The emotion concept of SHAME as one of the markers of social infantilism: Cross-cultural analysis based on language corpora data

Introduction

In cross-cultural studies, in particular linguistics, the tendency to identify common and divergent features in the structure, functioning and development of social and psychological phenomena in different linguocultures dominates. One of such phenomena is the concept of "national character" (Inkeles, 1997), which has long been criticized for some scientific bias (Farber, 1950, p. 307; McCrae & Terracciano, 2006, p. 156). However, methodological problems have not become an obstacle to the spread of this concept in a number of culturally oriented disciplines, including linguistic ones. This is especially true of ethnolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics, as well as post-Soviet versions of cultural linguistics – linguoculturology and linguoconceptology – whose followers operate with the concept of "national character" without much reservation as to its objectivity.

Cross-cultural studies of national characters are extremely relevant today, because they directly correlate with the acute problem of today – globalization. The latter encourages a number of issues of intercultural understanding, especially intercultural contacts and barriers. These barriers do not disappear, as globalization, in its turn, actualizes anti-globalization processes, which show, for example, some ethnocentric tendencies within the European linguo-cultural space.

The objectivity of the identification of national traits requires the disclosure of the features of the emotional world of the respective linguo-ethnic group, as the study of emotions (emotional states, feelings) can provide scientifically reliable data on the specifics of world perception and understanding of both individuals and ethnic groups as a whole. Such conclusions were reached by A. Wierzbicka and Z. Kövecses in their fundamental works (Kövecses, 1986, 1990; Wierzbicka, 1999), due to which they initiated a detailed study of emotion concepts in numerous cognitive and culturally oriented linguistic studies in the late twentieth century. In fact, they introduced the term emotion concepts into scientific circulation. At present, the fact that they are clearly expressed cultural concepts does not provoke much discussion among scholars (Kitayama & Markus, 1997; Kövecses, 1990; Schwarz-Friesel, 2008; Wierzbicka, 1999). This is the reason why the emotion concept of SHAME, which is the object of the study in our paper, should be considered as a cultural concept, i.e. the one that can reveal the specifics of world perception and world understanding of a particular linguo-culture.

Theoretical Framework

Emotions correlate with human cognition and language (Schwarz-Friesel, 2008, p. 277). Therefore, the methodological basis for identifying the cultural specificity of emotion concepts is the conclusion of psychologists and linguists that in the process of social interaction of individuals even basic (universal) emotions receive socio- and ethnocultural semantic nuances that influence their expression and perception in a particular linguo-society (Friedlmeier, Corapci, & Cole, 2011; Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 2017; Mizin & Petrov, 2021).

In addition, within the mentioned interaction there is a symbiotic synergy of basic emotions, which gives rise to numerous combinations of the latter. Purely "human" – social (derivative, complex) – emotions are formed this way (Levenson, 2011), a bigger part of which demonstrates a clear cultural marking. Social emotions are the result of the dynamics of the emotional world of a person, being an amalgam of two or more emotions. Their "blurred" nature is the reason that, despite the involvement of modern techniques and technical capabilities, the number of social emotions is still uncertain (Cowen & Keltner 2017; Du, Tao, & Martinez, 2014). It is noteworthy that there is no common point of view on the criteria for distinguishing between basic and social emotions among the scholars. Therefore, these emotions in some works are defined as basic, and in others – as social. Shame is one of such emotions, which is under consideration in our paper.

Psychologists generally hold the view that shame is a complex, i.e., social emotion, although it is considered as a basic one in some studies (Izard, 1992). Obviously, this is due to the fact that shame, although being not considered as an innate (basic) emotion, reveals at least some of the characteristics that are inherent to basic emotions (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008, p. 11655). First of all, it concerns the distinct manifestation (expression) of this emotion by the human physiology – blushing of the face, aversion of the eyes, lowering of the head, and so on. However, shame is characterized by signs of the social emotion, as it can occur only in the presence of another person / other people who evaluates / who evaluate the morality of the individual's actions. At the same time, the issue of self-esteem is no less important, because the lower the self-esteem, the more intensely the individual experiences shame.

Shame is considered to be an important moral and regulatory mechanism not only of a personal but also of public life, so the cultural concept of SHAME is relevant to any linguo-culture. As a regulator of social relations, it performs a moral and ethical function (Vdovychenko, 2015). If we take into account the fact that the norms of morality in different linguistic ethnic groups differ slightly, as they depend on the type of culture, it is reasonable to assume that the emotion concept of SHAME plays a significant role in shaping traits of the national character. Moreover, shame as a sociocultural phenomenon, may even be one of the criteria for the division of cultures (Benedict, 1989).

