Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). On emotions and on definitions: A response to Izard. Emotion Review, 2(4), 379-380.
(2010) Emotions: happiness
Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). The “history of emotions” and the future of emotion research. Emotion Review, 2(3), 269-273. DOI: 10.1177/1754073910361983
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 102-126) of:
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This article focuses on the emergence of a new subfield of emotion research known as “history of emotions”. People’s emotional lives depend on the construals they impose on events, situations, and human actions. Different cultures and different languages suggest different habitual construals, and since habitual construals change over time, as a result, habitual feelings change, too. But to study construals we need a suitable methodology. The article assumes that such a methodology is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It applies the NSM approach to the history of ‘happiness’, an emotion that is very much at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines. The article shows how the “history of emotions” can be combined with cultural semantics and why this combination opens new perspectives for the whole interdisciplinary field of emotion research.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) English – Cultural key words: STORY
Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). ‘Story’ – An English cultural keyword and a key interpretive tool of Anglo culture. Narrative Inquiry, 20(1), 153-181. DOI: 10.1075/ni.20.1.08wie
This paper draws attention to the fact that the word story, a unique English cultural key word and a key interpretive tool of modern Anglo culture, has played a significant role in the “narrative turn” in the humanities and social sciences. It discusses some of the implications of this fact. Because the uniqueness and centrality of English story has until now gone unnoticed, many semantic components associated with it have been projected onto other languages, which has lead to the positing of spurious human universals and to claims such as “story is a basic principle of mind”.
The paper also shows that the English word story is linked with a family of concepts that have no semantic equivalents in other languages and that are unique conceptual artefacts of Anglo culture. It argues that if we can pinpoint these concepts, we can also pinpoint the shared values and assumptions reflected in them. This can be done with the help of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) methodology.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) English, Russian – Cultural key words: FATE, SUD’BA
Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Cross-cultural communication and miscommunication: The role of cultural keywords. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(1), 1-23. DOI: 10.1515/IPRG.2010.001
The experience of immigrants and other people who live transcultural lives confirms that different societies and lingua-cultures have different tacit norms for interpersonal communication and that such differences matter a great deal in many people’s lives. Every lingua-culture inherits and transmits historically and culturally shaped ways of thinking. This applies to English-speaking societies no less than to any other. Given the massive scale of past and ongoing immigration to English-speaking countries as well as the growing domination of English in the global world, it is particularly important to recognize that English, too, is saturated with historically transmitted cultural assumptions. But it is above all “Anglo English” – the common core of the ‘‘Englishes of the inner circle’’ – that tends to be mistaken for a culture-neutral medium of communication. As a result, “Anglo English”, which greatly facilitates cross-cultural communication in today’s world, is also a major source of miscommunication and cross-cultural failure.
This paper takes as its starting point one of the most illuminating cross-cultural novels, Nabokov’s Pnin. The author surveys a number of ‘‘anomalies’’ in ‘‘Pninian English’’ that had an impact on Pnin’s life in America. Then the paper moves beyond Pnin, but stays with Nabokov, and explores one area of immigrant linguistic condition: the loss of cultural key words. The focus is in particular on the Russian key cultural concept of судьба sud’ba and on Nabokov’s continued reliance on this concept in his books created, through the English medium, by his post-Russian authorial self. The author’s overall purpose, however, is not to talk about Nabokov, but to illuminate the immigrant condition and the miscommunication inherent in cross-cultural communication. In her analysis, she relies on the ‘NSM’ methodology of semantic analysis, which allows us to analyse intercultural communication and miscommunication from a neutral, non-Anglocentric perspective.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) Experience, evidence, & sense [BOOK]
Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Experience, evidence, and sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368000.001.0001
This book is based on two ideas: first, that any language – English no less than any other – represents a universe of meaning, shaped by the history and experience of the men and women who have created it; and second, that in any language certain culture-specific words act as linchpins for whole networks of meanings, and that penetrating the meanings of those key words can therefore open our eyes to an entire cultural universe. This book demonstrates that three uniquely English words – evidence, experience, and sense – are exactly such linchpins. Using a rigorous plain language approach to meaning analysis, the book unpackages the dense cultural meanings of these key words, disentangles their multiple meanings, and traces their origins back to the tradition of British empiricism. In so doing the book reveals much about cultural attitudes embedded not only in British and American English, but other global varieties of English.
