Browsing results for English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Stanwood, Ryo E. (2014). On the adequacy of Hawai`i Creole English. Dallas: SIL International. PDF (open access)
Published version of a previously unpublished PhD thesis (1999).
Low prestige, non-standard speech varieties have been stigmatized by some psychologists and educators as a cognitive handicap responsible for the poor academic performance of minority children. This study investigates whether a particular non-standard variety, Hawai‛i Creole English (HCE), is equal to “real” languages (such as Standard English) in its expressive capacity. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage
(NSM) specification is the only explicit hypothesis about the expressive apparatus underlying all natural languages. It therefore offers us the only empirical means to carry out our investigation. This investigation argues in exhaustive detail that all the primitives and all the primitive combinations of the NSM specification are present in HCE.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199321490.001.0001
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 22, 2019.
Mackenzie, Colin Peter (2014). Vernacular psychologies in Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
Open access
Abstract:
This thesis examines the vernacular psychology presented in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. It focuses on the concept ‘hugr’, generally rendered in English as ‘mind, soul, spirit’, and explores the conceptual relationships between emotion, cognition and the body. It argues that despite broad similarities, Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English vernacular psychology differ more than has previously been acknowledged. Furthermore, it shows that the psychology of Old Norse-Icelandic has less in common with its circumpolar neighbours than proposed by advocates of Old Norse-Icelandic shamanism.
The thesis offers a fresh interpretation of Old Norse-Icelandic psychology that does not rely on cross-cultural evidence from other Germanic or circumpolar traditions. It argues that emotion and cognition were not conceived of ‘hydraulically’ as was the case in Old English, and that ‘hugr’ was not thought to leave the body either in animal form or as a person’s breath. Old Norse-Icelandic psychology differs from the Old English tradition; it is argued that the Old English psychological model is a specific elaboration of the shared psychological inheritance of Germanic whose origins require further study. These differences between the two languages have implications for the study of psychological concepts in Proto-Germanic: there are fewer semantic components that can be reliably reconstructed for the common ancestor of the North and West Germanic languages.
As a whole, the thesis applies insights from cross-cultural linguistics and psychology to show how Old Norse-Icelandic psychological concepts differ not only from contemporary Germanic and circumpolar traditions but also from the present-day English concepts used to describe them.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) amae 甘え, (E) angry, (E) Ärger, (E) hati, (E) heart, (E) hugr, (E) maum 몸, (E) mind, (E) mōd, (E) sich ärgern, (E) sind, (E) think
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Tien, Adrian (2014). Chinese-based lexicon in Singapore English, and Singapore-Chinese culture. In Maria Grozeva-Minkova, & Boris Naimushin (Eds.), Globalisierung, interkulturelle Kommunikation und Sprache (pp. 473-482). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Also published as:
Tien, Adrian (2014). Chinese-based lexicon in Singapore English, and Singapore-Chinese culture. In Ewa Zebrowska, Mariola Jaworska, & Dirk Steinhoff (Eds.), Materialität und Medialität der sprachlichen Kommunikation – Materiality and mediality of linguistic communication (pp. 411-422). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Singapore sits at the crossroads between the East and the West, and its “unofficial” national creole, Singapore English (or “Singlish”), attests to the diverse linguistic and cultural amalgam consisting of primarily English and Chinese and, secondarily, Malay and Tamil. While English grammar serves as the backbone of Singlish, its lexical composition is strongly represented by loanwords or calques which originated from Chinese – not only Standard Mandarin but also Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and Hakka dialects. These Chinese-based words in Singlish lexicon are worth studying because they demonstrate that the Singapore culture is both uniquely native and historically as well as culturally reflective of Chinese culture. To further substantiate the case, we examine a selection of cultural key words from Chinese-based Singlish lexicon using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) model as advanced by Wierzbicka and Goddard over the last 40 years. By using a set of 60 or so semantically unanalysable “primes”, this model allows us to decompose the complex meanings of cultural key words into configurations of semantic primes, thus making it possible to study, compare, and explain these words.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 17, 2018.
