Is Pain a Human Universal? A Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Perspective on Pain

Emotion Review 4 (3):307-317 (2012)
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Abstract

Pain is a global problem whose social, economic, and psychological costs are immeasurable. It is now seen as the most common reason why people seek medical (including psychiatric) care. But what is pain? This article shows that the discourse of pain tends to suffer from the same problems of ethnocentrism and obscurity as the discourse of emotions in general. Noting that in the case of pain, the costs of miscommunication are particularly high, this article offers a new paradigm for communicating about pain. It shows how the use of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) techniques developed in linguistic semantics can help in this area, as in other areas concerned with human subjectivity, and can lead to a greater understanding between psychologists, psychiatrists, medical practitioners, social workers, and ordinary suffering mortals

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Anna Wierzbicka
Australian National University

References found in this work

Semantics: primes and universals.Anna Wierzbicka - 1996 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Semantic primitives.Anna Wierzbicka - 1972 - (Frankfurt/M.): Athenäum-Verl..
Defining Emotion Concepts.Anna Wierzbicka - 1992 - Cognitive Science 16 (4):539-581.
Semantic analysis: a practical introduction.Cliff Goddard - 1998 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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