The Linguistic Expression of Affective Stance in Yaminawa (Pano, Peru)
The Linguistic Expression of Affective Stance in Yaminawa (Pano, Peru) By Kelsey Caitlyn Neely A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair Professor Eve Sweetser Professor Justin Davidson Summer 2019 Copyright by Kelsey Caitlyn Neely Abstract The Linguistic Expression of Affective Stance in Yaminawa (Pano, Peru) by Kelsey Caitlyn Neely Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair This dissertation explores affective expression in Yaminawa, a Panoan language ofPe- ruvian Amazonia. In this study, ‘affect’ is used to refer broadly to the English language concepts of ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’. Affective expression is approached as an interac- tional phenomenon and it is analyzed in terms of affective stancetaking, i.e., the way speakers position themselves to objects in the discourse as well as their interlocutors via linguistic performance. This study considers affective resources at the levels of the lex- icon, morphology, prosody, acoustics (voice quality, speech rate and volume, etc.), and interactional features (turn duration, complexity of backchannels, etc.). This study contextualizes affective expression in Yaminawa with a detailed descrip- tion of Yaminawa ethnopsychology and the lexical resources that describe affective states, as well as behaviors and bodily sensations that are associated with particular affects by the Yaminawa. Using methods from Cognitive Anthropology, I investigate the ways that native Yaminawa speakers categorize emotion terms, and show that prosociality vs. anti- sociality is a major cultural axis along which emotion terms are conceptually organized.
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