Browsing results for Indo-European
Published on August 9, 2018. Last updated on September 3, 2018.
Pedersen, Jan (2010). The different Swedish tack: An ethnopragmatic investigation of Swedish thanking and related concepts. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 1258-1265. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2009.09.026
In Sweden, people thank each other a lot. The reasons for this are partly linguistic, as the Swedish tack is different from e.g. English thanks. It encompasses both the meaning of ‘thanks’, and that of ‘please’. More interestingly, there are cultural reasons for this. For ethnic Swedes, there are some higher-order cultural scripts, such as equality, self-sufficiency, consensus seeking and conflict avoidance, which make people say tack a lot to show that they agree, and not to be indebted to other people. For ethnic Swedes, it is culturally important to pay your way, to return favours (tjänster och gentjänster) to retain the equilibrium between individuals. If this practise is not observed, the equilibrium is disturbed, and you end up in a debt of gratitude (tacksamhetsskuld), which can be very unpleasant for an ethnic Swede. This means that s/he thinks that s/he loses her independence and the equilibrium between him/her and the other person. This may result in ethnic Swedes seeming inhospitable, as they are reluctant to make other people feel tacksamhetsskuld.
This study of the cultural key word tack and its related notions shows that there are peculiarities in the Swedish language that can be accessible to outsiders through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) tack, (E) tacksamhetsskuld, (E) tjänster och gentjänster, (S) conflict, (S) tacksamhetsskuld
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2010). The “triple articulation” of language. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(11), 2932-2944. DOI:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.06.013.
In this paper, I argue that a language has three ‘‘faces’’ – form, meaning, and culture – and hence pragmemes are best analysed with respect to a cultural context. Using examples of culturally embedded pragmemes from Singapore English, I demonstrate how their use is intimately associated with culture-specific ways of thinking, which in many instances go against widely accepted paradigms like Grice’s maxims and Brown & Levinson’s politeness principles. My data suggest that Singapore English routinely blurs the distinction between opinion and fact and that opinions are often presented as if they are facts, which goes against the maxim of quality, which requires people not to say that for which they lack evidence. I additionally show how some of these culture-specific ways of thinking may be articulated in ways that reflect an insider perspective. Finally, I propose that we go one step further to talk about the ‘‘triple articulation’’ of language, which views language as a three-tiered entity, comprising form, meaning, and culture. This idea of what language is about goes beyond lexicon and grammar to include non-formal features like conversational routines, frequency of use of certain expressions, the avoidance of certain ways of speaking, pragmemes, etc., which can only be satisfactorily explained with reference to culture. A person who is supposed to have learned a language without understanding its culture has at best mastered its lexicon and grammar. They have not mastered the ‘‘essence’’ of the language.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część I. Dobroć. Etnolingwistyka, 23, 45-66.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2012). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część II. Prawość i odwaga. Etnolingwistyka, 24, 19-46.
Written in Polish.
Part I deals with the Polish word dobroć in comparative perspective. An assumption is made that an especially precious source of insight into the values of a given society are the key words used in that society. One of such words in Polish society is dobroć. By analysing the word’s semantics, the author shows the differences between that word and its closest equivalents in a few European languages: the English goodness, the French bonté or the Russian dobrotá. In the Polish hierarchy of values, dobroć ranks high as a positive human feature, manifested in people’s feelings, will and actions. The English goodness (derived from the adjective good) differs from the Polish dobroć in that it does not imply good feelings towards other people. The French bonté, in turn, although used in reference to people who want to do and actually do good things for others, does not, in contrast to dobroć, imply emotional overtones. On the other hand, the Russian dobrotá differs from dobroć in that it is primarily used in reference to someone’s emotional attitude towards others (expressed in one’s facial appearance or the tone of voice) but not actions. The author hypothesizes that bonté does not contain the emotional component (present in dobroć), and that dobrotá does not contain the element of action (present in dobroć and bonté). Neither does dobrotá occupy a central position among Russian values: that place is reserved for žalost’, an axiological category without a Polish equivalent. Similarly, in contemporary English-speaking cultures, greater importance is attached to kindness than to goodness.
Having discussed the semantics of dobroć, the author inquires into the historical and cultural origin of the associated concept and attempts to explain its uniqueness. A hypothesis is put forward that in Polish culture the attitude of the heart and will, reflected in the concept of ‘goodness’, finds its prototype in the figure of the Virgin Mary.
In Part II, the author analyses the concepts prawość ‘righteousness’ and odwaga ‘courage’.
Prawość is a specifically Polish concept, very much present in the Polish linguistic and cultural contemporary sphere. It is connected with the history of the country and the qualities attributed to major historical figures. Being prawy means being sensitive to others and following high ethical standards, which perhaps derives from the knightly ethos. English pseudo-equivalents of the Polish prawy/prawość are the words upright, righteous/righteousness and integrity. However, the word upright is now perceived by native speakers of English as dated and inadequate in the contemporary world; righteous and righteousness have clear biblical connotations and have entered the English language through Puritan morality – hence their range is limited. The closest equivalent is integrity, although the word is more readily connected with one’s social activity than with morality.
Odwaga is also connected with moral choices (cf. odwaga cywilna ‘moral courage’) but is not the same as courage: if someone is odważny, the deed may have negative consequences for the doer, which courage does not presuppose. The same semantic field contains words like śmiałość, dzielność and męstwo ‘boldness, bravery, valour’, but these also differ in their semantics from the English courage. Bravery is only an approximate to śmiałość, as is the Russian mužestvo, which merely resembles męstwo.
The cognitive scripts of the Polish value terms show clearly that speakers of Polish in each case operate with elements of awareness (“being aware of the moral obligation to act as one should”).
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bonté, (E) bravery, (E) courage, (E) człowiek prawy, (E) dobroć, (E) dobrotá, (E) dzielność, (E) integrity, (E) kindness, (E) męstwo, (E) mužestvo, (E) odwaga, (E) prawość, (E) righteousness, (E) śmiałość, (E) upright, (E) žalost’, (T) Polish
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 15, 2018.
Rieschild, Verna (2011). Arabic yaᶜni: Issues of semantic, pragmatic, and indexical translation equivalence. Intercultural Pragmatics, 8(3), 315-346. DOI 10.1515/IPRG.2011.016
This paper explores the idea that some discourse particles are so culturally embedded that they defy translation. Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Conversation Analysis are used to examine the meanings and functions of (a) the polysemous Arabic discourse particle yaᶜni (derived from yaᶜni ‘it means’), translatable as ‘well’, ‘I mean’, ‘that is’, ‘you see’, ‘like’, and ‘so’, and (b) sorta and I mean, the main English translation candidates for yaᶜni. The findings show that yaᶜni’s focus on marking relevance is useful in elaborating, correcting, creating narrative suspense, holding a turn, or, as sole constituent of a turn, hedging a response. Similar English functions are achieved using discourse particles that focus approximation. The analysis also shows that semantic or pragmatic similarity in discourse particles from different languages can predict translation potential. In the same way, similarity in the meaning of a discourse particle and of a speech act predicts translatability. However, despite semantic and pragmatic equivalence (of a sort), culture-specific indices may mean that a word is not a suitable translation candidate. The results augment our understanding of cultural semantics and ethnopragmatics, and have applications to the study of translation and intercultural communication.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) I mean, (E) ṣallaḥ, (E) sorta, (E) that means, (E) to correct, (E) yacni
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
McCaul, Kim (2011). Understanding courtroom communication through cultural scripts. In Le Cheng, & Anne Wagner (Eds.), Exploring courtroom discourse: The language of power and control (pp. 11-28). Farnham: Ashgate.
In this chapter I explore courtroom communication and its origin in legal culture, explicitly avoiding the kind of value judgments that some linguists arrive at when analyzing the seemingly asocial use that barristers often make of language. Instead, I intend to show how such language usage arises naturally from the culture of the law, and highlight a number of usually unstated premises that underpin courtroom communication. In particular, I will explore how the relationship between barrister and witness is determined by the culture of advocacy.
