Browsing results for Address forms and social cognition

(2021) Australian English, American English, British English, Chinese — migrant, immigrant, refugee

Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on January 15, 2022.

Ye, Zhengdao. (2021). The semantics of migrant, immigrant and refugee: a cross-linguistic perspective. In Aleksandrova, Angelina and Meyer, Jean-Paul (Eds.) Nommer l’humain: descriptions, catégorisations, enjeux, 97–122. Paris: L’Harmattan.

This paper investigates and presents the meanings of words denoting people who change, either voluntarily or involuntarily, places where they live. More specifically, it contrasts the meanings of ‘migrant’, ‘immigrant’, and ‘illegal immigrant’ in three varieties of English (e.g. Australian, British and American), and provides a cross-linguistic perspective by discussing the major differences in meaning between yímin (’emigrant/immigrant’) and nánmin (‘refugee’) in Chimpse and their counterparts in English. The analytical and comparative framework used in this paper for contrastive lexico-conceptual analysis is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (e.g. Wierzbicka, 1972, 1996; Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2014). The paper first discusses the larger context in which this methodology is situated (Sec. 2), as well as its basic principles (Sec. 3), before introducing NSM work on nouns for people and some of the key insights on which the present study is built (Sec. 4). Sec. 5 presents the analysis of the terms in question, and § 6 summarizes the implications arising from this study.

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2021) English, Murrinhpatha, Lardil – Pronouns, ‘We’

Published on November 11, 2020. Last updated on November 11, 2020.

Goddard, Cliff & Anna Wierzbicka (2021). “We”: conceptual semantics, linguistic typology and social cognition. Language Sciences, 83.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2020.101327

Abstract:

This paper explores “we-words” in the languages of the world, using the NSM method of semantic analysis. A simply phrased, cross-translatable explication for English ‘we’ [1pl] is proposed, suitable also for other languages with a single we-word. At the same time, it is argued that English ‘we’ co-lexicalises a second distinct meaning “we two” [1du], and that the same goes for other languages with a single we-word. The two explications are identical, except for being based on ALL and TWO, respectively. Both explications involve components of “I-inclusion” (roughly, ‘I am one of them’) and “subjective identification” (roughly, ‘I’m thinking about them all in the same way’). It is argued, furthermore, that both meanings (“we-all” and “we-two”) are likely to be found in all languages. To establish this, one has to take account of languages which manifest the “inclusive/exclusive” distinction. For such languages, evidence suggests that one of the two we-words contains a semantic component of “you-inclusion”, while the other is semantically unmarked. Languages whose “we words” encode kinship relations are also briefly considered. The analysis has implications for the typology of pronoun systems, for theorising about human social cognition, and for the lexical semantics of key social concepts.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2021) Japanese — Pronouns

Published on January 10, 2022. Last updated on January 10, 2022.

Yee, Timothy Bing Lun & Wong, Jock. (2021).  Japanese first-person singular pronouns revisited: A semantic and cultural interpretation. Journal of Pragmatics, 181(2021), pp 139-161. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.05.025

 

Abstract:

Japanese pronouns have been the subject of scrutiny in many studies. The contexts of their use have thus often been discussed. However, although we know from literature that some pronouns are more ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, or more formal or informal than others, it does not appear that we have reached a deep understanding of their inherent meanings. For example, we do not fully understand, from an insider perspective, why some Japanese first-person singular pronouns are said to be more masculine or feminine than others. We do not know why, for example, ore is said to be strongly masculine whereas atashi is seen as strongly feminine. Above all, we do not know which one of these pronouns is the Japanese exponent of the semantic prime I, i.e., the one that is indefinable. The present study aims to address these research gaps. However, due the constraints of space, it only analyzes the meanings of the six most common first-person singular pronouns: ore, watashi, jibun, boku, atashi, and uchi. It further proposes that the Japanese exponent of the semantic prime I is jibun. The study uses Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) to articulate meaning in terms that are maximally clear and minimally ethnocentric.

 

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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2021) Korean – Language Teaching

Published on August 15, 2021. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Lee, Jeong-Ae (2021). Using Minimal Language to Help Foreign Learners Understand Korean Honorifics. In Goddard, Cliff (ed.). Minimal Languages in Action. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp 195-221

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_8

 


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2021) Popular Geopolitics

Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on January 18, 2022.

Levisen, Carsten, & Fernández, Susana S. (2021). Words, People and Place: Linguistics Meets Popular Geopolitics. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 5(2021), 1–11

(Open Access)

Abstract

The language of everyday life is thick with geopolitical meaning. Everyday words, grammars, and stories are full of significant postulates about what the world is like. Habitual thinking about the world, its people and places, is guided by conceptual categories, created through, and supported by linguistic patterns and practices.

The language of everyday life allows many specific ways of conceptualizing and imagining people in places, but linguistics, the main discipline concerned with the study of the world’s languages, has not always seen and envisioned this link to geopolitics clearly. Due to the hesitant role of linguistics, the role of language(s) in geopolitical knowledge production has often been left to be studied by scholars of other disciplines. Stepping up to the challenge, we have in this volume invited linguists who work in many different areas and through different approaches to contribute to the emerging interdiscipline called ‘Popular Geopolitics’ (Saunders & Strukov 2018). The core idea behind this interdiscipline is that “geopolitical knowledges”, i.e. what people know and think about places (territories, cities, countries, etc.), and about people in these places (belonging, power relations, social cognition, etc.), is not only determined by the conceptualizations of diplomats, pundits, politicians, and political scientists, but just as much by everyday discourses and popular culture.