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(2020) Meaning, Life and Culture [BOOK]

Published on August 14, 2021. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Bromhead, Helen and Zhengdao Ye (eds.). (2020). Meaning, Life and Culture. Canberra: ANU Press.

DOI: http://doi.org/10.22459/MLC.2020 (Open Access)

Abstract:

This book is dedicated to Anna Wierzbicka, one of the most influential and innovative linguists of her generation. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies, as well as her home base of linguistics. She is best known for the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to meaning—a versatile tool for exploring ‘big questions’ concerning the diversity and universals of people’s experience in the world.

In this volume, Anna Wierzbicka’s former students, old and current colleagues, ‘kindred spirits’ and ‘sparring partners’ engage with her ideas and diverse body of work. These authors cover topics from the grammar of action verbs to cross-cultural pragmatics, and over 30 languages from around the world are represented.

The chapters in Part 1 focus on the NSM approach and cover four themes: lexico-grammatical semantics, cultural keywords, semantics of nouns, and emotion. In Part 2, the contributors connect with a meaning-based approach from their own intellectual perspectives, including syntax, anthropology, cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics.

The deep humanistic perspective, wide-ranging themes and interdisciplinary nature of Wierzbicka’s research are reflected in the contributions. The common thread running through all chapters is the primacy of meaning to the understanding of language and culture.

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

 

Chapters:

Part I: Meaning, life and culture: The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach

  1. Prototypes, polysemy and constructional semantics: The lexicogrammar of the English verb climb – Cliff Goddard doi
  2. The comparative semantics of verbs of ‘opening’: West Africa vs Oceania – Felix K. Ameka and Deborah Hill doi
  3. Gezellig: A Dutch cultural keyword unpacked – Bert Peeters doi
  4. Royal semantics: Linguacultural reflections on the Danish address pronoun De – Carsten Levisen doi
  5. The Singlish interjection bojio – Jock Onn Wong doi
  6. The semantics of bushfire in Australian English – Helen Bromhead doi
  7. The semantics of migrant in Australian English – Zhengdao Ye doi
  8. The semantics of verbs of visual aesthetic appreciation in Russian – Anna Gladkova doi
  9. Christian values embedded in the Italian language: A semantic analysis of carità – Gian Marco Farese doi
  10. The semantics of two loanwords in Navarrese Spanish – Mónica Aznárez-Mauleón doi
  11. TIME in Portuguese saudade and other words of longing – Zuzanna Bułat Silva doi
  12. Lost in translation: A semantic analysis of no da in Japanese – Yuko Asano-Cavanagh doi

Part II: Meaning, life and culture: Perspectives (Links in this section lead to the PDF download on the ANU Press website)

  1. Locating ‘mind’ (and ‘soul’) cross-culturally – Frances Morphy and Howard Morphy doi
  2. Teknocentric kin terms in Australian languages – Harold Koch doi
  3. Showing and not telling in a sign language – John Haiman doi
  4. Games that people play: Capitalism as a game – Annabelle Mooney doi
  5. Our ordinary lives: Pathways to a more human-oriented linguistics – John Newman doi
  6. On defining parts of speech with Generative Grammar and NSM – Avery D. Andrews doi
  7. CUT-verbs of the Oceanic language Teop: A critical study of collecting and analysing data in a language documentation project – Ulrike Mosel doi
  8. The depiction of sensing events in English and Kalam – Andrew Pawley doi
  9. Russian language-specific words in the light of parallel corpora – Alexei Shmelev doi
  10. ‘Sense of privacy’ and ‘sense of elbow’: English vs Russian values and communicative styles – Tatiana Larina doi
  11. On the semantics of cup  – Keith Allan doi
  12. Where we PART from NSM: Understanding Warlpiri yangka and the Warlpiri expression of part-hood – David Nash and David P. Wilkins doi

Envoi

 

(2020) Mental states

Published on February 16, 2019. Last updated on June 20, 2020.

