Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). A conceptual basis for intercultural pragmatics and world-wide understanding. In Martin Pütz, & JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer (Eds.), Developing contrastive pragmatics: Interlanguage and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 3-46). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
In her programmatic article, Anna Wierzbicka confronts the reader with the question of whether the exclusive reliance on English as a source of conceptual tools is the best way in which intercultural pragmatics can serve the cause of world-wide understanding. Her paper argues that it is not, because English itself carries with it a great deal of cultural baggage, and so comparing communicative norms and cultural values through English leads inevitably to an Anglocentric bias. Wierzbicka offers an alternative to the use of English as a tertium comparationis by proposing her well-established NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) model which as an auxiliary language (i.e. mini-language) matches the lexical and grammatical core of all languages. NSM English can be used to explain norms and values to ordinary interactants and thus to advance the cause of intercultural communication and world-wide understanding.
