Media Studies, Cross-Cultural Communication, and the Heart. Caring and Sharing in French, English, Czech, and German
Media Studies, Cross-Cultural Communication, and the Heart. Caring and Sharing in French, English, Czech, and German

Summary/Abstract: This article seeks to establish to what extent we think with the heart and express ourselves with the heart in various European languages. Working with a wide media-based corpus bringing together electronic corpora, on-line resources, literary texts, and newspaper articles, as well as interviews with students, professionals, and academics, this article explores the working hypothesis that the way we communicate is related to the heart and heartfelt expression. Beyond the politics of media studies, communication studies and cultural theory, the concept of the heart is studied in a quarto-lingual cross-cultural study of English, French, Czech, and German. The heart may not be a universal in the terms Wierzbicka and Goddard define universals. Nonetheless, the various words used in French, Czech and German to designate what English-speakers refer to as heart, support the hypothesis that the heart remains a core value in European thought with a living tradition in all the four languages investigated. Rather than fading out as an anachronistic pre-modern notion, the heart continues beating throughout various fields of contemporary life in the four lingua-cultures explored, in sources ranging from literary texts, self-help works, newspaper articles and seminars to business and marketing discourse.

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