Browsing results for Romance Languages
Published on August 17, 2018. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2014). Some remarks on “pain” in Latin American Spanish. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 239-252.
DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2.06bul
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to examine the Spanish counterpart of pain, that is, the lexeme dolor. It seems that dolor, different from both English pain and French douleur, has two clearly distinguishable meanings, dolor1 referring to physical (and emotional) sensation of pain, and dolor2, a quite frequent emotion term belonging to the domain of “sadness”. To support the above hypothesis, this article examines different lexical occurrences of the word dolor, coming inter alia from tango lyrics.
More information:
Reissued as:
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2016). Some remarks on “pain” in Latin American Spanish. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 109-122). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.06bul
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dolor, (E) me duele
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 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 May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2015). La France de la débrouille: étude ethnoaxiologique d’une valeur culturelle hypothétique. RSP (Revue de sémantique et pragmatique), 37, 103-122.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
François, Jacques (2015). Trois questionnements sémantiques encore largement méconnus en France [Three semantic approaches that remain largely unknown in France]. In Alain Rabatel, Alice Ferrara-Léturgie, & Arnaud Léturgie (Eds.), La sémantique et ses interfaces: Actes du colloque 2013 de l’Association des Sciences du Langage (pp. 23-46). Limoges: Lambert-Lucas.
Written in French. No abstract available.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) happy, (E) heureux, (E) joyeux
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 17, 2019.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Two levels of verbal communication, universal and culture-specific. In Andrea Rocci, & Louis de Saussure (Eds.), Verbal communication (pp. 447-482). Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110255478-024
Abstract:
Models of the human person embedded in everyday language differ a great deal across languages, cultures and epochs, and often lead us to the heart of the shared cultural values of the speech communities where they are found. Even within European languages, there is considerable diversity. Remarkably, though, all human cultures appear to agree that human beings have a body, which is visible, and ‘something else’, which is not. Models of the human person differ with respect to the construal of that ‘something else’. For speakers of modern English, it is usually interpreted as the ‘mind’; and in the era of global English, the model of a human being as composed of a body and a mind is often taken for granted by Anglophone humanities and social sciences (and even by cognitive and evolutionary science).
Yet the ‘mind’ is a conceptual artefact of modern English – an ethno-construct no more grounded in reality than the French esprit, the Danish sind, the Russian душа duša, the Latin anima, or the Yolngu birrimbirr. The reification of the English ‘mind’ and its elevation to the status of a ‘scientific’ prism through which all other languages, cultures, indigenous psychologies, and even stages in the evolution of primates can be legitimately interpreted is a striking illustration of the blind spot in contemporary social science that results from the ‘invisibility’ of English as a more and more globalized way of speaking and thinking.
This paper demonstrates that the meanings hidden in such language-specific cultural constructs can be revealed and compared, in a precise and illuminating way, through the use of NSM. It also shows how the understanding of such culturally central concepts can lead to better communication across languages and cultures.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) anima, (E) birrimbirr, (E) khilyot-ay, (E) lib-i, (E) mind, (E) nepesh נֶ֫פֶשׁ, (E) psykhe Ψυχη
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Making sense of terms of address in European languages through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Intercultural Pragmatics, 13(4), 499-527. DOI 10.1515/ip-2016-0022
Building on the author’s earlier work on address practices and focusing on the French words monsieur and madame, this paper seeks to
demonstrate that generic titles used daily across Europe have relatively stable meanings, different in different languages, and that their semantic analysis can provide keys to the speakers’ cultural assumptions and attitudes. But to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills. The NSM approach, with its stock of primes and molecules and its mini-grammar for combining these into explications and cultural scripts, provides both the necessary tools and the necessary techniques. The unique feature of the NSM approach to both semantics and pragmatics is the reliance on a set of simple, cross-translatable words and phrases, in terms of which interactional meanings and norms can be articulated, compared, and explained to linguistic and cultural outsiders. Using this approach, this paper assigns intuitive, intelligible and cross-translatable meanings to several key terms of address in French and English, and it shows how these meanings can account for many aspects of these terms’ use. The paper offers a framework for studying the use of terms of address in Europe and elsewhere and has implications for language teaching, cross-cultural communication and education.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) monsieur, (E) Mr [= Mister], (S) speaking to a man whom one doesn’t know, (S) speaking to a man whom one doesn’t know very well, (S) speaking to a man whom one doesn’t know well
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco, & Farese, Piergiorgio (2016). L’italiano in musica: an NSM-based semantic analysis of the musical terms vivace and rubato. Quaderni di semantica, N.S. 2, 131-165.
