culture and expressivity

[Judy Reilly]

>Dear Colleagues,
>We are looking at the use of language and emotion in a social context, in
>different cultures and languages, and are interested in finding references
>for work in the area of cultural conventions for expressivity in social
>situations. This might include the use of emotion, emotional language,
>gestures, prosody, when meeting and interacting with strangers. The folk
>wisdom might say, for example, that Italians are very 'expressive' in
>contrast to Japanese individuals who are thought to be more reserved in
>public, especially with strangers. We are particularly interested in
>French, American and Italian conventions for the display of sociability or
>affective expressivity, (for want of a better term). If you can think of
>any references or leads, we would be extremely grateful.
>Please respond to me individually and I will post the responses.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Judy Reilly
>reilly1 at mail.sdsu.edu