Lecture: The language of pain in Bolivian Quechua and Spanish

In this talk I will outline the general topic and methods for my upcoming 4-year PhD project on the language of pain in Bolivian Quechua and Spanish.

In the field of ethnolinguistics, most scholars agree that languages are shaped in large parts by the culture that uses them (e.g. Wierzbicka 1992; Everett 2012), and while great attention has already been given to exploring cross-linguistic differences in culturally significant concepts, such as emotion (Wierzbicka 1999; Dylman et al. 2020) or kinship (Pasternak 1976; Passmore & Jordan 2020), the language of pain remains mostly unexplored. However, previous research has already shown that the perception and processing of pain appears to be dependent on culture (c.f. Peacock & Patel 2008; Rogger et al. 2023). In particular, the Quechua people of the Andes believe that the experience of pain is tightly linked not only to one’s physical, but also emotional and spiritual state, which stands in contrast to some of the Spanish-speaking Mestizo and White population (Incayawar & Saucier 2015). And if we assume that culture shapes linguistic expression, differences in the pain expressions between the two cultures are to be expected as well.
This leads to the following research question: How do pain expressions across and between Bolivian Quechua (BQ) and Spanish (BS) differ?
For this purpose, this research project will first explore general differences between BQ and BS in regard to semantics, morphology and grammatical structure by eliciting data on pain interjections (e.g. BQ ¡Ayayay! ‘Ouch!’) and pain terminology (e.g. BQ phuti ‘emotional pain’ and BS dolor ‘physical or emotional pain’). Elicitation methods will take both an onomasiological as well as semasiological approach: For instance, study participants will be asked to look at images depicting situations related to physical or psychological pain (e.g. person stubbing their toe or mourning at a grave) and either describe what the person might be saying or name – in their native language – the type of pain that the person seems to be experiencing. They will also be asked to orally describe possible scenarios that involve specific pain expressions. On the one hand, this will allow the elicitation of new data, and on the other hand, it also enables the verification of previous assumptions about functional properties of expressions. In order to describe the semantics accurately and account for colexification as well as dyslexification, it will also be necessary to discuss and categorize pain types from a non-linguistic (i.e. medical) viewpoint, by distinguishing cold-induced pain from heat-induced pain, for example.
In a second part, this project will investigate the interaction between both languages regarding speakers with BQ as their L1 and BS as their L2. For instance, it will explore how L2 speakers of BS talk about pain treatment in traditional Quechua medicine and the possible use of SQ loan words where BS terminology does not exist. In this case, data will be elicited via narrative interviews to facilitate code-switching in mid-sentence. Additionally, the project will look at multilingual medical field guides dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of pain, such as Morató Peña (1994), to further explore the influence of BQ on BS.

References:
Dylman, Alexandra S., Marie-France Champoux-Larsson & Ingrid Zakrisson. 2020. Culture, Language and Emotion. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture 4(2).
Everett, Daniel L. 2012. Language: The cultural tool. New York: Pantheon Books.
Incayawar, Mario & Jean-François Saucier. 2015. Exploring pain in the Andes: Learning from the Quichua (Inca) people experience. Postgraduate medicine 127, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25697331/.
Morató Peña, Luis. 1994. Guia medica trilingüe: Queshwa - Castellano - English. Cochabamba, La Paz: Los Amigos del Libro.
Passmore, Sam & Fiona M. Jordan. 2020. No universals in the cultural evolution of kinship terminology. Evolutionary human sciences 2.
Pasternak, Burton. 1976. Introduction to kinship and social organization (Prentice-Hall series in anthropology). Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.
Peacock, Sue & Shilpa Patel. 2008. Cultural influences on pain. Reviews in pain 1(2). 6–9.
Rogger, Rahel, Corina Bello, Carolina S. Romero, Richard D. Urman, Markus M. Luedi & Mark G. Filipovic. 2023. Cultural framing and the impact on acute pain and pain services. Current Pain and Headache Reports 27, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11916-023-01125-2.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1992. Semantics, culture, and cognition: universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations, 2010th edn. Berlin, Boston: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1999. Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals (Studies in emotion and social interaction. 2. ser). Cambridge: C.U.P.; Paris; Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme.

Info

Day: 2024-05-10
Start time: 11:30
Duration: 00:30
Room: Seashell (33.4.032)
Track: Typology and Variational Linguistics
Language: en

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