Goddard, Cliff (2020). Overcoming the linguistic challenges for ethno-epistemology: NSM perspectives. In Masaharu Mizumoto, Jonardon Ganeri and Cliff Goddard (Eds.), Ethno-epistemology: New directions for global epistemology (pp. 130-153). New York: Routledge.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003037774-7

Abstract:

Scholars working in ethno-epistemology need to tread carefully in how they formulate their discussions in order to circumvent or minimize several dangers, such as conceptual imposition from English or other home languages, relying too heavily on some semantic subtlety peculiar to their own language, and misinterpreting unfamiliar patterns of polysemy or metaphor in another language. The NSM approach to meaning offers a well developed framework for overcoming these dangers. Based on a decades-long program of conceptual analysis and cross-linguistic empirical research, NSM is the only comprehensive approach to meaning that confronts the challenges of Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism head on, by seeking to base its representations on simple words with equivalents in all languages. It offers the prospect of authentically modelling the thoughts and meanings of ordinary native speakers, insofar as it uses non-technical words that are accessible to speakers in their own language. It also provides procedures for dealing with ambiguity and vagueness of words, including how to distinguish lexical polysemy (distinct-yet-related meanings) from semantic generality. This presentation overviews the NSM program, summarizing the research base behind it and exemplifying its key concepts and methods with examples relevant to ethno-epistemology. The paper contends that the NSM program can provide a metalanguage for ethno-epistemology.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2020) Minimal English

Published on June 19, 2020. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Sadow, Lauren (2020). Minimal English: Taking NSM ‘out of the lab’. 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.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_1

Abstract:

Abstract This introductory chapter to the third of three volumes celebrating the career of Griffith University academic Cliff Goddard recaps the fundamentals of the Minimal English offshoot of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, com- pares the two approaches (Sect. 1.2), then contextualizes and introduces the indi- vidual papers (Sect. 1.3).

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2020) Minimal English

Published on June 19, 2020. Last updated on August 16, 2021.

Hill, Deborah (2020). From Expensive English to Minimal 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.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_3

Abstract:

Minimal English is a useful tool for improving communication between monolingual English speakers and multilingual Tok Pisin and English speakers in PNG. This chapter reports on the use of Minimal English in an agricultural development project in PNG, arguing that it can help to go ‘under’ the language barriers created by Expensive English, that is, English that is not easily understood by the majority of people in PNG. The chapter demonstrates two ways in which Minimal English can be useful in this multilingual context: (1) semantic explications in Minimal English can distinguish different senses of the same word used by agricultural training facilitators and participants, and (2) words that are important in the local context can be chosen to replace Expensive English words that are less familiar to participants. The chapter argues that Minimal English is a valuable tool in agricultural development training and can be used to improve communication in a multilingual context where English is the language of instruction.

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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2020) Minimal Finnish

Published on June 19, 2020. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Vanhatalo, Ulla & Lindholm, Camilla. (2020). Prevalence of NSM primes in easy-to-read and standard Finnish: Findings from newspaper text corpora. 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.

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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2020) Niger-Congo, Ewe – Ethnopragmatics

Published on June 18, 2020. Last updated on August 16, 2021.

Ameka, Felix K. 2020. “I sh.t in your mouth”: Areal invectives in the Lower Volta Basin (West Africa). In Nico Nassenstein and Anne Storch (Eds.), Swearing and cursing: contexts and practices in a critical linguistic perspective (pp. 121-144). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501511202-006

Abstract:

Languages in the Lower Volta Basin belong to different subgroups of the Kwa family: Gbe, Ga-Dangme, Ghana-Togo Mountain, and Tano, which includes Akanic and Guang languages. These languages share several features, but it is not always easy to detect which features are inherited and which are diffused from one language to the other. Taking a cue from earlier studies, where some widespread interactional
routines are either inherited, such as agoo ‘attention getter’, or diffused from one language, such as ayikoo ‘well done, continue’, which seems to have spread to the other languages from Ga, I investigate some shared maledicta and taboo expressions in the area. I focus on the performance, perlocutionary effect and uptake as well as the cultural scripts that govern the use of two invective multi-modal embodied utterances in the area. One is an emblematic gesture involving a pointed thumb and its accompanying verbal representations. A common
expression that accompanies it comes from the Ga ‘obscene insults’ sɔ́ɔ̀mi! ‘inside female genitalia’, onyɛ sɔ́ɔ̀ mli ‘inside your mother’s genitalia’, whose equivalents are also used in the other languages. The Ewe-based accompanying verbal expression is literally: ‘I defecate in your mouth’. A second form is the one commonly called ‘suck teeth’, which is spread beyond the Lower Volta Basin to the Trans-Atlantic Sprachbund. Drawing on the representation and categorization of how the enactment of these linguistic practices are reported, I demonstrate that they are viewed as insults or ways of swearing at other people because of something bad they may have done to the speaker. I call into question the universality of swearing and argue that crosslinguistic studies of swearing, cursing or cussing and such phenomena should extricate themselves from the English language labels and attend to the insider and indigenous ways of understanding acts of saying bad words to another.

