Browsing results for Main Authors

(2019) Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs [BOOK]

Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2019.

Peeters, Bert (Ed.) (2019). Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs. New York: Routledge.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670

Abstract:

All languages and cultures appear to have one or more ‘mind-like’ constructs that supplement the human body. Linguistic evidence suggests they all have a word for someone, and another word for body, but that does not mean that whatever else makes up a human being (i.e. someone) apart from the body is the same everywhere. Nonetheless, the (Anglo) mind is often reified and thought of in universal terms. This volume adds to the literature that denounces such reification. It looks at Japanese, Longgu (an Oceanic language), Thai, and Old Norse-Icelandic, spelling out, in NSM, how the ‘mind-like’ constructs in these languages differ from the Anglo mind.

Table of contents:

  1. Delving into heart- and soul-like constructs: Describing EPCs in NSM (Bert Peeters)
  2. Inochi and tamashii: Incursions into Japanese ethnopsychology (Yuko Asano-Cavanagh)
  3. Longgu: Conceptualizing the human person from the inside out (Deborah Hill)
  4. Tracing the Thai ‘heart’: The semantics of a Thai ethnopsychological construct (Chavalin Svetanant)
  5. Exploring Old Norse-Icelandic personhood constructs with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (Colin Mackenzie)

Each chapter has its own entry, where additional information is provided.

Reviewed by:

Marini, Maria Giulia (2019). thepolyphony.org

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2019) Italian discourse: a cultural semantic analysis [BOOK]

Published on November 9, 2019. Last updated on November 9, 2019.

Farese, Gian Marco (2019). Italian discourse: A cultural semantic analysis. Lanham: Lexington.

Abstract:

Using NSM methodology, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of the most important Italian cultural key words and cultural scripts that foreign learners and cultural outsiders need to know to become linguistically and culturally proficient in Italian. It focuses on the words and speech practices that are used most frequently in Italian discourse and that are uniquely Italian, both because they are untranslatable into other languages and because they are reflective of salient aspects of Italian culture and society. The book sheds light on ways in which the Italian language is related to Italians’ character, values, and way of thinking, and it does so in contrastive perspective with English. Each chapter focuses on a cultural keyword, putting it into cultural context and tracing it through a series of written texts including novels, plays, poems, and songs.

Table of contents:

  1. Parlami e ti dirò chi sei
  2. Che bello!
  3. Una brutta storia
  4. Italiani, brava gente
  5. Italiani sapientoni
  6. Italiani attori
  7. Italiani comandanti
  8. Conclusione

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(2019) Japanese – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2019.

Asano-Cavanagh, Yuko (2019). Inochi and tamashii: Incursions into Japanese ethnopsychology. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 30-57). New York: Routledge.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670-2

Abstract:

Japanese has several personhood terms that lack equivalents in other languages. Two such terms are inochi and tamashii, neither of which has been investigated. In English, inochi is usually translated as life. However, this poses significant issues since the modern English word life is polysemous. Many of its meanings cannot be translated into Japanese by means of the word inochi, which has its own and contextually different meanings. Similarly, tamashii is often translated as soul but this term also has multiple interpretations in the source language.

This chapter explores the meaning of inochi and tamashii using NSM. The results of the analysis indicate a core component of inochi is ‘this something can be a part of someone one time, not many times’. The results also show that a fundamental meaning of tamashii is ‘this something can be a part of someone many times’ and ‘this something cannot die’.

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(2019) Longgu – Ethnopsychology and personhood

Published on February 20, 2019. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Hill, Deborah (2019). Longgu: Conceptualizing the human person from the inside out. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (pp. 58-81). New York: Routledge.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670-3

Abstract:

The Longgu people (Solomon Islands) conceptualize the human person as consisting of two parts, suli (‘body’) and anoa (roughly, ‘spirit’). Understanding the concept of anoa requires an understanding of other concepts, including agalo ‘ancestor spirit’ and Marapa, the place of ancestor spirits. This chapter discusses and explicates these culture-specific terms in Minimal English. The author argues that the conceptualization of the human person in Longgu can be described as seeing a human person ‘from the inside out’: rather than conceptualizing the human person as something visible (a body), with something invisible inside, Longgu people think in terms of what is inside (a ‘spirit’), and then as what can be seen on the outside (a body).

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(2019) Minimal English – Ethnopragmatics, Lexicography, Language teaching

Published on November 22, 2020. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Sadow, Lauren (2019). An NSM-based cultural dictionary of Australian English: From theory to practice. PhD Thesis, Australian National University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25911/5d514809475cb (Open Access)

Abstract:

This thesis is a ‘thesis by creative project’ consisting of a cultural dictionary of Australian English and an exegesis which details the theoretical basis and decisions made throughout the creative process of this project. The project aims to produce a resource for ESL teachers on teaching the invisible culture of Australian English to migrants, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (e.g. Wierzbicka, 2006) as a theoretical and methodological basis. The resource takes the form of an encyclopaedic dictionary focussing on Australian values, attitudes, and interactional norms, in response to the need for education resources describing the cultural ethos embodied in Australian English (Sadow, 2014).

Best practice for teaching intercultural communicative competence and related skills is to use a method for teaching which encourages students to reflect on their experience and analyse it from an insider perspective (Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2013). This thesis takes the position and demonstrates that an NSM-based descriptive method can meet these practical requirements by providing a framework for describing both cultural semantics and cultural scripts. In response to teacher needs for a pedagogical tool, I created Standard Translatable English (STE)—a derivative of NSM specifically designed for language pedagogy.

The exegesis part of this project, therefore, reports on the development of STE and the process, rationale, and results of creating a cultural dictionary using STE as a descriptive method. I also discuss the theoretical grounding of teaching invisible culture, the best-practice requirements for creating teaching materials and dictionaries, my methods for conducting user needs research, and the results, and the ultimate design choices which have resulted in a finished product, including supplementary materials to ensure that teachers are well prepared to use an NSM-based approach in pedagogical contexts.

The main body of this project, however, is the cultural dictionary—The Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers—comprising approximately 300 entries which describe, in STE, essential aspects of the values, attitudes, interactional norms, cultural keywords, and culture-specific language of Anglo-Australian English. The cultural dictionary is formatted as an eBook to enhance accessibility and practicality for teachers in classroom contexts. Drawing on previous dictionaries and on lexicography, the entries include a range of lexicographical information such as examples, part-of-speech, and cross-referencing. This innovative cultural dictionary represents the first targeted work into the applications of NSM and NSM-derived frameworks. It is the first dictionary of invisible culture in Australian English in this framework, and the only current resource which is aimed at maximum translatability for the English language education context.

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(2019) NSM primes – Possession

Published on December 9, 2020. Last updated on December 9, 2020.

Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka (2019). Cognitive Semantics, Linguistic Typology and Grammatical Polysemy: “Possession” and the English Genitive. Cognitive Semantics 5: 224-247.

DOI: http://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-00502003

Abstract

This paper explores the cognitive semantics of the typological category “possession” using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (nsm) approach. At the macro level, we argue that “possession” is not a unitary cognitive category for speakers, but instead represents an aggregation of diverse semantic schemas which center around three distinct conceptual anchor points: ownership, body-parts, and kinship relations. It is shown how each of these conceptual anchor points can be clearly identified using the nsm metalanguage of semantic primes and molecules. At the micro level, the paper undertakes a close examination of the cognitive semantics of English s-genitives in the frame [THIS SOMEONE’S] SOMETHING, e.g. Mary’s ring, Mary’s shoes, Mary’s drawing, Mary’s plate, Mary’s train. It is argued that the wide range of use of the s-genitive can be captured in a set of five semantic schemas, which constitute a network of grammatical polysemy.


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(2019) NSM Primes — Consciousness

Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on January 15, 2022.

Wierzbicka, Anna. (2019). From ‘Consciousness’ to ‘I Think, I Feel, I Know’: A Commentary on David Chalmers. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26(9–10), pp. 257–69

Abstract

David Chalmers appears to assume that we can meaning- fully discuss what goes on in human heads without paying any attention to the words in which we couch our statements. This paper challenges this assumption and argues that the initial problem is that of metalanguage: if we want to say something clear and valid about us humans, we must think about ourselves outside conceptual English created by one particular history and culture and try to think from a global, panhuman point of view. This means that instead of relying on untranslatable English words such as ‘consciousness’ and ‘experi- ence’ we must try to rely on panhuman concepts expressed in cross- translatable words such as THINK, KNOW, and FEEL (Wierzbicka, 2018). The paper argues that after ‘a hundred years of consciousness studies’ it is time to try to say something about us (humans), about how we think and how we differ from cats and bats, in words that are clear, stable, and human rather than parochially English.

 


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(2019) Reported speech

Published on May 19, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2019.

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2019). Reported speech as a pivotal human phenomenon: Commentary on Spronck and Nikitina. Linguistic Typology, 23(1), 167-175.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2019-0006

Abstract:

The authors take issue with the target paper on a number of theoretical and methodological matters. The most significant of these is the need to de-Anglicize linguistic terminology. The use of complex, poorly-defined, English-bound terms, including technical terms such as semiotic, ‘demonstratedness’, epistemic, modality, and representation, as well as ordinary, but equally English-bound, words such as report(ed), message, discourse, and utterance is unnecessary. Instead, people’s speech practices should be described in terms that are accessible to the people concerned.

Rather than trying to bring everything that may be counted as “reported speech” under a single, extremely abstract characterization, the authors favour an approach that analyses these diverse constructions one at a time, so to speak, linking them all to the prototypical direct speech construction in a family resemblance fashion. To make this more concrete, they briefly analyse the Yankunytjatjara quotative particle kunyu and the English say that… construction.

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(2019) Spanish – NSM

Published on November 11, 2020. Last updated on August 19, 2021.

Fernández, Susana S. (2019). Una introducción a la teoría de la Metalengua Semántica Natural (NSM) y su aplicación a la pragmática [An introduction to the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and its application to pragmatics]. Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics, 7(3), 397-420.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/soprag-2019-0023 / Open access

Resumen:

Este artículo expone los principios de la teoría de la Metalengua Semántica Natural (NSM , originalmente propuesta por Wierzbicka y luego desarrollada en una serie de trabajos por Anna Wierzbicka y Cliff Goddard, además de otros académicos que trabajan en el campo. El objetivo es presentar cómo esta teoría se ha aplicado al estudio de la semántica y de la pragmática para analizar distintos aspectos de los hábitos lingüísticos de un determinado grupo cultural sin recurrir a modelos de universalidad, sino más bien trabajando desde dentro de la lengua estudiada para reconocer conceptos claves y estilos comunicativos que le son propios. El artículo presenta los conceptos de explicaciones semánticas y guiones culturales, que son explicaciones redactadas con la metodología de paráfrasis reductora a través de la herramienta de la NSM. La NSM es un minilengua compuesta por una serie de conceptos muy básicos y traducibles a todas las lenguas que sirven como punto de partida para explicar conceptos más complejos. Esta teoría ha sido complementada por Cliff Goddard con el concepto de lengua mínima, que también se presentará en el artículo. El artículo concluye con una exposición de las similitudes y diferencias que existen entre esta forma de hacer pragmática intercultural y la propuesta por otras teorías de la pragmática, incluida la teoría de la Pragmática Sociocultural de Diana Bravo y sus colegas.

Abstract:

This article presents the principles of the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), originally proposed by Wierzbicka and further developed in a series of publications by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard, as well as by other scholars working in the field. The goal of the article is to present how this theory has been applied to the study of semantics and pragmatics in order to analyse different aspects of the linguistic habits of a particular cultural group without resorting to models of universality, but instead working from an insider’s perspective to recognize key concepts and communicative styles that belong to the group. The article presents the concepts of semantic explications and cultural scripts, which are explanations written through the method of reductive paraphrase making use of the tool of NSM. NSM is a mini-language composed of a series of very basic concepts, translatable to all languages, which are the basis for explaining complex concepts. Cliff Goddard has complemented this theory with the concept of Minimal Language, which will also be presented in the article. The article concludes with an exposition of similarities and differences between this way of doing intercultural pragmatics and other theories of pragmatics, including the theory of Sociocultural Pragmatics proposed by Diana Bravo and her colleagues.

More information:

Written in Spanish.

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(2019) Spanish (Spain) – Address forms and social cognition; Ethnopragmatics

Published on August 3, 2020. Last updated on August 3, 2020.

Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2019). Los vocativos de cariño en español peninsular: un enfoque desde la Metalengua Semántica Natural. Sociocultural Pragmatics, 7(3), 445-467.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/soprag-2019-0013

Abstract:

This article adopts an ethnopragmatic approach to the interpretation of linguistic strategies through their relation with cultural aspects which underlie their usage. The focus is on the relation between Spanish cultural scripts and nominal forms of address (terms of endearment) used in Peninsular Spanish. Cultural scripts would appear to be the perfect tool for explicating the sociocultural premises behind the interpretations we make of the function that terms of endearment have in Spanish politeness. Of particular interest are typically
Spanish scripts of “expressiveness”, “complimenting others”, “treating others with affection” and “being friendly”, and terms of endearment such as alma, ‘soul’, vida, ‘life’, cielo, ‘heaven’ and cariño, ‘love’. The explication of the semantic content of the terms of endearment on the one hand and the underlying sociocultural values on the other, applies the method of semantic and pragmatic analysis known as NSM.

More information:

Written in Spanish.

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(2019) What Christians believe [BOOK]

Published on February 28, 2019. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Wierzbicka, Anna (2019). What Christians believe: The story of God and people in minimal English. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract:

Many people today, both Christians and non-Christians, are confused about or unaware of the essentials of Christian faith. In this book, Anna Wierzbicka takes a radically new approach to the task of communicating “what Christians believe” to the widest possible audience. “The Story of God and People”, the heart of the book, sets out the core tenets of Christian faith in narrative form using simple language that is accessible to anyone, even those with no familiarity with Christianity or Christian vocabulary. The Story is not only simple but also universal: though written in English, it is not phrased in full English — English as we know it today, shaped by history, culture, and tradition — but in “Minimal English”. Minimal English contains only those 400 or so English words that can be translated into any other language; essentially, it corresponds to the shared core of all languages.

In the introduction to the book, Wierzbicka explains Minimal English and minimal languages in general, and in “The Story of God and People” that follows, she demonstrates the effectiveness of Minimal English as a tool for global understanding. At the same time, the use of Minimal English allows her not only to retell the Christian story in a strikingly new way, but also to rethink its meaning, bringing into relief its internal cohesion, logic and beauty.

Table of contents:

I. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

  1. Who are ‘Christians’?
  2. God and cross-cultural communication
  3. God and language
  4. Minimal English

II. THE STORY OF GOD AND PEOPLE

III. BRIEF COMMENTARIES ON THE CHAPTERS OF PART II

APPENDICES

  1. On the word “forgiveness”
  2. On the word “love”
  3. On the word hilastērion

Additional resources:

Anna Wierzbicka – Speech given at the launch of What Christians Believe, 16 May 2019

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(2020) – English (Singapore) – Foreign language teaching

Published on June 19, 2020. Last updated on January 15, 2022.

Wong, Jock. (2020). Semantic challenges in understanding Global English: Hypothesis, theory, and proof in Singapore English. In Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, & Kerry Mullan (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond) (pp. 191-212). Singapore: Springer.

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the Singapore government has relentlessly, and with some level of success, promoted the use of English among Singaporeans. Many younger people now use English at home and as their dominant language and have no problem pursuing a basic university degree, locally or overseas, using English. However, while there is evidence to suggest that the ‘well-educated’ variety of Singapore English is mutually intelligible with other varieties of Standard English, numerous studies have shown that many Singaporeans speak a variety of English that is distinct from Standard English. Singapore English (or ‘Singlish’) is shaped by Singapore culture and exhibits linguistic elements of that culture. Given that many Singaporeans speak Singapore English on an everyday basis, one wonders how proficient they truly are in Standard English. Indeed, some ‘educated’ Singaporeans, including university students, understand words often used in the academic context (like hypothesis, theory, and proof) differently from native Standard (Anglo) English users. This raises two questions. Are Singapore university students semantically challenged in Standard English? If so, what can be done to address this problem? One objective of this study is to examine Singapore university students’ understanding of several words that are important in Standard English. A further objective is to use Minimal English (ME) to explain the meaning of four Standard English words used in academic writing, hypothesis, theory, prove, and proof, and to show that ME can be used as a language pedagogic tool.

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(2020) Cèmuhî – Cultural key words

Published on July 28, 2020. Last updated on July 28, 2020.

