But Love, as we know it, seems to be one of those universal things. Something everyone feels, and we all find the need to express. But is it universal? What differences can we see in language and what do they mean? And why should you care about this when writing content? Or creating multimedia campaigns? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
From a cross-cultural study conducted by the City University of New York to the nuances between Je T’aime, I love you and “te quiero”, we\u2019ll find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Love and romantic love are not the same. This we know, and social scientists have been trying to coin the difference for some time now. These efforts began in the mid 20th century. Since then, scholars from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, have greatly advanced <\/a>in the theory of love and its constructs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The main question is whether romantic love is present in all cultures and how similar attitudes towards it are. An interesting answer came in from Papua New Guinea<\/a> in the \u201970s. People there lived quite isolated, and so they were the perfect focus group. Researchers decided to show this foreign cultural group photographs of western faces. In turn, they managed to identify the emotional expressions at rates higher than chance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kristen Lindquist, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explains this can be taken as evidence that people around the world can understand emotions in the same way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not enough though. So Lindquist together with her colleagues teamed up with researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, in one of the largest studies of cross-cultural emotional expression to date. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The team compared language families with common ancestral roots to understand and contrast emotion-associated vocabulary worldwide. And findings were that even though emotions have common ground, there are significant differences as to how they are conceptualized. Three times more than when we describe color. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These variations arise from two qualities: valence (how pleasant or unpleasant they are) and activation (the level of excitement they provoke). This is why joy is unlikely to be grouped in language families with regret. But Austronesian languages paired love, a typically positive emotion, with pity, a typically negative one. So there are exceptions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This was a trampoline for all other researchers. And as is our nature, from then on people tried to categorize and deconstruct love. Psychologist John Lee, for example, presented six ways<\/a> in which people love. Three primaries and three secondary forms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These were: <\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Romance, based on “chemistry” and a strong physical attraction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Conquest, used by those who see love as a game and want to “win”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Friendship, based more on similar interests and a commitment rather than on passion <\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Practicality relationships with a “business-like” fashion and common goals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Obsession possessive and jealous relationships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Selflessness, where the individual is willing to sacrifice anything for their partner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a start. But a bit over-simplistic. So Tim Lomas, lecturer in Positive Psychology at the University of East London, later found at least 14 distinct different kinds of love from analyzing 50 languages<\/a>. 609 relevant words were identified and organized into 14 forms or \u2018flavors\u2019 of love. This expanded theoretical treatment lets us appreciate the nuances of what seemed a simple yet turned out to be a very polysemous concept. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It gets more and more technical from here. \u201cAn Exploratory Study on the Use of I Love You<\/a> in the American Context<\/a>\u201d and \u201cEmotion expression and the locution \u2018\u2018I love you\u2019\u2019: A cross-cultural study<\/a>\u201d are only two of the many studies dedicated to this question. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the first essay, \u201cI love you\u201d is a very American thing. The United States uses the expression more than any other country with about 75% of Americans saying it at least once each day. And in the anglophone world in general, \u201cI love you\u201d is listed 59 among the top 250 most used English phrases. Not to mention the word love ranks 401 among the 5,000 most used words in contemporary American English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But when do we use these expressions so much? Well, the second study says it is used most in couples (62%). Followed by parents (40%) and grandparents (38%) with their children or grandchildren. Also, amongst friends, the phrase was shared occasionally. Though when it comes to neighbors and co-workers the most common answer was \u201cNever\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But what\u2019s incredibly interesting, is that for those who spoke English but English is not their native language, 67% said they chose to say \u201cI love you\u201d in English as a conscious choice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, the weight<\/em> given to the expression changes considerably. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Youtubers Rachel and Jun, an interracial couple based in Japan, point out that they don\u2019t live in a very verbally affectionate country. And that instead, Love is more about actions than words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rachel and Jun \u201cSaying I Love You\u201d video<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.stillmantranslations.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/laura-ockel-zAOBpEE_vV4-unsplash-1-1024x701.jpg\")
IS LOVE UNIVERSAL? <\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
TYPES OF LOVE REPORTED<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
WHAT DOES \u201cI LOVE YOU\u201d MEAN IN EACH COUNTRY?<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n