Value of Emotional Expression

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One thing that people from all cultures share is the ability to experience emotion. But expressing emotions (including which emotions and under what circumstances) varies greatly. In some cultures, emotional expression is associated with strength, while in others it is associated with weakness. Sometimes emotional expression is seen as chaos and other times as identifying and processing of problems (Lutz, 1996).

Many collectivistic cultures (for example, Arab cultures) often use hyperbole—vivid, colorful language with great emotional intensity (and often exaggeration). Individualistic cultures (particularly those of English-speaking people) tend toward understatement, language that downplays (often with use of euphemisms) the emotional intensity or importance of events (Wierzbicka, 2006). Consider, for example, the difference between describing a military battle by saying “the river ran red with the blood of the slaughtered” versus “there were a number of casualties.”

Communication in different cultures varies along continuums in seven key ways. Yet within these broadly defined cultures, we all vary our communication in many more specific ways based on the many groups to which we belong or with which we identify, as we outline in the next section on group affiliation.