Browsing results for English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 11, 2018.
Dineen, Anne (1990). Shame/embarrassment in English and Danish. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 217-229. DOI: 10.1080/07268609008599442
The paper discusses one area of the emotion lexicon in Danish and English, namely a set of terms within the domain of ‘shame’/’embarrassment’. This set of terms constitutes a folk taxonomy, the internal relationships between these terms being a matter for empirical investigation. The paper relies on NSM to make semantic relationships explicit and easily comparable. English and Danish terms are discussed in turn, and comparisons are drawn between them.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) ashamed, (E) embarrassed, (E) flov, (E) forlegen, (E) have bidt hovedet af al skam, (E) ilde berørt, (E) past shame, (E) pinlig, (E) shy, (E) skamfuld
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wilkins, David P. (1992). Interjections as deictics. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 119-158. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90049-H
Reissued in an abridged format as:
Wilkins, David P. (1995). Expanding the traditional category of deictic elements: Interjections as deictics. In Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, & Lynne E. Hewitt (Eds.), Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective (pp. 359-386). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
The paper examines some of the semantic and pragmatic consequences of a form being both a lexeme (i.e. a simple sign) and a conventional utterance. The approach presented here has far-reaching consequences for the manner in which interjections are identified, analyzed, and subclassified. In particular it it suggested that interjections have all the features attributed to utterances, including the facts that they convey complete propositions and have an illocutionary purpose. Given that interjections are context-bound, it is possible to observe that the referential arguments in the propositions conveyed by interjections are provided by context. As lexemes, interjections have ‘real’ semantic (i.e. propositional/conceptual) content, and within the decomposition of all interjections are basic deictic elements. These ‘primitive’ deictic elements are not tied referentially to any entities until they are placed in context. In this sense both a pragmatic and a semantic approach are required to account for interjections. Interjections are, therefore, shifters (indexicals) by virtue of being built semantically out of basic deictic elements and so should be considered a reasonable topic within the study of deixis.
Definitions, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to lexical decomposition, are proposed for a varied range of interjections from English, Mparntwe Arrernte (Central Australia), American Sign Language, and Italian.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Cincin!, (E) me (interjection), (E) Ngke!, (E) Ow!, (E) To'!, (E) Wow!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Furniture and birds: A reply to Dwight Bolinger. Cognitive Linguistics, 3(1), 119-123. DOI: 10.1515/cogl.1992.3.1.111
No full-fledged explications are proposed in this short reply to Dwight Bolinger’s reaction following the publication of Wierzbicka’s paper “Prototypes save: On the uses and abuses of the notion ‘prototype’ in linguistics and related fields” (1990). The reply suggests, against Bolinger (for whom furniture and bird are comparable categories), that the explication of collective categories such as furniture, cutlery, kitchenware, clothing, or bedlinen should start as follows:
things of different kinds
they are in the same place
(because people want them to be in the same place)
In the case of taxonomic concepts such as bird, tree, flower, or fish, the beginning of the explications will be different and refer instead to “a kind of thing”.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 11, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Talking about emotions: Semantics, culture, and cognition. Cognition and Emotion, 6(3/4), 285-319. DOI: 10.1080/02699939208411073
Translated into Polish as chapter 4 of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1999). Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
The author argues that the so-called “basic emotions”, such as happiness, fear or anger, are in fact cultural artifacts of the English language, just as the Ilongot concept of liger, or the Ifaluk concept of song, are the cultural artifacts of Ilongot and Ifaluk. It is therefore as inappropriate to talk about human emotions in general in terms of happiness, fear, or anger as it would be to talk about them in terms of liget or song. However, this does not mean that we cannot penetrate into the emotional world of speakers of languages other than our own. Nor does it mean that there cannot be any universal human emotions. Universality of emotions is an open issue which requires further investigation. For this further investigation to be fully productive, it has to be undertaken from a universal, language and culture-independent perspective; and it has to be carried out in a universalist framework that is language and culture-independent. The author proposes for this purpose the Natural Semantic Metalanguage based on universal (or near-universal) semantic primitives (or near-primitives), developed over two decades by herself and colleagues, and she argues that the use of this metalanguage facilitates such a perspective and offers such a framework.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) angry, (E) displeased, (E) displeasure, (E) glücklich, (E) grateful, (E) happy, (E) heureux, (E) joy, (E) liget, (E) pleased, (E) remorse, (E) sad, (E) song, (E) tjituru-tjituru, (E) watjilpa, (E) złość
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 20, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Australian b-words (bloody, bastard, bugger, bullshit): An expression of Australian culture and national character. In André Clas (Ed.), Le mot, les mots, les bons mots/Word, words, witty words (pp. 21-38). Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
Abstract:
The claim made in this paper is not that the Australian ‘b-words’ (bastard, bloody, bugger, and bullshit) are not used outside Australia. They are. But in Australia, they are part of everyday language and play a role that is truly unique. Elsewhere, they are more or less marginal. In Australia, they are central — in everyday life and even in public discourse (especially on the political scene). They are felt to be an important means of self-expression, self-identification, and effective communication with others.
Although the frequency of b-words in Australian speech is undoubtedly unique, and although it has often been commented on by visitors from other parts of the English-speaking world, it is, above all, in the meaning of these words, as they are used in Australia, that the Australians have managed to express something of their own cultural identity. Strictly speaking, then, it is not the b-words themselves but the meanings encapsulated in them that are characteristically Australian.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Chapter 5 (pp. 198-234) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1997), Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bastard, (E) bloody, (E) bugger, (E) bullshit
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). The semantics of interjection. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 159-192. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90050-L
Translated into Russian as:
Вежбицкая, А. [Wierzbicka, Anna] (1999). Семантика междометия. In Вежбицкая, А. [Wierzbicka, Anna], Семантические универсалии и описание языков, под ред. Татьяна В. Булыгиной [Semantic universals and the description of languages, ed. Tatyana V. Bulygina] (pp. 611-649). Москва [Moscow]: Языки русской культуры [Languages of Russian Culture].
An expanded version of this paper was published earlier as chapter 8 (pp. 285-339) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1991, 2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
This paper argues that interjections – like any other linguistic elements – have their meaning, and that this meaning can be identified and captured in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage developed by the author and her colleagues. A number of interjections from English, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish are discussed, and rigorous semantic formulae are proposed which can explain both the similarities and the differences in their range of use. For example, the English interjection yuk! is compared and contrasted with its nearest Polish and Russian counterparts fu!, fe!, rfu!. The author shows that while the meaning of interjections cannot be adequately captured in terms of emotion words such as disgust, it can be captured in terms of more fine-grained components, closer to the level of universal semantic primitives. The role of sound symbolism in the functioning of interjections is discussed, and the possibility of reflecting this symbolism in the semantic formulae is explored.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Ameka, Felix (1992). Interjections: The universal yet neglected part of speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 101-118. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(92)90048-G
It is perhaps true that apart from nouns and verbs, interjections – those little words, or ‘non-words’, which can constitute utterances by themselves – are a word class found in all languages. But it is also true that this class of items has eluded description and has, for the most part, been ignored in theoretical linguistics discourse. In this introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics dedicated to interjections and similar items, I want to attempt to draw out and suggest solutions to the confusion that has beset these important items.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) thank you, (E) Wow!
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on January 22, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Defining emotion concepts. Cognitive Science, 16(4), 539-581. DOI: 10.1207/s15516709cog1604_4
This article demonstrates that emotion concepts – including the so-called basic ones, such as anger or sadness – can be defined in terms of universal semantic primitives such as GOOD, BAD, DO, HAPPEN, KNOW, and WANT, in terms of which all areas of meaning, in all languages, can be rigorously and revealingly portrayed.