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(2020) NSM

Published on August 14, 2021. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Ye, Zhengdao and Bromhead, Helen. (2020). Introduction. In Bromhead, Helen and Zhengdao Ye (eds.). Meaning, Life and Culture. Canberra: ANU Press pp

(Open Access)

 

No rating is provided.

(2020) NSM

Published on August 19, 2021. Last updated on August 19, 2021.

Sadow, Lauren & Mullan, Kerry. (2020). A brief introduction to the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. 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_2

 

Abstract:

This introductory chapter to the first of three volumes celebrating the career of Griffith University academic Cliff Goddard recaps the fundamentals of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, ethnopragmatics and cultural scripts, and Minimal English (Sect. 2.1 to 2.7), then contextualizes and introduces the individual papers (Sect. 2.8).

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

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

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

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(2020) Spanish – Interpersonal Closeness

Published on November 22, 2020. Last updated on August 19, 2021.

Fernández, Susana S. & Cliff Goddard. (2020).  Una aproximación al estilo comunicativo de cercanía interpersonal del español a partir de la teoría de la Metalengua Semántica Natural [An Approach to the Spanish Communicative Style of Interpersonal Closeness from the Theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage]. Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics, 7(3), 469-493.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/soprag-2019-0022 (Open Access)

Resumen:

El presente artículo discute un estilo comunicativo típico de muchos hispanohablantes, que a menudo ha sido caracterizado en la literatura sobre pragmática y comunicación intercultural como de cercanía interpersonal y de confianza. El punto de partida teórico y metodológico es la teoría de la Metalengua Semántica Natural (NSM, por sus siglas en inglés), que propone el uso de un minivocabulario de conceptos básicos para explicar otros más com- plejos. En este caso, presentamos descripciones (que en la teoría se denominan guiones culturales) de distintos aspectos de este estilo comunicativo de cercanía y de palabras claves culturales y rasgos gramaticales relacionados con este modo de comunicar al que, consciente o inconscientemente, adhieren muchos hispanohablantes. Nos basamos en trabajos ya realizados por otros autores dentro de la NSM y proponemos también nuevas descripciones.

Abstract:

This article discusses a communicative style typical of many Spanish speakers, which has often been characterized in the literature on pragmatics and intercultural communication as interpersonal closeness. The theoretical and methodological starting point for the present analysis is the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), which proposes the use of a minivocabulary of basic concepts to explain complex ones. In this case, we present descriptions – called cultural scripts within the theory – of different aspects of this communicative style of closeness and analyze cultural keywords and grammatical features related to this way of communicating, which, consciously or unconsciously, many Spanish speakers adhere to. We rely on work already done by other authors within NSM and we also propose new descriptions.

More information:

Written in Spanish.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2020) Standard Arabic, Jish Arabic, Hebrew — NSM primes

Published on July 25, 2020. Last updated on January 26, 2022.

Habib, Sandy (2020). The exponents of eleven simple, universal concepts in three Semitic languages. International Journal of Arabic Linguistics, 6(1-2), 68-90.

Open access

Abstract:

The NSM theory makes the claim that there are 65 concepts that are simple and universal; these concepts are called semantic prime. Their simplicity is proven by the fact that they cannot be defined via simpler terms, while their universality is proven by finding their exact equivalents in as many geographically and genetically different languages as possible. In this paper, I identify the exponents of eleven semantic primes in three Afroasiatic languages: Standard Arabic, Jish Arabic, and Hebrew.

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(2020) Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication [BOOK, vol. 1]

Published on November 15, 2019. Last updated on January 15, 2022.

Mullan, Kerry; Peeters, Bert; & Sadow, Lauren (Eds.) (2020). Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 1. Ethnopragmatics and semantic analysis. Singapore: Springer.

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

Abstract:

This book is the first in a three-volume set that celebrates the career and achievements of Cliff Goddard, a pioneer of the NSM approach in linguistics. It explores issues in ethnopragmatics and conversational humour, with a further focus on semantic analysis more broadly.

