Negative emotions

Drawing on an interdisciplinary lens, this chapter aims to explain how negative emotions are perceived across different cultures and how negative emotions are constructed and expressed through language, in particular, narratives. The chapter begins with a description of negative emotions and continues with a discussion of how members of certain cultural communities or societies are socialized, through culture, language, and discourse, into constructing, displaying, regulating, and interpreting negative emotions. The chapter also discusses how bi/multilingual individuals express negative emotions, how negative emotions affect second/foreign language learning and use, and what narratives that display negative emotions look like.