This corpus-based study examines the description and analysis of linguistic and cultural diversity in the conceptualization of the notions "sympathy" and "empathy". On the basis of the contrastive semantic analysis of "sympathy" and "empathy" in English and their Russian translation equivalents the considerable differences in the conceptualization of these words, explained by the reference to the prevalence of different models of social interaction in Anglo and Russian cultures, as well as different cultural attitudes towards emotional expression are demonstrated. Данное исследование посвящено описанию и анализу языкового и культурного различия понятий "сочувствие" и "сопереживание". На основе сравнительного семантического анализа данных понятий в английском и русском языках продемонстрированы их концептуальные различия, обоснованные распространением различных моделей социального взаимодействия в английской и русской культурах, а также отношение этих культур к эмоциональной экспрессии

Buyankina, A. S.

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702. ???? ?????? ??????????? ????? ??? ??????????? // ??????? ?????? ???????????? ?????. 03.07.2013. URL:http://learngle.com/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=193/ (date accessed: 21.01.2015).3. Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (part 1) // ??????????? ???????????. URL: http://englishon-line.ru/chudog-tekst1.html/ (date accessed: 21.01.2015).4. 7 ???? 7 ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? // ??????????????????????????????. 2009–2015.URL: http://begin-english.ru/article/7-za-protiv/addressing (date accessed: 21.01.2015).Scientific adviser Yu. P. Azhel, senior lecturer of TPUBychkova I. A., studentNational Research Tomsk Polytechnic UniversityE-mail: id131898898-a31cfb86b@vkmessenger.com???????? . ?.????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????, ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????? ?????????. ?????? ????????? ????????? ??? ?????????? ???????? ??????????? ?????????? (????????,??????????? ?? ???????????????), ?????? ???????, ?????????? ????? ?????? ????????? ?????? ????? ???????????. ???????????????? ?????????? ?????????? ????????? ???????????? ?????? ?? ???????? ??????????. ?? ????????? ???????? ????????????????????? ?????? ?????? ????? «???????????? ????? ??????». ?? ??????????? ?????? ?????????? ??? ????????????? ??????????????????????????.????????? ?????: ??????????, ?????? ????????, ???????????? ????, ????????, ??????????, ?????????????????????????, ???????????.?????????. ?., ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????E-mail: id131898898-a31cfb86b@vkmessenger.comBuyankina A. S.SYMPATHY AND EMPATHY IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN:A LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL ANALYSISThis corpus-based study examines the description and analysis of linguistic and cultural diversity in the conceptualiza-tion of the notions «sympathy» and «empathy». On the basis of the contrastive semantic analysis of «sympathy» and «empathy»in English and their Russian translation equivalents the considerable differences in the conceptualization of these words, ex-plained by the reference to the prevalence of different models of social interaction in Anglo and Russian cultures, as well as dif-ferent cultural attitudes towards emotional expression are demonstrated.Keywords: culture, emotions, sympathy, empathy, English, Natural Semantic Metalanguage, Russian.The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) as a Method of Semantic AnalysisNSM is a methodology of linguistic and conceptual analysis which was developed by Anna Wierzbicka, CliffGoddard, and her colleagues. It consists of sixty-three empirically established lexical and grammatical universals.These universals form a minilanguage, which is used to represent the meaning of linguistic units. Within the NSMapproach, emotion terms are explained by reference to a prototypical cognitive scenario, which gives rise to a certainway of feeling. This approach is consistent with the view held in cultural psychology that emotion concepts can bedecomposed into ‘narrative’ terms [1].The purpose of the NSM-based conceptual analysis of the emotion term is to create a semantic explication ofthe term representing a proto-typical way of thinking and feeling associated with this emotion. This explication isexpected to be broad enough to account for a variety of uses of the term within its single meaning. The advantage ofusing the NSM in conceptual analysis lies in the fact that it makes it possible to capture the meaning of the emotionterm of any language by using words that are adequate in that language.The use of the NSM enables to study human emotions from a genuinely cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, aswell as a psychological