Abstract:
This paper presents a semantic analysis of two musical terms with which most teachers and students struggle: vivace and rubato. The scope of the paper is twofold: firstly, to elucidate the meaning of these two terms in a clear way; secondly, to analyse the meaning of these terms from the point of view of cultural semantics, which adopts the methodology of the NSM approach to analyse the meaning of words, thus highlight the connection with the meaning of the Italian adjectives from which they derive. Ultimately, the analysis is aimed at illustrating the advantages that NSM-based semantic explications of vivace and rubato can have for pedagogical purposes.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) rubare, (E) tempo rubato, (E) vivace, (T) Italian
Published on May 10, 2016. Last updated on May 24, 2019.
August-Zarębska, Agnieszka, & Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2016). Recalling the past: The linguistic and cultural images of kurtijo, Sephardic courtyard. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 25(1), 96-117.
DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2016.250107
Abstract:
The present article investigates the concept of kurtijo, roughly ‘courtyard’, ‘home’, in Ladino (also known as Judeo-Spanish, Djudezmo or Sephardi), the language of Sephardic Jews, currently under threat of extinction. It argues that, after the Holocaust, kurtijo became a culturally salient word and may be regarded as a cultural key word in Ladino. Dictionaries and texts of contemporary Ladino poets are used as the main source of data. The meaning of kurtijo is expressed in the form of an NSM explication.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kurtijo
Published on August 10, 2018. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2016). Descrever o lar português [Describing the Portuguese home]. In Barbara Hlibowicka-Węglarz, Justyna Wiśniewska, & Edyta Jabłonka (Eds.), Língua portuguesa: unidade na diversidade: Volume 1 (pp. 201-213). Lublin: Editora da Universidade Marie Curie-Skłodowska.
Written in Portuguese.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on May 24, 2019.
Aragón, Karime (2016). Mexican colors and meanings: An ethnolinguistic study of visual semantics in Oaxaca. In Geda Paulsen, Mari Uusküla, & Jonathan Brindle (Eds.), Color language and color categorization (pp. 302-332). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Abstract:
This study explores the meanings of Mexican Spanish colour words using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Visual meanings are associated with widespread natural and material prototypes identified in the speaker’s cultural and environmental contexts. The results of the ethnolinguistic fieldwork reveal the visual meanings embedded in Mexican Spanish colour terms and their prototypes, illustrating the way Oaxacans think and talk about colour and account for the specifics of their visual and cultural practices.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on March 26, 2018. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco (2017-18). The Fundamental Principles of the Italian constitution: A semantic analysis. Quaderni di Semantica, n.s. 3-4, 667-746.
Abstract:
This paper presents a semantic analysis of the so-called “Fundamental Principles”, the first twelve articles of the Italian constitution. The purpose of the paper is to analyse the Italian constitution as a literary text, not a legal text. Thus, the focus of the present analysis is strictly on the linguistic aspects of the Fundamental Principles, not on the juridical ones. The meaning of the key words of these twelve articles is analysed adopting the methodology of the NSM approach, whereas the language and the structure of the text are analysed following the principles of text linguistics. The reader is able to appreciate the Fundamental Principles both in the original version and in a revised English translation.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) dignità, (E) eguaglianza, (E) inderogabile, (E) inviolabile, (E) libertà, (E) nazione, (E) ripudiare, (E) solidarietà, (T) Italian
Published on May 16, 2017. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Bromhead, Helen (2017). The semantics of standing-water places in English, French, and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 180-204). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0007
This chapter proposes semantic explications for selected words for standing-water places in English, French, and the Australian Aboriginal language Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. It uses standing-water places as a case study to argue that languages and cultures categorize the geographic environment in diverse ways, influenced by both geography and a culture’s way of life. Furthermore, the chapter investigates the semantic nature of nouns for kinds of places, and shows how to approach the treatment of nouns for landscape within the NSM framework. The chapter finds that the meanings of landscape concepts, like those of other concepts based in the concrete world, are anchored in a human-centred perspective.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) étang, (E) lac, (E) lake, (E) pond, (E) tjintjira, (E) tjukula, (E) warku
Published on June 23, 2017. Last updated on November 5, 2021.
Peeters, Bert (2017). Du bon usage des stéréotypes en cours de FLE: le cas de l’ethnolinguistique appliquée [Making good use of stereotypes in the French foreign language classroom: the case of applied ethnolinguistics]. Dire, 9, 43-60. http://epublications.unilim.fr/revues/dire/816.
Written in French.
