Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Raw Emotion: Syria’s Child Victims

The violence in Syria has been going on since March 2011. Activists say that more than 40,000 people have died in the clashes between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and rebel forces who want him out. The ongoing violence in Syria is taking a toll on children and their families.

Sharifa, a young child in Syria lost her leg when the ceiling collapsed in a missile attack. She now struggles with daily life in a refugee camp and her Emotions are Raw and palpable, even though you may not understand her words.

Emotions: Unspeakable Words

PopSci.com has an interesting article on emotions for which there are no English words.

The article delves into the insightful fact that certain languages do not attach words to some emotions. Therefore, emotions and language seem to be culturally entangled.

An example that the article provides is the lack of an English word for the emotional, painful, bittersweet, wistful feeling you get when your driving at night and hear a song from your past on the radio.  However, the Japanese language does have a word that is specific to that emotional state.

Therefore, it seems that for an emotion to receive a word specific to that feeling it must be culturally acknowledged and widely accepted to be worthy enough to put into language “words”.

View the Chart below to see some of the interesting findings: