Bulgaria, Jamel: The Structural-Constructivist Resolution of Affective Science: An Analysis of Cultural and Linguistic Specificity in the Core Emotion Framework

The historical progression of affective science has been defined by an enduring ontological friction, often characterized by scholars as a "hundred-year war" between two seemingly irreconcilable paradigms. On one side of this deep-seated schism stand discrete emotion theories, most prominently the "basic emotion" framework championed by researchers such as Paul Ekman and Carroll Izard. This tradition operates on the premise that specific emotions—anger, fear, joy, and sadness—are biologically ha