Studies of cultural variation in emotional meanings have pla an important part in the development of the interdisciplinary f of cultural psychology (Shweder and Sullivan 1993: 515; cf. Br 1990; Shweder 1990). In the wake of fascinating ethnographi such as Briggs (1970), Levy (1973), Rosaldo (1980), Myers (198 and Lutz (1988), to name only a few, it is now widely accepted th the language of emotion can be an invaluable window into cult specific conceptualizations of social life and human nature. Such studies inevitably involve explorations in cross-linguis semantics. Thus Lutz investigates the Ifaluk concepts of song fago (roughly,'justifiable anger" and" compassion/love," res tively), Myers delves into the Pintupi concept of kunta (roug" shame/embarrassment"), Rosaldo focuses on Ilongot liget, wh she compares with" passion," and so on. Despite their undoub value, however, from the point of view of linguistic semantics t inquiries have been informal in the sense that they have not uti any rigorous framework for semantic analysis. It is the premise of this article that a suitably rigorous metho cross-cultural semantic analysis is the NSM (Natural Semanti Metalanguage) approach developed primarily by Anna Wie bicka. It is an approach responsible for a growing body of work the semantics of emotion vocabularies. Wierzbicka's own recent