Browsing results for Ethnopsychology & personhood
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 18, 2019.
Levisen, Carsten (2017). Personhood constructs in language and thought: New evidence from Danish. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 120-146). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0005
Abstract:
This chapter analyses personhood constructs, a particular type of noun whose meanings conceptualize invisible parts of a person. The meaning of personhood constructs originates in cultural discourses, and they can vary considerably across linguistic communities. They are reflective of society’s dominant ethnopsychological ideas, and they co-develop with historical changes in discourse. Drawing on insights from previous studies, a semantic template is developed to account for the differences but also the similarities in personhood constructs. With a detailed case study on Danish personhood constructs, the chapter tests the template on the translation-resistant Danish concept of sind, along with two other Danish nouns: sjæl ‘soul’ and ånd ‘spirit’. The case study provides a model for how personhood constructs can be empirically explored with tools from linguistic semantics.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ånd, (E) duša душа, (E) maum 몸, (E) mind, (E) sind, (E) sjæl, (S) immortality, (S) spirituality
Published on May 4, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Peeters, Bert (2019). The English ethnopsychological personhood construct mind “deconstructed” in universally intelligible words. Critical studies in languages and literature, 1(1), 61-77.
Open access
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.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 1-29). New York: Routledge.
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
Tags: (E) mind
Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Peeters, Bert (2019). Delving into heart- and soul-like constructs: Describing EPCs in NSM. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 1-29). New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670-1
Abstract:
This introduction to a collection of four thematically related studies addresses the perennial problem of Anglocentrism and reification in scholarly discourse, where English continues to set the tone and its constructs continue to be used as yardsticks in the description of cultural diversity, thereby elevating the English language to a status it does not deserve, no matter how important it may be on a world scale. Use of NSM is put forward as a way out of the problem. In addition, to illustrate the idea that “every explication is an experiment”, the author reconstructs the various stages that explications of the English ethnopsychological personhood construct mind have gone through since the first attempt was made in the late 1980s.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Peeters, Bert (2019). The English ethnopsychological personhood construct mind “deconstructed” in universally intelligible words. Critical studies in languages and literature, 1(1), 61-77.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) duša душа, (E) God, (E) mind, (E) psykhe Ψυχη
Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Peeters, Bert (Ed.) (2019). Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs. New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670
Abstract:
All languages and cultures appear to have one or more ‘mind-like’ constructs that supplement the human body. Linguistic evidence suggests they all have a word for someone, and another word for body, but that does not mean that whatever else makes up a human being (i.e. someone) apart from the body is the same everywhere. Nonetheless, the (Anglo) mind is often reified and thought of in universal terms. This volume adds to the literature that denounces such reification. It looks at Japanese, Longgu (an Oceanic language), Thai, and Old Norse-Icelandic, spelling out, in NSM, how the ‘mind-like’ constructs in these languages differ from the Anglo mind.
Table of contents:
- Delving into heart- and soul-like constructs: Describing EPCs in NSM (Bert Peeters)
- Inochi and tamashii: Incursions into Japanese ethnopsychology (Yuko Asano-Cavanagh)
- Longgu: Conceptualizing the human person from the inside out (Deborah Hill)
- Tracing the Thai ‘heart’: The semantics of a Thai ethnopsychological construct (Chavalin Svetanant)
- Exploring Old Norse-Icelandic personhood constructs with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (Colin Mackenzie)
Each chapter has its own entry, where additional information is provided.
Reviewed by:
Marini, Maria Giulia (2019). thepolyphony.org
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Asano-Cavanagh, Yuko (2019). Inochi and tamashii: Incursions into Japanese ethnopsychology. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 30-57). New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670-2
Abstract:
Japanese has several personhood terms that lack equivalents in other languages. Two such terms are inochi and tamashii, neither of which has been investigated. In English, inochi is usually translated as life. However, this poses significant issues since the modern English word life is polysemous. Many of its meanings cannot be translated into Japanese by means of the word inochi, which has its own and contextually different meanings. Similarly, tamashii is often translated as soul but this term also has multiple interpretations in the source language.
This chapter explores the meaning of inochi and tamashii using NSM. The results of the analysis indicate a core component of inochi is ‘this something can be a part of someone one time, not many times’. The results also show that a fundamental meaning of tamashii is ‘this something can be a part of someone many times’ and ‘this something cannot die’.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) inochi 命, (E) kokoro 心, (E) tamashii 魂
Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Hill, Deborah (2019). Longgu: Conceptualizing the human person from the inside out. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 58-81). New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670-3
Abstract:
The Longgu people (Solomon Islands) conceptualize the human person as consisting of two parts, suli (‘body’) and anoa (roughly, ‘spirit’). Understanding the concept of anoa requires an understanding of other concepts, including agalo ‘ancestor spirit’ and Marapa, the place of ancestor spirits. This chapter discusses and explicates these culture-specific terms in Minimal English. The author argues that the conceptualization of the human person in Longgu can be described as seeing a human person ‘from the inside out’: rather than conceptualizing the human person as something visible (a body), with something invisible inside, Longgu people think in terms of what is inside (a ‘spirit’), and then as what can be seen on the outside (a body).
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) agalo, (E) anoa, (E) Marapa, (E) zabe
Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Mackenzie, Colin (2019). Exploring Old Norse-Icelandic personhood constructs with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 116-145). New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670-5
Abstract:
Old Norse-Icelandic is the only early medieval language to contain lengthy vernacular accounts of the mythology and pre-Christian practices obliquely evidenced in other Germanic languages. Because of this, Old Norse-Icelandic evidence has been used to reconstruct the nature of the ancestral Germanic psychological system and to inform interpretations of personhood constructs in other Germanic languages, whose surviving literatures are far more Christianized. Old Norse-Icelandic material has also been approached from the standpoint of circumpolar shamanistic beliefs; it has been argued that some features of Germanic psychology are the product of early contact with these circumpolar traditions.
This chapter presents a semantic explication of hugr, the principal personhood construct in Old Norse-Icelandic, and is based on linguistic constructions used in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. The explication is framed in NSM to facilitate comparisons with personhood constructs in contemporary languages and cultures, free from the obfuscating terminology of present-day English. It is shown that hugr has less in common with circumpolar personhood constructs than proponents of Old Norse-Icelandic shamanism advocate and that it differs in a number of ways from its Old English analogue mōd.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) fylgja, (E) hugr, (E) mōd, (S) courage and bravery, (S) hostile intentions, (S) shape-shifting
Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on January 26, 2020.
Svetanant, Chavalin (2019). Tracing the Thai ‘heart’: The semantics of a Thai ethnopsychological construct. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 82-115). New York: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670-4
Abstract:
This chapter sheds light on the semantic journey of chai ใจ, a key cultural concept in Thai culture. Chai is a person’s innermost secret part, linked to the body, with a dynamic capacity to move around and change its shape, size, colour, and even temperature, depending on the circumstances.
The chapter surveys the lexical meaning and multiple ways in which chai is used in contemporary Thai, then takes a historical turn to examine the semantic development of the word from its earliest attested uses to the present day, relying on data from a wide range of classical and contemporary sources. The analysis reveals that the primary conceptuality of the personhood construct embedded in the word chai ใจ has remained relatively stable since its first appearance in the 13th century, when it was used to refer to a person’s disposition, representing a ‘locus’ where psychological activity occurs. The literary data in the later periods demonstrates massive growth in cognitive and cultural salience with its occurrence in a steadily increasing number of metaphorical expressions and idioms. The chapter concludes with the explication of the modern folk concept of chai ใจ, using English and Thai NSM to avoid cultural bias.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) chai ใจ
Published on August 14, 2021. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Ye, Zhengdao (2020). The semantics of migrant in Australian English. In Bromhead, Helen and Zhengdao Ye (eds.) Meaning, Life and Culture. pp 135-154. Canberra: ANU Press.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.22459/MLC.2020.07 (Open Access)
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) migrant