Table of contents:
Part I Introduction
1. Making the familiar look foreign
Part II Experience and evidence
2. Experience: An English keyword and a key cultural theme
3. Evidence: Words, ideas, and cultural practices
Part III Sense
4. The discourse of sense and the legacy of “British empiricism”
5. A sense of humour, a sense of self, and similar expressions
6. A strong sense, a deep sense, and similar expressions
7. Moral sense
8. Common sense
9. From having sense to making sense
Part IV Phraseology, semantics, and corpus linguistics
10. Investigating English phraseology with two tools: NSM and Google
Chapter 2 builds on: “Experience” in John Searle’s account of the mind: Brain, mind and Anglo culture (2006)
Chapter 7 builds on: Moral sense (2007)
Chapter 10 builds on: Exploring English phraseology with two tools: NSM semantic methodology and Google (2009)
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2010) Kalam – ‘Eat’, ‘drink’
Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). ‘Eating’ and ‘drinking’ in Kalam. In John Bowden, Nikolaus Himmelmann, & Malcolm Ross (Eds.), A journey through Austronesian and Papuan linguistic and cultural space: Papers in honour of Andrew Pawley (pp. 651-660). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
(2010) NSM primes (WANT)
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). ‘Want’ is a lexical and conceptual universal: Reply to Khanina. Studies in Language, 34(1), 108-123. DOI: 10.1075/sl.34.1.04god
The question of whether or not all languages have a word for ‘want’ (as in ‘I know what you want, I want the same’) is far more important than many linguists appear to realize. Having studied and debated this question for many years, we welcome Olesya Khanina’s (2008) paper “How universal is ‘wanting’?”, which, we believe, addresses a question of fundamental importance. Our own view — which we have sought to substantiate in a large number of publications, over many years (cf. Wierzbicka 1972, 1996; Goddard 1991, 2001; Goddard and Wierzbicka eds. 1994, 2002; Peeters ed. 2006) — is that WANT is a universal semantic prime, i.e. an indivisible unit of meaning with a lexical exponent in all languages. In the present article, we argue that although Khanina has produced valuable results about cross-linguistic patterns in the polysemy of exponents of WANT, she has failed to demonstrate her concluding point, namely, “that ‘want’ is not a universal semantic prime in the sense of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage … [and] that the inclusion of WANT in this list [of semantic primes] is indeed false” (p. 848). Briefly, we will argue that Khanina’s conclusion depends, first, on an a priori decision not to recognise the existence of polysemy; and
second, on a misunderstanding of the NSM position on what it means to be a lexical exponent of a semantic prime. We will also argue that ‘wanting’ constitutes an indispensable conceptual building block in human communication and cognition, and in linguistic and psychological theorizing about communication and cognition.
(2010) Thought without language
Besemeres, Mary, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Is there thought without language? In Marek Kuczyński (Ed.), Language, thought and consciousness: Vol. 2 (pp. 11-21). Zielona Góra: Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego.
We argue that the concept ‘think’ is universal, and that it has four universal frames: 1) we can say, someone thinks’, but not ‘something thinks’; 2) we can combine ‘think’ with a direct quote: ‘she thinks: “I’ll do it”‘; 3) we can say ‘someone thinks about someone or something’; 4) we can say ‘someone thinks that…’. It is not possible to use the word ‘think’ meaningfully without respecting the assumptions underlying these four frames. In ordinary speech, we are able to refer to someone thinking in images rather than words – as when someone is described as thinking ‘about’ another person. We also sometimes impute thought to animals which we perceive as in some ways similar to human beings, but only when their thinking doesn’t involve words (it is normally not possible to say: *The dog thinks: there is meat in the bag). However, apart from cases such as the above, much of our use of the term ‘think’ effectively refers to thinking with words.
On the basis of prior empirical research, our paper assumes that there exists in fact a whole set of universal human concepts, including words like ‘someone’, ‘think’, ‘feel’, ‘want’, which need no further explanation, and in terms of which more complex (often culture-specific) concepts can be explained. These universally shared concepts allow us to translate between different languages. At the same time, autobiographical writings by bilinguals affirm the presence of significant differences between languages, and suggest how individual languages help to create a distinct conceptual world. These autobiographical narratives argue, in other words, that language is closely connected with thought, and that we think in ways that are language- and culture-specific.
(2011, 2012) Polish – DOBROC, PRAWOSC, ODWAGA
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część I. Dobroć. Etnolingwistyka, 23, 45-66.
Wierzbicka, Anna (2012). Polskie słowa-wartości w perspektywie porównawczej. Część II. Prawość i odwaga. Etnolingwistyka, 24, 19-46.
