The psycholinguistic world of “zdziwienie” - “astonishment” and “zaskoczenie” - “surprise”

• Authors: Aleksandra Jasielska
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of the study was to answer the question whether the words “zaskoczenie” [phon. zaskɔˈʧ̑ɛ̃ɲɛ]- “surprise” and “zdziwienie” [phon. ʑʥ̑iˈvjɛ̇̃ɲɛ]- “astonishment”, which are treated in the Polish language as synonyms, possess a fixed pattern of application, and whether the colloquial context of using these words differs in terms of its emotional valence. The theoretical background for this investigation was the triadic approach to language cognition that includes perception, conceptualization and symbolization, and corresponding to this approach concept of mental representation of emotions. The obtained results have shown that people tend to use the word “zaskoczenie” to describe emotions that occur in positive situations, whereas the word “zdziwienie” is more frequently applied in negative situations. The observed emotive connotation of the investigated words has been explained by the rules of phonetic symbolism and implicative meaning of the words preserved in the popular/colloquial understanding.

Keywords

EN

surprise; astonishment; psycholinguistics; denotative and connotative meaning; emotional valence; conventional sound symbolism

• Publisher: Committee for Psychological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 46
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 384-392

Dates

published

2015-09-01

online

2015-11-17

Contributors

author

Aleksandra Jasielska

• Institute of Psychology, Adam Mickiewicz University

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/ppb-2015-0045