Browsing results for Cultural key words
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 25, 2019.
Gladkova, Anna (2013). The Russian social category svoj: A study in ethnopragmatics. In Istvan Kecskes, & Jesús Romero-Trillo (Eds.), Research trends in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 219-238). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614513735.219
Abstract:
Terms for social categories provide a window into understanding culture. They conceptualize relationships and also relate to a culture’s communicative practices. The term for the Russian social category свой svoj possesses the status of a cultural key word. It is associated with important cultural rules of behaviour specific to people of this kind. It also exists at the intersection of other cultural rules, namely искренность iskrennost’ ‘sincerity’ and сокровенный sokrovennyj ‘innermost meanings’. The cultural scripts approach and NSM constitute reliable tools for describing these rules in terms that are universal, accessible and easily translatable into other languages.
The results of the study support the idea of a textual character of culture. Culture is best represented as a collection of rules or texts (Geertz), rather than by means of over-riding universalist concepts. The cultural scripts approach as it is implemented in ethnopragmatics is arguably the most adequate way to describe this variety of texts from a linguistic point of view.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) po-svojski по-свойски, (E) svoj свой, (S) feelings and thoughts, (S) interaction, (S) non-imposition, (S) relationships, (T) Russian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 25, 2019.
Gladkova, Anna (2013). A cultural semantic and ethnopragmatic analysis of the Russian praise words molodec and umnica (with reference to English and Chinese). Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2013, 249-272.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6250-3_12
Abstract:
Using data from the Russian National Corpus, this chapter explores the semantics and ethnopragmatics of two Russian praise words, молодец molodec and умница umnica. NSM is used to formulate semantic explications of the words in question as well as cultural scripts as a reflection of underlying cultural ideas. Cultural specificity of the terms is established by comparison with other Russian cultural key words and ideas as well as comparison with their closest pragmatic equivalents in English (good boy/girl) and in Chinese (乖 guāi). The investigation allows us to formulate culturally valued modes of behaviour in Russian.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) good boy/girl, (E) guāi 乖, (E) molodec молодец, (E) umnica умница, (E) umnyj умный, (S) non-imposition, (S) praise, (S) praiseworthy behaviour
Published on July 30, 2018. Last updated on August 21, 2023.
Horn, Nynne Thorup (2014). Child-centered semantics: Keywords and cultural values in Danish language socialisation. MA thesis, Aarhus University.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Danish child-view, including Danish language socialization practices, is perceived as particularly foreign and peculiar by immigrants and other cultural outsiders. Personal accounts from Middle-Eastern immigrants are supported by available information material offered by Danish integration services. Thus, the booklet Your child lives in Denmark, devised by the Danish child-oriented organisation Børns Vilkår ‘Children’s Welfare’, which is available in Afghan, Arabic, Danish, English, Somali, Turkish, and Urdu, advises immigrants in Denmark to bring up their children by talking with them, by avoiding coaxing them with sweets, and by giving them the freedom to be children. While this advice may make sense to a native member of Danish culture, they are unintelligible and meaningless to cultural outsiders. By means of semantic and ethnopragmatic analyses, the thesis seeks to concretize and clarify the meaning as well as the inherent cultural values and assumptions inherent in the culture-specific advice and the Danish child-view in general. More specifically, the thesis combines the theory of language socialization with the approach of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) to identify and analyse cultural key words and core values in the Danish child-view and investigates if, and how, Danish children become socialized with these key words and their underlying values.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) fantasi, (E) pædagogisk, (E) trivsel, (E) upædagogisk
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on January 15, 2022.
Waters, Sophia Elizabeth (2014). The cultural semantics of “sociality” terms in Australian English, with contrastive reference to French. PhD thesis, University of New England.
This thesis investigates the lexical semantics of nice and a set of other superficially “simple” sociality concepts (rude, polite and manners) in Australian English. When appropriately analysed, these words reveal much about the socially accepted and approved ways of behaving in Australian society. As expected of heavily culture-laden words, nice and rude lack precise translation equivalents in many languages and can be regarded as cultural key words. The comparative reference to French (for example, nice vs. gentil lit. ‘kind’, rude vs. mal élevé lit. ‘badly brought up’) highlights differences in ways of behaving and construals of sociality.
The thesis engages with the (im)politeness literature, and addresses the problem of transparent definitions of sociality words as they are used by ordinary speakers. This thesis enriches the current literature on (im)politeness and sociality by providing clear and accessible lexical semantic analyses of these words in Australian English, in a range of contexts, collocations and constructional frames in 24 explications. The methodology for the semantic analysis is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. The lexical semantic analysis of the abstract noun manners pioneers the theoretical innovation of “manners scripts”, which are an extension of the cultural scripts approach.
A quasi-ethnographic approach was taken to compile the dataset of example sentences of Australian English and French sourced from the search engine Google. These form a purpose-built corpus of almost 3000 tokens.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) mal élevé, (E) manners, (E) nice, (E) polite, (E) rude, (E) table manners, (E) well-mannered, (S) expressiveness, (S) no elbows on the table, (S) no reaching, (S) not chewing with the mouth open, (S) not speaking with the mouth full, (S) saying excuse me, (S) saying hello, (S) saying please, (S) saying sorry, (S) saying thank you, (S) using cutlery, (T) French
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on May 23, 2019.
Asano-Cavanagh, Yuko (2014). Linguistic manifestation of gender reinforcement through the use of the Japanese term kawaii. Gender and Language, 8(3), 341-359.
DOI: 10.1558/genl.v8i3.341
Abstract:
This paper examines the Japanese cultural key word kawaii. Japanese women frequently use kawaii to express positive feelings towards objects or people. Scholars suggest that Japanese women are making kawaii part of their gender identity. From a linguistic perspective, kawaii is not lexicalized in other languages. Although the kawaii phenomenon has been thoroughly examined, there has been no rigorous semantic analysis.
In this study, NSM is used to explicate the meaning of kawaii. The analysis indicates that the core meaning of kawaii is explained as ‘when people see this thing, they can’t not feel something very good, like people often can’t not feel something very good when they see a small child’. The kawaii syndrome reveals a Japanese cultural characteristic that puts emphasis on being ‘gender appropriate’ in society.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kawaii かわいい, (T) Japanese
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on January 15, 2022.
Levisen, Carsten & Waters, Sophia (2015). Lige, a Danish ‘magic word’? An ethnopragmatic analysis. International Journal of Language and Culture, 2(2), 244-268. DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.2.2.05lev
The Danish word lige [ˈliːə] is a highly culture-specific discourse particle. English translations sometimes render it as ‘please’, but this kind of functional translation is motivated solely by the expectation that, in English, one has to “say please”. In the Danish universe of meaning, there is in fact no direct equivalent of anything like English please, German bitte, or similar constructs in other European languages. Consequently, Danish speakers cannot “say please”, and Danish children cannot “say the magic word”.
However, lige is in its own way a magic word, performing a different kind of pragmatic magic that has almost been left unstudied because it does not correlate well with any of the major Anglo-international research questions such as “how to express politeness” or “how to make a request”. This paper analyses the semantics of lige to shed light on the peculiarities of Danish ethnopragmatics. It is demonstrated not only that Danish lige does a different semantic job than English please, but also that please-based and lige-based interactions are bound to different interpretations of social life and interpersonal relations, and reflect differing cultural values.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on April 4, 2018. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Eisold, Lisa (2015). Fernweh as a cultural key word: A cross-cultural linguistic analysis using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Munich: GRIN.
Seminar paper in cross-cultural linguistics submitted at the University of Newcastle (AUS). Grade: High Distinction, 92%. Commercially available at https://www.grin.com/document/336516
Fernweh functions as a cultural key word for a whole generation of young Germans travelling the world. This short linguistic analysis examines the meanings and connotations of Fernweh, attempting to make the concept accessible to non-German speakers. Work and travel, au pair, semester abroad: more and more young Germans leave their home country to spend up to one year abroad. The more remote a destination, the more appealing the trip. This often leaves the older generations speechless. The young people’s urge to travel can be best described with the key word Fernweh, a feeling that lacks an adequate English translation. The English word wanderlust that can be found in dictionaries fails to account for the complete scope of the feeling of Fernweh as it emphasizes that the longing to travel is only a temporary one. Furthermore, the root lust suggests a strongly positive feeling. Fernweh, in contrast, not only can be triggered and answered in many different ways but also encompasses a high diversity of things someone might be longing for and a high range of feelings connected to this longing.
Tags: (E) Fernweh
Published on July 27, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Lorenzana, Angela E. (2015). A semantic analysis of “pakikisama”, a key Filipino cultural relationship concept: The NSM approach. Iamure International Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Religion, 7(1), 15-31.
DOI: 10.7718/iamure.ijlpr.v7i1.874
Abstract:
The study of a language, especially of its vocabulary, can reveal one’s way of thinking, show the essential features of a particular culture and offer important clues for its distinction from others. This paper uses NSM to investigate the Filipino notion of pakikisama ‘getting along with others’. The semantic explication reveals the Filipinos’ unique way of looking at things by demonstrating their dominantly inherent ‘group’ cognitive structures. The paper recommends that the concept be compared with those from other ethnolinguistic groups in order to promote goodwill and understanding among people of diverse cultural backgrounds.
Rating:
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) pakikisama, (S) respect for others
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 3, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). Words as carriers of cultural meaning. In John R. Taylor (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the word (pp. 380-398). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199641604.013.027
Though most approaches to lexical semantics have shown little interest in cultural aspects of meaning, the subject holds intense interest for adjacent disciplines such as anthropology, cultural history, literary studies, and translation studies, as well for the general public. This chapter reviews different ways in which word meanings can be ‘culturally laden’, starting with cultural key words, i.e. intense focal points of cultural meaning, typically untranslatable, by normal means, into other languages. Words can also be culturally important in less dramatic fashion. The chapter reviews examples from various abstract and concrete domains, stressing that cultural themes are often conveyed by a suite of related, mutually reinforcing words. The chief methodological challenges in this arena are how to capture subtleties of meaning with precision, while avoiding the danger of conceptual Anglocentrism creeping into the description. The chapter demonstrates how the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach deals with this challenge.
Published on March 26, 2018. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco (2017-18). The Fundamental Principles of the Italian constitution: A semantic analysis. Quaderni di Semantica, n.s. 3-4, 667-746.
Abstract:
This paper presents a semantic analysis of the so-called “Fundamental Principles”, the first twelve articles of the Italian constitution. The purpose of the paper is to analyse the Italian constitution as a literary text, not a legal text. Thus, the focus of the present analysis is strictly on the linguistic aspects of the Fundamental Principles, not on the juridical ones. The meaning of the key words of these twelve articles is analysed adopting the methodology of the NSM approach, whereas the language and the structure of the text are analysed following the principles of text linguistics. The reader is able to appreciate the Fundamental Principles both in the original version and in a revised English translation.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dignità, (E) eguaglianza, (E) inderogabile, (E) inviolabile, (E) libertà, (E) nazione, (E) ripudiare, (E) solidarietà, (T) Italian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Levisen, Carsten (2017). The social and sonic semantics of reggae: Language ideology and emergent socialities in postcolonial Vanuatu. Language & Communication, 52, 102-116. DOI: 10.1016/j.langcom.2016.08.009
In Port Vila, Vanuatu, young Pacific Islanders with an ambivalent stance towards the value system represented by the jioj ‘church’ are forming new socialities and new ways of socializing on the fragments of kastom ‘traditional culture’. The reggae sociality stands out. As a cultural key word, reke ‘reggae’ offers a rich point for understanding local language-embedded ideologies, and also for understanding the status of Bislama, the national creole. This study breaks new ground into the emerging discipline of sonic semantics and the study of language ideologies in postcolonial contexts.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) reke, (T) Bislama
Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Levisen, Carsten & Priestley, Carol (2017). Social keywords in postcolonial Melanesian discourse: Kastom ‘traditional culture’ and tumbuna ‘ancestors’. In Carsten Levisen & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 83-106). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277.04lev
In postcolonial Melanesia, cultural discourses are increasingly organized around creole words, i.e. key words of Bislama (Vanuatu) and Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea). These words constitute (or represent) important emerging ethnolinguistic world views, which are partly borne out of the colonial era, and partly out of postcolonial ethnorhetoric. This chapter explores the word kastom ‘traditional culture’ in Bislama and pasin bilong tumbuna ‘the ways of the ancestors’ in Tok Pisin. Specific attention is paid to the shift from “negative “ to “positive” semantics, following from the re-evaluation of ancestral practices in postcolonial discourse. Social key words in postcolonial discourse form a fertile ground for understanding how speakers in Melanesia conceptualize the past as a vital part of the present.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on August 1, 2018. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Kornacki, Paweł (2017). What does it mean to have a good time the Chinese way? An ethnopragmatic exploration of a Chinese cultural keyword. In Anna Duszak, Arkadiusz Jabłoński & Agnieszka Leńko-Szymańska (Eds.), East-Asian and Central-European Encounters in Discourse Analysis and Translation (pp. 57-82). Warsaw: Institute of Applied Linguistics. PDF (open access)
The paper examines the main uses and the symbolic significance of the Chinese cultural key word 热 闹 rènao. Often rendered in English with its literal gloss of ‘hot and noisy’, it has been viewed by both Chinese and Western scholars as primary in making sense of Chinese social behaviour, across a variety of contexts. The present study analyses two Chinese cultural texts – a report from a local temple festival and a debate over two different styles of feasting, which frequently rely on this salient cultural notion. While the formula crowds, events, noise in the psychological literature dealing with this Chinese social value is often confirmed by the described cultural data, it is argued that close attention to the meaning and form of the descriptive language used by the cultural actors yields valuable insights into indigenous viewpoints. In particular, the notion of 热 闹 rènao turns out to be closely intertwined with other prominent Chinese cultural concerns, such as the idea of 人情味 rén qíng wèi (‘flavour of human feelings’), Chinese cultural identity, Chinese language, and a particularly complex culinary culture as described in the anthropological literature.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) rènao 热 闹
Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Leung, Helen Hue Lam (2017). Cantonese ‘mong4’: A cultural keyword of ‘busy’ Hong Kong. In Carsten Levisen & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 183-210). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277.08leu
This chapter investigates the Hong Kong Cantonese cultural key word 忙 mong4. 忙 mong4 is usually translated into English as busy and into Mandarin as 忙 máng, but though their meanings overlap, many examples of busy and 忙 máng cannot be translated directly into Cantonese using 忙 mong4. This is because mong has a culturally significant meaning and usage, and is linked to a specific value system supported by Hong Kong discourse. This chapter examines some differences between 忙 mong4, busy and 忙 máng, explores Hong Kong discourses of work and life, and the meta-discourse surrounding mong in the speech community. A Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) explication for 忙 mong4 is proposed in English and Cantonese.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on January 15, 2022.
Levisen, Carsten, & Waters, Sophia (2017). An invitation to keyword studies: Guidance for future research. In Carsten Levisen, & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 235-242). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277.10lev
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on January 15, 2022.
Levisen, Carsten & Waters, Sophia (2017). How words do things with people. In Carsten Levisen & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 1-23). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277.01lev
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on January 15, 2022.
Levisen, Carsten & Waters, Sophia (Eds.) (2017). Cultural keywords in discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277
Abstract:
Cultural key words are words around which whole discourses are organized. They are culturally revealing, difficult to translate and semantically diverse. They capture how speakers have paid attention to the worlds they live in and embody socially recognized ways of thinking and feeling. The book contributes to a global turn in cultural key word studies by exploring key words from discourse communities in Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, Melanesia, Mexico and Scandinavia. Providing new case studies, the volume showcases the diversity of ways in which cultural logics form and shape discourse.
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach is used as a unifying framework for the studies. This approach offers an attractive methodology for doing explorative discourse analysis on emic and culturally-sensitive grounds.
Table of contents:
- How words do things with people (Carsten Levisen and Sophia Waters)
- Nice as a cultural keyword: The semantics behind Australian discourses of sociality (Sophia Waters)
- Bogan as a keyword of contemporary Australia: Sociality and national discourse in Australian English (Roslyn Rowen)
- Social keywords in postcolonial Melanesian discourse: Kastom ‘traditional culture’ and tumbuna ‘ancestors’ (Carsten Levisen and Carol Priestley)
- Talking about livet ‘life’ in Golden Age Danish: Semantics, discourse and cultural models (Magnus Hamann and Carsten Levisen)
- Visuality, identity and emotion: Rosa mexicano as a Mexican Spanish keyword (Karime Aragón)
- Subúrbio and suburbanos: Two cultural keywords in Brazilian discourse (Ana Paulla Braga Mattos)
- Cantonese ‘mong4’: A cultural keyword of ‘busy’ Hong Kong (Helen Hue Lam Leung)
- Kawaii discourse: The semantics of a Japanese cultural keyword and its social elaboration (Yuko Asano-Cavanagh)
- An invitation to keyword studies: Guidance for future research (Carsten Levisen and Sophia Waters)
More information:
Each chapter has a separate entry, where more information is provided.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Hamann, Magnus & Levisen, Carsten (2017). Talking about livet ‘life’ in Golden Age Danish: Semantics, discourse and cultural models. In Carsten Levisen & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 107-129). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277.05ham
This chapter explicates the word livet, literally ‘the life’, a cultural key word of the Danish Golden Age (1800-1850). With evidence from Golden Age Danish and its era-specific webs of words, it explores how “life and living” were construed discursively and how they relate to contemporary discourses of the good life in English and the related Danish calque det gode liv. The authors argue that era-specific cultural semantics should not be seen as being substantially different from other kinds of culture-specific discourses and that historical varieties such as Golden Age Danish can help us dismantle the hegemonic modern and Anglo take on “narratives of life” that dominate contemporary global discourse.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on October 16, 2018. Last updated on October 18, 2018.
Choesna, Mayla (2017). Kata-kata bermuatan konsep freedom dalam budaya Inggris [Words expressing the concept of freedom in English culture]. Master’s thesis, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta.
Written in Indonesian.
This investigation into the key nouns for the concept of freedom in British English culture deals with usage patterns, meanings and underlying cultural aspects. Data were obtained from dictionaries and on-line corpora. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach is applied jointly with the Componential Analysis framework to investigate the issues.
This study yields several findings. At least 16 nouns are involved: liberty, carte blanche, free will, latitude, leeway, immunity, impunity, exemption, discretion, free speech, sovereignty, independence, autonomy, self-determination, and autarky. They can be grouped into three categories. The freedom to~ category includes liberty, carte blanche, free will, latitude, and leeway; the freedom from~ type includes immunity, impunity, and exemption; and the freedom of~ type includes discretion, free speech, sovereignty, independence, autonomy, self-determination, and autarky. The freedom to~ type has as its central feature “if I want to do something, I can do it”. The freedom from~ type relies on the semantic components “I don’t have to do something” / “many people have to do this”. The freedom of~ category is typically framed as “if I want to do something I can do it/I can do something” / “this something is something like this”. The differences between the various nouns – which can be designated as cultural key words – can be elucidated through the elaboration of their prototypical cognitive scenario as this is the part that developa the understanding of the concepts differently.
The concepts of freedom manifested in the nouns have cultural underpinnings. These are geographically and philosophically motivated. The insularity of the English developed their independence as well as their free spirit. Their philosophical outlook encouraged cultural values such as non-interference, nonimposition, personal autonomy, anti-dogmatism, and tolerance. Other linguistic evidence such as expressions corroborate the claim that freedom is an English cultural value. It can therefore be said that the realized cultural key words are the representation of the English concept of freedom.
Tags: (E) autarky, (E) autonomy, (E) carte blanche, (E) discretion, (E) exemption, (E) free speech, (E) free will, (E) immunity, (E) impunity, (E) independence, (E) latitude, (E) leeway, (E) liberty, (E) self-determination, (E) sovereignty
Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on January 15, 2022.
Waters, Sophia (2017). Nice as a cultural keyword: The semantics behind Australian discourses of sociality. In Carsten Levisen & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 25-54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277.02wat
This chapter investigates the English word nice as a cultural key word, around which sociality discourses revolve. Focusing on its semantic scope in Australian discourse, the key word nice has an important story to tell about socially accepted and approved ways of thinking, communicating and behaving. Nice has often been trivialized, or even ridiculed as an “empty word”, but closer scrutiny reveals that nice has all the characteristics of a cultural key word. It is frequent and foundational in Australian discourse, and it reflects cultural logics, values and orientations. Also, as is common with cultural key words, nice lacks translational equivalents, even in closely related languages. A comparison with French gentil demonstrates how nice is distinctive in the way it organizes and maintains specific discursive orders.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) nice
