wierzbicka 2004 happines in cross-lingusitic perspective

7/24/2019 Wierzbicka 2004 Happines in Cross-lingusitic Perspective

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34 Ddalus Spring 2004

The psychologists David Myers and EdDiener start their frequently cited arti-cle Who is Happy with the observa-tion that Books, books and more bookshave analyzed human misery. Duringits rst century, psychology focused farmore on negative emotions, such as de-

pression and anxiety, than on positiveemotions, such as happiness and satis-faction. They note with approval thatthis is now changing quite dramatically.1

There is of course a good reason whybooks, books, and more books havebeen written about human misery. Mis-ery and suffering are part and parcel ofmost lives, whereas happiness is notor so it has appeared to most people at

most times. In the autobiographicalnovel by the Egyptian-born British writ-er Ahdaf Soueif, the Egyptian aunt of theWesternized heroine asks her niece whyshe left her husband. We were not hap-py together, she replies. The aunt raisesher eyebrows: Not happy? Is this sane

talk? . . . Whos happy, child?2

This ex-change is, I think, a characteristic clashof culturally informed thought patterns,values, and expectations.

The rst century of psychology, which,as Myers and Diener point out, focusedto a far greater extent on negative emo-tions than on positive ones, was also thecentury of, inter alia, the two worldwars, the Holocaust, the Gulag Archipel-ago, the millions deliberately or reckless-ly starved to death in the Ukraine andelsewhere under Stalin and in China un-der Mao Ze Dong, and the horrors of PolPots Cambodia. By the end of the twen-tieth century, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, andPol Pot were all gone, but few of those

who watch the evening news on televi-sion would say that the human conditionhas radically changed since the time oftheir rule.

Anna Wierzbicka

Happiness in cross-linguistic

& cross-cultural perspective

Anna Wierz bicka is professor of linguistics at the

Australian National University. Her work spans

anthropology, psychology, cognitive science, phi-

losophy, and religious studies as well as linguistics.

She is the author of numerous books, including

Cross-Cultural Pragmatics (1991), Seman-tics: Primes and Universals (1996), Emotions

Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and

Universals (1999), and What Did Jesus Mean?

Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the

Parables in Simple and Universal Human Con-

cepts (2001).

2004 by the American Academy of Arts

& Sciences

1 David G. Myers and Ed Diener, Who is Hap-py?Psychological Science (January 1995): 10.

2 Ahdaf Soueif,In the Eye of the Sun (London:

Bloomsbury, 1992), 747.


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Against such a background, the claimof Myers and Diener that most peopleare reasonably happy, but that some peo-

ple are happier than others seems rath-er startling. Most people are reasonablyhappy? Who are those reportedly happypeople?

According to the studies they cite,North America has the greatest concen-tration of happy people in the world.[I]n national surveys, writes Myers, athird of Americans say that they arevery

happy. Only one in ten say not too hap-py. The remainderthe majorityde-scribe themselves as pretty happy.Europeans, Myers adds, by and largereport a lower sense of well-being thanNorth Americans, but they too typi-cally assess themselves positively. Fourin ve say they are fairly or very satis-

ed with their everyday lives.3

By Myers and Dieners account, na-tions differ strikingly in happiness, rang-ing from Portugal, where about 10% ofpeople say they are very happy, to theNetherlands, where about 40% of peo-ple say the same. They emphasize thatnations differ markedly in happinesseven when income differences are con-

trolled for.4 Is it true that nations differin happiness? Or do they differ, rather,in what they are prepared to reportabout the state of their happiness?

In addressing these questions, politi-cal scientist Ronald Inglehart is morecautious than Myers and Diener, in thathe speaks only of differences in reportedhappiness rather than in happiness assuch. He also seems less willing simplyto take his results at face value. For ex-ample, he asks:

But exactly what is it that underlies theselarge and rather stable cross-national dif-

ferences? Can it be true that Italians,French, Germans, and Greeks really are agreat deal less happy and more dissatised

with their lives than the Danes, Swiss,Dutch, and Irish? Could fate be so unkindas to doom entire nationalities to unhap-piness, simply because they happened tobe born in the wrong place?5

