This site was produced by Maïa Ponsonnet, Linguist at The University of Western Australia, in concertation with […]
This site was produced by Maïa Ponsonnet, Linguist at The University of Western Australia, in concertation with […]
By Maïa Ponsonnet, Noongar Boodjar, Perth, 27th January 2021
Why a website on emotions in Australian languages?
As a linguist working on the language of emotions in Australian languages, I have always found the way these languages associate emotions with body parts very interesting, as well as beautiful. It tells us something about Australian Indigenous groups and their languages, as well as about how humans in general understand emotion. The linguistic information about it can be useful to Australian Indigenous groups who are reclaiming their heritage languages, and may not have access to much data on emotions.
Where does the information come from?
As part of my linguistic research, and with the help of Kitty-Jean Laginha, I have conducted a review of existing publications in 67 languages across the continent, to find out about how they use body parts to express emotions. We collected all the emotional expressions with body parts that we could find, and sorted them out to understand how the systems work. The content of this website comes from this research, which was funded by the Australian Research Council and the University of Western Australia.
Acknowledgements
We can be immensely grateful to the numerous Indigenous language speakers who, over the years, have contributed the data that allow us to understand emotion metaphors today. Due to the number of languages involved, I have not yet been able to contact every language group to ask for permissions. Although only published sources are cited, I am aware that some readers may prefer not to see their languages presented here, may want to edit the presentation or flag mistakes. If this is the case, please contact me here.
A list of all the languages considered in the study is presented here, and a table with all the expressions we found here. If you are after some information regarding your heritage language and cannot find it, you are welcome to contact me.
I would also like to express my most profound gratitude to speakers of the Dalabon, Rembarrnga, Kunwinjku, Kune and Kriol languages, who taught me the emotion metaphors of their own languages in the first place. So many people generously helped me that I cannot list them all here, but I would like to name †Maggie Tukumba, †Lily Bennett, Quennie Brennan, Nellie Camfoo, †Maggie Jentian, Michelle Martin, June Jolly-Ashley, Angela Ashley and Ingrid Ashley.
Many thanks also to all the linguists who have contributed data and advice, in particular Dr Doug Marmion; as well as to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies for giving us access to some of the archived material.
A note on artwork
Because these pages were created with very limited resources, we were unfortunately unable to include Indigenous artwork. If you would like to suggest or contribute some illustrations, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Website organisation
The design of this website is straightforward. From the home page, you can access three main pages. One of them presents each body part and how it maps onto emotion. Another one presents each emotion and which body parts represent it. Finally, a third page explains how the links between emotions and body parts ‘work’ linguistically. You can also download a table with all the expressions for all the 67 languages we studied.
Who is Maïa Ponsonnet?
I’m a linguist, currently employed as a Senior Lecturer by the University of Western Australia in Perth. I have been working with several language groups in Arnhem Land (centre north of Australia) for many years, documenting the language of emotions in particular. I first worked with speakers of Dalabon (central Arnhem Land), then Kriol (in and around the town of Katherine), and later Rembarrnga, Kune and Kunwinjku (Arnhem Land).