If I were given a grant to conduct linguistic research, I would love to study how emotion are verbally expressed and experienced in Hindi and Hindi culture. Cross-cultural studies of emotions show that language shapes the way we experience and express emotions. Some languages have more or less emotion-words, and some have incredibly specific emotion words that English needs 20 words to mean the same thing. Affective scientists wonder if the words we have access to in our language influence the way we experience emotions.
I would start by doing a literature review of the existing research about Hindi language, Hindi culture, Hindi-speakers' metalinguistic awareness, and any Indian-Western cross-cultural studies of emotion. Although, if I already have the grant, that means I must have already written a well-research grant proposal. :)
Next I would attempt to compile all the ways to verbally express feelings of emotions in Hindi. I would gather info from both the higher-SES (perhaps urban-dwelling) people and the lower-SES (perhaps village-dwelling) people. I would love to look at the differences in how the two SES extremes express emotions in Hindi. Research already does show that higher- and lower-SES Americans perceive emotional expressions on others' faces differently, so there may also be differences in linguistic expressions of emotion.
With my study, I would also be interested in how the linguistic expression of emotions affects how culture views them - are emotions entities outside of ourselves that flow through us? Do they originate within us? I would like to look at the individual words which Hindi uses to express emotions. Do they say "I am happy," "Happiness has come to me," or "I am a happy person"? I already know that one way to express thirst in Hindi is "I am a thirsty person" and a way to say "Nice to meet you" is "Mujhe, aap se milkar, hushi hui" which translates to "To me, upon meeting you, happiness occurred." Since both of these are different from my native way of speaking in English, it gives me the idea that there would be plenty to study in a linguistic-affective study of Hindi.
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