Introduction: universality and specificity of emotions, with a focus on Russian

Abstract

An inseparable part of human life, emotions were neglected in the academic discourse in the West for a long time, because scholars juxtaposed them with thought and reason. Yet educational research reveals that emotions are manifestations of high order intelligence and stimulate goal achievement, memory, and motivation in knowledge acquisition. Emotions are culturally and individually shaped. While some cultures consider open demonstration of feelings inappropriate, others perceive unwillingness to reveal emotions as indicators of indifference. These differences are of major importance for understanding contemporary multilingual and multicultural societies. Differences in emotion management between majority and minority cultures may lead to intergroup conflicts. The interrelation between emotions, language and culture emerges in comparative analyses of emotion lexis in different languages. Although all languages contain words expressing positive and negative emotions, idioms, tropes and interjections used to render them vary. There is growing evidence that multilinguals often switch between languages to express their emotions more precisely, adjusting to the communicative situation. Moreover, foreign-language learners often misjudge their interlocutors' attitudes due to the insufficient knowledge of the norms of expressing emotions in the target language. They sometimes fail to predict the consequences of their own utterances, which may cause a communication break-down. KEYWORDS Basic and mixed emotions; norms of expressing emotions; emotions in multilinguals; codeswitching; management of emotions; Russian emotional expressions; sociological turn in the study of emotionsThe past four decades have witnessed a revival of interest in emotions among researchers in social sciences, psychology and humanities. From emotional aspects of intrapersonal development, the emphasis shifted to interpersonal relations and regulation of social life as a whole, be it family and friendships or such domains of public life as politics and business. The study of emotions is beneficial for better understanding of such activities as conflict resolution, teamwork, negotiations, establishing leadership, and others (Van Kleef, 2009). Even in such domain as law, which is traditionally thought to be the bulwark of rationality, emotions matter and may have an impact on the outcome of legal cases (Posner, 2000;Woolley, 2020).