Charisma Past, Present and Future

Abstract

In recent years, an article in the China Daily mentioned charisma as part of leadership skills; a Japanese film was titled Charisma; a Bollywood actress was named Karisma Kapoor.¹ The international spread of the word charisma has proceeded largely by phonetic transliteration (the Japanese equates to ‘karisuma’ with meaning close to the Western sense of charisma) or direct use of the Western word (as in Mandarin). Polish has imported the word as ‘charyzma’ or ‘charyzmat’, the latter connoting the religious domain, as in charisma of prophets. Ukrainian, using the Cyrillic alphabet, pronounces the word as kharyzma. Other languages have similarly added ‘charisma’ to their vocabulary, adapting the word to fit their orthographies. The appropriation of the word into many languages suggests that no exact equivalent already existed in those languages; to express the thing called charisma, it was necessary to use ‘charisma’, in transliterated form.² Yet even as the word has gained international currency, the meaning and proper use of ‘charisma’ in Western culture have remained ill-defined.