Hot-blooded' Estonians. On Estonians' folk category of emotions

Bibliographic Data

ID2658557
AuthorsEne Vainik (0000-0002-4320-8755, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume21
Pages26-51
Publication date2002-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFolklore Electronic Journal of Folklore (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1406-0957 • E-ISSN: 1406-0949
PublisherEstonian Literary Museum of Scholarly Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.7592/fejf2002.21.emotions
OpenAlexW2130660347
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited9

Latvians have a teasing phrase for Estonians – ‘hot-blooded’, which ironically refers to the emotional dullness and inadequate – either apparent or actual – calmness of Estonians. This article1 does not aim to compare the ethnopsychology of Esto-nians and Latvians, nor to measure the psychological characteris-tics inherent to the nation of Estonians (Tulviste 1998). It does strive to take a look at the folk psychology of Estonians – what is the attitude of Estonians to emotions and how the so-called average Estonian deals with emotions. By the end of this article it should also become clear why Latvians refer to us as they do. The term folk psychology is used here to denote the understanding of psychic phenomena on the part of common people. Not the un-derstanding of a single person, but that of the so-called average person. Admittedly, folk psychology is connected with the culture in which it has developed and the language people have taken into use for analysing such phenomena. Similarly to other unsophisticated treatments, the terms of folk psychology are not clearly definable or in direct correspondence with the words which are used at ran-dom and in parallel. Thus, Estonian folk psychology does not make a substantial difference between the meanings of the words emotsioon ‘emotion ’ and tunne ‘feeling’. These two words are used parallel, like numerous other pairs consisting of a foreign and a native word, where the use of the foreign word is more prestigious. For example, the Estonian equivalent of ‘positive emotion ’ sounds more elegant than the simple ‘good feeling’. In modern Estonian folk psychology the word emotsionaalne ‘emo-tional ’ tends to be used as an evaluative adjective. For instance, the sentence Ta on nii emotsionaalne, temaga ei saa rääkida ‘She is so emotional, there’s no point in talking to her ’ is likely to mean that the person in question is too emotional (which is bad) or Ärgem

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