Diller Anthony
Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra Australia.
Pain. 1980 Aug;9(1):9-26. doi: 10.1016/0304-3959(80)90025-1.
Cultures differ as to typical linguistic reports and classifications of pain. In some languages upwards of a dozen specific pain terms are in common use, each indicating a particular pain experience. In other languages a single inclusive term is the norm, perhaps with optional qualifiers added to make desired distinctions. Pain experience thus undergoes cognitive sorting of different types, and it is important to be aware of how obligatory or how optional imposed linguistic distinction may be. Cultural responses to pain, including local medical practices, may be linked to such cognitive sorting. A bolder speculation (in line with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) would be to think of cognitive categorizations as exerting controls on affective perception itself through some type of neo-cortical monitoring or filtering of incoming neural messages. Before turning to these questions, more technical aspects of pain-term semantics need to be studied and issues must be clearly formulated. The present paper examines in some detail a representative proliferated system (Thai) and then makes some comparisons with distinctions in other languages. Taxonomic and sequential contrast relationships are discussed and illustrated. In particular, it is proposed that varying types and degrees of looseness in semantic contrast cannot be ignored if revealing cross-cultural comparisons are to be made.
不同文化对于疼痛的典型语言描述和分类存在差异。在一些语言中，常用的特定疼痛术语多达十几个，每个术语都表示一种特定的疼痛体验。在其他语言中，通常使用一个包容性的术语，可能会添加一些可选的限定词来进行所需的区分。因此，疼痛体验会经历不同类型的认知分类，了解语言区分是强制性的还是可选的非常重要。包括当地医疗实践在内的文化对疼痛的反应可能与这种认知分类有关。一个更大胆的推测（符合萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说）是，认知分类通过某种新皮层监测或对传入神经信息的过滤，对情感感知本身施加控制。在探讨这些问题之前，需要研究疼痛术语语义的更多技术方面，并明确阐述相关问题。本文详细研究了一个有代表性的丰富系统（泰语），然后与其他语言中的区分进行了一些比较。讨论并举例说明了分类和顺序对比关系。特别是，如果要进行有启发性的跨文化比较，就不能忽视语义对比中不同类型和程度的松散性。
