textbook has gotten it wrong, a bit like if“ Anger” had been pink instead or red in the movie Inside Out?
Barrett explains that prototypes like my thumbs-up are the way that we conceptualize our emotions, dependent on context. This means, if you are a Japanese kid and have been told that“ I’ m fine” translates to“ Genki desu!” you might be a tad confused by my thumbs-up. But this is okay, because, as Barrett explains in the podcast, there is going to be variation between our prototypical views of which physiological changes best represent an emotion. For example, a thumbs-up in America is generally interpreted as feeling fine, whereas in South America a thumbsup is anything but indicating you are feeling fine. One possible reason for not including a thumbs-up in the Hi, Friends! 1 textbook could be the confusion with another, albeit uncommon, interpretation of a thumbs-up as a sign for having a boyfriend. If so, an argument could be made that the textbook content was localized to suit the Japanese cultural context in which students will use English. In Hollywood, localization, or changing content to suit the intended audience, is an important aspect of ensuring global appeal and selling movies.
The feeling I get is that the classical view of emotion might not sit very well with the realities we all experience in our lives. This is where Barrett’ s research helped me reframe my view of emotion in a new way. Specifically, based on the variability of brain imaging results she proposes a different view of emotion that suggests that beyond the feelings that motivate us to move toward or away from something, emotions are socially constructed concepts that have a high degree of variability within them. Variability is perhaps more easily understood when we consider that not every person who is feeling fine is going to be walking around giving the thumbsup gesture. In short, emotions and how they result in changes in our body language are not universal, so as teachers we should pay closer attention to how we teach feelings and emotions to students using stereotypical gestures; more so when we are using materials that are written to target their home culture rather than a foreign culture. This makes me think that perhaps they should have redesigned“ Anger” for the Japanese audience to have his tummy stick out( hara ga tatsu), but then again a quick image search on Japan Google has pictures of heads exuding steam, so I guess no change was needed.
Materials often feature stilted video conversations and bland, almost lifeless voice acting CDs that drone like a Buddhist mantra … y
How emotion in the context of culture is introduced has even wider implications for textbook materials like those approved by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology( MEXT) that feature stilted video conversations and bland, almost lifeless voice acting CDs that drone like a Buddhist mantra, inevitably helping students fall