Abstract
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This thesis supplements the persistent debate around the cross-cultural applicability of Western mental health categories. Focusing on alcoholism, I compare how members of different cultural groups of varying degrees of exposure to English conceptualize the cultural domain of alcohol. Combining ethnographic fieldwork in Sardinia, Italy, with a modified execution of Cultural Domain Analysis, I gathered qualitative and quantitative data from English speakers in Miami, Italian speakers in Miami, and Italian speakers in Sardinia. The results predictably indicate that the three groups hold different conceptual associations to the stimulus of alcohol, and unexpectedly show low degrees of consensus among Italian speakers in Miami. These findings carry direct implications for both the standards of mental health reporting in Sardinia and the current format of the Cultural Formulation Interview in the U.S. psychiatric practice. In a broader historical and theoretical context, this research then constitutes an addition to the anthropological literature on health and culture, and language and cognition.</span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: medium;"></span>
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