perspective, and, thus, providews new possibilities for the scientific understanding of subjec-tivity and psychological experience.Semantic analysisEnglish «Sympathy» and «Empathy»The term «sympathy» is polysemous. In this article one meaning of «sympathy» as it is used in the combina-tions ‘to feel sympathy for/with someone else’ and ‘to have sympathy for/with someone else’ is considered.Sympathy is an emotion caused by the awareness of the fact that something bad has happened to another per-son. The range of conditions invoking sympathy is relatively broad and extends from the discomfort of everyday life(for example, working long hours) to serious misfortunes (such as the death of a loved one, or living through a war).71In  summary,  sympathy is  invoked by the  awareness  of  a  negative  emotional  state  of  another  person.  It  cancause some emotional response in a person, yet there is little evidence to suggest that it is associated with a bodilysensation. Sympathy can be expressed to another person, but it is restricted to situations when people are in contactwith each other. Since sympathy can be experienced in the situations when one person does not know another one, orhas no contact with that person; this feature cannot be regarded as an invariant of the meaning.In the paper the following formula to capture the meaning of «sympathy» is given:[A] sympathya. person X thinks about person Y that way:b. something bad has happened to this personc. this person feels something bad because of thisd. it is not goode. I don’t want people to feel bad things like thisf. when X thinks that way, X feels somethingg. how people feel when they think that way about someone.The structure of the suggested explication expresses the opinion, that the meaning of the emotion term has acomponent (components f–g) indicating a feeling caused by a particular way of thinking (components a–e). The ele-ment ‘like’ in components (f–g) signals that the explication refers to a prototype of the feeling. A similar structure ofexplications refers to other terms discussed in this paper. Explication [A] shows that sympathy is caused by thinkingthat something bad has happened to someone else and this event has led to the person’s negative feelings (compo-nents b and c). This situation receives a negative evaluation (d) because the person does not want people to experi-ence such bad feelings (e).«Empathy» refers to a conscious attention to the feelings of another person. As the data suggest,  in Englishfolk psychology (as re?ected in conventional English) «empathy» is most commonly conceptualized as a state ratherthan a feeling. In accordance with this ?nding, the expression ‘to have empathy’ is studied in this paper. The essenceof «empathy» means knowing and understanding the emotional state of another person. Importantly, the other persondoes not have to have experienced something bad.«Empathy» can be explicated as follows:[B] empathya. person X thinks about someone else that way:b. something happens to this personc. this person feels something because of thisd. I know what a person can feel when something like this happense. because of this, I know what this person can be feelingRussian «sochuvstvie» and «soperezhivanie»To begin with, it necessary to mention the similarity of the morphological structures of «sochuvstvie» and«soperezhivanie». Both words contain the pre?x so- (comparable to the English pre?x co-), which roughly means ‘ajoint activity’. In Russian the pre?x s?- is regarded as ‘alive’, that is, its meaning differs from the meaning of theword taken as a whole. For Russian speakers the emotion terms in question have a transparent morphological struc-ture and refer to a ‘joint’ or ‘shared’ emotional experience: sochuvstvie – roughly ‘co-feeling’, and soperezhivanie –roughly, ‘co-living through’ or ‘co-intense feeling’.Sochuvstvie is a feeling caused by awareness of someone else’s bad situation and his or her consequent nega-tive emotional state. The range of potential situations invoking sochuvstvie is relatively broad; examples from theCorpus include someone being cheated by a salesperson in a grocery store, having to go far away from home, beingcriticized in a newspaper, being lonely, being unemployed, and being old.Typically, sochuvstvie is experienced towards someone who a person knows and is in contact. An importantconstituent of sochuvstvie is that the experiencer feels some kind of a ‘bond’ between him- or her and the target per-son. An illustration for this quality of sochuvstvie is found in its tendency to collocate with the name of a social cate-gory, «blizhnij» (literally ‘the one next to you’), hence the collocation «sochuvstvie k blizhnemu» (literally, ‘sympa-thy for the one next to you’). «Blizhnij» is a Russian culture- and language-speci?c social category which refers topeople with whom one shares one’s life on an everyday basis, and with whom one feels a bond.The meaning of the word «sochuvstvie» can be represented as follows:??] Sochuvstviea. person X knows that something bad has happened to person Yb. X knows that Y feels something bad because of thisc. when X thinks about it, X feels something badd. at the same time X thinks about Y that way:e. I don’t want this person to feel bad things like thisf. because of this, I want to do something good for this persong. when X thinks that way about Y, X feels something good towards Yh. X wants Y to know this.Components a and b in the explication show that sochuvstvie develops from the awareness of the bad condi-tion and emotional state of another person. The choice of the prime KNOW rather than THINK (as used for Englishsympathy) is due to the greater degree of ‘closeness’ between the experiencer and the object: the experiencer72KNOWS through his or her contact with the person that something bad has happened to him or her. Component ccaptures the ‘painful’ sensations associated with sochuvstvie. Component d indicates that a parallel mental activitydevelops in the experiencer’s mind – the experiencer wants the person to stop experiencing the negative emotionalstate (component e) by doing something good for that person (component f). This way of thinking is associated witha positive attitude towards the other person (component g). The desire to express this attitude to the one in trouble iscaptured in component h.Derivationally, the word «soperezhivanie» (traditionally translated in English as «empathy») is related to«perezhivanie», which roughly means ‘intense feeling’. Therefore, soperezhivanie describes an ‘intense feeling’caused by the ‘intense feeling’ of another person. Typical situations when soperezhivanie can be experienced arewatching a movie or a play, reading a book, or following a sports competition. In such cases a person becomes awareof the emotional state of other people and in the process experiences the similar emotional state.In order to feel soperezhivanie, it is essential for the experiencer to feel some bond between himself and an-other person. In the case of fans and sports teams, this bond is usually developed due to a common town or countryof origin. In the case of ?ctional characters, this bond can be formed by belonging to the same gender or age group,or having similar experiences. Soperezhivanie can also be felt by someone who is away from home and becomesaware of some misfortune happening to the people in their native country (e.g., a terrorist attack, ?ood, earthquake,etc.).[D] Soperezhivaniea. person X knows that something bad is happening to person Yb. X knows that Y feels something bad because of thisc. when X thinks about it, X feels something bad,d. at the same time X thinks about Y that way:e. this person is someone like mef. I don’t want this person to experience bad thingsg. I want good things to happen to this personh. when X thinks that way about Y, X feels something good towards YThis study contributes to the analysis of linguistic and cultural variation in the conceptualization of «sympa-thy» and «empathy» type emotions, an area which has been largely overlooked in the psychological literature. Theuse of universal semantic concepts allows to identify the precise semantic and conceptual differences between theEnglish words «sympathy» and «empathy» and the Russian words «sochuvstvie» ? «soperezhivanie», which are re-garded as their translation counterparts. These differences are mainly related to the degree of familiarity between theexperiencer and the target person and the complexity and expression of the feelings. These differences can be attrib-uted to the different models of social interaction prevalent in English and Russian cultures and different attitudestowards the expression of emotions.References1. Shweder, Haidt, Horton, & Joseph, 2008, p. 414.Scientific adviser Yu. P. Azhel, senior lecturer of TPUBuyankina A. S., studentNational Research Tomsk Polytechnic UniversityE-mail:lina.buyankina@mail.ru??????????. ?.??????????? ????????????????????????? ??????????????????:???????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? «??????????»? «?????????????». ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??? ??????????????? ????????, ????????????? ????????????????? ?????????? ???????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????, ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????.??????????????:?????????, ??????, ??????????, ?????????????, ????????????????????????????, ????????????.??????????. ?., ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????E-mail: lina.buyankina@mail.ru

Sympathy and empathy in English and Russian: a linguistic and cultural analysis

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