Browsing results for Main Authors
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 11, 2019.
Goddard, Cliff & Cramer, Rahel (2016). “Laid back” and “irreverent”: An ethnopragmatic analysis of two cultural themes in Australian English communication. In Donal Carbaugh (Ed.), The handbook of communication in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 89-103). New York: Routledge.
Abstract:
What cultural logic is at play whereby Australians can be friendly and humorous, and yet at the same time derisive, disdainful, and scornful? One of the goals of this study is to explain this paradox by providing a detailed insider perspectives on certain canonical Anglo-Australian (“Aussie”) cultural values and orientations to communication, both at the interpersonal level and in the public sphere. Words and expressions are treated as entry points through which to access cultural meaning.
The focus is on two clusters of words. In the first cluster are the words laid back and easy going, which are high-frequency descriptors of the preferred Australian interactional style and an indisputable part of the national self-stereotype. The second cluster consists of the twin expressions not taking yourself/anything too seriously and the word irreverence. These expressions, it is argued, are Australian cultural key words and, consequently, deeply implicated in canonical Anglo-Australian conceptions of personhood, social interaction, and humour.
Though the paper includes occasional contrastive remarks about other cultural orientations, its focus is not on cross-cultural communication but on Australian cultural conceptualizations of communication and how these play out in communicational practices.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) easy going, (E) irreverence, (E) laid back, (E) take [...] too seriously, (S) jocular abuse, (S) other people's admiration, (S) social equality, (S) social similarity
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Goddard, Cliff, Wierzbicka, Anna, & Wong, Jock (2016). “Walking” and “running” in English and German: The conceptual semantics of verbs of human locomotion. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2), 303–336. DOI: 10.1075/rcl.14.2.03god
This study examines the conceptual semantics of human locomotion verbs in two languages – English and German – using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. Based on linguistic evidence, it proposes semantic explications for English walk and run, and their nearest counterparts in German, i.e. laufen (in two senses, roughly, ‘run’ and ‘go by walking’), rennen (roughly, ‘run quickly’), gehen (roughly, ‘go/walk’), and the expression zu Fuß gehen (roughly, ‘go on foot’). Somewhat surprisingly for such closely related languages, the conceptual semantics turns out to be significantly different in the two languages, particularly in relation to manner-of-motion. On the other hand, it is shown that the same four-part semantic template (with sections Lexicosyntactic Frame, Prototypical Scenario, Manner, and Potential Outcome) applies in both languages. We consider the implications for systematic contrastive semantics and for lexical typology.
contrastive semantics; conceptual semantics; lexical polysemy; manner; verbs of motion; semantic template; Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on June 25, 2019.
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.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) belief, (E) believe, (E) mnenie мнение, (E) sčitat’ считать, (S) categoricalness, (S) non-imposition, (S) opinions, (S) refusal to compromise, (S) sincerity, (S) truth and untruth, (T) Russian
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 17, 2021.
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Possible contributions of ethnopragmatics to second language learning and teaching. In Sten Vikner, Henrik Jørgensen & Elly van Gelderen (Eds.), Let us have articles betwixt us: Papers in historical and comparative linguistics in honour of Johanna L. Wood (pp. 185-206). Aarhus: Aarhus University.
Open access
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible pedagogical application of the theory of Ethnopragmatics in the field of second and foreign language learning and teaching with the purpose of promoting intercultural communicative competence.
Ethnopragmatics can be seen as part of the broad paradigm of Cognitive Linguistics. Unlike other theories of pragmatics, its focus is on examining cultural aspects of language and communication from an insider’s perspective, without relying on universal concepts such as politeness, directness/indirectness, etc. that can be foreign to many cultures. Its main methodological tool is NSM, used in so-called explications but also in cultural scripts that reflect widely shared ways of thinking. The latter can be reformulated into pedagogical scripts that can be used in second language learning and teaching.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Etnopragmatik og interkulturel competence: Didaktiske nytænkninger i fremmedsprogsundervisningen [Ethnopragmatics and intercultural competence: Didactic innovations in foreign language teaching]. Ny forskning i grammatik, 23, 38-54.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) højskole
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 17, 2021.
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Etnopragmatik og interkulturel competence: Didaktiske nytænkninger i fremmedsprogsundervisningen [Ethnopragmatics and intercultural competence: Didactic innovations in foreign language teaching]. Ny forskning i grammatik, 23, 38-54.
Open access
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible pedagogical application of ethnopragmatics in the field of language learning and teaching with the purpose of promoting intercultural communicative competence. Ethnopragmatics examines cultural aspects of language and communication from an insider’s perspective. Its pedagogical potential lies in its consistent attempts to unravel the values, beliefs and norms that underpin the verbal behaviours of a cultural group and to do so without cultural bias.
