A resource base of publications using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. 1,100+ detailed notices, and counting!
Mooney, Annabella (1997). Poetic primitives: An NSM analysis of the poetry of T. S. Eliot. Master’s thesis, Australian National University.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (2012). Cultural scripts and communication style differences in three Anglo Englishes (English English, American English and Australian English). In Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky (Ed.), Intercultural miscommunication past and present (pp. 101-120). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. DOI: 10.3726/978-3-653-01353-5
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Goddard, Cliff (2012). ‘Early interactions’ in Australian English, American English, and English English: Cultural differences and cultural scripts. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1038-1050.
DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2012.04.010
Abstract:
Different communicative styles pertaining to initial self-presentation have implications for mutual misperception, negative evaluation and stereotyping. This study applies the techniques of contrastive ethnopragmatics to communicative style in initial conversational interactions in three varieties of Anglo English: Australian English, American English, and English English. It proposes for each variety a distinctive suite of cultural scripts concerning matters such as presumed stance in relation to sameness and difference, degree of attention to accent and speech style, expected degree of interest in personal information about the interlocutor, expressions of accomplishments and ambitions, and ‘phatic complimenting’. Evidence is drawn from personal testimonies about cultural cross-talk, sociological and cultural studies, and contrastive corpus data.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
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.
Butter, Stella; Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2020). The comfort of home as an ethical value in Mike Packer’s Inheritance. In Bert Peeters, Kerry Mullan, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 2. Meaning and culture (pp. 85-101). Singapore: Springer.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_5
Abstract:
The loss of, and search for, comfort is at the heart of the 2010 social realist play Inheritance, in which the English dramatist Mike Packer explores the burst of the housing bubble in England by depicting the declining fortunes of a family. The pensioner Harry decides to buy his council house as an inheritance for his sons, but when the economic recession hits, the house is lost. This chapter gauges how the play negotiates meanings and sources of comfort by linking them with the theme of home. Packer’s play is notable for the way it connects the
characters’ understanding of comfort with specific forms of subjectivity, highlighting in particular how comfort may be understood as an ethical value and how neoliberal subjects reduce such ethical comfort to a sensuous appeasement achieved through appropriate technological devices. In order to tease out different dimensions and meanings of comfort in the play, we adopt an interdisciplinary approach, conjoining literary studies and linguistics. In presenting our results, we rely heavily on the method of semantic analysis known as the NSM approach. The interdisciplinary analysis is presented as a first step towards establishing the heuristic value of NSM methodology for enriching the study of literary negotiations of meanings and values while also showing how the inclusion of literary texts in NSM studies helps trace semantic meaning transformations in the wake of changing life worlds.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Forbes, Alexander (2020). Using Minimal English to model a parental understanding of autism. In Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, & Kerry Mullan (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond) (pp. 191-212). Singapore: Springer.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_8
Abstract:
The challenges faced by families of children who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder have been well-studied, as have the impacts on the family of this diagnosis. What a parent prototypically thinks when confronted with the word ‘autism’, however, has not been well-studied. This study reviewed liter- ature and examined multiple texts in order to posit two cognitive models held by the prototypical parent of an autistic child. These cognitive models are expressed in Minimal English, allowing readers to ‘get inside the head’ of a prototypical parent who hears that ‘X has autism’. Two scripts (cognitive models) are provided in this study: one noting perceptions of the autistic person and the other noting perceptions of other parents of autistic children. Script 1 reveals how the prototypical parent of an autistic child perceives an autistic person in relation to other people, including how the autistic person thinks, does things, feels and interacts with other people. It further describes how this prototypical parent assumes others perceive autistic people, and how the prototypical parent may want to do things in a particular way with an autistic person as opposed to non-autistic people. Script 2 reveals how the prototypical parent thinks of the parents of an autistic child, including assumptions of shared experiences, social isolation, and fear for the future. This innovative study breaks ground in the use of Minimal English and offers a new way forward for representing prototypical understandings of concepts.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
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
 |
Crude application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner |
 |
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner |
 |
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 |