I will use a tool from cross-cultural linguistics called the “cultural script,” which not only helps to develop succinct synopses of those premises, but could also provide a method by which they can be explained to lay people entering the courtroom, including L2 speakers of English and non-English speakers.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 11, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Whatʼs wrong with “happiness studies”? The cultural semantics of happiness, bonheur, Glück, and sčas’te. In Igor Boguslavsky, Leonid Iomdin, & Leonid Krysin (Eds.), Slovo i jazyk: Sbornik statej k vos’midesjatiletiju akademika Ju. D. Apresjana (pp. 155-171). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury. PDF (open access)
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 102-126) of:
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
There is a huge industry of so-called “happiness studies” that relies on cross-national statistical comparisons, which challengers see as based on false and ethnocentric assumptions. ‘Happiness’ has become a big issue in politics and in economics, but here, too, a lack of attention to the meaning of words leads to unwarranted conclusions and causes confusion and miscommunication. The misunderstandings surrounding happiness, bonheur, and Glück illustrate the need for uncovering, and explaining, the differences between significant words that are wrongly assumed to be readily cross-translatable. In view of the place of ‘happiness’ at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines, a comparison of happiness and счастье sčast’e seems especially topical.
The assumption that all languages have a word like happiness, and that there can be a reliable “index of happiness” based on self-reports (given in different languages) is naïve and untenable. Progress in emotion research in general depends to a considerable extent on increased recognition that language goes deeper in us than many students of emotion (especially psychologists) are willing to admit. Genuine progress requires a greater linguistic and cross-cultural sophistication than that evident in much of the existing writings on the subject.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bonheur, (E) happiness, (E) sčast’e счастье, (T) English, (T) Russian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 24, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2011). The lexical semantics of language (with special reference to words). Language Sciences, 33(1), 40-57.
DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2010.03.003
Abstract:
Language can be regarded as one of the cultural key words of English, as well as the foundational term of the discourse of linguistics. It is well to remember, however, that the concept of a language lacks precise semantic equivalents in many languages. This study presents a semantic-lexicographic analysis of several meanings of the word language in contemporary English, using the NSM method of semantic description. The study is similar in scope and approach to an earlier study of the word culture, which resembles language in several important respects. One distinctive aspect of the explications for language is their reliance on the proposed semantic prime WORDS, which is discussed at some length. Though primarily focused on English, the study makes reference to Yankunytjatjara, Chinese, and Russian, among other languages.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on August 28, 2018. Last updated on August 28, 2018.
Roberts, Michael (2011). Doctors, Australians and friends: A semantic analysis of social categories. Master’s thesis, University of New England.
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 July 25, 2020.
Habib, Sandy (2011). Ghosts, fairies, elves, and nymphs: Towards a semantic template for non-human being concepts. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 31(4), 411-443.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2012.625599
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to devise a semantic template for non-human being terms. To achieve this objective, four non-human being concepts were analysed, and an explication for each concept was built. Comparing the explications yielded a nine-part semantic template. The usefulness of this semantic template is threefold. First, it eases the task of explicating non-human being concepts because the parts of the template can serve as guidelines to be followed while constructing the explications. Second, it eases the comparison between related non-human being concepts from different languages. Third, it reveals the devices that are embodied in the structure of non-human being concepts and that enable people to use these complex concepts without difficulty.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) elf, (E) fairy, (E) ghost, (E) nymph
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Bromhead, Helen (2011). The bush in Australian English. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 31(4), 445-471. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2011.625600
Individual landscape terms in various languages do not always have exact equivalents in other languages, or even in different varieties of the same language. One example is the term the bush in Australian English. The bush denotes an Australian landscape zone, but the word has developed additional senses related to culture and human geography. This study delineates the semantics of the bush in Australian English in relation to Australian culture. These meanings of the bush are described using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to linguistic analysis.
The study finds that the bush is a key word in Australian culture. The author shows that in Australian English and other settler Englishes the meanings of national landscape terms can shed light on the relationship between settlers’ cultures, and their new environments and ways of life.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bush, (E) the bush
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Mullan, Kerry (2011). Expressing opinions in French and Australian English discourse: A semantic and interactional analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.200
Based on the analysis of conversations between French and Australian English speakers discussing various topics, including their experiences as non-native speakers in France or Australia, this book combines subjective personal testimonies with an objective linguistic analysis of the expression of opinion in discourse.
It offers a new perspective on French and Australian English interactional style by examining the discourse markers I think, je pense, je crois and je trouve. It is shown that the prosody, intonation unit position, and the surrounding context of these markers are all fundamental to their function and meaning in interaction. In addition, this book offers the first detailed comparative semantic study of the three comparative French expressions in interaction.