Wong, Jock O. (2014). The culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519519
This book provides a fresh approach to Singapore English, by focusing on its cultural connotations. The author, a native Singaporean, explores a range of aspects of this rich variety of English – including address forms, cultural categories, particles, and interjections – and links particular words to particular cultural norms and values. By using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, which is free from technical terminology, he explains the relationship between meaning and culture with maximal clarity.
An added strength of this study lies in its use of authentic examples and pictures, which offer a fascinating glimpse of Singaporean life. Through comparisons with Anglo English, it also explores some difficulties associated with Standard English and cultural misunderstanding.
Table of contents
- English in Singapore
- The language of culture and the culture of language
- Singlish forms of address
- Cultural categories and stereotypes
- The discourse of can in Singlish
- Expressions of certainty and overstatements
- The tonal particles of Singlish
- The enigmatic particle lōr
- Interjections: aiya and aiyo
- Making sense of Singlish
Chapter 3 builds on: The reduplication of Chinese names in Singapore English (2003); Social hierarchy in the ‘speech culture’ of Singapore (2006)
Chapter 4 builds on: Contextualizing aunty in Singaporean English (2006)
Chapter 5 builds on: Cultural scripts, ways of speaking and perceptions of personal autonomy: Anglo English vs. Singapore English (2004)
Chapter 6 builds on: Why you so Singlish one? A semantic and cultural interpretation of the Singapore English particle one (2005); Reduplication of nominal modifiers in Singapore English: A semantic and cultural interpretation (2004); Anglo English and Singapore English tags: Their meanings and cultural significance (2008)
Chapter 7 builds on: The particles of Singapore English: A semantic and cultural interpretation (2004); To speak or not to speak? The ‘a’ particles of Singlish (2001)
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags listed below are in addition to those listed at the end of the entries for the earlier work on which this book builds.
Tags: (E) able, (E) Ah, (E) Ah Beng, (E) Ah Lian, (E) Aiya!, (E) Aiyo!, (E) can already, (E) Can you do this?, (E) can?, (E) lōr, (E) Oh-oh!, (E) oops, (E) Ow!, (E) permission, (E) possible, (E) right? (tag), (E) sarong party girl (SPG), (E) tai tai, (E) uncle, (E) wink, (E) X can Y cannot, (E) You do this, (S) Asking people to do things, (S) attitude towards someone older, (S) being easy to please, (S) feeling good and showing it, (S) good feelings in verbal interactions, (S) honorific deference, (S) marking what one thinks from what one knows, (S) names, (S) not sounding excessively negative, (S) offering suggestions, (S) offering to do something for someone, (S) parental obligation, (S) presenting certainties as uncertainties, (S) saying something good about something, (S) sounding positive, (S) use of an address form when interacting with older people, (S) use of the imperative
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668434.001.0001
Abstract:
This book presents a series of systematic, empirically based studies of word meanings. Each chapter investigates key expressions drawn from different domains of the lexicon – concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. The examples chosen are complex and culturally important; the languages represented include English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri, and Malay. The authors ground their discussions in real examples and draw on work ranging from Leibniz, Locke, and Bentham, to popular works such as autobiographies and memoirs, and the Dalai Lama’s writings on happiness.
The book opens with a review of the neglected status of lexical semantics in linguistics and a discussion of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage methodology, which is used in all chapters. The discussion includes a wide range of methodological and analytical issues including lexical polysemy, semantic change, the relationship between lexical and grammatical semantics, and the concepts of semantic molecules and templates.