More information:
Written in Danish. An earlier English version of this paper was published as:
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Possible contributions of ethnopragmatics to second language learning and teaching. In Sten Vikner, Henrik Jørgensen, & Elly van Gelderen (Eds.), Let us have articles betwixt us: Papers in historical and comparative linguistics in honour of Johanna L. Wood (pp. 185-206). Aarhus: Aarhus University.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) højskole, (E) hygge, (S) hygge, (S) personal autonomy, (S) requests
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, 2018. Last updated on August 31, 2018.
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
Tags: (E) Herr, (E) Mr [= Mister], (E) Pan, (E) Pani
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 12, 2017. Last updated on November 9, 2019.
Farese, Gian Marco (2016). The cultural semantics of the Japanese emotion terms ‘haji’ and ‘hazukashii’. New Voices in Japanese Studies, 8, 32-54.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21159/nvjs.08.02 / Open access
Abstract:
This paper presents a cultural semantic analysis of the Japanese emotion terms 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii. The paper has three aims: (i) to pinpoint the conceptions of 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii as emotion terms in Japanese language and culture; (ii) to highlight the differences in meaning with their typical English translations shame and embarrassing, and show that 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii reflect two different, culture-specific emotion conceptions; (iii) to emphasize the suitability of NSM for cross-cultural comparisons of emotion terms in different languages and, in turn, for cross-cultural training.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) embarrassment, (E) haji 恥, (E) hazukashii 恥ずかしい, (E) shame, (T) Japanese
Published on May 10, 2017. Last updated on May 23, 2019.
Asano-Cavanagh, Yuko (2016). Being ‘indecisive’ in Japanese: Analysis of kana, darou ka and (n) janai ka. Studies in Language, 40(1), 63-92.
DOI: 10.1075/sl.40.1.03asa
Abstract:
Japanese speakers are often characterized as ‘indecisive’. The indecision is indicated by epistemic markers being frequently added to express doubt. The sentence-final particle kana shows an indecisive attitude and is usually translated into English as I wonder or maybe. There are other similar Japanese expressions, for example, darou ka and (n) janai ka. Both expressions represent uncertainty and are generally interpreted as I wonder or maybe. Although kana, darou ka and (n) janai ka are often treated as synonyms, they are not necessarily interchangeable.
The aim of this study is to define these Japanese epistemic markers using NSM. New definitions are presented to clarify semantic differences and the invariant concept embedded in each expression. This analysis elucidates Japanese speakers’ epistemic stance when they are in doubt.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) darou ka だろう か, (E) ka か, (E) kana かな, (E) n janai ka ん じゃない か, (T) Japanese
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 19, 2021. Last updated on August 19, 2021.
Hill, Deborah (2016). Bride-price, Baskets, and the Semantic Domain of “Carrying” in a Matrilineal Society. Oceanic Linguistics 55(2): 500-521
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ol.2016.0023
Abstract:
The semantic domain of “carrying” is culturally salient in the Oceanic lan- guage, Longgu. Like many Austronesian languages, Longgu has about a dozen lexically specific verbs that refer to modes of carrying things and small children. This paper discusses the semantics of verbs in this domain, paying particular attention to the most culturally significant verb sungia, which is heterosemous with the noun sungi ‘bride-price exchange’ and refers to the manner in which women carry things supported on their head. The paper discusses meaning components, such as manner and motion, of verbs in this domain and highlights the importance of the association between some verbs and material objects. Further, the paper argues that there are grounds for suggesting the gender of the carrier is entailed in the lexical meaning of some verbs. The paper also discusses whether, given there is no generic verb ‘carry’, there is an underlying semantic pattern to this domain, and suggests that it may revolve around the cultural prominence of the verb sungia ‘to carry something [supported] on the head’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) angoi’inia, (E) sungi-a
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 5, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). ‘It’s mine!’ Re-thinking the conceptual semantics of “possession” through NSM. Language Sciences, 56, 93-104. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2016.03.002
This study has two main parts. It begins with a conceptual and semantic analysis in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework of what linguists term “true possession” or “ownership”. The requirements of the NSM framework force the analysis to be conducted using very simple expressions that are available not only in English, but (ideally) in all languages. The main proposal is that true possession is anchored in a semantic prime with an egocentric perspective that occurs in a predicative construction, i.e. (IS) MINE. It is argued that expressions like This is mine are semantically irreducible and (very likely) universally expressible across the diversity of the world’s languages.
In the second part of the study, three semantically and grammatically complex “possession verbs” are examined: steal, give, and own. Intricate (but coherent) explications for the English versions of these words are proposed, using (IS) MINE and a range of other semantic components. Though no claim is made that all languages possess precisely these meanings, this study hopes to help pave the way for a lexical semantic typology of “ownership-related” concepts in the languages of the world.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
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 12, 2017. Last updated on September 29, 2018.
Goddard, Cliff (2016). Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de lexicologie, 109, 13-34. DOI: 10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0013
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach is well known for its use of reductive paraphrase as a mode of lexical definition (conceptual analysis) and for its claim to have discovered an inventory of irreducible lexical meanings — semantic primes — that are apparently universal in the world’s languages. It is less well known that many NSM definitions rely crucially on semantic molecules, i.e. certain non-primitive meanings that function alongside semantic primes as building blocks in the composition of yet more complex lexical meanings.
