Exploring the Relationship between Emotions, Language and Space: Construals of Awe in Medieval English Language and Pilgrimage Experience

Up speeds you down. Awe-evoking monumental buildings trigger behavioral and perceived freezing

“…In our last integrative study, we tested the effect of building height on both awe and on clicking speed. While we did not find an effect of height on awe (probably due to methodological issues), increased awe was still associated with slower clicking speed, which is consistent with the view that feeling this emotion typically involves a state of paralysis or "sluggishness" (e.g., Solomon, 2002;Díaz-Vera, 2015).…”

“…In particular, awe has been linked to a state of "freezing" (Griskevicius, Shiota, & Neufeld, 2010), "paralysis" (Solomon, 2002), "stillness" (Haidt & Keltner, 2002), "passivity" (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Fuller, 2008), and "immobility" (Shiota, Neufeld, Yeung, Moser, & Perea, 2011). Recent linguistic research also shows that old English notions for awe have been metonymically used to express "sluggishness" and "physical paralysis" (Díaz-Vera, 2015). Inasmuch as emotion labels can be diagnostic of the emotion's associated behavioral response (Scherer, 2001), this tentatively suggests that (at least in earlier times) people experienced immobility as part and parcel of awe episodes.…”

“…In psychological studies on awe, pictures and clips of vast natural scenes and phenomena (e.g., grand waterfalls, huge mountain ranges) are often used to provoke awe (Saroglou, Buxant & Tilquin, 2008;Rudd, Vohs, & Aaker, 2012;Joye & Bolderdijk, 2015;Piff et al, 2015), and experiences of nature have been listed as amongst the most frequent elicitors of awe (Shiota, Keltner, & Mossman, 2007). Given their enormous scale and height it should come as no surprise that instances of monumental architectural structures (e.g., cathedrals) are also often pinpointed as potential man-made elicitors of awe (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Joye & Verpooten, 2013;Díaz-Vera, 2015;Piff et al, 2015).…”

Individual and Cultural Differences in Predispositions to Feel Positive and Negative Aspects of Awe

“…In contrast to the empirical studies’ focus on the positive aspects of awe, and consistent with Keltner & Haidt (2003)’s identification of threat as a flavoring feature of awe, the word for “awe” is associated with “fear” in several languages (e.g., Japanese, Chinese, Greek, and Hebrew; Gordon et al, 2017; Halstead & Halstead, 2004; Nakayama & Uchida, in press) and was associated with negative emotions of fear, shame and depression in its Old English form, ege (Díaz-Vera, 2015). Indeed, the Japanese language has two words for “awe,” the ideographs of which have negative connotations.…”

Conceptual variation in the linguistic expression of aesthetic emotions: Cross-cultural perspectives on an underexplored domain (Variación conceptual en la expresión lingüística de emociones estéticas: perspectivas interculturales en un campo poco estudiado)

“…However, as has been shown for utilitarian emotion expressions (Kövecses, 2005), our linguistic expressions for aesthetic experiences are, in spite of their embodied nature, subject to variation across different languages, historical periods, social groups, textual genres and even individual speakers, indicating that metaphorical conceptualization can be sensitive to cultural influences (Geeraerts & Gevaert, 2008, p. 319). For example, the role of diachronic variation in our expressions for aesthetic emotions has been amply analysed by Díaz-Vera (2016), who in his study of Old English (ninth to thirteenth centuries) figurative expressions for awe identifies five metonymies (namely MYSTERY, DARKNESS, WANDERING AROUND, SHRINKING and SUDDENNESS STAND FOR AWE) and one metaphor (i.e., AWE IS A LIQUID IN A BODY/ CONTAINER) for awe, each of which point to, at least, one of the awe-appraisals identified by Keltner and Haidt (2003) 1 .…”