Grapes of Wrath: Anger Term Semantics in Ukrainian vs. Russian

This paper reports the results of two psycholinguistic studies on the meaning of anger words in Ukrainian and Russian. In Study 1, meaning profiles of nine Russian anger terms were obtained from L2 Russian speakers from Ukraine (Kyiv) and monolingual Russian speakers from Russia (Volgograd). In Study 2, the meanings of five anger-related emotions were evaluated by two groups of Ukrainian bilinguals (L1 Ukrainian and L1 Russian). The results show that Ukrainians (in both their L1 and L2) consider anger-related emotions to be less likely subjected to regulatory control and societal disapproval, which may highlight cultural differences between Ukraine and Russia.