Los sentimientos morales de la «tristeza» china. Una ilustración del acercamiento del Metalenguaje Semántico Natural (MSN) al análisis de algunas emociones chinas «básicas»

Abstract

This study undertakes, under the framework of Natural Semantic Metlanguage (NSM) developed by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues, a detailed contrastive and comparative semantic analysis of a pair of emotions concepts: bei and ai (often glossed interchangeably as sadness, sorrow, and grief), which are considered to be basic emotions in traditional Chinese philosophical texts. It illustrates that (a) they are by no means interchangeable, nor are they equivalent of the Western idea of sadness, (b) they are artifacts of the Chinese culture, shaped by Chinese people’s social and moral experiences, and their view of life and the universe. Essentially, bei encompasses a fatalistic view, and ai is a moral emotion. This leads the author to challenge the claims of universality based on the view entrenched in the English language, and urges researchers to pay attention to the analytical framework employed in the search for universal aspects of human emotions.