The book will appeal to all those interested in linguistics, French and Australian English interactional style, cross-cultural communication, and discourse analysis. Students and teachers of French will be interested in the semantic analysis of the French expressions, the authentic interactional data and the personal testimonies of the participants.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Bromhead, Helen (2011). Ethnogeographical categories in English and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. Language Sciences, 33, 58-75. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2010.07.004
This study examines the contrastive lexical semantics of a selection of landscape terms in English and the Australian Aboriginal language, Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. It argues that languages and cultures categorize the geographical environment in diverse ways. Common elements of classification are found across the languages, but it is argued that different priorities are given to these factors. Moreover, the study finds that there are language-specific aspects of the landscape terms, often motivated by culture and land use. Notably, this study presents ethnogeographical concepts as being anchored in an anthropocentric perspective, based on human vision and experience in space. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) technique of semantic analysis is used throughout, and it is argued that this methodology provides an effective tool in the exploration of ethnogeographical categories.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) apu, (E) creek, (E) hill, (E) karu, (E) mountain, (E) puli, (E) river, (E) stream
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 16, 2020.
Stock, Kristin, & Cialone, Claudia (2011). Universality, language-variability and individuality: Defining linguistic building blocks for spatial relations. In Max Egenhofer, Nicholas Giudice, Reinhard Moratz, & Michael Worboys (Eds.), Spatial information theory. 10th international conference (COSIT 2011) (pp. 391-412). Berlin: Springer.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23196-4_21
Abstract:
Most approaches to the description of spatial relations for use in spatial querying attempt to describe a set of spatial relations that are universally understood by users. While this method has proved successful for expert users of geographic information, it is less useful for non-experts. Furthermore, while some work has implied the universal nature of spatial relations, a large amount of linguistic evidence shows that many spatial relations vary fundamentally across languages. The NSM approach is a methodology that has helped identify the few specific spatial relations that are universal across languages. We show how these spatial relations can be used to describe a range of more complex spatial relations, including some from non-Indo-European languages that cannot readily be described with the usual spatial operators. Thus we propose that NSM is a tool that may be useful for the development of the next generation of spatial querying tools, supporting multilingual environments with widely differing ways of talking about space.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) across, (E) alongside, (E) cross, (E) inside, (E) pereekhat’, (E) pereezdit’, (E) pereidti, (E) perekhodit’, (E) surround, (E) vicino a
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on June 16, 2020.
Can, Hümeyra (2011). A cross-cultural study of the speech act of congratulation in British English and Turkish using a corpus approach. MA thesis, Middle East Technical University, Ankara.
PDF: Open access
Abstract:
This study aims to find out the culturally different conceptualizations of congratulation in British culture and tebrik and kutlama in Turkish culture using a corpus approach and to formulate cultural scripts for these three performative verbs using the NSM approach. More specifically, the study aims to reveal the contexts where the target speech act is used and to uncover the kinds of strategies/components employed in these situations.
To be able to collect the targeted data, the study begins with the monolingual and bilingual dictionary definitions of the performative verbs (i.e., congratulate, tebrik etmek and kutlamak) and then follows a corpus approach whereby the performative verbs and their various lexical forms are searched for in various corpora (i.e., BYU-BNC, MTC, Google). In total, 47 dictionaries are looked up and 442 contexts of congratulation, 339 contexts of tebrik and 348 contexts of kutlama are collected from the newspaper and blog genres in the three corpora. The analyses of the data aim to uncover the qualitative and quantitative features of congratulation, tebrik and kutlama in British and Turkish cultures.
The results of the study show that there are some cultural differences as well as similarities in the conceptualization of the speech act of congratulation in terms of its contexts of use and strategies. The findings also demonstrate the usefulness of the corpus approach in studying speech acts and their conceptualization.
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) congratulate, (E) kutlama, (E) tebrik
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Common language of all people: The innate language of thought. Problems of information transmission, 47(4), 378-397. DOI: 10.1134/S0032946011040065
English translation of a Russian text (2011) published in Problemy Peredachi Informatsii, 47(4), 84-103.
As is well known, Leibniz was interested in language throughout his life, and he saw in it a key to the understanding of the human mind. Many of his ideas about language were expressed in unpublished manuscripts, and what has come to us is not always clear. Nevertheless, some of his ideas — even if he did not always consistently adhere to them himself — seem to be both clear and extremely appealing.