The definitions proposed here take the form of certain prototypical scripts or scenarios, formulated in terms of thoughts, wants, and feelings. These scripts, however, can be seen as formulas providing rigorous specifications of necessary and sufficient conditions (not for emotions as such, but for emotion concepts), and they do not support the idea that boundaries between emotion concepts are “fuzzy”. On the contrary, the small set of universal semantic primitives employed here (which has emerged from two decades of empirical investigations by the author and colleagues) demonstrates that even apparent synonyms such as sad and unhappy embody different – and fully specifiable – conceptual structures.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) amazement, (E) anger, (E) appalled, (E) ashamed, (E) contented, (E) delighted, (E) depressed, (E) despair, (E) disappointment, (E) distressed, (E) embarrassed, (E) excited, (E) frightened, (E) frustration, (E) glücklich, (E) grief, (E) guilt, (E) happy, (E) heureux, (E) humiliated, (E) hurt, (E) indignant, (E) indignation, (E) pleased, (E) pride, (E) relief, (E) remorse, (E) sad, (E) sčastliv, (E) shocked, (E) sorrow, (E) sorry, (E) surprise, (E) triumph, (E) unhappy, (E) upset, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). Why do we say IN April, ON Thursday, AT 10 o’clock? In search of an explanation. Studies in Language, 17(2), 437-454. DOI: 10.1075/sl.17.2.07wie
Why do we say ON Thursday but AT 10 o’clock? Or why do we say AT night but IN the morning? One common answer to such questions is to dismiss the problem: this is the way we speak because this is the way to speak; it is all arbitrary, conventional, idiosyncratic.
It is argued that such answers are unilluminating and unsatisfactory. Prepositions such as ON, AT, or IN have their meanings, and the choice between them is motivated by these meanings. There are also certain conventions of use based on cultural expectations; the meanings and the cultural expectations interact and their interaction produces results whose “logic” may be difficult to detect — especially if one looks in the wrong direction, that is, that of “truth conditions” regarding external situations. In fact,
however, the problem is not insoluble, and if it is approached with the understanding that meaning is all in the mind and that it is a matter of conceptualizations rather than “truth conditions”, the hidden “logic ” behind the choice of prepositions for temporal adverbials can be explained.
The paper argues, and tries to demonstrate, that the prepositions AT, IN, and ON mean different things, and that the patterns of their use in different types of temporal phrases are determined by their meanings.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). *Intercultural communication in Australia. In G. Schulz (Ed.), The languages of Australia (pp. 83-103). Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Kidman, Angus (1993). How to do things with four-letter words: A study of the semantics of swearing in Australia. BA(Hons) thesis, University of New England. HTML (open access)
This thesis presents and defends semantic explications for a number of swear words commonly used in Australian English. Its focus is on different constructions which can be conveyed using the three lexical forms shit, fuck and cunt. Contrary to the popular belief that swear words are “meaningless”, it is shown that each of these swear words can be used to convey a number of specific meanings. These meanings are sometimes related, but each needs to be defined independently if similarities and differences between terms are to be precisely captured. Aspects of meaning discussed include the contrast between the exclamations Shit! and Fuck!, the common adjectival form fucking, the relationship of the referential term cunt to other uses, the contrast between fucking and making love, and the meaning conveyed by
semi-metaphorical forms such as to kick the shit out of someone. The method of semantic representation adopted is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach advocated by Anna Wierzbicka and others. The explications presented here have a number of implications. Relevant issues examined include the relationship between referential uses of swear words and the other meanings which they convey, the semantic importance of the consciousness of “phonetic form” in swearing, and the role of prototypes in the semantics of swear words. The semantic characterization of the concepts “swearing” and “swear word” is also discussed.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bullshit, (E) cunt, (E) cunt of a..., (E) faeces, (E) Fuck off!, (E) Fuck you!, (E) Fuck!, (E) fucking, (E) Get fucked!, (E) I'm fucked, (E) kick/punch the shit out of, (E) make love, (E) Shit!, (E) swear, (E) vagina, (E) Who/What the fuck
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Béal, Christine (1993). Les stratégies conversationnelles en français et en anglais: Conventions ou reflet de divergences culturelles profondes? [Conversational strategies in French and English: Convention or reflection of profound cultural divergence?] Langue française, 98, 79-106. DOI: 10.3406/lfr.1993.5835. PDF (open access)
The inspiration for this paper was found in A. Wierzbicka’s Cross-cultural pragmatics (1991). The author describes contrastively some of the rules which underlie conversation in French and in Australian English. The transcription of authentic recordings shows how each system works in isolation and what kind of conflicts emerge when both systems meet (in the case of native speakers or French using their own conversational strategies when expressing themselves in English). It is claimed that the observed differences reflect divergent cultural norms. underlie conversation in French and in Australian English. The transcription of authentic recordings shows how each system works in isolation and what kind of conflicts emerge when both systems meet (in the case of native speakers or French using their own conversational strategies when expressing themselves in English). It is claimed that the observed differences reflect divergent cultural norms.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Cognitive domains and the structure of the lexicon: The case of emotions. In Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, & Susan A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 431-452). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In trying to discover how knowledge (or at least basic, “foundational” knowledge) is stored and organized in the human mind we can rely, in a considerable measure, on language. There may be concepts that are not lexicalized in natural language, but these are probably less common, less basic, and less salient in a given speech community than those that have achieved lexicalization; they are also less accessible to study. Words provide evidence for the existence of concepts. Lexical sets, sharing a similar semantic structure, provide evidence for the existence of cohesive conceptual wholes (or fields). If it is hypothesized that knowledge is organized in the mind in the form of “cognitive domains,” then conceptual fields detectable through semantic analysis of the lexicon can be regarded as a guide to those domains. These general assumptions are illustrated in this paper by reference to a specific semantic domain: that of emotion terms. For reasons of space, the discussion must remain brief, sketchy, and selective.
