Browsing results for Slavic

(2014) English (Ireland) – Opinions

Gąsior, Weronika Zofia (2014). Intercultural pragmatics: An investigation of expressing opinions in Irish English amongst Irish and Polish students. PhD thesis, University of Limerick. PDF (open access)

Research in cross-cultural pragmatics has been limited to a handful of speech acts, and opinions remain rather poorly documented. The aim of this research was to explore the speech act of opinions from the dual perspective of pragmalinguistics-sociopragmatics, focusing additionally on the Irish variety of the English language and the Irish-Polish intercultural context. An empirical study of the expression of opinions among Polish and Irish students was conducted, using a mixed-method approach. The corpus of opinions was gathered through open role-plays among Irish and Polish university students, and it was complemented with focus group interviews which explored issues of sociopragmatic attitudes and awareness in expressing opinions.

The findings suggest that opinions should be treated as a speech act set, quite complex in its execution and an example of a rich environment for investigation of cooccurrence of many speech acts. Consequently, opinions are not achieved by simple ‘I think (that) x…’ sentences, but rather involve a negotiation of meaning represented in the use of concessive (dis)agreements, the most prominent being the use of ‘yes, but’ expressions. Additionally, opinions present not only face-saving strategies, such as those for polite disagreements, but they also promote face-enhancing moves and foster relationship-building communication.

The findings suggest further that in the Irish culture opinions are based on beliefs, while from the Polish participants’ perspective they are also based on facts and expected to be supported in conversation by good arguments. These different perspectives may have repercussions on how both cultures approach exchanges of opinions. While a direct cultural clash between them is not a direct conclusion to be drawn from the data, a possible misinterpretation of each other’s intentions should be pointed out. Consequently, some pedagogical and interculturally-oriented recommendations with reference to opinions are put forward.

(2014) English, Cantonese, Polish – Interjections

Goddard, Cliff (2014). Interjections and emotion (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”). Emotion Review, 6(1), 53-63.

DOI: 10.1177/1754073913491843

Abstract:

All languages have ‘emotive interjections’ (i.e. interjections expressing cognitively based feelings), and yet emotion researchers have invested only a tiny research effort into interjections, as compared with the huge body of research into facial expressions and words for emotion categories. This article provides an overview of the functions, meanings and cross-linguistic variability of interjections, concentrating on non-word-based ones such as Wow!, Yuck!, and Ugh! The aims are to introduce an area that will be unfamiliar to most readers, to illustrate how the NSM approach deals with interjectional meaning, and to start a discussion about an interdisciplinary research agenda for the study of emotive interjections. Examples are drawn from English, Polish, and Cantonese.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2014) English, Russian – NSM primes

Gladkova, Anna (2014). HERE, NEAR, FAR: Spatial conceptualisation and cognition in a cross-linguistic perspective (English vs. Russian). In Luna Filipović, & Martin Pütz (Eds.), Multilingual cognition and language use: Processing and typological perspectives (pp. 121-150). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.44.05gla

Abstract:

This chapter explores variation and similarities in the conceptualization of space in Russian and English on the basis of selected terms of ‘location’ and ‘proximity/distance’. It adopts the NSM approach, which identifies eight semantic universals of space, three of which, HERE, NEAR, FAR, were tested for their realization in both languages. A semantic analysis of terms denoting ‘here’, ‘near’, ‘not far’, and ‘far’ confirms the presence of the three universal primes in English and Russian, though they differ in how they conceptually carve up the notion of space.