Peeters, Bert; Lecompte-Van Poucke, Margo (2020). Bwénaado: an ethnolexicological study of a culturally salient word in Cèmuhî (New Caledonia). In Bert Peeters, Kerry Mullan, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 2. Meaning and culture (pp. 123-148). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_7

Abstract:

Ever since people have come together in communities, they have felt the need to regulate and control their relationships with members of other groups. One way of building and maintaining a stable society is by sharing wealth. New Caledonia has developed its own unique system of exchange, referred to as la coutume by its French-speaking inhabitants and by the Melanesian part of the population, which also uses indigenous terms that have relatively high cultural visibility and can thus be considered culturally salient. This paper focuses on one such word, bwénaado, and aims to demonstrate that it reflects an important cultural value in Cèmuhî, an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 3300 people dispersed along the north-east coast and in the valleys of New Caledonia’s rugged interior. To the best of our knowledge, no detailed treatment of bwénaado exists. Our semantic analysis therefore breaks new ground. Three different meanings of the word (roughly, ‘large-scale customary celebration’, ‘customary ceremony’ and ‘customary gift’) are distinguished. It will be argued that, even though the Kanak social exchange system (in which all three meanings are highly relevant) seems to be linked to a universal principle of reciprocity, it is highly culture-specific. To ensure utmost respect for this cultural specificity and to break out of the prison walls of the English language, NSM will be used to frame the description, and applied ethnolinguistics will form the backdrop against which the description is carried out.

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(2020) Chinese (Cantonese), English – Ethnopragmatics

Published on February 10, 2020. Last updated on February 10, 2020.

Wakefield, John C.; Winnie Chor, Winnie; & Lai, Nikko (2020). Condolences in Cantonese and English: What people say and why. In Kerry Mullan, Bert Peeters, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 1. Ethnopragmatics and semantic analysis (pp. 35-58). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9983-2_3

Abstract:

This study uses the ethnopragmatics approach to examine the cultural-based knowledge that guides Cantonese and Anglo-English speakers when offering death-related condolences, or what we refer to here as ‘condolence routines’. The data come from discourse completion tasks, the existence of cultural key phrases, and the authors’ native-speaker intuitions. The authors examine condolences that are offered to a good friend who has recently lost someone close to him or her. They present cultural scripts that are proposed to account for the linguistic contrasts in Cantonese versus English condolence routines. The Cantonese script is entirely new while the English script is revised from a previous study.

Based on our analysis, we conclude that the primary contrast is that Anglo-English condolences typically focus on expressing that the condoler feels sad because of the bereaved’s loss, while Cantonese condolences typically focus on telling the bereaved not to be sad and to take care of his- or herself. Knowledge of this contrast in sociopragmatics is not only a meaningful contribution to the study of pragmatics; it is also of practical help to people in regular contact with Cantonese and/or Anglo-English speakers. It can help one understand how to avoid saying something during a condolence routine that may sound inappropriate, or even insensitive, to speakers of these two languages.

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(2020) Chinese (Cantonese), English – Intonational morphology [BOOK]

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on February 9, 2020.

Wakefield, John C. (2020). Intonational morphology. Singapore, Springer, 2020.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2265-9

Abstract:

This book discusses the morphological properties of intonation, building on past research to support the long-recognized relationship between the functions and meanings of discourse particles and the functions and meanings of intonation. The morphological status of intonation has been debated for decades, and this book provides evidence from the literature combined with new and compelling empirical evidence to show that specific intonational forms correspond to specific segmental discourse particles. It also describes how intonation is represented in speakers’ minds, which has important implications for first and second language acquisition as well as for theories and approaches to artificial speech recognition and production.

Chapter 6 of the book presents evidence that strongly indicates that six Cantonese sentence-final particles (SFPs) have English intonational equivalents. These six SFPs divide into three pairs of related particles: the evidential particles 咯 lo1 and 吖吗 aa1maa3; the question particles 咩 me1 and 呀 aa4; and the “only” particles zaa3 and ze1. Each SFP’s meaning is described and an NSM explication of it is presented before showing and discussing the data related to its English equivalent. The data comprise Cantonese-to-English oral translations and their accompanying F0 contours. The translators were ambilingual speakers of L1 Cantonese and L1 English. Based on the fact that each SFP translated into English as the same form of intonation by more than one ambilingual translator in more than one context, it is assumed that the definition given to each SFP also applies to its English intonational equivalent. It is further proposed that these English forms of intonation are tonal morphemes that reside in native-English speakers’ lexicons.

