Using Corpus Data in English-German Equivalence Determination: A Case Study of Anger-like Emotion Concepts in Related Cultures
Using Corpus Data in English-German Equivalence Determination: A Case Study of Anger-like Emotion Concepts in Related Cultures

Summary/Abstract: The article develops a three-stage methodology by which the equivalence of language designations of emotion concepts (ECs) ANNOYANCE, ANGER, and RAGE is clarified since there are discrepancies in the German translations of emotion model by R. Plutchik while reproducing these designations. The methodology was tested in the following stages: 1) the definitional analysis (“sifting out” false cases of equivalence and the identification of those lexemes in German that most fully convey the semantics of the English nouns anger, annoyance, and rage); 2) refining the results of the definitional analysis by determining the cultural relevance of the ECs ANNOYANCE, ANGER, and RAGE and their German equivalents (processing frequency diagrams of Google Books Ngram Viewer online service and the indicators of the most frequent collocates of query words anger, annoyance, rage, Ärger, Wut, and Zorn, and establishing emotional proximates of these ECs; 3) verifying the results of the first and second stages on the basis of arousal indicator of emotional proximates of analysed ECs. This approach made it possible to identify that a certain relevance level of ECs ANGER – WUT, RAGE – ZORN and ANNOYANCE – ÄRGER is traced by parameters of (a) content, (b) cultural relevance and (c) intensity. This means that the representatives of the German speaking culture perceive ECs ÄRGER, WUT, and ZORN with the associations similar to those the speakers of English experience in connection with ECs ANNOYANCE, ANGER, and RAGE.

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