The study has implications for research into bilingualism and language acquisition and demonstrates that the NSM formulae can be used experimentally to test spatial conceptualization and cognition cross-linguistically.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2014) English, Russian, Spanish – Ethnopragmatics

Gladkova, Anna, & Romero-Trillo, Jesús (2014). Ain’t it beautiful? The conceptualization of beauty from an ethnopragmatic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 140-159.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.005

Abstract:

This study addresses the question of the ethnopragmatic conceptualization of ‘beautiful’ in three European languages – English, Russian and Spanish. Specifically, it investigates the polysemy and the spheres of application of English beautiful, Russian красивый krasivyj, and Spanish bonito/a. Through corpus analysis methodology, the authors investigate the most common collocations and the pragmatic and contextual uses of these terms. On the basis of the analysis, the study then adopts NSM to propose semantic explications of the three words in universal human concepts. In particular, it investigates the presence of the perception universals SEE, HEAR, and FEEL, which in the data are central to the analysis of the aesthetics vocabulary, along with the primes GOOD, SOMEONE, SOMETHING and THINK.

The data for the study comes from three online corpora: the Russian National Corpus (Russian), Cobuild’s Wordbanks Online (English) and the Corpus de referencia del español actual (Spanish).

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2014) Words and meanings [BOOK]

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:

  1. Words, meaning, and methodology
  2. Men, women, and children: The semantics of basic social categories
  3. Sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp: Physical quality words in cross-linguistic perspective
  4. From “colour words” to visual semantics: English, Russian, Warlpiri
  5. Happiness and human values in cross-cultural and historical perspective
  6. Pain: Is it a human universal? The perspective from cross-linguistic semantics
  7. Suggesting, apologising, complimenting: English speech act verbs
  8. A stitch in time and the way of the rice plant: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay
  9. The meaning of abstract nouns: Locke, Bentham and contemporary semantics
  10. 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.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2015) English, Russian – Emotions

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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(2015) English, Russian – Ethnosyntax

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.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2015) Irish English – Speech act verbs (opinions)

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

(2016) English, Russian – Cultural scripts / Mental states

Gladkova, Anna (2016). Propositional attitudes and cultural scripts. In Alessandro Capone, & Jacob L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 329-352). Berlin: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_12

Abstract:

In linguistic literature inspired by work in philosophy, the key concepts for the analysis of ‘propositional attitudes’ include mental states such as ‘belief’, ‘hope’, ‘doubt’ and ‘know’, among others. This literature, and the work on which it is based, ignores cultural and linguistic variation in the conceptualization of mental states that can be labelled as ‘propositional attitudes’. It also overlooks the fact that categorization of mental states, in general, and ‘propositional attitudes’, in particular, is aligned with cultural attitudes and understandings.

This chapter proposes a comparative analysis of selected words reflecting propositional attitudes in English and Russian. The focus is on to believe vs. считать sčitat’ and on belief vs. мнение mnenie, and the analysis is undertaken in terms of universal meanings, using NSM. It is demonstrated that the supremacy of logical concepts in current scientific thinking is not reflected in the architecture of the mental lexicon as it is revealed in universal human concepts. Instead, it is argued that NSM semantic universals can be regarded as more appropriate elements in the analysis of propositional attitudes.

The concepts central to the analysis are KNOW and THINK, which have been shown to have exact semantic equivalents in Russian and English as well as other languages. The chapter shows that the analysed concepts differ in meaning and can be related to culture-specific cognitive styles that can be formulated as cultural scripts.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2016) German, Polish – Terms of address: HERR vs. PAN

Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Terms of address as keys to culture and society: German Herr vs. Polish Pan. Acta Philologica [Uniwersytet Warszawski], 49, 29-44.

This article takes up a theme addressed many years ago by Andrzej Bogusławski: a semantic and cultural comparison of the Polish and German terms of address Pan and Herr. Focussing on these two words, the paper seeks to demonstrate that despite their apparent insignificance, generic titles used daily across Europe can reveal complex and intricate webs of cultural assumptions and attitudes and provide keys to the inmost recesses of the speakers’ cultural and social world. At the same time, the paper argues that to use these keys effectively, we need some basic locksmith skills; and it tries to show that the NSM approach to semantics and pragmatics can help us develop such skills. The explications posited here possess, it is argued, predictive and explanatory power that is beyond the reach of traditional analyses operating with technical labels such as “formal”, ”polite”, “respectful”, “egalitarian” and so on. The paper has implications for language teaching and cross-cultural communication and education in Europe and beyond.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2016) Montenegrin – Speech act verbs (apologies)

