(2013) Child raising values and practices

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.

Wong, Jock (2013). Child-raising values and practices: Looking from the inside. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 42(4), 361-375. DOI: 10.1080/17475759.2013.848224

This introduction to a special forum on the linguistic aspects of child-raising practices discusses the ethnocentric bias inherent in every natural language and proposes a way to minimize this bias. English is not culturally neutral. Words like ‘ love’ and ‘happy’ are not suitable for cross cultural description because they reflect an English-specific perspective. However, while most words in any language are language-specific, research suggests that a small number of words and various combinations of these words to form clauses are universal. These words, called semantic primes, and their universal combinations constitute a meta-language that is minimally ethnocentric.

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	Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
	Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
	Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners