Nerves and Emotional Play in Northeast Brazil

Abstract

Current theory on emotion posits that different cultures' emotional vocabularies constitute sets of glosses for negotiated understandings of interpersonal interaction. Folk illness terms can overlap emotion glosses, as in the case of the Northeast Brazilian folk ailment nervos (“nerves”), associated with anxiety and anger. Working‐class women in Northeast Brazil can use their nervos to change others' behavior in social situations in which they otherwise would have limited control. Rather than passively feel emotion or submissively suffer illness, women actively play with emotion and illness roles. A woman's manipulations are more or less successful, depending on her skill at orchestrating perceptions of her situation.

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