Perović, Slavica (2016). Apologising and the Montenegrin cultural script. Logos et Littera, 1(3), pp. 1-24. PDF (open access)

The paper deals with the representation of the speech act of apology through cultural scripts. The research has been done on a corpus of students’ responses gathered through an interview of the Discourse Completion Task (DCT) type. The speech act of apology is analysed within the politeness theory originated by Brown and Levinson (1987) and the category of ‘face’. The complexity and specificity of this speech act in Montenegrin leads us to establish six semantic components of apologizing for which we devise cultural scripts. Furthermore, two broad categories of apologies are identified: non-verbal and verbal. These are labelled ‘to do is to say’ and ‘to say is to do’, respectively, and give rise to do master scripts. The analysis in this paper relies on the idea of cultural scripts developed by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard, executed through the semantic primes of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM).


Crude application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

(2018) English, Polish – Totalitarian (in)experience in literary works [BOOK]

Biegajło, Bartłomiej (2018). Totalitarian (in)experience in literary works and their translations: between East and West. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Abstract:

This book explores the different images of totalitarianism in 20th century literature and the capacity of NSM to be adopted in a comparative literary study in the analysis of four totalitarian literary works written in Polish and English, together with their translation into English and Polish respectively. The key question addressed here is the totalitarian experience, which, it is assumed, conditions the literary reflections of the regime provided by Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Czesław Miłosz and Tadeusz Konwicki. Brief biographical details are provided with regards to each of the writers and their private experiences are linked with the works they published. Additionally, key concepts are named for each of the works subject to discussion, and it is their cross-linguistic analysis carried out within the NSM framework that forms the core of the book.

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Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

(2018) Polish — Address terms, Religion

Wierzbicka, Anna. (2018). Polskie słowo Boże w perspektywie porównawczej [The Polish word God in comparative perspective]. In Jolanta Chojak and Zofia Zaron (eds.) Ku rzeczom niebłahym, 221–234. Wydanie I, Warszawa: BEL Studio.

Written in Polish

Abstract
All European languages have a word for God, and this word means exactly the same in all of them. But when it comes to addressing God, the situation is very different. Speakers of different European languages tend to relate to God in different ways. Each group has its own characteristic ways of addressing God, encoded in certain words, phrases and grammatical forms. These words, phrases, and grammatical forms both reflect and shape the speakers’ habitual way of thinking about God and relating to God. Often, they also reflect some other aspects of their cultural memory and historical experience. This paper is about the Polish vocative Boże, commonly used in Polish to address God in prayer. The paper discusses the meaning of this vocative comparing it with addressative expressions such as O God in English, Mon Dieu in French and Gospodi in Russian, within the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM).


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2018) Polish, Portuguese – HOME

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2018). The concept of HOME in Polish and Portuguese — distant cultures, similar concepts. Studia Linguistica [Wrocław], 37, 7-23.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.19195/0137-1169.37.1 / Open access

Abstract:

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the concept of HOME in Polish and Portuguese language and culture. The methodology that suits this purpose best and allows to compare words from different languages without an ethnocentric bias is the NSM approach. On the basis of lexical and textual data, the meaning of Polish dom is explicated and compared with its Portuguese equivalent, casa. Despite differences in the way public and private space are treated in Polish and Portuguese cultures, the notions of HOME in these two languages have many things in common: both dom and casa are multidimensional concepts referring not only to ‘people living together in a place’ but they are also related to emotions such as love, tenderness and homesickness, and to feelings of security and warmth.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2020) English, Russian – Cultural key words

Gladkova, Anna (2020). When value words cross cultural borders: English tolerant versus Russian tolerantnyj. In Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, & Kerry Mullan (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond) (pp. 73-93). Singapore: Springer.