Table of contents:
- Words, meaning, and methodology
- Men, women, and children: The semantics of basic social categories
- Sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp: Physical quality words in cross-linguistic perspective
- From “colour words” to visual semantics: English, Russian, Warlpiri
- Happiness and human values in cross-cultural and historical perspective
- Pain: Is it a human universal? The perspective from cross-linguistic semantics
- Suggesting, apologising, complimenting: English speech act verbs
- A stitch in time and the way of the rice plant: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay
- The meaning of abstract nouns: Locke, Bentham and contemporary semantics
- Broader perspectives: Beyond lexical semantics
More information:
Chapter 3 builds on: NSM analyses of the semantics of physical qualities: sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp in cross-linguistic perspective (2007)
Chapter 4 builds on: Why there are no “colour universals” in language and thought (2008)
Chapter 5 builds on: “Happiness” in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective (2004); The “history of emotions” and the future of emotion research (2010); What’s wrong with “happiness studies”? The cultural semantics of happiness, bonheur, Glück and sčas’te (2011)
Chapter 6 builds on: Is pain a human universal? A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective on pain (2012)
Chapter 8 builds on an unpublished English original translated in Russian as: Следуй путем рисового поля”: семантика пословиц в английском и малайском языках [“Sleduy putem risovogo polya”: semantika poslovits v angliyskom i malayskom yazykakh / “Follow the way of the rice plant”: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay (Bahasa Melayu)] (2009)
The proverbs explicated in Chapter 8 include: (English) A stitch in time saves nine, Make hay while the sun shines, Out of the frying pan into the fire, Practice makes perfect, All that glitters is not gold, Too many cooks spoil the broth, You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; Where there’s smoke there’s fire; (Malay) Ikut resmi padi ‘Follow the way of the rice plant’, Seperti ketam mangajar anak berjalan betul ‘Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight’, Binasa badan kerana mulut ‘The body suffers because of the mouth’, ‘Ada gula, ada semut ‘Where there’s sugar, there’s ants’, Seperti katak di bawah tempurung ‘Like a frog under a coconut shell’, Keluar mulut harimau masuk mulut buaya ‘Out from the tiger’s mouth into the crocodile’s mouth’, Bila gajah dan gajah berlawan kancil juga yang mati tersepit ‘When elephant fights elephant it’s the mousedeer that’s squashed to death’.
Tags listed below are in addition to those listed at the end of the entries for the earlier work on which this book builds.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) 'happiness' (Dalai Lama), (E) aching, (E) altruism, (E) apologize, (E) arnkelye, (E) ask, (E) babies, (E) blue, (E) ból, (E) boyish, (E) boys, (E) childish, (E) childlike, (E) children, (E) commit suicide, (E) complain, (E) compliment, (E) criticize, (E) death, (E) depressed, (E) depression, (E) devočki, (E) devuški, (E) disease, (E) douleur, (E) eu prattein, (E) female, (E) girls, (E) goluboj, (E) greet, (E) ill, (E) illness, (E) insult, (E) interpersonal warmth, (E) kill, (E) kill oneself, (E) life, (E) mal, (E) male, (E) mana, (E) marry, (E) men, (E) niebieski, (E) offer, (E) order, (E) parricide, (E) patricide, (E) praise, (E) problem, (E) promise, (E) proverb, (E) real, (E) recommend, (E) saying, (E) sinij, (E) size, (E) souffrir, (E) suffer, (E) suggest, (E) tell, (E) temperature, (E) thank, (E) threaten, (E) trauma, (E) typical, (E) violence, (E) vzaimopomoshch, (E) warn, (E) women, (S) expressiveness, (S) personal autonomy, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). Verb classes and valency alternations (NSM approach), with special reference to English physical activity verbs. In Andrej Malchukov & Bernard Comrie (Eds.), Valency classes in the world’s languages, vol. 2 (pp. 1671-1701). Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. DOI: 10.1515/9783110429343-020
This study examines five English physical activity verbs (eat, pour, dig, carry, cut) and, using a dedicated semantic template, proposes detailed semantic explications for the basic activity-in-progress meanings of these verbs. It then shows, with a different template, how these basic meanings can be transposed into perfective uses. The study examines and explicates 11 alternations (specialized constructions) involving the five verbs, showing in each case exactly how the alternations are related to the base semantics of the verb. In his demonstration, the author relies on the concept of derivational base, which is a new concept in NSM studies.
The general picture is that the specialized constructions are quasi-derivational in nature: the primary or semantically basic sense of the verb is embedded in a more elaborate configuration containing additional semantic material. Often much of this additional material is modeled on the semantics of verbs that belong to different semantic types (lexicosyntactic blending), but it can be partly idiosyncratic or non-predictable. Each specialized construction represents a kind of “word in construction” polysemy.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) carry, (E) cut, (E) dig, (E) eat, (E) pour
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). The idea of a ‘spoon’: semantics, prehistory, and cultural logic. Language Sciences, 47(A), 66-83. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2014.08.005
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2015). Tall poppies in the land down under: An applied ethnolinguistic approach. International Journal of Language and Culture, 2(2), 219-243. DOI:10.1075/ijolc.2.2.04pee
Published on August 7, 2017. Last updated on September 1, 2018.
Cramer, Rahel K. (2015). Why Australians seem “laid-back” and Germans rather “serious”: A contrastive semantic and ethnopragmatic analysis of Australian English and German, with implications for second language pedagogy. MA thesis, Hamburg University. PDF (open access)
This study aims to explore manifestations of cultural characteristics in spoken conversational Australian English and German to reveal the relation between cultural values and ways of speaking and to facilitate their understanding, in particular for second language learners. It is a two-part contrastive analysis. Part One gives a cultural overview by identifying macro-concepts of the two speech communities (‘Ordnung’ and ‘Angst’ for the German culture; the ‘no worries’ attitude, ‘friendliness’ and ‘good humour’ for the Australian culture). Part Two provides a detailed semantic and pragmatic analysis of micro-concepts, which includes a section on social descriptor terms (laid back, relaxed and easy going in Australian English; locker and sympathisch in German) and a section on conversational ideals (anregend and ernsthaft in German; friendly and not too serious in Australian English). The methodological approach is a combination of corpus linguistics and the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). The findings from this analysis are considered in relation to their applicability to and usefulness for second language pedagogy.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Alles in Ordnung, (E) anregend, (E) easy going, (E) ernsthaft, (E) friendly, (E) laid back, (E) locker, (E) no worries, (E) relaxed, (E) się, (E) sympathisch, (E) take [...] too seriously, (S) serious conversation, (S) social interaction, (S) stimulating conversationh, (S) take [...] too seriously, (T) German
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). “Swear words” and “curse words” in Australian (and American) English: At the crossroads of pragmatics, semantics and sociolinguistics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 12(2), 189-218. DOI 10.1515/ip-2015-0010
This study seeks to show that Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) analytical techniques allow an integrated semantic-pragmatic approach to the use of “swear words” and “curse (cuss) words”. The paper begins with a semantic exegesis of the lexical items swear word and curse word. This is helpful to delimit and conceptualize the phenomena being studied, and it also hints at some interesting differences between the speech cultures of Australian English and American English. Subsequent sections propose semantic explications for a string of swear/curse words and expressions as used in Australian English, including: exclamations (Shit! Fuck! Damn! Christ! Jesus!), abuse formulas (Fuck you!, Damn you!), interrogative and imperative formulas (e.g. Who the fuck do you think you are?; Get the hell out of here!), and the free use of expressive adjectives, such as fucking and goddamn, in angry swearing. A novel aspect, with interesting implications for the relationship between semantics and pragmatics, is that the explications incorporate a metalexical awareness section, modelling speaker awareness of the ethnometapragmatic status of the word in the community of discourse. The study goes on to address so-called “social/conversational” swearing. Cultural scripts are proposed to capture some Anglo ethnopragmatic assumptions about how the use of swear/curse words can be affected by perceptions of familiarity, solidarity, and mutuality. Differences between Australian English and American English are discussed at various points.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Christ!, (E) curse words, (E) cuss words, (E) Dammit!, (E) Damn you!, (E) Damn!, (E) Fuck you!, (E) Fuck!, (E) fucking, (E) Get the hell out of here!, (E) goddamn, (E) Jesus!, (E) Shit!, (E) swear words, (E) Where (who/what...) the hell, (S) swear/curse words and children, (S) swear/curse words and gender, (S) swear/curse words in high solidarity situations, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). Can there be common knowledge without a common language? German Pflicht versus English duty. Common Knowledge, 21(1), 141-171. DOI: 10.1215/0961754X-2818482
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Krijtenburg, Froukje, & de Volder, Eefje (2015). How universal is UN ‘peace’? A comparative linguistic analysis of the United Nations and Giryama (Kenya) concepts of ‘peace’. International Journal of Language and Culture, 2(2), 194-218. DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.2.2.03kri
It is now commonly accepted that, for the sake of international peace, the provisions of the UN Charter (originally devised to regulate interstate wars) should be interpreted so as to allow for intrastate interference as well. Yet the UN Charter does not explicitly state what the term peace refers to. It seems that the concept underpinning this term is so much the norm that only deviations from it are marked and therefore noteworthy or definable. Still, in view of the wide array of UN peacekeeping missions all over the world, a clear notion of ‘peace’ could make an important contribution to the success of these missions. In view of this, the paper addresses two questions: what lies behind the concept of ‘peace’ embedded in UN discourse, and how internationally salient is it? To provide the necessary perspective, we undertake a comparative ethnolexicological analysis of the UN and Giryama (Kenya) ‘peace’ concepts. The analysis aims to highlight those aspects of Giryama kuelewana and UN peace that are characteristically ‘socially meaningful’ and concludes by highlighting convergences and divergences between them.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco (2015). Hi vs. ciao: NSM as a tool for cross-linguistic pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics, 85, 1-17.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.05.020
This paper presents the results of the semantic analysis of two salutations, hi (English) and ciao (Italian), using NSM. The analysis is aimed at making two points: first, that ‘‘greetings’’ have a proper semantic content consisting of expressed attitudes and feelings that can be described in simple, cross-translatable words; second, that salutations are not only performed differently, but also conceived differently across languages. This can create potential cases of miscommunication in cross-cultural interactions. To show this, the interactional meaning of hi is compared with that of ciao; two different semantic explications are proposed to capture various aspects of their meaning emerging from linguistic evidence. The implications for cross-linguistic pragmatics are also discussed.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ciao, (E) hi, (T) Italian
Published on July 18, 2017. Last updated on May 23, 2019.
Neale, Miles (2015). A comparison of English and Japanese proverbs using Natural Semantic Metalanguage. New Voices in Japanese Studies, 7, 85-101.
DOI: 10.21159/nvjs.07.05 / Open access
Abstract:
This study examines the meaning of semantically similar English and Japanese proverbs. It uses textual data sourced from online corpora to highlight and compare the different cultural and conceptual elements embedded within these proverbs. The findings demonstrate that matching proverbs from different languages is a potentially problematic exercise, both in dictionaries and in the second-language classroom.
The proverbs that are being explicated in NSM are (English) Look before you leap and (Japanese) Nen ni wa nen o ireyo (lit., ‘put care into care’), followed by (English) The proof of the pudding is in the eating and Japanese Ron yori shoko (lit., ‘argument less than proof/demonstration’).
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 7, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2015). The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 13(2), 291-313.
DOI: 10.1075/rcl.13.2.02god
Abstract:
This study has three main dimensions. It begins by turning the lens of NSM semantic analysis onto a set of words that are central to the “discourse of the unexpected” in English: surprised, amazed, astonished and shocked. By elucidating their precise meanings, we can gain an improved picture of the English folk model in this domain. A comparison with Malay (Bahasa Melayu) shows that the “surprise words” of English lack precise equivalents in other languages.
The second dimension involves grammatical semantics: it seeks to identify the semantic relationships between agnate word-sets such as: surprised, surprising, to surprise; amazed, amazing, to amaze.
The third dimension is a theoretical one and is concerned with the development of a typology of “surprise-like” concepts. It is argued that adopting English-specific words, such as surprise or unexpected, as descriptive categories inevitably leads to conceptual Anglocentrism. The alternative, non-Anglocentric strategy relies on components phrased in terms of universal semantic primes, such as ‘something happened’ and ‘this someone didn’t know that it will happen’, and the like.
More information:
Reissued as:
Goddard, Cliff (2017). The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. In Agnès Celle, & Laure Lansari (Eds.), Expressing and describing surprise (pp. 27-49). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.92.02god
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amazed, (E) astonished, (E) hairan, (E) shocked, (E) shocking, (E) surprise, (E) surprised, (E) surprising, (E) terkejut, (E) terperanjat
Published on July 29, 2018. Last updated on June 25, 2019.
Buyankina, A. S. (2015). Sympathy and empathy in English and Russian: A linguistic and cultural analysis. In С. А. Песоцкая [S. A. Pesotskaya] (Ed.), Коммуникативные аспекты языка и культуры: сборник материалов XV Международной научно-практической конференции студентов и молодых ученых [Communicative aspects of language and culture: A collection of materials of the XVth International Scientific and Practical Conference of Students and Young Scientists]: Vol. 3 (pp. 70-72). Томск [Tomsk]: Изд-во ТПУ [TPU Publishing House].
Open access
 |
This paper is a quasi verbatim reproduction of selected paragraphs of:
Gladkova, Anna (2010). Sympathy, compassion, and empathy in English and Russian: A linguistic and cultural analysis. Culture & Psychology, 16(2), 267-285. |
| The NSM explications are slightly different and may be imperfect translations from the Russian explications in chapter 6 of:Гладкова, А. Н. [Gladkova, Anna] (2010). Русская культурная семантика: эмоции ценности, жизненные установк [Russian cultural semantics: Emotions, values, attitudes]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянской культуры [Languages of Slavic Cultures]. |
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Tags: (E) empathy, (E) sočuvstvie сочувствие, (E) sopereživanie сопереживание, (E) sympathy
Published on April 28, 2018. Last updated on June 25, 2019.
Gladkova, Anna (2015). Grammatical structures in cross-cultural comparisons. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 19(4), 57-68.
Open access
Abstract:
This paper discusses how cultural information is embedded at the level of grammar. It treats grammar as inseparable from semantics and pragmatics. The study is done within the approach known as ethnosyntax. The article provides examples of cultural meaning embedded at the level of syntax relying on examples from Russian and English. In particular, it demonstrates variation in impersonal constructions in Russian (linked up with the cultural themes of ‘irrationality’ and ‘unpredictability’) and causative constructions in English (linked up with the cultural ideas of ‘personal autonomy’ and ‘non-imposition’). It then discusses variation in the use of grammatical structures due to the influence of cultural factors on the basis of ways of wording requests in English and Russian.
The linguistic examples in the discussion are sourced from the Russian National Corpus for Russian and Collins Wordbanks Online for English. The article argues for the importance of culture-sensitive linguistic studies in language teaching.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) rabotaet'sja работаеться, (E) spit'sja спиться, (E) verit'sja вериться, (E) xočet'sja хочеться, (E) živet'sja живеться, (S) non-imposition
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 9, 2018.
Gąsior, Weronika (2015). Cultural scripts and the speech act of opinions in Irish English: A study amongst Irish and Polish university students. ELOPE (English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries), 12(1), 11-28. DOI: 10.4312/elope.12.1.11-28. PDF (open access)
Studies in pragmatics have been limited to a handful of illocutionary acts such as requests, apologies or compliments, and opinions remain underrepresented in the existing literature. In this paper I present the results of a study of opinions in Irish English, conducted in an intercultural environment of Irish-Polish interactions. Departing from a traditional approach of speech act realisation studies, I applied the theory of cultural scripts to analyse opinions. In contrasting the Irish and Polish formulas for expressing opinions, as well as sociopragmatic attitudes towards this speech act, a difference in the cultural scripts for opinions in each culture was observable. Apart from already documented Polish frankness in opinions, the study discovered also a rational approach to presenting good arguments to support one’s assertions among the participants. In relation to the Irish script for opinions, the findings are in line with previous classifications of opinions in Australian English, showing a certain level of variational uniformity amongst the English-speaking cultures in this regard.
Crude application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (S) opinions
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on January 15, 2022.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). New perspectives on kinship: Overcoming the Eurocentrism and scientism of kinship studies through lexical universals. In Nancy Bonvillain (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 62-79). New York: Routledge.
Given a measure of mental discipline, effort and experience, unfamiliar concepts embodied in kinship terminologies can be explained to outsiders through ordinary language. To grasp them, one does not require a tutorial in kinship studies or in arcane formalisms of any kind. One does need, however, an explanation. If this explanation is free of any technical terminology, if it is couched in words that one can understand, and if one is prepared to make an effort to get out of one’s accustomed ways of thinking, then with the help of such an explanation, authentic understanding can be reached.
See also:
Kotorova, Elizaveta (2018). Analysis of kinship terms using Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Anna Wierzbicka’s approach. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 701-710.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) beyko, (E) bornang, (E) Father, (E) mother, (E) wulaŋ, (E) yawko, (E) yawmey, (T) English