Trying to answer such questions, onehas to address, at some point, the lin-

guistic problem. For example, if 14 per-cent of Germans declare themselves tobesehr glcklich whereas 31 percent ofAmericans declare themselves to beveryhappy, can these reports be meaningfullycompared ifglcklich does not mean thesame thing as happy?6

Inglehart considers the possibilitythat the words used in other languages

to translate the English words happy andsatisedmay not exactly match, but thenhe condently dismisses the matter. Hismain argument for dismissing it restson the Swiss case: regardless of the lan-guage they usewhether German,French, or Italianthe Swiss rank veryhighly in life satisfaction and express

higher levels of satisfaction than theGermans, French and Italians withwhom they share a language. But how-ever convincing the Swiss case may be,it is hard to see how it can justify thesweeping conclusion that Inglehartdraws from it: These Swiss resultsalone devastate any attempt to explainthe cross-national differences as arti-

facts of language.7

Happinessin cross-linguistic& cross-

culturalperspective

3 David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness(New York: Avon Books, 1992), 25.

4 Myers and Diener, Who is Happy? 4.

5 Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in AdvancedIndustrial Society (Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1990), 79.

6 See Anna Wierzbicka,Emotions Across Lan-guages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1999).

7 Inglehart, Culture Shift, 78.

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AnnaWierzbickaonhappiness

It is true that the differences in self-reported bonheur(and its adjective,heureux) between the French and the

French-speaking Swiss cannot be attrib-uted directly to any linguistic differ-ences.8 But surely it doesnt follow fromthis that the differences in self-reportingbetween the French and the Americanscouldnt possibly have anything to dowith the semantic differences betweenthe French word heureux and the Englishword happy.

The glibness with which linguistic dif-ferences are at times denied in the cur-rent literature on happiness can be quiteastonishing. The economist RichardLayard, for example, writes, Of courseone could question whether the wordhappy means the same thing in differentlanguages. If it does not, we can learn

nothing by comparing different coun-tries. The problem is dismissed as soonas it is raised; the reader is assured thatthere is direct evidence, for a numberof languages, that the words do have thesame meaning in different languages.

In support of this claim, Layard re-ports that a group of Chinese studentswere asked to answer the happiness

question, once in Chinese and once inEnglish . . . . The students reported almostexactly the same average level of happi-ness in both Chinese and English. In-stead of inquiring into the possible rea-sons for such results, Layard concludesthat since the English and Chinese lan-guages are very far apart, this nding ishighly reassuring, and that the con-cept of happiness seems equally familiarin all cultures.9

In fact, the linguist Zhengdao Yes de-tailed study of Chinese positive-emotionconcepts shows clearly that while there

are two happiness-like concepts in thetraditional list of Chinese basic emo-tions, both are different from the Eng-lish happiness. The terms in question are

xi, which Ye denes as festive joy, andle, which she denes as attainable en-

joyment/contentment. Ofxi Ye says,inter alia, that the positive cognitiveevaluation, the personal character, and

the unexpectedness of the event all con-tribute to the sudden, intense goodfeeling . . . , which is usually outwardlyshown via facial expressions and bodilygestures. On the other hand, le seemsto have a gamut of components frommany happy-like words in English. It islike a hybrid ofpleased, enjoyment, con-

tentedand having fun. In particular, sheemphasizes the active attitude ofle,which results in a wish to do somethingto keep the current situation going. Yeconcludes her discussion of the differ-ences between the ethnotheories ofemotion reflected in Chinese and Eng-lish as follows:

It seems that in Chinese peoples percep-

tion and conceptualisation of human

emotional experience in relation to good

events there are two quite opposite as-

pects: one is due to a somewhat mysteri-

ous external force, to which the experi-

encer actively responds, experiencing

a momentary, intense feeling stirred

by external stimuli, and the other is due

to human effort. Each aspect is equallyimportant and culturally salient, and

each term occupies a place in the small

set of the basic emotions.108 Surely, the rst hypothesis about the Swissmust be that, unlike their neighbors, they werespared the catastrophe of World War II. Fre-quently, happiness studies are lacking a histori-cal as well as a linguistic and a cultural dimen-sion.

9 Richard Layard,Happiness: Has Social Science

a Clue? Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures,London School of Economics, March 2003, 17.

10 Zhengdao Ye, Why Are There Two Joy-like Basic Emotions in Chinese? Semantic


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The lack of equivalence between theChinese and English words does notmean that Chinese and Anglo attitudes

toward life cannot be meaningfully com-pared at all. They can be, but every com-parison requires a common measure. Inthis case such a measure is provided bythe mini-language of simple and univer-sal human concepts that can be foundin all languages. These simple and uni-versal concepts include good, bad,know, think,want, feel, live, and

fty or so others. They do not include,however, complex culture-specic wordslike happy,satised, orwell-being.11

It is an illusion, then, to think that theEnglish words happy and happiness haveexact semantic equivalents in Chinese,or, for that matter, in other European

languages. The differences, it turns out,are particularly striking in the case of theadjective.

In the language of simple and univer-sal human concepts, the meaning ofhap-

piness can be linked with the followingcognitive scenarios: a) some very goodthings happened to me; b) I wantedthings like this to happen; and c) I cant

want anything else now. By contrast, thecognitive scenario ofhappy can be repre-sented as follows: a) some good thingshappened to me; b) I wanted things likethis to happen; and c) I dont want any-thing else now. The main differencesbetween happiness and happy, then, lie inthe contrast between very good and

good (component a) and between Icantwant anything else now and Idontwant anything else now (compo-

nent c). In happiness ones heart is lledto overflowing and there seems to be noroom left for any further (unfullled)desires or wishes.

Happiness can be compared, roughly,to the French bonheur, the German Glck,the Italianfelicit, and the Russiansccastie,because like these words it can be usedto refer to an existential condition seen

as a certain absolute. The adjective hap-py, however, does not necessarily implya state of happiness. For example, if Isay that Im happy with the present ar-rangements, I do not mean that I eitherexperience or am in a state of happiness.Thus, happy is, so to speak, weaker thanhappiness, whereas heureux,felice,glcklich,

andsc

castlivyj are not similarly weakerthan bonheur, Glck,felicit, andsccastie,respectively.

The semantic differences between hap-py and its putative counterparts in Euro-pean languages are often flagged in bilin-gual dictionaries, which instruct usersnot to translate happy as, for instance,heureux, but to use some weaker word in-

stead. Here are some examples from theCollins-Robert English-French Dictionary:

Ill be quite happy to do it.

Je le ferai volontiers. / a ne me derange

pas de le faire. (Ill gladly do it. / It

doesnt bother me to do it.)

Im happy here reading.

Je suis trs bien ici lire. (Im very well

here reading.)

Im not happy about leaving him alone.

Je ne suis pas tranquille de le laisser seul.

(Im not at ease about leaving him

alone.)

The very fact that happy, in contrast to

those other words, has developed such

Theory and Empirical Findings, in Love, Ha-tred and Other Passions: Questions and Themeson Emotions in Chinese Civilisation, ed. PaoloSantangelo (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J.Brill, in press).

11 Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka, eds.,Meaningand Universal Grammar, 2 vols. (Am-sterdam: John Benjamins, 2002) and AnnaWierzbicka, Semantics: Primes and Universals(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).


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a weaker second meaning highlights asemantic shift that has no doubt con-tributed to the expansion of the terms

use in English, at the expense of wordswith more intense meanings like rejoiceandjoy.Happyunlike heureux,sccastlivyj,andglcklichis not restricted to excep-tional states (like bliss), but rather isseen as referring to states within every-ones reach. There is nothing excep-tional about being happy, and this iswhy one can be quite happy, reasonably

happy,pretty happy, not at all happy, andso on.

As I have argued in my bookEmotionsAcross Languages and Cultures: Diversityand Universals, the very notion that a per-son can be pretty happy is, so to speak, amodern invention. At the time when theadjective happy was close semantically to

the noun happiness, collocations likepret-ty happy did not exist in the English lan-guage, and being happy was regarded byspeakers of English as something veryrare, as witnessed, for example, by thefollowing line from George HerbertsJacula Prudentium: There is an hourwhere a man might be happy all his like,could he nd it.

To some extent, happiness can still beseen as something rare and exclusive,as can bonheurandfelicit. But happy hasdrifted away from happiness so far thatit can almost be said to be halfway be-tween happiness and okay; syntacticframes such as Im happy with thepresent arrangements reflect this se-mantic weakening. This weakening,in turn, can be seen as a manifestationof an overall process of the dampeningof the emotionsmodern Anglo-Ameri-can cultures trend against emotionalintensity.12

The remarkable expansion of theword happy has gone hand in hand withthe decline of negative words likewoes,

sorrows, andgriefs.13

As I have tried toshow in myEmotions Across Languagesand Cultures, modern English has, soto speak, exorcised woes, sorrows, andgriefs from the fabric of normal life. Inolder English,woes,sorrows, andgriefs (inthe plural) were commonly used to referto everyday life, whereas in present-dayEnglish,griefis restricted, by and large,

to the exceptional event of the death of aloved person. At the same time happi-ness has come to be seen not as some-thing rare and unusual, but as altogetherordinary; and the word happy has be-come one of the most widely used Eng-lish emotion adjectivesperhaps themost widely used one of all. According

to the data in thecobuild

corpus ofcontemporary English, happy is not onlyuttered much more frequently thansad(roughly 3:1) andjoyful (roughly 36:1),but also much more frequently than,for example, heureux is in comparableFrench listings (roughly 5:2).

Stanislaw Baranczak, a Polish poetwho emigrated to America, gives a par-

ticularly astute account of the semanticclash between the English word happyand its nearest equivalents in some otherEuropean languagesan account basedon his personal experience:

Take the word happy, perhaps one ofthe most frequently used words in BasicAmerican. Its easy to open an English-

Polish or English-Russian dictionary andnd an equivalent adjective. In fact, how-ever, it will not be equivalent. The Polishword for happy (and I believe this also

holds for other Slavic languages) hasmuch more restricted meaning; it is gen-erally reserved for rare states of profound

12 Peter N. Stearns,American Cool: Constructinga Twentieth-Century Emotional Style (New York:New York University Press, 1994).

13 Anna Wierzbicka, Emotion and Culture:Arguing with Martha Nussbaum, Ethos (inpress).


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bliss, or total satisfaction with serious

things such as love, family, the meaning

of life, and so on. Accordingly, it is not

used as often as happy is in Americancommon parlance . . . . Incidentally, it is

also interesting that Slavic languages dont

have an exact equivalent for the verb to

enjoy. I dont mean to say that Americans

are a nation of supercial, backslapping

enjoyers and happy-makers, as opposed

to our suffering Slavic souls. What Im try-

ing to point out is only one example of the

semantic incompatibilities which are sormly ingrained in languages and cultures

that they sometimes make mutual com-

munication impossible.14

In the book entitled The Pursuit of Hap-piness, the American David Myers asks:How happy are people? Given the

widespread assumption that the wordhappy can be readily translated withoutany change of meaning into other Euro-pean languages, it is interesting to notethat the question raised in the title ofthat chapter cannot be translated intomany other languages at all. One simplycant ask in these languages the equiva-lent of How happy are people?:

*Comment (*combien) heureux sont les

gens?

*Come felici sono gli uomini?

*Kak sccastlivy ljudi?

The reason why all of the above sen-tences are infelicitous is that unlike theword happy, the words heureux,felice,

andsccastlivyj are not gradable. They allrefer to something absolute, to a peakexperience or condition that is not con-sidered a matter of degree. To be askedto measure ones bonheuror onessccastieon a scale from one to ten is like being

asked to measure ones bliss on such ascale.

Inglehart, speaking of research into

reported happiness carried out in Europeand based on the so-called Eurobarome-ter Survey, has maintained that the ques-tions adapted from American researche.g., How are things going these days?Would you say you are very happy, fairlyhappy or not too happy?have beenfound effective in measuring feelingsof happiness [in Europe]. The phrase

feelings of happiness is as problematichere as the idea that such feelings can beeffectively measured.

Using French and Russian again as ex-amples, I will note that bonheurandsccas-tie suggest, roughly speaking, an existen-tial condition rather than a momentaryfeeling, and that the phrase feelings ofhappiness cannot be translated literallyinto French or Russian (*les sentiments debonheur; *ccuvstva sccastia). Incidentally,for this reason, the economist DanielKahnemans idea that happiness canbe studied more effectively by focusingpeoples attention on the subjectivequality of their current circumstances,rather than on any overall assessment

of their lives, may be more applicable toEnglish than to other languages.15 Forexample, in French, momentary goodfeelings occurring in the course of anordinary day would normally be linkedwithplaisir(pleasure) rather than withbonheur; and in Russian, they would belinked with udovolstvie (roughly, plea-sure) rather than withsccastie.

In happiness studies, it is often as-sumed that peoples subjective well-being can be reliably estimated on the

14 Stanislaw Baranczak,Breathing Under Waterand Other East European Essays (Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 12.

15 Daniel Kahneman, Objective Happiness,in Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, and NorbertSchwarz, eds., Well-Being: The Foundations of He-donic Psychology (New York: The Russell Sage

Foundation, 1999).


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basis of their self-reports. Doubts aboutthe reliability of such reports are some-times acknowledged, but they tend to

be minimized.For example, Layard, having dismissedthe question whether the word happymeans the same in different languages,writes, But again, might not people insome countries feel more impelled to re-port high or low levels of happiness, be-cause of local cultural norms? There isno evidence of thisfor example no

clear tendency for individualistic coun-tries to report high or collectivist cul-tures to report low.16

Strikingly, the reliability of the clas-sication of countries as either individu-alist or collectivist is taken for grantedhere, and since there emerges no clearcorrelation between individualism (asmeasured by such classications) andself-reported happiness, it is assumedthat self-reports can reliably measurethe actual well-being of people acrosslanguages and cultures.

Myers strikes a more cautious noteabout self-reports, but his caution doesnot include any cross-cultural perspec-tive. He begins by stating that everyone

is the best judge of his or her own happi-ness: ifyou cant tell someone whetheryoure happy or miserable, who can?He continues as follows: Still, even ifpeople are the best judges of their ownexperiences, can we trust them to becandid? Peoples self-reports are suscep-tible to two biases that limit, but do noteliminate, their authenticity.17 One ofthe biases, according to Myers, has to dowith peoples momentary moods: Bycoloring peoples assessments of theoverall quality of their lives, temporarymoods do reduce the reliability of theirself-pronouncements. Their happiness

thermometers are admittedly imper-fect. The other bias is peoples ten-dency to be agreeable, to put on a good

face. People, Myers says, overreportgood thingsthey are all a bit Polly-annish. However, this poses no realproblem for research, because wecould downplay peoples happinessreports by, say, 20 percent and still as-sume that our happiness thermometersare valid as relative scales.18

I do not wish to question Myerss as-

sumption or conclusions as far as thesubjective well-being of Americans isconcerned. One should be careful, how-ever, to distinguish between all Ameri-cans and all people. It may indeed bereasonable to assume that our happi-ness thermometers are valid as relativescalesif one is comparing individualswho speak the same language and share,or are familiar with, the same culturalnorms. When it comes to cross-culturalcomparisons, however, the situation isvery different.

Thus, when Myers and Diener statethat nations differ strikingly in happi-ness, ranging from Portugal, whereabout 10% of people say they are very

happy, to the Netherlands, where about40% of people say the same, a move ismade, imperceptibly, from differences inself-reports to differences in actual well-being. In fact, Myers and Diener them-selves acknowledge that in some soci-eties norms more strongly support ex-periencing and expressing positive emo-tions.19 But if so, then how can cross-national and cross-cultural differencesin self-reports be equated with differ-ences in happiness?

Somewhat disconcertingly, Myers andDiener state that collectivist culturesreport lower swb [subjective well-

16 Layard,Happiness, 19.

17 Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness, 27.

18 Ibid., 28.

19 Myers and Diener, Who is Happy? 12.


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being] than do individualist cultures,whereas Layard claims, as we have seen,that there is no clear difference in this

regard between so-called individualistand collectivist countries. Even moredisconcerting, however, is Layards con-dent rejection of the possibility thatpeople in some countries [might] feelmore impelled to report high or low lev-els of happiness because of local culturalnorms.

There is plenty of evidence that localcultural norms do produce different atti-tudes to expressing happiness or, moregenerally, good feelings. Evidence of thiskind cannot be elicited through surveysbased on self-reports; it can, however, begained by other methods. In particular,there is a growing body of evidence

emerging from cross-cultural autobiog-raphies, and there is extensive linguisticevidence.

In her memoirLost in Translation: Lifein a New Country, the Polish-born writerEva Hoffman, who emigrated with herparents to North America at the age ofthirteen, contrasts two cultural scriptsby describing two different rituals of

farewell, as experienced rst in Polandand then, two years later, in America:

But as the time of our departure approach-

es, Basia . . . makes me promise that I wontforget her. Of course I wont! She passesa journal with a pretty, embroidered clothcover to my fellow classmates, in whichthey are to write appropriate words of

good-bye. Most of them choose melan-choly verses in which life is gured as avale of tears or a river of suffering, or a

journey of pain on which we are embark-ing. This tone of sadness is something weall enjoy. It makes us feel the gravity oflife, and it is gratifying to have a truly trag-ic eventa parting foreverto give ventto such romantic feelings.

Its only two years later that I go on amonth-long bus trip across Canada andthe United States with a group of teenag-

ers, who at parting inscribe sentences ineach others notebooks to be rememberedby. It was great fun knowing you! theyexclaim in the pages of my little notebook.Dont ever lose your friendly personali-ty! Keep cheerful, and nothing canharm you! they enjoin, and as I com-pare my two sets of mementos, I knowthat, even though theyre so close to each

other in time, Ive indeed come to anothercountry.20

A similar autobiographical account of aclash between Polish and American cul-tural scripts comes from Laura Klos So-kol, an American woman who married aPole and settled with him in Warsaw:

To some extent, Poles enjoy the upbeatAmerican pom-pom skating cheer. Whowould dare claim that cheerfulness is bad?However, sometimes Poles balk at Ameri-can-style frothy enthusiasm. Ask a Pole toimitate American behavior and chancesare the result will include a wide smile, anelongated Wooooow! and Everything

is ne! with a thumbs-up.

One Pole said, My rst impressionwas how happy Americans must be.But like many Poles she cracked the code:Poles have different expectations. Some-thing fantastic for Americans would notbe fantastic in my way of thinking. An-other Pole says, When Americans sayit was great, I know it was good. When

they say it was good, I know it was okay.

When they say it was okay, I know it wasbad.21

20 Eva Hoffman,Lost in Translation (New York:E. P. Dutton, 1989), 78. For discussion, see MaryBesemeres, Translating Ones Self: Language andSelfhood in Cross-Cultural Autobiography (Ox-ford: Peter Lang, 2002).

21 Laura Klos Sokol, Shortcuts to Poland(War-

saw: Wydawnictwoips

, 1997), 176.



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Looking at her native American culturefrom a newly acquired Polish point ofview, Klos Sokol satirizes: Wow!

Great! How nice! Thats fantastic! I hada terric time! It was wonderful! Have anice day! Americans. So damned cheer-ful.

In addition to verbal routines likethose mentioned above, and to the fre-quent use of untranslatable key culturalwords likefun and enjoy, the differencesbetween the two sets of cultural scripts

are also reflected in nonverbal commu-nication, particularly in smiling:

A Pole who lived in the States for six yearsrecently returned to Poland for a visit.During a round of introductions to somepeople in a caf, she immediately spotted

the American by his smile. Theres a lackof smiling here . . . says the Pole. Another

Pole says, Americans, in general, smile allthe time. Here, people in the streets lookworried.22

Noting that Americans smile more insituations where Poles tend not to, KlosSokol observes: In American culture,you dont advertise your daily head-aches; its bad form; so you turn up the

corners of the mouthor at least tryaccording to the Smile Code.