The stereotypes envisaged in this paper serve as a starting point for a research protocol aimed at corroborating the reality, in French languaculture, of the cultural value of stance-taking. The protocol adopted here is part of a research paradigm called applied ethnolinguistics, elaborated for use with and by foreign language students whose linguistic competence is sufficiently advanced to enable them to use their language resources to discover, through essentially (but not uniquely) linguistic means, the cultural values typically associated with the languaculture they study. Since the posited values are hypothetical, corroboration will be required. A specific protocol (the one illustrated here) has been set aside for this purpose. The cultural value of stance-taking will be presented in the form of a pedagogical script expressed in minimal French, a descriptive tool based on the French version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Precautions are taken to ensure that end-users of such scenarios are aware that they are dealing with generalizations (which are unavoidable as languacultures are never homogeneous).
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (S) freedom of speech, (S) opinions
Published on August 10, 2017. Last updated on June 29, 2019.
Hanczakowski, Allira (2017). Translating emotion: A lexical-semantic analysis of translating emotion words from Italian to English in Marco Braico’s novel La festa dei limoni (2011). Master of Translation thesis, University of Western Australia.
Open access
Abstract:
Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural differences are particularly evident within expressions of emotion, creating a challenging task for translators who are required to find the closest possible equivalent term in the target language. The context in which emotion words are used plays a crucial role in determining the most accurate translatant. This study explores how context influences and governs the selection of translatant within the novel La festa dei limoni by Marco Braico. Based on a select list of Italian emotion words, the author demonstrates that while Italian can employ the same emotion word in a variety of contexts, English requires different terms depending on textual context, linguistic context and the sociolinguistic identity of the person employing the term.
The NSM approach is adopted in Chapter Three of the thesis to create a systematic method for the translation of emotion words. Employing NSM facilitates a cross-linguistic analysis to be carried out from a language independent stance. Semantic primes are used to create semantic explications of five Italian emotion terms identified in Chapter Two as problematic from a translational point of view: affetto, rabbia, ansia, fastidio and meraviglia. The explications achieve the aim of demonstrating how to select the most accurate English translatant of Italian emotion terms, depending on the specific context within the novel.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) affetto, (E) ansia, (E) fastidio, (E) meraviglia, (E) rabbia, (T) Italian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2017). Terms of address in European languages: A study in cross-linguistic semantics and pragmatics. In Keith Allan, Alessandro Capone, & Istvan Kecskes (Eds.), Pragmemes and theories of language use (pp. 209-238). Berlin: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-43491-9_12
One of the deepest differences between English-based human interaction and the interaction based on the languages of continental Europe has to do with terms of address. For speakers of languages like French, Italian, or German it goes without saying that “polite” words such as vous, Lei and Sie are indispensable in daily exchanges with others. What do these words actually mean? To what extent do their meanings differ from one European language to another? Why can some of these terms, for example, vous, be applied to God (or to one’s spouse), whereas others, for example, Sie, cannot?
There has been an upsurge of interest in both nominal and pronominal terms of address in recent years, but most publications in this area focus on frequencies, forms, functions, and sociolinguistic variation, with virtually no mention of meaning. To uncover the secrets hidden in the meanings of such essential tools of daily communication and to bring to light their cultural significance, we need an appropriate methodology. As I hope to show in the present paper, NSM semantics provides the necessary tools and techniques.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) grazie, (E) Lei, (E) się, (E) voi, (E) vous
Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Braga Mattos, Ana Paulla (2017). Subúrbio and suburbanos: Two cultural keywords in Brazilian discourse. In Carsten Levisen & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 157-182). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277.07mat
This chapter studies the Brazilian Portuguese key words subúrbio ‘suburb’ and suburbanos ‘suburb dwellers’. Despite formal similarities, the English cityscape word suburb conveys a very different concept than subúrbio. In dictionaries, the cultural semantics of the words subúrbio ‘suburb’ and suburbanos ‘suburb dwellers’ is largely missing. This is unfortunate since the semantic richness of these words shed light on Brazilian discourses of urbanism and on a culturally-specific way of categorising people in the urban space. Using evidence from a range of different Brazilian discourses and speakers’ reflections on the two words, I propose a semantic explication for each, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) to adequately account for the complex and cultural meaning of the words – seen from an insider’s perspective.
Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on June 17, 2019.