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(2020) Chinese (Mandarin) – Colours and vision

Published on June 19, 2020. Last updated on January 15, 2022.

Tao, Jiashu & Wong, Jock. (2020). The confounding Mandarin colour term ‘qīng’: Green, blue, black or all of the above and more?. In Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, & Kerry Mullan (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond) (pp. 191-212). Singapore: Springer.

Abstract

The Mandarin word qīng (‘青’), which Google translates to ‘green’, ‘blue’ and even ‘black’, among other colour terms in English, is one of the oldest, most frequently used colour terms in Mandarin and probably the most confounding. The word is polysemous and its multiple meanings and combinations with other words have generated much confusion among generations of non-native speakers and learners of Mandarin, and perhaps even native speakers. To help Mandarin speakers and learners better understand the word, dictionaries mainly define qīng using English colour terms, such as ‘green’, ‘blue’ and ‘black’, which is to a certain extent helpful but which raises questions, such as if Mandarin speakers do not distinguish between the colours green and blue. There is thus a need to semantically analyse this word to help Mandarin learners acquire a deeper understanding of its multiple meanings and uses. The objective of this paper is to study the multiple meanings of the character qīng, one of which dates back to the late Shang Dynasty (1200–1050 BC), when the oracle bone script, the earliest known form of Chinese writing, was first used. This paper also compares its meanings with those of two related colour terms lǜ (‘绿’) and lán (‘蓝’), which are associated with the English ‘green’ and ‘blue’, respectively. To capture the meanings and their differences with maximal clarity and minimal ethnocentrism, the authors use Minimal English.

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(2020) Cultural key words

Published on July 28, 2020. Last updated on July 28, 2020.

Peeters, Bert (2020). Culture is everywhere! In Bert Peeters, Kerry Mullan, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 2. Meaning and culture (pp. 1-14). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_1

Abstract:

This introductory chapter to the second of three volumes celebrating the career of Griffith University academic Cliff Goddard recaps the fundamentals of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, which is explicitly adopted by all contributors to this volume (Sect. 1.2), then contextualizes and introduces the individual papers (Sects. 1.3 and 1.4).

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(2020) Danish – Address pronouns

Published on August 14, 2021. Last updated on August 14, 2021.

Levisen, Carsten (2020). Royal semantics: Linguacultural reflections on the Danish address pronoun De. In Bromhead, Helen and Zhengdao Ye (eds.) Meaning, Life and Culture. pp 85-98. Canberra: ANU Press.

DOI: http://doi.org/10.22459/MLC.2020.04 (Open Access)

 

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(2020) Danish – Grammatical categories & constructions

Published on July 28, 2020. Last updated on August 18, 2023.

Levisen, Carsten (2020). Postcolonial prepositions: semantics and popular geopolitics in the Danosphere. In Bert Peeters, Kerry Mullan, & Lauren Sadow (Eds.), Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 2. Meaning and culture (pp. 169-186). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_9

Abstract:

This study breaks new ground in the semantics of ‘popular geopolitics’. With a case study on two Danish prepositions, i and på, both of which are important for the Danish construal of Greenland, the study develops a new analysis of the popular geopolitics that guide Danish ways of thinking about Greenland. Empirically, the study relies on evidence from social media discourse, which is subjected to the NSM method of analysis. The aim is to provide semantic explications for the two prepositional phrases i Grønland ‘in Greenland’ and på Grønland ‘on Greenland’, and to articulate the cultural scripts that allow speakers to ascribe geopolitical meaning to these prepositions. Drawing on Goddard’s seminal work on spatial semantics, place constructs and ethnopragmatics, the paper develops a postcolonial semantic account of Danish ‘preposition talk’. It is shown that the two prepositions have come to stand for two different Danish attitudes towards Greenland, in short, the på-attitude, which emphasizes Greenland’s ‘Islandness’, and the i-attitude, which emphasizes Greenland as a country among other countries.

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(2020) Dutch – Cultural keywords

Published on August 14, 2021. Last updated on August 14, 2021.

Peeters, Bert. (2020). Gezellig: A Dutch cultural keyword unpacked. In Bromhead, Helen and Zhengdao Ye (eds.). Meaning, Life and Culture. Canberra: ANU Press pp 61-84.

DOI: http://doi.org/10.22459/MLC.2020.03 (Open Access)

 


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