I would summarize these ideas as follows:
1. All human thoughts can be decomposed into a relatively small number of elementary concepts;
2. All explanations depend on the existence of some concepts which are self-explanatory (otherwise, they would lead to an infinite regress);
3. The elementary concepts are common to all languages, and can be found by means of semantic analysis;
4. These concepts are the foundation of an innate language, “lingua naturae.” Just as mathematics is, as Galileo said, the language of the physical world, so the innate “lingua naturae” is the language of the inner world, the language of thoughts;
5. This language can be identified;
6. This language can serve as an auxiliary means of mutual understanding for speakers of different languages;
7. This language can help us to reach a greater clarity in our thinking;
8. This language can serve as a means for clarifying, elucidating, storing and comparing ideas.
These are also the main ideas which lie at the basis of the NSM program and from which this program has derived and continues to derive its inspiration.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) cross, (E) God, (E) Máwú, (T) Russian
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Bourdin, Gabriel Luis (2011). Partes del cuerpo e incorporación nominal en expresiones emocionales mayas [Body parts and nominal incorporation in Maya emotional expressions]. Dimensión antropológica, 51, 103-130. PDF (open access)
This paper relates to the expression of emotions in colonial Yucatec Maya. NSM is used on just one occasion, to explicate the Spanish word miedo ‘fear’.
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 17, 2021.
Bullock, David (2011). NSM + LDOCE: A non-circular dictionary of English. International Journal of Lexicography, 24(2), 226-240.
DOI: 10.1093/ijl/ecq035
Abstract:
This paper describes an approach used to test the expressive power of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and its tiny set of semantic primes. A small dictionary was created, using NSM to paraphrase definitions for each word in the controlled defining vocabulary of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE). Student participants performed several headword-identification tasks to evaluate the quality of these definitions. The resulting 2000-word dictionary is non-circular, and by extension provides non-circular definitions for all the words in the LDOCE.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) cup
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Arguing in Russian: Why Solzhenitsyn’s fictional arguments defy translation. Russian Journal of Communication, 4(1/2), 8-37.
This paper discusses patterns of ‘arguing’ which prevails in Russian speech culture and shows that they differ profoundly from those characteristic of modern Anglo culture(s). The author focuses on the extended arguments (spory) in Solzhenitsyn’s novel ‘In the First Circle’ and shows that many linguistic and cultural aspects of the original are lost in the English translation. She argues that this was inevitable because English doesn’t have and “doesn’t need” linguistic resources to render various aspects of Russian communicative practices, which are culture-specific and have no counterparts in Anglophone
culture(s). The paper shows too that the techniques of semantic analysis developed in the “NSM” approach to cultural semantics help explain why Solzhenitsyn’s fictional arguments defy translation, and more generally, how they can be used to identify some deep differences between Russian and Anglo
speech cultures and communicative norms.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 17, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Revised and expanded version of:
Goddard, Cliff (1998). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The summary below reflects the contents of the second edition.
This lively textbook introduces students and scholars to practical and precise methods for articulating the meanings of words and sentences, and for revealing connections between language and culture. Topics range over emotions (Chapter 4), speech acts (Chapter 5), discourse particles and interjections (Chapter 6), words for animals and artefacts (Chapter 7), motion verbs (Chapter 8), physical activity verbs (Chapter 9), causatives (Chapter 10), and nonverbal communication. Alongside English, it features a wide range of other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Australian Aboriginal languages. Undergraduates, graduate students and professional linguists alike will benefit from Goddard’s wide-ranging summaries, clear explanations and analytical depth. Meaning is fundamental to language and linguistics. This book shows that the study of meaning can be rigorous, insightful and exciting.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
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Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2011). El dolor y el tango [Pain and tango]. Estudios hispánicos, 19, 27-37. PDF (open access)
Written in Spanish.
The present paper is dedicated to the analysis of the Spanish word dolor (‘pain’) on the basis of a corpus consisting of 100 tango lyrics. I describe the linguistic picture of dolor in tangos, demonstrating its cultural specificity. To describe its lexical and cultural meaning without an ethnocentric bias I rely on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dolor, (T) Spanish
