The Identification and Communication of Expressions of Anger in Italian and Chinese Using Emotional Script

In the field of psychology and artificial intelligence, the concept of script (Schank and Abelson 1977;Fehr and Russell 1984; Shaver et al.1987) was developed to define the shared and culture-specific knowledge by which people know how to think, express, and regulate emotions. The script model ‘recounts’ the culture’s view of the distinctive phases of an emotional experience, or rather, a procedural knowledge in which we distinguish three distinct stages called respectively “antecedents” (the circumstances which elicit a certain type of emotion), “responses” (the representations of reactions related to the antecedents) and “control” (the actions that moderate the emotional reaction). From a linguistic point of view, the script-based approach (Kövecses 1986, 1990, 2000; Lakoff 1987; Wierzbicka 1994) has made it possible to conceptually evaluate emotions by adopting, on the one hand, a universalistic view of emotions, and, on the other, the experiential nature of emotional concepts by embracing the idea that their conceptualization, and not their physiological reactions, may vary between different languages and cultures. The socio-pragmatic aspects that regulate the communication of emotions seem to be a neglected aspect in Chinese language and culture textbooks designed for Italian learners, and it would not be surprising if a similar omission were to be found in those focusing on teaching Italian language and culture to Sinophone students. However, the correct use of expressions related to emotional experience is extremely important to avoid miscommunication. This paper firstly aims to explain the simultaneous teaching activities designed for Italian and Chinese students from four universities (the University of Naples L’Orientale, the University of Bologna, the Beijing University of International Business and Economics, and the Zhejiang International Studies University). Secondly, it focuses on the identification, learning and communication of terms and expressions related to Anger through the compilation of emotional scripts based on the analysis of verbal, non-verbal and paralinguistic elements included in some episodes from the TV series L’amica geniale (My Brilliant Friend) and Yi jiaren zhi ming - Go Ahead. The provisional findings obtained by collecting students’ scripts will be shown and discussed.