Ways of Meaning
Looking back on the quarter, something that stood out to me was an idea presented by Pinker in “Mentalese,” explaining that when we have a thought and decide to share it with someone else, you are only capable of putting so much of your thought into words. The rest must be filled in by the person you are speaking with, based on certain cultural assumptions. This accounts for much of the cultural differences between languages. I never imagined that our words, created mostly for sharing and saving ideas, cannot actually convey the entirety of what we mean to say. Despite Pinker’s argument that some culturally distinct assumptions are a necessary aspect of communication, this course has shown me several additional aspects of language ranging from those that are universal, to those that are culture-specific. While there are different perspectives on whether language is capable of influencing thought, I personally believe that it has this ability. Particularly, when speakers are unaware of the assumptions that they themselves are making when they communicate with others. While this course is ending, in the future I wish to explore cross-cultural linguistic differences in more depth and discover whether there are further examples of languages’ power over thought. While I have encountered limited evidence in support of the hypothesis that the language one speaks can influence the way that they think, I believe that language is extremely powerful and if speakers are unaware of its power, then it is likely to shape the way that they think about certain aspects of life. Below is the final paper that I wrote for this course.
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How Language Influences Our Perception and Representation of Happiness
Happiness is a concept that is highly emphasized to those growing up in America. As a child, you read fairy tales that end ‘happily ever after,’ and go on family vacations to ‘The Happiest Place on Earth.’ As a teenager, you are taught about the ‘American Dream’, which emphasizes the attainability of happiness through equal opportunity for success to all who work hard. Happiness is ingrained in our media. We watch movies like The Pursuit of Happiness, we hear about it in songs, and we write countless books instructing people on the best way to navigate life to achieve happiness. Most important of all, ‘the pursuit of happiness’ is one of three unalienable rights that our nation was founded upon. It is clear that happiness has become a nearly universal goal for all Americans aspire to, and I am no exception. I find the concept of happiness to be fascinating because I believe that while it is definable, it holds a different meaning to everyone depending on their background, aspirations, and what makes them feel happy.
Recently, I read a book titled The Geography of Bliss. It is a nonfiction account of National Public Radio foreign correspondent Eric Weiner’s international travels in his attempt to discover why it is that some countries are significantly happier than others. Weiner’s travels were inspired by ratings of national happiness, collected through research at one of the World’s leading research centers of positive psychology, The World Database of Happiness (WDH), operated by Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Throughout the book Weiner visits ten countries, all of which are ranked relatively high on the national happiness scale, in search of the secret to what makes each of them happy relative to others.
While Weiner’s book provides several proposed explanations for each country’s position in the ranking, it does not suggest any universal key to national happiness. This led me to research other factors that could be influencing the data. Is it possible that many of the distinct differences in national happiness have less to do with the variation in national conditions, and instead are a result of nations having different definitions of happiness? While differences in cross-national happiness may exist, the current scores are influenced by the cultural norms related to the expression of positive emotion, and the level to which the translation of ‘happiness’ has been diluted in a country’s primary language.
The Growth of Positive Psychology
The study of happiness is still relatively new to researchers. The first century of psychology focused on negative emotions rather than positive ones. However, policy makers are currently interested in determining the societal conditions that promote happiness, and have created an emphasis on comparative research related to the happiness of nations. This has led to an increase in studies of positive psychology, which is defined as “the scientific study of what makes life most worth living.”
As mentioned earlier, one of the leading researchers in positive psychology, specifically happiness, is the World Database of Happiness at Rotterdam. The WDH is an “archive of research findings of subjective enjoyment of life,” and includes over 13,000 publications (Veenhoven, n.d.). One of the most renowned aspects of the WDH’s research is their focus on cross-national comparisons in levels of happiness. Each year, researchers compile the results of several studies and surveys, and each country is given a score for their annual average happiness. These values are then used to rank each country in terms of overall happiness. While more scientifically quantitative research methods have been used to assess happiness, such as evaluating one’s cardiac activity or stress hormones, most research on happiness is done simply by having subjects evaluate their own well-being and happiness level (Oishi).
When assessing national happiness, the WDH asks a variety of questions. Some questions are asked once, and other questions are asked multiple times to verify answer consistency. Here is an example of a different types of questions asked on a survey that has previously been conducted:
1. “Taking all together, how happy would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy, not at all happy?”
2. “How satisfied are you with the life you lead?”
“Here is a picture of a ladder. Suppose the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder the worst possible life. Where on the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?”
“How do you feel about your life-as-a-whole? Delighted, pleased, mostly satisfying, mixed, mostly dissatisfying, unhappy, terrible” (Veenhoven. 2012)
The obvious problem of collecting data through this self-reporting survey is that you are basing your research on the assumption that people will answer truthfully. This makes it possible for the data to be influenced by cultural norms of emotional expression. For example; American’s have a tendency to be agreeable and “inflate our contentment in order to impress” (Weiner). Because of this, it is possible that we are reporting falsely high happiness scores in comparison to other nations. The second, less obvious, problem associated with self-reporting happiness levels is that you are relying on the assumption that these questions can be translated into all languages used for the survey, without compromising or changing their meaning. Veenhoven mitigates this issue by asking a variety of questions, each using different key-words, to get at the same general idea: how satisfied the respondent is with their life. However, the inability to be sure how each question translates, both culturally and linguistically, must still be acknowledged.
Eric Weiner elaborates on this issue in his book The Geography of Bliss: “all cultures have a word for happiness, and some cultures have many words. But does the English word happiness mean the same thing as the French bonheur or the Spanish felicidad or the Arabic sahaada?”(Weiner). To answer this question, I conducted some additional secondary research related to the definitions of happiness and its translation into other languages.
Variation in Happiness Across Language and Culture
In a study conducted at University of Virginia’s Department of Psychology, researchers collected and analyzed definitions of words that translate to happiness. The definitions analyzed came from words spanning several different languages, in a total of 30 nations. Within these definitions, the researchers analyzed the presence of the concepts of luck and good fortune in each definition. According to their research, luck and good fortune were mentioned in 24 definitions and were entirely absent from only 6, including the definition of English word happiness(Oishi).
According to Oishi, “people living in the nations where happiness is not based on luck or good fortune reported having experienced happiness more than those living in the nations where happiness is defined as luck or fortune”(Oishi). This correlation is widely generalized to the nations considered in this study, and is likely to have exceptions. However, this conclusion is intuitive. It makes sense that nations and languages that consider happiness to be based on luck and good fortune would also see it as a state of emotion that is experienced less frequently. It is also based on elements outside of a person’s control. However, speakers of languages that attribute higher levels of agency to the concept of happiness are likely to report greater satisfaction because they see happiness as something that is attainable on a daily basis.
According to Weiner, “all cultures value happiness, but not to the same degree. East Asian countries tend to emphasize harmony and fulfilling societal obligations rather than individual contentment”(Weiner). This is a possible explanation for the tendency towards lower happiness rankings in East Asian countries. In contrast, America has a much more individualistic background, and thus emphasizes the individual contentment aspects of happiness.
Another interesting aspect of this study is that definitions of happiness can vary for speakers of the same language. The most obvious illustration of this is in the contrasting definitions of happiness in Australian English and American English. We have already established that the American definition of happiness does not make any references to luck or good fortune. However, the Australian definition of happiness continues to site luck and good fortune as components of happiness (Oishi). All English definitions contain ideas of luck and good fortune in their etymology, as they were rooted in the same words. This suggests that this difference is likely due to the geographic separation and isolated evolution of happiness usage and definitions over time. The concept of how the meaning of happiness has evolved over time is important to consider, in terms of how it reflects modern society.
The Evolution of English Happiness Over Time
In the English language alone, there are differing definitions of happiness depending on time. Historically, happiness refers to states influenced by luck and good fortune, and tend to be out of individual control. However, in the present day it is seen as much more of an attainable goal for one to pursue through your own actions both daily, and in the long-term (Wierzbicka). This evolution of both happyand happiness is likely a result of English speakers’ desire for control in their own life, as well as the specifically American pursuit of the ‘American Dream,’ and emphasis on individual autonomy.
This shift of the American definition of happiness from something related to luck and good fortune, to something that can be actively pursued throughout one’s life, is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson’s reference to happiness in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration reads:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This marks a turning point in the definition of happiness into a concept that people control for themselves. It transitioned from an existential state of good fortune and was redefined as a state of satisfaction that was attainable for all.
The Dilution of Happy
Since this transition, the words happiness and happy have only become more common to an English-speaker’s everyday vocabulary. As a result of new attainability of happiness, the word happyhas been greatly diluted. In the English language, the word happy is used three times as often as the word sad. The etymology of happyincludes similar concepts of luck and good fortune as seen in the etymology of happiness (Lomas). However, there are a few key differences, illustrated in the following cognitive scenarios:
Happiness: “In the language of simple and universal concepts, the meaning of happinesscan be linked with the following cognitive scenarios:
a) some very good things happened to me
b) I wanted things like this to happen to me
c) I can’t want anything else now.”
Happy: These are the cognitive scenarios that can be linked to the word happy:
a) “some good things happened to me
b) I wanted things like this to happen
c) I don’t want anything else now” (Wierzbicka).
Besides the fact that they are different parts of speech, the key difference between happiness and happy is that happiness refers to a state where one can’t want anything else, and happy refers to a state where one does not want anything else. This illustrates how happiness can still be seen as rare and exclusive, whereas happy has drifted away from happiness, and now encompasses a state that can fall anywhere between happiness, and simply feeling okay.
The English word happinesscan be compared to the French word Bonheur, the German word Glück, and Italian word Felicita (Wierzbicka). However, the adjective forms of these words are used infrequently, and are not translations of the word happy. This is largely due to the dilution of the word happy in the English language.
In English, happiness and happy can be used to refer to everything from an exceptional state of bliss, to states that are characterized by very little positive emotion, such as that of being ‘pretty happy.’ The concept of being pretty happy is a modern invention. Being happy used to be regarded by speakers of the English language as a rare occurrence, and if this definition had been maintained, qualifying phrases involving the word happy would never have existed. However, because the meaning of happy has been so greatly diluted, we often pair happy with an adverb to indicate a more specific feeling. Examples of this are saying one is ‘very happy’ and ‘pretty happy.’
While you may find dictionary equivalents in other languages, they are not true equivalents because the usage in American society has diluted the meaning. If other nations report their happiness at a lower level, it is possibly due to the strength behind the word and its usage.
Conclusion
There is extensive evidence to suggest that the definition and meaning of happiness is neither universal, nor directly translatable between languages. From my research, it is clear that while historically definitions of happiness were likely much more uniform, and easily translatable across both languages and cultures, this is no longer the case. Definitions evolve over time, often in relation to cultural norms, expectations and emphasis. Words move in and out of popularity. If used too frequently they are at risk of dilution. If used too rarely they are at risk of becoming archaic.
Happiness is one of the best examples of this evolution. However, because it encapsulates a concept so irreplaceable in many English speaking countries, the United States in particular, we often do not realize that it does not carry the same emphasis in other languages and cultures. In reference to the National Happiness rankings, the United States ranks only a little bit above average, reflecting ambivalence or uncertainty as to the level of happiness people enjoy. It must be acknowledged that the current rankings may be somewhat influenced by both the cultural norms and societal expectations related to the expression of positive emotion. The level to which the translation of happiness has evolved from its etymology, or been diluted in a countries primary language also is instructive on societal impressions of happiness.
One of the main obstacles to happiness research is that happiness and its translations can still take on so many different meanings, even to speakers of the same language. The overall concept of happiness, while definable, is understood and used differently by most English speakers. As illustrated in the Declaration of Independence, in American society happiness is something we aspire to. Thus, one’s opinion on what constitutes happiness is often dependent on aspirations goals and the ability to attain those goals.
As we’ve seen with the evolution of happiness language in United States specifically, we have come to qualify what it means to be happy. Happiness is now seen on a sliding scale. We have diluted the aspirational concept with qualification. We are ‘pretty happy’, relatively happy, or euphorically happy. We are happy now, but that feeling is transient and we may not be later. This is a reflection of both the social and political environment that Americans live in. Personal autonomy is highly emphasized in our society, and because of this we like to think that our happiness is within our control. But, modern society has made us question our own control. With our individualistic culture, we are less socially engaged and less reliant on others than previous generations. People are confused about their own upward mobility and whether the American Dream is attainable for them. This uncertainty has slipped into the language so that now we qualify our happiness. Happiness is not an absolute aspiration but a matter of degree, making us question both our goals and place in society. The Declaration of Independence promises us the unalienable right to the “pursuit of happiness,” but our own language makes us question exactly what that is.
Bibliography
Lomas, T. (2016). How other languages can reveal the secrets to happiness. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/134736/languages-can-reveal-secrets-happiness
Oishi, S. (n.d.). Concepts of Happiness Across Time and Culture.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://www-bcf.usc.edu/~jessegra/papers/OGKG.inpress.HappinessConcepts.PSPB.pdf
Veenhoven, R. (2012). Cross-national differences in happiness: Cultural measurement bias culture? International Journal of Wellbeing, 2(4), 333-353.
Veenhoven, R. (n.d.). (ERasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands) Retrieved 03 02, 2019, from World Database of Happiness: http://wolddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl
Weiner, E. (2009). The Geography of Bliss. Twelve, Hachette Book Group.
Wierzbicka, A. (2004). 'Happiness' in cross-linguistic & cross-cultural perspective. Daedalus, 133(2), 34-43.
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