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The heart is the next most frequently-occurring body part in Indigenous Australian emotion vocabularies, after the belly. It is found in Cape York, for instance, as well as in Arnhem Land languages. Central Australian languages, on the other hand, don’t seem to make much use of this body part in emotional expressions.

Good and bad heart

A lot of expressions with the heart mean ‘feel good’ or ‘feel bad’. This occurs in about half the languages we looked at and comprises a quarter of all the heart-based expressions we found. Often, the notion of feeling ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is expressed simply by saying that your heart is good or bad. In Wik Mungkan (Cape York) for instance, one can say ngangk min ‘heart good’ to mean ‘happy’. Amongst more specific emotions expressed via heart metaphors are those to do with romantic love, such as desire, as well as fear. A smaller number of heart-related metaphors are tied to anger, and, more marginally, we also found hatred, sorrow, grief, compassion, lack of generosity, composure and assertiveness.

Loving hearts

Associating the heart with love and with fear may sound natural to a lot of people. We see this connection in English too, and indeed some of the expressions found in Australian Indigenous languages are similar to those occurring in English, and probably in many languages of the world. For example, softness of the heart represents sensitivity, similar to what we see with ‘tender-hearted’ in English. In other languages, like Kaurna (also South Australia), having a hard heart means being brave (pulthawilta ‘heart’ + ‘hard’, ‘bold, brave, fearless’) whilst in Djinang (Yolngu, Arnhem Land), the expression ḍurkḍurk inydji ḷapmiygi, literally ‘open one’s heart’, means to be compassionate.

Same but different

Although the associations above are likely quite familiar from what we come across in English, there are also important differences. For the most part, in English we represent love as being ‘in’ the heart, however in many Australian languages, it is the beloved person, not love itself, that is ‘in’ the heart. In Gija (Kimberley) you can say that you ‘have someone in the heart’, kiningen, meaning you love them. Some Australian languages also describe the heart as being in a ‘high’ (or vertical, or raised) position when someone feels love or affection. For instance, in Dalabon (Arnhem Land), ngerh-waddi ‘heart be high up’ means ‘feel strong affection’. Across the world’s languages, height, and upward direction more broadly, typically represents positive emotions; but the application to love, as we see here in Australian languages, is perhaps less common.

Physical responses to emotions

The association of fear with the heart may, again, be quite relatable. Most of us would have experienced the sensation of the heart jumping in the chest when given a fright, or beating faster when we are scared. These commonly felt physical reactions may actually explain how languages come to associate the heart with fear. Australian languages have numerous expressions linking such bodily reactions with the corresponding emotions. In Kriol (Top End), there is the expression atkrek ‘heart cracks’, which means to experience a fright or a shock, particularly upon hearing the bad news that someone has passed away. There are also expressions to do with the beating of the heart, for instance ngerh-(r)dow(r)dow(mu) in Dalabon, which means both ‘heart beats’ and ‘feel bad, worry’.

Love and fear

Love and fear, the two main emotional associations of the heart, could be seen as relating to one another. When we love and/or desire someone (or something), we can easily get anxious. We may worry for the welfare of the person we love, or harbour a fear that they will reject us. This correlation between love and fear is itself reflected in some heart-based expressions, some of which can mean ‘desirous’ and ‘anxious’ at the same time.

References

Amery, Rob. Emotion Metaphors in an Awakening Language: Kaurna the language of the Adelaide Plains. Paper presented at the 2017 Australian Linguistics Society Conference, Sydney, Australia, 2017.

Blythe, Joseph. Yuwurriyangem Kijam (our language Kija): A phrasebook of the Kija language. Halls Creek, W.A.: Kimberley Language Resource Centre, 2001.

Kilham, Christine, Mabel Pamulkan, Jennifer Pootchemunka, and Topsy Wolmby. Wik Mungkan-English interactive dictionary. AuSIL Interactive Dictionary Series A-6, Australian Society for Indigenous Languages, 2017. Retrieved from http://ausil.org/Dictionary/Wik-Mungkan/lexicon/mainintro.html.

Ponsonnet, Maïa. The language of emotions: The case of Dalabon (Australia). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2014.

Ponsonnet, Maïa. Difference and repetition in language shift to a creole. The expression of emotions. New York: Routledge, 2019.

Waters, Bruce E. An interim Djinang dictionary. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1983.