Schadenfreude

[Brian MacWhinney]

Dear FunkNet,
   The discussion of the absence of a word in English for Schadenfreude and
its equivalents in many other languages has not yet touched on what I would
have considered to be a fairly obvious observation.  This is the
observation that English has no word for this emotion because the emotion
is not supposed to exist.  One is not supposed to experience delight in the
misery of others.  In fact, I would say that, although I have occasionally
been tempted to experience such feelings, I usually convert them quickly
into something like feeling that others have gotten their "just desserts".
In other words, some moral agent intervenes in the process and I get
removed from the experience.  I can definitely see how someone would
experience Schadenfreude, but I sense a cultural prohibition of this
emotion in those aspects of American culture with which I am familiar.
   An interesting ethnographic perspective on issues related to this can be
found in an article by Signe Howell titled "Rules not words" in P. Heelas &
A. Lock (Eds.) (1981) Indigenous Psychologies.  New York: Academic Press.
Howell notes how the Chewong of Malaysia avoid language that denotes the
expression of inner states except through the actions that accompany them.
   It seems to me that a fuller understanding (or at least description) of
links between emotion, language, and culture is a place where functional
linguistics can make a nice contribution.

--Brian MacWhinney