All issues related to cross-cultural differences are quite "sensitive" for any nation, especially national groups. The pressure of globalization makes them even more "sensitive". Therefore, even minor comments on the specifics of "our" or "their" linguo-cultures now require objective scrutiny, as they may contain a certain amount of ethnocentric "distortion". It is because of this "distortion" that both the objectivity of national (or ethnic) stereotypes and their relevance are questionable, because they often do not correspond to reality due to the significant dynamics of socio- and ethnocultural changes.

Such typical features of Ukrainians as love of freedom (desire for freedom), emotionality ("cordocentrism"), irrationality, religiosity, individualism, introversion (projecting one's own activity on oneself), stubbornness, diligence and hospitality have been distinguished by Ukrainophile researchers (Kulchytskyi, 1949; Yaniv, 2006) for a long time. They may have been relevant to the Ukrainian-speaking community in the previous or the last but one century, but not today, when the impact of globalization, democratization and liberalization on the Ukrainian society is becoming more and more noticeable. At least, some of these features are certainly not true any more, but continue to exist at the level of auto- and heterostereotypes. Thus, recent sociological research has found that the rate of individualism among Germans reaches 67, among Poles – 60, among Russians – 39, and among Ukrainians – 25 (Hofstede Insights, 2019). Although ethnographers of the past centuries were convinced that Ukrainians are more individualistic than Russians (Kostomarov, 1991, p. 61). Apparently, there were some objective reasons for that at that time. The same concerns such a feature as being hard working. In our opinion, it is also irrelevant for modern Ukrainians, because there can be no bumpy roads, untidy houses, neglected estates, abandoned public areas and a permanently depressed economy in a hard-working nation. It is impossible to talk about religiosity without irony, because the Orthodox religion is mostly a "fashion" for weddings, baptisms, funerals, etc. for the current generation, so the religiosity of many Ukrainians is more pretentious than sincere.

There are some grounds for assuming that the very concept of "national character" is methodologically somewhat incorrect in relation to the Ukrainian society. In particular, after 30 years of Ukrainian independence the third President of Ukraine V. Yushchenko acknowledged that Ukrainians still remain a "quasi-nation" (Yushchenko, 2021). This national inferiority was caused by historical, geopolitical, socio-cultural and ethnocultural factors. The role of the psychological type of the people is important here, as the immaturity of Ukrainians as a nation is obviously connected with immaturity (infantilism) as a feature of their character. The problem of social infantilism has become even more relevant in the Ukrainian society after the 2019 presidential election, as this feature is associated with V. Zelensky’s voters according to a number of public figures (Hopko, 2019; Hundorova, 2019; Kozlovskyi, 2021).

Infantilism is closely correlated with the emotional world of the individual and society as a whole, because it influences the social expression of emotions by the individual (Rotenberg, 2009, p. 163). In their turn, social emotions themselves, as cultural concepts, are directly involved in the formation of social infantilism. And because the infantile person has problems regulating their behavior in a certain group of people due to increased suggestibility, emotional imbalance, low level of development of a sense of duty and responsibility, it is primarily about regulatory emotions, including shame.

In view of the abovementioned, the purpose of our study is to establish those ethnocultural features of the emotion concept of SHAME, which directly correlate with some national characteristics of the representatives of Ukrainian, Anglo-Saxon and German linguo-cultures. On the one hand, shame, showing socio- and ethnocultural significance, can more or less determine the basic characteristics of the concept of the "national character", and on the other hand, these characteristics themselves influence the formation of shame as a social emotion. We are speaking primarily about the role of shame in the generation of such a social phenomenon as infantilism, as the significant spread of the latter in a particular linguo-culture, in particular in Ukrainian, suggests that infantilism may become a national trait (Strazhnyi, 2017, p. 415). To prove the scientific objectivity of this assumption, the proposed study involves corpora-based data.

Methodology

In Western European science, the objectivity of research methodology is paid much attention to. This also applies to those works in which anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists or linguists touch on "subtle matter" – the characteristic features of the mentality of a particular linguistic ethnic group. Instead, in the post-Soviet scientific space, the truth of statements about character traits of the nation is often based on the conclusions of philosophers, culturologists, or even theologians. Although such statements must be based on empirical evidence and involve a scientifically sound methodology, because otherwise they cannot be considered objective enough. In addition, in the field of linguistics, the study of the specifics of the mentality of a particular linguo-culture is considered more scientifically correct if it is based on the material of different – related and unrelated – languages, as this allows avoiding erroneous, in particular linguo-narcissistic conclusions, which are often observed in monolingual studies (Mizin & Korostenski, 2020, p. 114).

Taking into account the purpose of the proposed study, it is necessary to identify the ethnocultural specificity of the emotion concept of Сором in the Ukrainian-speaking society, which could be one of the factors that contributed to the formation of Ukrainian infantilism. Data from the language corpora are used to establish the ethnocultural semantics of shame, because at the beginning of the third decade of the XXI century it can be reasonably argued that the methodology of corpus linguistics is quite objective in terms of studying cultural concepts (Mizin, Slavova, & Khmara, 2021; Stefanowitsch, 2020). Language corpora in interlingual studies should be balanced (as far as possible) in terms of volume, structure and technical capabilities (set of tools). The English-language iWeb (iWeb, 2021) corpus, the German-language Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (DWDS, 2021) and the Ukrainian-language General Regional Annotated Corpus of the Ukrainian Language (GRAC-13 version) (GRAC, 2021) meet this requirement, because they are, firstly, representative, and secondly, are freely available, thirdly, have a similar volume and structure, and fourthly, the collocation strength indices used in these corpora (logDice and MI-index) are to some extent related.

The iWeb corpus contains 14 billion words (22 million web pages represented by different types of discourses: Internet discourse, publicistics, science, fiction, etc.). The volume of the DWDS corpus is currently more than 27 billion tokens. The basis for the automatic creation of word profiles is a newspaper corpus of about 3 billion tokens. These profiles provide data on the frequency of left and right collocates of query words (a general list and lists separately for each part of speech) and co-occurrences. The function of automatic creation of similar profiles is also available in iWeb and GRAC corpora. However, in methodological terms, the volume of the GRAC corpus is somewhat problematic, as its latest version – GRAC-13 – contains only 861 million tokens. However, today it is the largest corpus of the Ukrainian language.

It should be noted that the logDice and MI-index, although developed on the basis of different techniques, but serve one purpose – to establish a typical compatibility and "weed out" a random one, so these indices can be considered, at least for the purposes of this study, essentially relevant ones. There are more than eight dozen such statistical metrics for estimating word compatibility. They allow calculating the strength of the connection between the elements of phrases, based on the frequency of these phrases and their constituent words.

Results and discussion

Studying Japanese linguistic culture, the American anthropologist R. Benedict (1989) came to the conclusion that the emotion of shame has a significant role for the Japanese in the process of regulating of social relations. This became the basis for determining the latter as one of the criteria on the basis of which the cultures of East and West are divided. According to this scholar, a "guilt culture" is characteristic for Europeans, and a "shame culture"– for the Japanese. The phenomenon of "guilt culture" is obviously associated with a high rate of individualism in the European cultural space (Hofstede Insights, 2019), because the individualistic nature is focused on assessing the responsibility for choosing a model of behavior in a relevant situation of social interaction. On the contrary, the "shame culture" of the Japanese is based on a sense of internal solidarity (corporatism) of groups, so the individual is ashamed of their actions to violate generally accepted norms and cause inconvenience to members of "their" group. This conclusion is consistent with the position of psychologists, who argue that members of European individualistic cultures are more prone to emotions that give them distance and independence. Here, the role of emotions is related to the individual's self-expression, personal aspirations and interests. But in collectivistic cultures, a person is more apt to the emotions that are responsible for the interaction and relationship between members of the group and contribute to its adaptation in this team (Breslav, 2004, p. 468).

This gives grounds to assert that the division of cultures by R. Benedict according to the emotional criterion coincides to some extent with the division of cultures into collectivistic and individualistic (see, e.g., Hofstede, 2006). The relevance of the emotion of guilt for members of individualistic linguo-societies is obviously related to Christianity, as confession and repentance have helped individuals develop a sense of responsibility for their sins. In such linguo-societies, a person does not look for the reasons for their sinful actions outside of their own "I", but, feeling guilty, takes responsibility.

The ability of the representatives of individualistic cultures not to shift responsibility for their actions onto someone else directly correlates with another criterion, according to which different linguo-societies are differentiated. This criterion is the locus of control. This concept was introduced by the social psychologist J. Rotter (1954) as an indicator of the localization of individuals’ conation. Later on, this indicator came into use as one of the characteristics of a psychological type of a particular nation. Representatives of linguo-societies who are inclined to credit their success or failures to external factors have an external locus of control. And vice versa, if the results of activities are extrapolated to internal factors, namely conation, then we are talking about an internal locus of control. It is believed that utter individualists like Anglo-Saxons and Germans have an inherent internal locus of control.

This fact is also confirmed by the research results through the lens of the concept of cultural standards by A. Thomas (2018), which correlates with the abovementioned G. Hofstede’s approach in terms of most criteria (sense of community / individualism, hierarchical orientation, regulation of interpersonal distance, orientation towards the result, tendency to preserve dignity, etc. Cultural standards are the ways of perceiving, thinking, judging and acting, which are perceived and considered by representatives of a certain linguo-society not only in the context of their behaviour but also concerning others as normal, typical, or even obligatory. These standards are adopted by an individual in the course of growing up and development and are reflexively manifested during social interaction. The followers of A. Thomas’ concept have found that Germans are oriented towards internal control when carrying out any activity (Schroll-Machl, 2003, pp. 45-129). This conclusion is also true of Anglo-Saxons if one takes into account their character traits such as discipline, reasonable thinking (common sense), pragmatism, and individualism (Horodetska, 2003; Kobozeva, 1995).

Therefore, the fact that Anglo-Saxons and Germans belong to "guilt cultures" is directly or indirectly confirmed by the most common theories of culture types: (1) typology of organizational culture by G. Hofstede, (2) theory of locus of control by J. Rotter and (3) concept of cultural standards by A. Thomas. However, that does not necessarily mean that all European ethnic groups also belong to guilt cultures. For instance, it is unlikely that Ukrainian linguo-society can be defined as a guilt culture since Ukrainians, as has been specified above, have a low indicator of individualism. In addition, the thesis that Ukrainians have an internal locus of control (Reva, 2019, p. 122) needs further studies because, unlike Anglo-Saxons and Germans, Ukrainians go beyond their inner world due a to certain fatality, when they may credit their failures or inaction to some external factors (phantom forces). Moreover, hypersensitivity of a Ukrainian soul and its vulnerability is the reason for the weak strong-willed regulation of Ukrainians, which leads to the fact that emotional sensitivity, contemplativeness, and reverie outweigh the will in their character (Mizin & Petrov, 2018, p. 121). This feature of the psychological type of the nation has greatly determined cultural standards of Ukrainians: (1) orientation towards hierarchy, (2) indirect management of conflicts and problems, (3) flexibility in communication rules, and (4) high level of uncertainty (indecisiveness, insecurity) (Fink, Gruttauer, & Thomas, 2008, pp. 12-13).

In view of this, it can be assumed that representatives of Ukrainian linguo-culture tend to be less responsible for their actions than Anglo-Saxons or Germans because they often shift their responsibility to external, sometimes even phantom factors. Such traits of the Ukrainian character as dependency to some extent and irresponsibility originate from the sense of community since collective responsibility involves the opportunity to shift responsibility onto others. The fact that a considerable number of individuals is not ready to take responsibility indicates a certain immaturity of a community as a whole. This is consistent with V. Yushchenko’s thesis about Ukrainians as a "quasi-nation". In such a community, shame for misdemeanors transforms into shame in the eyes of people from the community rather than someone’s own shame.

One of the ways to verify this assumption is a comparative study of frequent collocates for the following lemmas (Table 1): Ukrainian сором (GRAC), English shame (iWeb, 2021) and German Scham (DWDS, 2021). To ensure the validity of the research findings, it is sufficient to analyze 30 collocates with the highest indices of logDice or MI-index in each corpus, i.e., not only the frequency of compatibility of these lemmas with other word forms (Freq.), but also an index of the typicality (stability) of this compatibility (if extrapolated to the conceptual level, then Freq. indicates the relevance of a concept in a certain linguo-society, and logDice / MI-index indicate how strongly these concepts correlate to related ones).

With the help of such an analysis, it is possible to identify those cultural concepts, especially emotion ones, which most closely correlate with the concepts of Ukrainian СОРОМ, Anglo-Saxon SHAME, and German SCHAM. At the same time, the cross-cultural background enables us to determine more objectively to which culture – guilt or shame – Ukrainians belong. Correlating concepts closest to shame by analogy with the conceptual proximates of U. Oster (2012, p. 338) will be called conceptual proximates.

Table 1.
Proximates of emotion concepts of UkrainianСором, Anglo-Saxon Shame and German Scham (corpus-based data).