Aragón, Karime (2017). Visuality, identity and emotion: Rosa mexicano as a Mexican Spanish keyword. In Carsten Levisen & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 131-156). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.277.06ara
Abstract:
This chapter presents a semantic and ethnopragmatic analysis of the Mexican Spanish colour word rosa mexicano. This word functions as a symbol of Mexican identity and serves as a cultural key word for Mexican Spanish speakers. It appears in a variety of discourses, such as international and cross-cultural relations, the arts, education and discursive representations of national self-perception. After providing a semantic analysis of the meaning of the word, the chapter moves on to an ethnopragmatic examination, articulating cultural scripts for the visual, identificational and emotional meanings associated with rosa mexicano discourse.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) rosa mexicano, (S) rosa mexicano
Published on August 18, 2018. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
Peeters, Bert (2018). (White) lies and (pieux) mensonges: Ethnolinguistic elaborations on not telling the truth. Etnolingwistyka, 30, 169-188. DOI: 10.17951/et.2018.30.169. PDF (open access)
The fact that most European languages have a word similar to the verb lie has led many to believe that lying is a universal cognitive category, that all human beings have an intuitive understanding of what it means to lie, and that all forms of discourse involving a lack of truth can be analysed as forms of lying, wherever they occur. This is a myth. Within Europe itself, there are differences, and these become more outspoken once we move further away. Even a Melanesian creole such as Bislama, in spite of being English-based, has no strict equivalent to the verb lie; the closest it gets is by means of the verb giaman, which, unlike lie, refers to a fairly common, sometimes even a necessary course of action.
On the other hand, whereas, at least from an Anglo point of view, lying is mostly felt to be morally reprehensible, there are instances that are not as straightforward. In English, lies that are deemed less bad than others are often referred to as white lies. Other terms exist, but this one is by far the commonest and has a high degree of cultural salience. Does the concept exist in other languages, e.g. French? The phrase pieux mensonge comes to mind. White lies and pieux mensonges are shown to be overlapping categories, but carry different connotations, which are spelled out using a tool known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) lie, (E) pieux mensonge, (E) white lie, (S) truth and untruth
Published on August 7, 2017. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco (2018). The cultural semantics of address practices: A contrastive study between English and Italian. Lanham: Lexington.
Abstract:
This book presents a contrastive analysis of various forms of address used in English and Italian from the perspective of cultural semantics, the branch of linguistics that investigates the relationship between meaning and culture in discourse. The objects of the analysis are the interactional meanings expressed by different forms of address in these two languages, which are compared adopting the methodology of the NSM approach. The forms analysed include greetings, titles and opening and closing salutations used in letters and e-mails in the two languages. Noticeably, the book presents the first complete categorization of Italian titles used as forms of address ever made on the basis of precise semantic criteria.
The analysis also investigates the different cultural values and assumptions underlying address practices in English and Italian, and emphasizes the risks of miscommunication caused by different address practices in intercultural interactions. Every chapter presents numerous examples taken from language corpora, contemporary English and Italian literature and personal e-mails and letters.
The book encourages a new, innovative approach to the analysis of forms of address: it proposes a new analytical method for the analysis of forms of address which can be applied to the study of other languages systematically. In addition, the book emphasizes the role of culture in address practices and takes meaning as the basis for understanding the differences in use across languages and the difficulties in translating forms of address of different languages. Combining semantics, ethnopragmatics, intercultural communication and translation theory, this book takes an interdisciplinary approach and brings together various fields in the social sciences: linguistics, anthropology, cross-cultural studies and sociology.
Table of contents:
- Analyzing address practices from a cultural semantic point of view
- “Sorry boss”: an unrecognized category of English address nouns
- “Prego, signore”: the semantics of Italian “titles” used to address people
- “Hi, how are you?”
- “Ciao!” or “ciao ciao”?
- “Dear customers, …”
- “Caro Mario,” “Gentile cliente,” “Egregio dottore”
- “Best wishes,” “kind regards,” “yours sincerely”
- “Distinti,” “cordiali,” “affettuosi saluti”
- Italian cultural scripts for address practices
- Australian cultural scripts for address practices
- Address practices in intercultural communication
- Concluding remarks
More information:
Revised version of the author’s PhD thesis, Australian National University (2017).
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (titles of address), (E) a presto, (E) affettuosi saluti, (E) affettuoso, (E) all best, (E) all the best, (E) best, (E) best regards, (E) best wishes, (E) caro, (E) ciao, (E) ciao ciao, (E) cordiali saluti, (E) cordialmente, (E) dear, (E) distinti saluti, (E) egregio, (E) gentile, (E) hi, (E) kind, (E) kind regards, (E) regards, (E) saluti, (E) signora, (E) signore, (E) signori, (E) signorina, (E) simpatico, (E) sincerely, (E) un bacio, (E) un caro saluto, (E) un saluto, (E) vabbè, (E) vabbene, (E) warmest wishes, (E) yours, (E) yours sincerely, (S) address practices, (T) Italian
