Chapter 21 :Finno-Ugric emotions: The meaning of anger in Estonian and Finnish

Authors : A. Realo, M. Siiroinen, H. Tissari & L. Kööts-Ausmees

Abstract : This article compares the meaning of the emotion concept ‘anger’ between representatives of two linguistically and culturally similar countries: Estonia and Finland. Because the term viha means ‘anger’ in Estonian but ‘hate’ in Finnish, a further aim of the study was to examine the extent to which the Estonian and the Finnish viha actually correspond to each other. The choice of term was based on previous research suggesting that viha is the most cognitively salient term in both languages in terms of this particular emotion concept (Tuovila, 2005; Vainik, 2002b). Results show that the meaning of the emotion term ‘anger’ in Estonian and Finnish is very similar but that emotion meaning profiles are even more similar for the word viha. We conclude that emotion concepts repertoires may vary across cultures and languages and that emotion terms in English are not always easily translatable into other languages.

Keywords : anger hate Estonian and Finnish languages