DOI:

Abstract:

This chapter investigates the situation of language change in contemporary Russian with a particular focus on value words. Using data from the Russian National Corpus, it analyses the meaning of the word толерантный tolerantnyj, which has been borrowed from English. It compares its meaning with the English tolerant as a source of borrowing and the traditional Russian term tерпимый terpimyj. The chapter demonstrates a shift in meaning in the borrowed term, which allows it to accommodate to the Russian value system. The meanings of the terms in question are formulated using universal meanings employed in Minimal English, which makes the comparison transparent and explicit.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2020) Polish, English, French, German, Russian — Address terms, Religion

Wierzbicka, Anna. (2020). Addressing God in European languages: different meanings, different cultural attitudes. Russian Journal of Linguistics 24 (2). 259—293. DOI: 10.22363/2687-0088- 2020-24-2-259-293

Abstract

All European languages have a word for God, and this word means exactly the same in all of them. However, speakers of different European languages tend to relate to God in different ways. Each group has its own characteristic ways of addressing God, encoded in certain words, phrases and grammatical forms, which both reflect and shape the speakers’ habitual ways of thinking about God and relating to God. Often, they also reflect some other aspects of their cultural memory and historical experience. In this paper I will compare the meanings of the vocative expressions used for addressing God in several European languages, including “Gospodi” in Russian, “O God” in English, “Mon Dieu” in French, “Herr” in German, and “Boże” in Polish. But to compare those meanings, we need a common measure. I believe such a common measure is available in the “NSM” framework, from Natural Semantic Metalanguage (see e.g. Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2014; Wierzbicka 2014a and 2018a; Gladkova and Larina 2018a, b).
The data is taken mainly from well-known works of literature, such as Lev Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Boris Pasternak’s poem “V bol’nice” (“In Hospital”) for Russian, Charles Peguy’s Le mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc and its English translation by Julien Green for French and English, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison poems and Heinrich Böll’s novel Billard um halbzehn for German. The results have shown that each European language offers its users a range of options for addressing God. Some of these options are shared, others appear to be unique to the language. All are underpinned by broader historical phenomena. The exact nature of all these links remains to be investigated.

Аннотация

Во всех европейских языках есть слово для обозначения Бога, и это слово имеет одинаковое значение. Тем не менее, носители разных европейских языков, как правило, обращаются к Богу по-разному. У каждой группы есть свои характерные способы обращения к Богу, зако- дированные в определенных словах, фразах и грамматических формах, которые отражают и формируют привычные способы мышления о Боге и отношение к Богу. Часто они также от- ражают некоторые другие аспекты культурной памяти и исторического опыта.Статья посвя- щена сопоставлению значений вокативных слов и фраз, используемых для обращения к Богу на нескольких европейских языках, включая «Господи» на русском языке, «O God» на ан- глийском языке, «Mon Dieu» на французском языке, «Herr» на немецком и «Boże» на поль- ском. Для сравнения этих значений необходимо единое измерение. Есть все основания пола- гать, что в качестве такого измерения может быть использован Естественный Семантическмй Метаязык (NSM) (см., например, Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2014; Wierzbicka 2014a и 2018a; Gladkova and Larina 2018a, b и др.). Материал для исследования был взят в основном из из- вестных литературных произведений, таких как роман Льва Толстого «Анна Каренина» и стихотворение Бориса Пастернака «В больнице» для русского языка, «Мистерия о милосер- дии Жанны Д’Арк» Шарля Пеги и ее английский перевод Жюльена Грина для французского и английского языков, тюремные стихи Дитриха Бонхеффера и роман Генриха Белля «Биль- ярд в половине десятого» для немецкого языка. Результаты показали, что каждый европей- ский язык предлагает своим пользователям различные варианты обращения к Богу. Некото- рые из них являются общими, другие представляются уникальными для того или иного языка. Все они обусловлены более широким историческим контекстом, конкретное влияние которого еще предстоит изучить.

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2021) English, French, Russian – Pedagogical scripts

Peeters, Bert (2021). From Cultural to Pedagogical Scripts: Speaking Out in English, French, and Russian. In Goddard, Cliff (ed.). Minimal Languages in Action. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan pp 171-193

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_7

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners