Lexical Worlds Travelling in Translation

Self, identities and relationships, as depicted in a Mexican novel anchored in different cultural and linguistic contexts

  • Tatiana Espinosa Castro Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Social Psychology, University of Padua, Italy
  • Valentina Rizzoli Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
  • Andréa Barbará da Silva Bousfield Department of Psychology, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil
  • Alberta Contarello Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Social Psychology, University of Padua, Italy
Keywords: Social representations, Lexicometric analysis, Reinert method, Lexical worlds, Cultural contexts

Abstract

Literary texts have recursively encountered social psychology and related disciplines, particularly in theoretical frameworks that focus on meaning-making such as the social representations perspective. The present study explores the relationships between text and context in a collection of short stories published in different languages: Women with Big Eyes by Ángeles Mastretta. The ouvre was examined using lexicometric analyses, i.e. Reinert’s Descending Hierarchical Analysis, in order to identify emerging worlds of meaning. From the three analysed versions (the original Spanish, the Italian, and the English translation), different lexical worlds are identified that likewise recreate the general idea of the book. However, interesting variations in meaning-making emerged, as grounded in specific cultural and linguistic contexts. The results appear to legitimise the use of literary texts in social psychological analyses, also in their translated versions, although with some caveat. The paper closes underscoring the importance of studying meaning-making in context, thus enhancing the potential of literary texts for research in social psychology and in related fields of knowledge. 

Author Biographies

Tatiana Espinosa Castro, Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Social Psychology, University of Padua, Italy

Tatiana Espinosa Castro has bachelor degree in social and work psychology at the University of Padua, and is MSc in Cultural Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. She did an internship with advocacy and research focus to develop the grounds of a strategy to create a knowledge hub on international student mobility at the European Federation for Intercultural Learning in Brussels. Her current interests include emotions and language differences in intercultural couples.

Valentina Rizzoli, Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

VALENTINA RIZZOLI is a Social Psychologist, Post-doctoral fellow at Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. She got her PhD Social Sciences, Interactions, Communication, Cultural Constructions at Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education, and Applied Psychology, University of Padua. Her research interests include qualitative and quantitative methods in social psychology, particularly, computational text analyses applied to social issues. Main area of research: risk perception, risk communication, history of social psychology, natural language processing.

Andréa Barbará da Silva Bousfield, Department of Psychology, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil

ANDRÉA BARBARÁ da SILVA BOUSFIELD is Associate professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis, Brazil. She coordinates the Laboratory of Social Psychology of Communication and Cognition (Laccos) at the same university. Social Psychologist, her main works deal with public health, social and environmental risk, social representations, and textual data analysis.

Alberta Contarello, Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Social Psychology, University of Padua, Italy

ALBERTA CONTARELLO is Honorary Professor of Social Psychology at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology - University of Padova, Italy. Her main fields of interest regard social representations and meaning making processes, qualitative methods in social psychology, social psychology and literature. Her current interests concern the social construction of knowledge, with particular regard to the issue of ageing and intergenerational relations.

Published
2023-06-26
Issue
Vol 32 No 1 (2023): Vol 32 No 1 (2023)
Section
Free standing papers