A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Embodied emotions in ancient Neo-Assyrian texts revealed by bodily mapping of emotional semantics
Authors: Lahnakoski, Juha M.; Bennett, Ellie; Nummenmaa, Lauri; Steinert, Ulrike; Sams, Mikko; Svärd, Saana
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Publication year: 2024
Journal: iScience
Journal name in source: iScience
Article number: 111365
Volume: 27
First page : 111365
ISSN: 2589-0042
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.111365
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.111365
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/484229724
Emotions are associated with subjective emotion-specific bodily sensations. Here, we utilized this relationship and computational linguistic methods to map a representation of emotions in ancient texts. We analyzed Neo-Assyrian texts from 934–612 BCE to discern consistent relationships between linguistic expressions related to both emotions and bodily sensations. We then computed statistical regularities between emotion terms and words referring to body parts and back-projected the resulting emotion-body part relationships on a body template, yielding bodily sensation maps for the emotions. We found consistent embodied patterns for 18 distinct emotions. Hierarchical clustering revealed four main clusters of bodily emotion categories, two clusters of mainly positive emotions, one large cluster of mainly negative emotions, and one of empathy and schadenfreude. These results reveal the historical use of embodied language pertaining to human emotions. Our data-driven tool could enable future comparisons of textual embodiment patterns across different languages and cultures across time.
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Funding information in the publication:
This research was conducted as part of the project Embodied Emotions: Ancient Mesopotamia and Today, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation (project no. 00220992). We thank Heidi Jauhiainen for providing example files to test the scripts used to produce the word embeddings. The PMI-embeddings script was developed with the assistance of the Center of Excellence Ancient Near Eastern Empires, funded by the Research Council of Finland (decision number 352747). The emotion vocabulary is based on the work of the project “Akkadian and Hittite Emotions in Context” (AHEC, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation, project no. 495257771).
