and Society
Edited by Hans-Georg Wolf, Denisa Latić and Anna Finzel
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 14] 2021
► pp. 79–104

Conceptualizing shame in Old Romanian

A cultural and historical-semantic analysis

| University of Bucharest

The chapter deals with the conceptualization of a social-moral emotion, ruşine [shame], in Old Romanian (16th–18th centuries). Within an integrative theoretical and methodological framework (combining elements of Cultural Linguistics, Textual and Cognitive Lexical Semantics, Cultural Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology of Emotions), I tackle the patterns of conceptualizing shame, delineating the prototypical feature profile, together with its contextual variation, as highlighted by the counterpart lexicalization. The corpus data bring forward a complex componential grid. Certain types of shame can be outlined: (a) dysphoric prototypical shame; (b) contiguous shame, contextually intersecting with disrespect, dishonor or fear; (c) religious shame, hedonically hybrid, both euphoric and dysphoric, overlapping with respect and fear; (d) positive shame, socially validated and decoded as shyness, modesty, or, in a romantic love context, as pudor.

Keywords: shame, conceptualization of emotions, componential grid, semantic feature, cultural dimensions, cultural evaluation, Old Romanian
Article outline
  • 1.Preliminaries
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3. Shame – definition, description, and typology
    • 3.1Psychological, anthropological, and sociological perspective
    • 3.2Linguistic perspective
  • 4.Conceptualization and lexicalization of shame in Old Romanian
    • 4.1Prototypical shame
      • a.Violation of norms of physical and moral integrity
      • b.Violation of norms of social integrity
    • 4.2Contiguous / hybrid shame
      • a.Violation / Loss of laic authority
      • b.Violation of religious authority: Religious shame
    • 4.3Positive (honorable) shame – shyness/modesty/pudor
  • 5.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • Corpus (16th–18th centuries)
  • References
Published online: 8 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.14.05sto
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