Narratives of Suffering: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Two Yi Religious Communities in Southwest China

In China, there are 56 ethnic groups, among which Yi people are the seventh largest ethnic group who reside mainly in the most isolated and deprived regions. They are being marginalized with labels such as 'AIDS/HIV,' 'drug addicts,' 'violent,' 'lazy' and so on. This study adopted a psycholinguistic approach to examine cognitive processing of emotional information through an analysis of the narratives of suffering in two religious communities, Yi-Bimo and Yi-Christian, in Southwest China. It was predicted and found that in time of adversity, these two religious groups expressed their emotions differently in their narratives of suffering. The Yi-Bimo group tended to express their emotion through implicit codes such as talking about emotionally loaded events without naming their emotions, whereas the Yi-Christian group utilized a significantly more extensive lexicon of emotions. Their cognitive attribution of suffering was also shaped by their social ties and religious approaches. The Yi-Bimo group tended to rely on supernatural reasons to explain their suffering, whereas the Yi-Christian group made more use of internal attributions and life review. In terms of help-seeking methods, these two groups did not differ in their utilization of strong-ties relationship, but Yi-Christians included more weak ties as their resources. The Yi-Bimo utilized significantly more external interventions (e.g. rituals) than the Yi-Christian, while the latter utilized significantly more internal manipulations (e.g. prayer) than the former. In conclusion, as a cultural system, religion coevolves with the ecological niche and cognitive styles that have pervasive impact on the emotional expressions of the local community.