This paper considers aspects of the NSM theory of semantic molecules, including: first, the notion of molecules within molecules (e.g. ‘mouth → ‘water’ → ‘drink’); second, the distribution of semantic molecules in the world’s languages: some are universal or near-universal, e.g. ‘hands,’ ‘children,’ ‘water’, others are widespread but not universal, e.g. ‘money’, and still others are specific to particular languages or linguistic/cultural areas; third, the emerging notions of “small molecules” and lexicosyntactic molecules. The paper includes explications for about twenty-five semantic molecules that are posited to be universal or near-universal.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) at night, (E) children, (E) creature, (E) during the day, (E) ears, (E) eyes, (E) face, (E) hands, (E) hard, (E) head, (E) heavy, (E) know that, (E) long, (E) men, (E) mouth, (E) on, (E) round, (E) sky, (E) sun, (E) thin, (E) water, (E) women, (T) English, (T) French, (T) semantic molecules
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 25, 2018.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2016). Back to ‘mother’ and ‘father’: Overcoming the eurocentrism of kinship studies through eight lexical universals. Current Anthropology, 57(4), 408-429. DOI: 10.1086/687360
This paper addresses one of the most controversial issues in cultural anthropology: the conceptual foundations of kinship and the apparent inevitability of ethnocentrism in kinship studies. The field of kinship studies has been in turmoil over the past few decades, repeatedly pronounced dead and then again rising from the ashes and being declared central to human affairs. As this paper argues, the conceptual confusion surrounding kinship is to a large extent due to the lack of a clear and rigorous methodology for discovering how speakers of the world’s different languages actually navigate their kinship systems.
Building on the author’s earlier work on kinship but taking the analysis much further, this paper seeks to demonstrate that such a methodology can be found in Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (developed by the author and colleagues), which relies on 65 universal semantic primes and on a small number of universal “semantic molecules” including ‘mother’ and ‘father’. The paper offers a new model for the interpretation of kinship terminologies and opens new perspectives for the investigation of kinship systems across languages and cultures.
Comments by a number of scholars, including Felix Ameka, follow the paper.
See also:
Kotorova, Elizaveta (2018). Analysis of kinship terms using Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Anna Wierzbicka’s approach. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 701-710.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) awofasi, (E) born, (E) duujinda, (E) Father, (E) kamuru, (E) kularrinda, (E) kuntili, (E) kuta, (E) malanypa, (E) mama, (E) mother, (E) ngunytju, (E) thabuju, (E) tɔ, (E) wakatha, (E) wofa, (E) wofasi, (E) yakukathu, (S) kinship, (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 9, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2016). A critical look at the description of speech acts. In Alessandro Capone, & Jacob L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 825-855). Cham: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_32
For John Searle, philosophy of language was the attempt to come up with philosophically illuminating descriptions of some of the general features of language. It was to concern itself only incidentally with particular elements in a particular language. The problem is that understanding the general features of language requires a metalanguage that contains general features of language; a metalanguage that contains particular elements associated with particular languages (or, in other words, an ethnocentric metalanguage) does not fit the bill. Yet, this is precisely how the study of speech acts, which originally came under the ambit of language philosophy, is often conducted – with an ethnocentric metalanguage. It seems paradoxical that while scholars who study speech acts directly or indirectly engage in the pursuit of language universals, the metalanguage they use often effectively prevents them from reaching that goal.
This chapter argues that, if we want to fruitfully study speech acts in world languages, we should employ an analytical tool that is minimally ethnocentric, such as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It helps us recognize speech acts from any language, even if there is no English word for them, and it allows us to understand them from the inside.
This chapter also argues that we should refrain from “comparing” speech acts by asking how people in various cultures perform the same speech act because this would necessitate the use of a language-specific speech act verb (e.g., request, apologize). A more fruitful way might be to formulate a generic situation using NSM and ask how people in various cultures respond in/to that situation.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (assertives), (E) (commissives), (E) (declaratives), (E) (directives), (E) (expressives)
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 12, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.
Levisen, Carsten (2017). The social and sonic semantics of reggae: Language ideology and emergent socialities in postcolonial Vanuatu. Language & Communication, 52, 102-116. DOI: 10.1016/j.langcom.2016.08.009
In Port Vila, Vanuatu, young Pacific Islanders with an ambivalent stance towards the value system represented by the jioj ‘church’ are forming new socialities and new ways of socializing on the fragments of kastom ‘traditional culture’. The reggae sociality stands out. As a cultural key word, reke ‘reggae’ offers a rich point for understanding local language-embedded ideologies, and also for understanding the status of Bislama, the national creole. This study breaks new ground into the emerging discipline of sonic semantics and the study of language ideologies in postcolonial contexts.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) reke, (T) Bislama
