Peeters, Bert (2019). The English ethnopsychological personhood construct mind “deconstructed” in universally intelligible words. Critical studies in languages and literature, 1(1), 61-77.
Abstract:
The dominance of English as the international lingua franca has led to rampant Anglocentrism and the reification of concepts that are in fact culture-specific. One such concept, often thought to refer to a universal human ‘attribute’, is the ethnopsychological personhood construct mind. This paper argues that the best weapon to combat Anglocentrism is the English language itself — or rather, a metalanguage such as NSM based on what English shares with all other languages of the world. The paper shows how far NSM practitioners have come in their efforts to demonstrate that the word mind is a cultural construct that has nothing universal about it and that cannot be used to define the ethnopsychological personhood constructs of other languages. Instead, it is just as culture-specific as any other ethnopsychological personhood construct and does not deserve any special status.
More information:
This paper builds on:
Peeters, Bert (2019). Delving into heart- and soul-like constructs: Describing EPCs in NSM. In Bert Peeters (Ed.),
The DOIs quoted on the journal’s web site and in the PDF are incorrect [20 June 2019].
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
