Wnuk Ewelina, Wodowski Jan
Faculty of Modern Languages, University of Warsaw, 00-312, Warsaw, Poland.
Sci Rep. 2024 Sep 16;14(1):21589. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-72432-w.
From Darwin through Wittgenstein to contemporary scientific investigations, it has been argued humans tend to view facial expressions through a mentalistic lens. According to this view, when looking at someone's expressive face, we see emotion and are unable to describe the face in behavioral terms, i.e., name the details of facial movements. At the same time, however, a growing body of work shows cultures in fact differ in the degree of importance they attribute to mental states and willingness to discuss them. Is this variation reflected in the linguistic coding of facial expressions? To explore this, we conducted two facial expression naming tasks targeting mental states and facial movements with speakers of Maniq (Austroasiatic, Thailand) and Polish (Indo-European, Poland), representing highly diverse linguistic and cultural settings. We found that, while Polish speakers conformed with the predicted orientation towards mental states, this did not hold for Maniq speakers. The Maniq were instead oriented towards behavioral aspects of faces, naming them more frequently, more precisely, and with higher consensus, compared to the Polish. These differences are carved into the Maniq and Polish lexicons, suggesting diverse cultures exhibit differential specialization in verbalizing expressive faces.
从达尔文到维特根斯坦，再到当代科学研究，一直有人认为人类倾向于通过心理主义的视角来看待面部表情。按照这种观点，当我们看着某人富有表情的脸时，我们看到的是情感，并且无法用行为术语来描述这张脸，即说出面部动作的细节。然而，与此同时，越来越多的研究表明，不同文化实际上在它们赋予心理状态的重要程度以及讨论心理状态的意愿方面存在差异。这种差异是否反映在面部表情的语言编码中呢？为了探究这一点，我们针对心理状态和面部动作，对代表高度多样化语言和文化背景的马尼格语（南亚语系，泰国）和波兰语（印欧语系，波兰）使用者进行了两项面部表情命名任务。我们发现，虽然说波兰语的人符合对心理状态的预期倾向，但说马尼格语的人并非如此。相反，马尼格人更倾向于关注面部的行为方面，与波兰人相比，他们对面部行为的命名更频繁、更精确，并且一致性更高。这些差异体现在马尼格语和波兰语的词汇中，表明不同文化在描述富有表情的面部时表现出不同的语言专业化程度。
