Cultural difference of the perceptual concept for Japanese social affects using a new free description approach
Résumé
Various socio-affective meanings are conveyed by vocal prosody and visual gesture. Research on social affects also provided information about the perception of affective expressions in different languages (Scherer & Wallbott, 1994). However, most research on this topic are based on force-choice paradigms, presenting given sets of labels and their translations in several languages, an approach which might introduce biases because of variations in "folk labels" conceptualization (Wierzbicka,1992). The aim of this paper is twofold: 1) using a free labeling approach to avoid any pre-conceptualization imposed through labels selection and translation, 2) providing a cross-cultural comparison of the perceptual categorization of such expressions by Japanese and French participants interpreting expressions produced by L1 Japanese speakers. Participants were asked to describe by one word the intended expressions of videotaped speakers uttering small phrases in 16 different social interactions. Similarities and differences between the interpretation of Japanese and French participants are described in terms of the clustering of the situations obtained from a multidimensional analysis of the obtained labels. The classification shows that two main clusters emerged from both groups of subjects, one that may be described (according to the majority of given labels) as containing "assertive" expressions, while the second is described as "interrogative" – a bipartition that recalls Brandt proposal for prosodic meaning (Brandt, 2008). Finer distinctions show an opposition between polite and imposition expressions within the assertive cluster. Both French and Japanese subjects showed similar perceptual classification patterns for expressions of surprise, irony and Kyoshuku–a typical Japanese expression. The labels used to define some situations however show cultural specificities, especially for irony an expression negatively connoted for Japanese participants while French participants associate it to humorous or comical meanings. This free-labeling approach revealed cultural nuances that a forced-choice paradigm misses, asserting its relevance to the study of cross-language changes.