A linguistic analysis of SHAME and GUILT in English and Japanese – with a focus on emotion co-occurrence

SHAME and GUILT refer to compositional emotional experiences, some aspects of which are shared across linguacultures, while others are shaped by socialisation. This study combines questionnaire and corpus data to explore how people talk about and possibly experience SHAME and GUILT in English and Japanese contexts. First, keyword analysis is used to identify English and Japanese expressions frequently used in SHAME- and GUILT-inducing situations. These keywords are treated as potential markers of SHAME and GUILT. The focus then shifts to emotion co-occurrence. Assuming that emotions rarely occur in isolation, I examine patterns of lexical co-occurrence in two general corpora of Japanese and English, using some of the previously identified keywords as nodes. The findings suggest that FEAR and SADNESS have a dominant role in the emotional landscapes of SHAME and GUILT in both languages. In the English data, we find references to ANGER and DISGUST, while in the Japanese data, GUILT is more strongly associated with the semantic sphere of ‘responsibility’. Methodologically, the study exemplifies an innovative approach to operationalising emotion through terms that emerge from the data itself and is more generally relevant to scholars interested in questions that revolve around (relative) ineffability and linguacultural variation.