Table of contents [NSM chapters only]:

2. A brief introduction to the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach (Lauren Sadow & Kerry Mullan)

Part I. Ethnopragmatics

3. Condolences in Cantonese and English: What people say and why (John C. Wakefield, Winnie Chor, & Nikko Lai)
4. The ethnopragmatics of English understatement and Italian exaggeration: Clashing cultural scripts for the expression of personal opinions (Gian Marco Farese)
5. Ethnopragmatics of hāzer javābi, a valued speech practice in Persian (Reza Arab)
6. “The Great Australian Pastime”: Pragmatic and semantic perspectives on taking the piss (Michael Haugh & Lara Weinglass)
7. Thứ-Bậc (‘hierarchy’) in the cultural logic of Vietnamese interaction: An ethnopragmatic perspective (Lien-Huong Vo)

Part II. Semantic analysis

10. Positive appraisal in online news comments (Radoslava Trnavac & Maite Taboada)
11. The conceptual semantics of alienable possession in Amharic (Mengistu Amberber)
12. The meanings of list constructions: Explicating interactional polysemy (Susanna Karlsson)

More information:

Each chapter will soon have its own entry, where additional information is provided.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2020) Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication [BOOK, vol. 2]

Published on November 15, 2019. Last updated on August 19, 2021.

Peeters, Bert; Mullan, Kerry; & Sadow, Lauren (Eds.) (2020). Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 2. Meaning and culture. Singapore: Springer.

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

Abstract:

This book is the second in a three-volume set that celebrates the career and achievements of Cliff Goddard, a pioneer of the NSM approach in linguistics. It focuses on meaning and culture, with sections on words as carriers of cultural meaning and understanding discourse in cultural context.

Table of contents: 

1. Culture is everywhere! (Bert Peeters)

Part I. Words as carriers of cultural meaning

2. In staunch pursuit: the semantics of the Japanese terms shūkatsu ‘job hunting’ and konkatsu ‘marriage partner hunting’ (Yuko Asano-Cavanagh & Gian Marco Farese)
3. Cultural keywords in Porteño Spanish: viveza criolla, vivo and boludo (Jan Hein)
4. The “Aussie” bogan: an occasioned semantics analysis (Roslyn Rowen)
5. The comfort of home as an ethical value in Mike Packer’s Inheritance (Stella Butter & Zuzanna Bułat Silva)
6. Common Akan insults on GhanaWeb: a semantic analysis of kwasea, aboa and gyimii (Rachel Thompson)
7. Bwénaado: an ethnolexicological study of a culturally salient word in Cèmuhî (New Caledonia) (Bert Peeters & Margo Lecompte-Van Poucke)
8. Heaven and hell are here! The non-religious meanings of English heaven and hell and their Arabic and Hebrew counterparts (Sandy Habib)

Part II. Understanding discourse in cultural context

9. Postcolonial prepositions: semantics and popular geopolitics in the Danosphere (Carsten Levisen)
10. Combining NSM explications for clusters of Cantonese utterance particles: laa3-wo3 and zaa3-wo3 (Helen Hue Lam Leung)

More information:

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

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(2020) Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication [BOOK, vol. 3]

Published on November 15, 2019. Last updated on January 10, 2022.

Sadow, Lauren; Peeters, Bert; & Mullan, Kerry (Eds.) (2020). Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond). Singapore: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5

Abstract:

This book is the third in a three-volume set that celebrates the career and achievements of Cliff Goddard, a pioneer of the NSM approach in linguistics. This third volume explores the potential of Minimal English, a recent offshoot of NSM, with special reference to its use in language teaching and intercultural communication.