Tags: (E) angry, (E) annoyed, (E) disappointed, (E) discontent, (E) displeased, (E) distress, (E) emotion, (E) guilty, (E) irritated, (E) joyful, (E) mad, (E) resent, (E) sad
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 7, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). What is prayer? In search of a definition. In Laurence Binet Brown (Ed.). The human side of prayer: The psychology of praying (pp. 25-46). Birmingham: Religious Education Press.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) pray
Published on December 17, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Harkins, Jean (1994). Bridging two worlds: Aboriginal English and crosscultural understanding. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
This sociolinguistic study of Aboriginal English of Alice Springs town camps, published with the blessing of the Yipirinya School Council at Alice Springs, where the author’s linguistic research was based, aims to show that Aboriginal English is a full dialect of English, whose resources it uses to express Aboriginal conceptual distinctions. It explains how there can be misunderstanding when Aboriginal English is seen as an imperfect attempt to learn standard English. The study discusses implications for education particularly for language programs at Yipirinya School.
This book is the published version of:
Harkins, Jean (1988). English as a ‘two-way’ language in Alice Springs. MA thesis, Australian National University.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Wong, Jock (1994). A Wierzbickan approach to Singlish particles. MA thesis, National University of Singapore.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 17, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Emotion, language, and cultural scripts. In Shinobu Kitayama, & Hazel Rose Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual influence (pp. 133-196). Washington: American Psychological Association.
Abstract:
This chapter explores the relationship between emotion and culture, and between emotion and cognition. It examines the concept of emotion, and argues that it is culture-specific and rooted in the semantics of the English language, as are also the names of specific emotions, such as sadness, joy, anger, or fear. It shows that both the concept of emotion and the language-specific names of particular emotions can be explicated and elucidated in universal semantic primes (NSM).
NSM provides a necessary counterbalance to the uncritical use of English words as conceptual tools in the psychology, philosophy, and sociology of emotions. It offers a suitable basis for description and comparison of not only emotions and emotion concepts but also of cultural attitudes to emotions. Different cultures do indeed encourage different attitudes toward emotions, and these different attitudes are reflected in both the lexicon and the grammar of the languages associated with these cultures.
The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the language-specific character of emotion concepts and grammatical categories; the need for lexical universals as conceptual and descriptive tools; the doctrine of basic emotions and the issue of the discreteness of emotions; and the relationships among emotions, sensations, and feelings. The second part, on cultural scripts (with special reference to the Anglo and Polish cultures), explores attitudes toward emotions characteristic of different cultures (in particular, the Anglo and Polish cultures) and shows how these attitudes can be expressed in the form of cultural scripts formulated by means of universal semantic primes.
