Introduction

Linguistic evidence for cultural psychology

In a famous passage, Edward Sapir affirmed that “the worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached” (1949[1929]: 162). Three quarters of a century later, in the light of evidence that has accumulated in the interim, Sapir's insight can be extended: as members of different societies, we live not just in different worlds, but also among different people; and, moreover, we ourselves are different people.

As the growing field of “cultural psychology” demonstrates more and more clearly, we are different people because as members of different cultural groups we not only speak differently but also think differently, feel differently, and relate differently to other people (see e.g. Bond 1997; Kitayama and Markus 1994; Lutz 1988; Shweder and LeVine 1984; Stigler, Shweder, and Herdt 1990; White and Kirkpatrick 1985; Wikan 1990). But it is not only our “psyches” (and their external manifestations) which are culturally constituted; our bodies, and the behaviour in which they are involved, are different too: we laugh differently, we move our hands differently, we manage our faces differently, and so on (Cf. e.g. Hasada 1996; Russell and Yik 1996).