Analysis of the corpus data presented in Table 1 leads to the following conclusions:

1. proximates of the concept СОРОМ show that the emotion of shame in Ukrainians is manifested mostly collectively, because they associate it primarily with the very shame, disgrace, and humiliation, and the latter, as is commonly known, can occur only within the in-group. At the same time, the concepts of СОРОМ and ГАНЬБА reveal the closest connections with this emotion. It is noteworthy that the collective nature of shame caused the relevance of the physiological expression of this emotion in the representatives of the Ukrainian linguo-society (пекучий, згоріти, червоніти, паленіти, etc.). Shame is often accompanied by pangs of conscience and feelings of fear. However, shame associated with sinful acts is no longer so relevant for modern Ukrainians, as stated in some linguistic and cultural studies (e.g., Vdovychenko, 2015). The feeling of guilt for the actions they are ashamed of is also irrelevant for them;
2. as for the concept of SHAME, the Anglo-Saxons associate it most with guilt, as evidenced by both indices of the lemma guilt. Indicative is the appeal of the proximates of this concept to the individual (self-hatred, self-loathing, self-consciousness, self-doubt), which is particularly emphasized by the fact that the Anglo-Saxons tend to take the responsibility for those acts (actions) which they are ashamed of. It is because of guilt that Anglo-Saxon linguistic societies develop self-hatred, self-disgust, and self-loathing. The close connection between shame, guilt, and repentance (redemption) is indicated by a number of synonyms, e.g., remorse, blame, regret;
3. the most relevant proximate of the German concept SCHAM is, as in the case of the Anglo-Saxon SHAME, guilt. Although in terms of intensity of connection, the first positions are occupied by shame (dishonor, disgrace) and remorse. It is noteworthy that the relevance of guilt is reinforced by the lemma Schuldgefühl (feeling of guilt), which occupies the fourth position, i.e. shame for Germans is a destructive (painful) emotion that makes them feel guilty for their actions and repent, which causes anger and disgust to themselves. Unlike Ukrainians and Anglo-Saxons, the Germans associate the concept SCHAM with fear, e.g., Angst, Furcht, Entsetzen.

The foregoing gives grounds for asserting that Ukrainians, although a European linguo-society, belong not to guilt culture, as the Anglo-Saxons and Germans, but to shame culture, because this emotion arises in them mostly in in-groups, transforming into shame, humiliation, pangs of conscience, but not guilt. This feature of Ukrainians’ psychological type brings them closer to Eastern cultures, correlating to the greatest extent with such a criterion of cultures distinctions as collectivism–individualism. The high rate of collectivism in modern Ukrainian linguistic society can be explained by geographical (Ukraine is the geographical midpoint between the West and the East) as well as historical and political (until recently Ukrainians were in the bosom of the empire, where dictatorial collectivism dominated). Among other factors, one should mention that Ukrainians had never had their own state. Obviously, this has led to a very high index of power distance in Ukrainian society – 92 positions out of 100 (Hofstede Insights, 2019), which indicates, in particular, the political immaturity of Ukrainians. All these together gave rise to clannishness among Ukrainians, where each of them puts the interests of their "clan" above the interests of "others". In such a society, violation of norms and rules leads to the feeling of shame, as there is always an opportunity to shift one's responsibility (blame) onto "others". Such emotional immaturity is closely related to cultural immaturity, i.e., social infantilism. Taking this into account, the opinion that the emotion concept of СОРОМ is one of the markers of infantilism in Ukrainian linguo-culture can be considered quite reasonable.

Conclusion

The proposed cross-cultural study has found that the emotion concept of SHAME has a specific ethno-cultural nature in the Ukrainian, Anglo-Saxon, and German linguistic cultures, which directly correlates with the national characteristics of the representatives of these linguo-cultures. A comparative analysis of data from representative Ukrainian, English, and German corpora has revealed that this concept may be one of the markers of the infantilism of the Ukrainian people and confirmed the assumption that the clearly expressed infantilism of Ukrainians is associated with changes in their psychological type, especially with a low rate of individualism. Because of collectivism, representatives of the Ukrainian linguo-culture tend to be less responsible for their actions than Anglo-Saxons or Germans, often shifting their responsibility to external, sometimes even phantom factors. The unwillingness of a large number of individuals to take responsibility indicates a certain immaturity of the society as a whole. In such a society, the shame for their misdeeds is transformed, as a rule, not into their own guilt, but shame in front of "others".