Conceptual Universale in Interpersonal Language

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Abstract
A comparison of models of cognitive organization in the personality descriptors of three languages indicates that common conceptual themes underlie the meanings and uses of personality descriptors cross‐culturally. Two crosscutting dimensions, interpreted as solidarity/conflict and dominance/submission, consistently organize the interrelation of trait‐descriptors in a number of distinct languages. This finding leads to the speculation that these dimensions represent a universal conceptual schema produced by the interaction of innate psycholinguistic structures and fundamental conditions of human social life, for example, the potential for concord or discord in the goals and actions of multiple actors (solidarity/conflict), and for the asymmetrical influence of one actor upon another (dominance/submission). The appearance of similar structures in other types of vocabulary used to describe and explain interpersonal behavior (such as terms for emotions and social roles) suggests that these conceptual dimensions reflect basic themes in folk interpretations of social behavior. [cognitive anthropology, language, universal, personality, interpersonal themes]

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