Translations:
Into Polish:
Chapter 5 (pp. 163-189) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1999), Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (endearments), (E) emotion, (E) enjoy, (E) Gefühl, (E) Gefühle, (E) sensation, (E) sentiment, (E) sentimento, (E) sentimiento, (S) bad things happen to people, (S) compliments, (S) consideration, (S) emotions, (S) feelings, (S) good things can happen to people, (S) I don't think this, (S) I say what I think, (S) I think this, (S) saying what one thinks, (S) self-analysis, (S) self-control, (S) spontaneity, (S) tact, (S) verbal and non-verbal communication, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 22, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). ‘Cultural scripts’: A new approach to the study of cross-cultural communication. In Martin Pütz (Ed.), Language contact and language conflict (pp. 69-87). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/z.71.04wei [sic]
According to Edward Hall, writing in 1983, one element lacking in the cross-cultural field was the existence of adequate models that enable us to gain more insight into the processes going on inside people while they are thinking and communicating. It is the purpose of the present paper to develop and validate a model of the kind that Hall is calling for. The model developed here, which can be called the “cultural script model”, offers a framework within which both the differences in the ways of communicating and the underlying differences in the ways of thinking can be fruitfully and rigorously explored. It is shown how cultural scripts can be stated and how they can be justified; this is done with particular reference to Anglo, Japanese, and Polish cultural norms.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) [tag questions], (E) ne ね, (S) affective common ground, (S) agreement, (S) disagreement, (S) frankness, (S) free speech, (S) hurtful truth, (S) I don't think the same, (S) I don't think this, (S) I think this, (S) I want to say something bad about you, (S) impulsiveness, (S) it is bad to think this, (S) positive thinking, (S) saying exactly what one thinks, (S) self-expression, (S) sincerity, (S) spontaneity, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). “Cultural scripts”: A semantic approach to cultural analysis and cross-cultural communication. Pragmatics and Language Learning [Monograph Series], 5, 1-24. PDF (open access)
This paper argues that the ways of speaking characteristic of a given speech community cannot be satisfactorily described (let alone explained) in purely behavioral terms. They constitute a behavioral manifestation of a tacit system of “cultural rules” or “cultural scripts”. To understand a society’s ways of speaking, we have to identify and articulate its implicit “cultural scripts”. Furthermore, it is argued that to be able to do this without ethnocentric bias we need a universal, language-independent perspective; this can be attained if the”rules” in question are stated in terms of lexical universals, that is, universal human concepts lexicalized in all languages of the world.
To illustrate these general propositions, the author shows how cultural scripts can be stated and how they can be justified. This is done with particular reference to Japanese, (White) Anglo-American, and Black American cultural norms.
The cultural scripts advanced in this paper are formulated in a highly constrained Natural Semantic Metalanguage, based on a small set of lexical universals (or near-universals) and a small set of universal (or near-universal) syntactic patterns. It is argued that the use of this metalanguage allows us to portray and compare culture-specific attitudes, assumptions, and norms from a neutral, culture-independent point of view and to do so in terms of simple formulae that are intuitively self-explanatory while at the same time being rigorous and empirically verifiable.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) enryo 遠慮, (S) advocate stance, (S) agreement, (S) apologies, (S) attitudes to emotion, (S) criticism of others, (S) freedom of expression, (S) imposition of opinions, (S) likes and dislikes, (S) non-advocate stance, (S) open-mindedness, (S) opinions of others, (S) resilience, (S) self-assertive behaviour, (S) speech, (S) spokesman stance, (S) toughness, (S) verbal restraint, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wilkins, David P. (1995). Expanding the traditional category of deictic elements: Interjections as deictics. In Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, & Lynne E. Hewitt (Eds.), Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective (pp. 359-386). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
The bulk of this chapter is an abridged and re-edited version of an earlier paper (Wilkins, 1992). The primary purpose of that paper and, hence, this chapter is to argue that the traditional American linguistic view of deictic elements must be expanded to embrace interjections alongside the more standard members such as pronouns and demonstratives. To rescue interjections from the periphery of linguistic concerns requires a demonstration of two points: (a) that interjections share specific linguistic and communicative properties with more standard deictic elements, and (b) that it is possible to render a convincing account of the semantic structure and pragmatic usage of interjections. I attempt to expand this argument, and extend the demonstration of the two forementioned points by tying interjections in with the narrative and deictic center concerns that form the focus of the book in which the new version appears, but that were not explicitly covered in the original paper.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) Cincin!, (E) me (interjection), (E) Ngke!, (E) Ow!, (E) To'!, (E) Wow!