Observations of this kind cast doubton the validity of statements like the fol-lowing: When self-reports of well-being are correlated with other methodsof measurement, they show adequateconvergent validity. They covary . . .with the amount of smiling in an inter-

view.23 Statements of this kind donttake into account that the amount ofsmiling, too, is governed to some extent

by cultural norms, and that the normsfor smiling are closely related to thenorms for verbal behavior (including

verbal self-reports).From the perspective of immigrantwriters it seems clear that Anglo-Ameri-can culture fosters and encouragescheerfulness, positive thinking, andstaying in control. To quote Eva Hoff-mans memoir again:

If all neurosis is a form of repression, then

surely, the denial of suffering, and of help-lessness, is also a form of neurosis. Surely,all our attempts to escape sorrow twistthemselves into the specic, acrid pain ofself-suppression. And if that is so, then aculture that insists on cheerfulness andstaying in control is a culture thatin one

of those ironies that prevails in the unrulyrealm of the inner lifepropagates its

own kind of pain.24

Such assessments of the psychologicalcosts of obligatory cheerfulness mayor may not be correct, but few commen-tators would disagree with the basic ideathat something like cheerfulness is en-couraged by American culture.

Let me adduce here one more autobio-

graphical testimony to the perceived dif-ferences between Polish and Anglo-American cultural scripts concerninghappiness and good feelingsa frag-ment of Stanislaw Baranczaks poemSmall talk (translated from the Polishby the poet):

How Are You, Im Just Fine; who says

there is no chancefor any conversation between us, who saystheres no communication between the

grey stone wall,or the trembling of a window frame, or

the rainbow-hued oil

spilled on the asphalt, and myself; how onearth could

22 Ibid., 117.

23 Ed Diener and Eunkook M. Suh, NationalDifferences in Subjective Well-Being, inKahneman, Diener, and Schwarz, eds., Well-

Being, 437. 24 Hoffman, Lost in Translation, 271.


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my dialogue with them be a lie, how could

it be mute,

this talk between the hydrant, fog, stairs,

bough, screech of tiresand me, whom they approachon every

path, in every passing

always the same and invariably friendly

inquiry,

Whats The News, Everythingsok.25

For immigrants like Baranczak, Eng-lish conversational routines like Howare you, Im just ne constitute barriersto genuine heart-to-heart communica-tionand, as we have seen earlier, sodoes the wide use of the word happy.From this perspective, the tendency ofAmericans to declare themselves as hap-py in the surveys that aim to assess theirsubjective well-being must be seen aslinked, to some extent, with the same

norms that encourage the social smile,the cheerfulness, the use ofGreat! and soon.26

In conclusion, progress in cross-cul-tural investigations of happiness andsubjective well-being requires a greater

linguistic and cross-cultural sophistica-tion than that evident in much of theexisting literature on the subject. Tocompare meanings across languagesone needs a well-founded semanticmetalanguage; and to be able to inter-pret self-reports across cultures oneneeds a methodology for exploring cul-tural norms that may guide the inter-

viewees in their responses. I believe thatthe natural semantic metalanguage,based on universal human concepts,can solve the rst problem and thatthe methodology of cultural scripts cansolve the secondand that together theycan bring signicant advances to the in-triguing and controversial eld of happi-ness studies.

25 Stanislaw Baranczak, The Weight of the Body:Selected Poems (Evanston, Ill.: TriquarterlyBooks, 1989).

26 While I have looked at Anglo-American

norms from a Polish perspective, other per-spectives yield comparable outcomes. For ex-ample, see Eunkook M. Suh, Self: The HyphenBetween Culture and Subjective Well-Being, inEd Diener and Eunkook M. Suh, eds., Cultureand Subjective Well-Being(Cambridge, Mass.:mit Press, 2000). In his contribution to thisimportant recent volume, Suh, a Korean Amer-ican scholar, notes dramatic differences be-tween North Americans and East Asians intheir levels of swb [subjective well-being] andpositive self-views. He elaborates that NorthAmericans report signicantly higher levels ofswb than East Asians. For instance, comparedto 36 percent of Japanese and 49 percent ofKorean men, 83 percent of American men and78 percent of Canadian men reported aboveneutral levels of life satisfaction in Diener andDieners study [Ed Diener and Marissa Diener,Cross-Cultural Correlates of Life Satisfactionand Self-Esteem,Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology 68 (1995): 653663].



perspective

wierzbicka 2004 happines in cross-lingusitic perspective

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