Table of contents: 

1. Minimal English: Taking NSM ‘out of the lab’ (Lauren Sadow)
2. Using NSM and “Minimal” Language for intercultural learning (Susana S. Fernández)
3. From Expensive English to Minimal English (Deborah Hill)
4. “There is no sex in the Soviet Union”: From sex to seks (Anna Wierzbicka & Anna Gladkova)
5. When value words cross cultural borders: English tolerant versus Russian tolerantnyj (Anna Gladkova)
6. The confounding Mandarin colour term ‘qīng’: Green, blue, black or all of the above and more? (Jiashu Tao & Jock Wong)
7. Semantic challenges in understanding Global English: Hypothesis, theory, and proof in Singapore English (Jock Wong)
8. Using Minimal English to model a parental understanding of autism (Alexander Forbes)
9. Principles and prototypes of a cultural dictionary of Australian English for learners (Lauren Sadow)
10. Minimal and inverse definitions: A semi-experimental proposal for compiling a Spanish dictionary with semantic primes and molecules (María Auxiliadora Barrios Rodríguez)
11. Prevalence of NSM primes in easy-to-read and standard Finnish: Findings from newspaper text corpora (Ulla Vanhatalo & Camilla Lindholm)

More information:

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

Review:

Gladkova, Anna. (2020). Review of Sadow, Lauren, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan (eds.). 2020. Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication: Vol. 3. Minimal English (and beyond). Singapore: Springer. ISBN 978‐981‐329‐978‐8 Russian Journal of Linguistics, 24(4). pp. 1049—1054

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(2021) Aesthetics

Published on August 15, 2021. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Gladkova, Anna, & Romero-Trillo, Jesús (eds.). (2021). The Conceptualization of ‘Beautiful’ and ‘Ugly’ across Languages and Cultures. Special issue of the International Journal of Language and Culture 8:1

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.8.1

 

Contents (NSM articles only):

The linguistic conceptualization in folk aesthetics: Past, present and future. Anna Gladkova and Jesús Romero-Trillo | pp. 1–13
Pæn, flot, dejlig, and lækker : A lexical anthropology of Danish folk aesthetics. Carsten Levisen | pp. 14–34
“Is beauty only skin deep?”: The conceptualization of ‘beauty’ in Mandarin Chinese. Jock Wong and Marshal Or | pp. 35–61
“What is beauty?”: Cultural semantics of the Russian folk aesthetics. Anna Gladkova | pp. 84–105
Is ugliness in the mind of the beholder? The conceptualization of ‘ugly’ in English. Anna Gladkova and Jesús Romero-Trillo | pp. 106–127
The good, the bad… and the ugly? The conceptualization of aesthetics in Spanish. Jesús Romero-Trillo | pp. 147–168

 

(2021) Aesthetics

Published on August 15, 2021. Last updated on August 15, 2021.

Gladkova, Anna, and Romero-Trillo, Jesús. (2021).  The linguistic conceptualization in folk aesthetics: Past, present and future. International Journal of Language and Culture 8(1): 1–13

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00032.int

 

Abstract:

This Special Issue is dedicated to the analysis of the linguistic conceptualization of “beautiful” and “ugly” as the key concepts that are basic to aesthetic appreciation across languages and cultures within the framework of folk aesthetics. For this purpose, we present a collection of original research articles analyzing concepts related to folk aesthetics in seven languages: English, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Danish, Persian, and Mandarin Chinese. All studies in this Special Issue focus on words and concepts as representations of culture-specific ways of aesthetic appreciation. Most of the studies are corpus-based, therefore they draw their conclusions on significant linguistic data.

 

 

 

(2021) An Anatomy of Chinese Offensive Words [BOOK]

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

Tien, Adrien, Carson, Lorna, & Jiang, Ning. (2021). An Anatomy of Chinese Offensive Words: A Lexical and Semantic Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Abstract

This book offers a precise and rigorous analysis of the meanings of offensive words in Chinese. Adopting a semantic and cultural approach, the authors demonstrate how offensive words can and should be systematically researched, documented and accounted for as a valid aspect of any language. The book will be of interest to academics, practitioners and students of sociolinguistics, language and culture, linguistic taboo, Chinese studies and Chinese linguistics.

 

From the Foreward

This book began life as an individual project undertaken by Professor Adrian Tien. After living in Australia and Singapore, Adrian moved to Ireland in 2015 to take up a new post at Trinity College Dublin, where he was recruited to direct the growing Chinese Studies programme in the university. Within three years of his arrival, Adrian tragically passed away following a short illness. Aware of the progress of this book project, we— Adrian’s colleague Professor Lorna Carson, and his former PhD student and research assistant Dr Ning Jiang—undertook to complete the manu- script as a way of honouring Adrian’s memory, our friendship and his academic legacy. The vision for this book belongs to Adrian, and any errors or shortcomings which follow remain the responsibility of his co-authors.

 


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners