Anna Wierzbicka’s theory of emotions

Abstract

The paper presents the psychological model of emotions which emerges from Anna Wierzbicka’s works written since the mid-1980s. The analysis of her theses on emotions and of her research into the meaning of the emotional terms leads to the distinction of a three-level mechanism responsible for the development and recognition of emotions: the level of physiological reactions of the organism, the level of subjective feelings, and the level of language conceptualization. Wierzbicka’s concept of what basic emotions are is also put forward. Furthermore, the paper argues that, against Wierzbicka’s intentions, there is no place for basic emotions in the reconstructed model.