Hatred - Ethnolinguistics

Ethnolinguistics

James W. Underhill, in his Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Concepts: truth, love, hate & war, (2012) discusses the origin and the metaphoric representations of hate in various languages. He stresses that love and hate are social, and culturally constructed. For this reason, hate is historically situated. Although it is fair to say that one single emotion exists in English, French (haine), and German (Hass), hate varies in the forms in which it is manifested. A certain relationless hatred is expressed in the French expression J'ai la haine, which has no equivalent in English. While for English-speakers, loving and hating invariably involve an object, or a person, and therefore, a relationship with something or someone, J'ai la haine (literally, I have hate) precludes the idea of an emotion directed at a person. This is a form of frustration, apathy and animosity which churns within the subject but establishes no relationship with the world, other than an aimless desire for destruction. Underhill (following Philippe Roger) also considers French forms of anti-americanism as a specific form of cultural resentment. At the same time, he analyses the hatred promoted by Reagan in his rhetoric directed against the "Evil-Empire". In addition, Underhill suggests it is worrying that foreign languages (French, German, Spanish, Czech) are uncritically assimilating forms of hatred exported by neo-conservative discourse which permeate these languages via the translation of political journalism and the rhetoric of the "War-on-Terror" and the promotion of "Security".

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