This commentary discusses the article “The Many Meanings/Aspects of Emotion: Definitions, Functions, Activation, and Regulation” by Carroll Izard (2010). Reading the article from the vantage point of cultural anthropology, these comments applaud its “ethnographic” thrust in explicating conceptual models used by scientists to define and analyze emotion. At the same time, reading the article as a kind of auto ethnography finds problems with its assumptions and methods that limit the extent of the exploration and preordain certain findings.
D’Andrade, R. ( 1987). A folk model of the mind. In D. Holland & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought (pp. 112-148). New York: Cambridge University Press.
2.
Izard, C.E. ( 2010). The many meanings/aspects of emotion: Definitions, functions, activation, and regulation. Emotion Review, 2, 363-370.
3.
Kroeber, A.L., & Kluckhohn, C. ( 1952). Culture: A critical review of concepts and definitions . (Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology (Vol. 47, No. 1). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4.
Wilce, J.M. ( 2009). Language and emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
