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Perhaps surprisingly – given the role of facial features in the communication of emotions –, the face is not particularly prevalent in linguistic descriptions of emotions in Australian Indigenous languages. Emotional expressions with words denoting the ‘face’ are not infrequent around the Western Desert and in Arnhem Land, but they appear marginal elsewhere.

Face and parts of the face

In the majority of languages where face expressions were identified, the word for ‘face’ also denotes specific parts of the face: the nose, forehead or eyes. Few languages feature expressions involving words that solely mean ‘face’, though there are occasional instances, for instance in Kuku Yalanji (Cape York): walu jirrbu-jirrbu literally ‘face+lonely/sad’, meaning ‘sad’. Consequently, in terms of emotional meaning and figurative representations, face expressions seem to be a mix of what we find for the nose, forehead and eyes. In many languages, there are good reasons to think that the ‘face’ meaning is older than the other meanings. In Yolngu (Arnhem Land), for instance, the word buku means ‘face’ and ‘forehead’, and it also means ‘cliff’, which suggests a long-standing association with the forehead. This suggests that the ‘face’ meaning is likely to be more recent than the ‘forehead’ meaning. Altogether, and though somewhat counter-intuitive, it appears that the bulk of expressions with words denoting the ‘face’ derive from expressions originally involving the eyes, nose or forehead, where the meanings of the words for these body parts have shifted to ‘face’ (following the same principle as explained for the liver).

References

Bowern, Claire and David Zorc. Yolngu Matha dictionary. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, AILEC 0778, n. d.

Hershberger, Henry D. and Ruth Hershberger. Kuku-Yalanji dictionary. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1982.