Written in Polish.
Part I deals with the Polish word dobroć in comparative perspective. An assumption is made that an especially precious source of insight into the values of a given society are the key words used in that society. One of such words in Polish society is dobroć. By analysing the word’s semantics, the author shows the differences between that word and its closest equivalents in a few European languages: the English goodness, the French bonté or the Russian dobrotá. In the Polish hierarchy of values, dobroć ranks high as a positive human feature, manifested in people’s feelings, will and actions. The English goodness (derived from the adjective good) differs from the Polish dobroć in that it does not imply good feelings towards other people. The French bonté, in turn, although used in reference to people who want to do and actually do good things for others, does not, in contrast to dobroć, imply emotional overtones. On the other hand, the Russian dobrotá differs from dobroć in that it is primarily used in reference to someone’s emotional attitude towards others (expressed in one’s facial appearance or the tone of voice) but not actions. The author hypothesizes that bonté does not contain the emotional component (present in dobroć), and that dobrotá does not contain the element of action (present in dobroć and bonté). Neither does dobrotá occupy a central position among Russian values: that place is reserved for žalost’, an axiological category without a Polish equivalent. Similarly, in contemporary English-speaking cultures, greater importance is attached to kindness than to goodness.
Having discussed the semantics of dobroć, the author inquires into the historical and cultural origin of the associated concept and attempts to explain its uniqueness. A hypothesis is put forward that in Polish culture the attitude of the heart and will, reflected in the concept of ‘goodness’, finds its prototype in the figure of the Virgin Mary.
In Part II, the author analyses the concepts prawość ‘righteousness’ and odwaga ‘courage’.
Prawość is a specifically Polish concept, very much present in the Polish linguistic and cultural contemporary sphere. It is connected with the history of the country and the qualities attributed to major historical figures. Being prawy means being sensitive to others and following high ethical standards, which perhaps derives from the knightly ethos. English pseudo-equivalents of the Polish prawy/prawość are the words upright, righteous/righteousness and integrity. However, the word upright is now perceived by native speakers of English as dated and inadequate in the contemporary world; righteous and righteousness have clear biblical connotations and have entered the English language through Puritan morality – hence their range is limited. The closest equivalent is integrity, although the word is more readily connected with one’s social activity than with morality.
Odwaga is also connected with moral choices (cf. odwaga cywilna ‘moral courage’) but is not the same as courage: if someone is odważny, the deed may have negative consequences for the doer, which courage does not presuppose. The same semantic field contains words like śmiałość, dzielność and męstwo ‘boldness, bravery, valour’, but these also differ in their semantics from the English courage. Bravery is only an approximate to śmiałość, as is the Russian mužestvo, which merely resembles męstwo.
The cognitive scripts of the Polish value terms show clearly that speakers of Polish in each case operate with elements of awareness (“being aware of the moral obligation to act as one should”).
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Bilingualism and cognition
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Bilingualism and cognition: The perspective from semantics. In Vivian Cook, & Benedetta Bassetti (Eds.) Language and bilingual cognition (pp. 191-218). London: Routledge.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Emotions: happiness
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Whatʼs wrong with “happiness studies”? The cultural semantics of happiness, bonheur, Glück, and sčas’te. In Igor Boguslavsky, Leonid Iomdin, & Leonid Krysin (Eds.), Slovo i jazyk: Sbornik statej k vos’midesjatiletiju akademika Ju. D. Apresjana (pp. 155-171). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury. PDF (open access)
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 102-126) of:
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
There is a huge industry of so-called “happiness studies” that relies on cross-national statistical comparisons, which challengers see as based on false and ethnocentric assumptions. ‘Happiness’ has become a big issue in politics and in economics, but here, too, a lack of attention to the meaning of words leads to unwarranted conclusions and causes confusion and miscommunication. The misunderstandings surrounding happiness, bonheur, and Glück illustrate the need for uncovering, and explaining, the differences between significant words that are wrongly assumed to be readily cross-translatable. In view of the place of ‘happiness’ at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines, a comparison of happiness and счастье sčast’e seems especially topical.
The assumption that all languages have a word like happiness, and that there can be a reliable “index of happiness” based on self-reports (given in different languages) is naïve and untenable. Progress in emotion research in general depends to a considerable extent on increased recognition that language goes deeper in us than many students of emotion (especially psychologists) are willing to admit. Genuine progress requires a greater linguistic and cross-cultural sophistication than that evident in much of the existing writings on the subject.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Empirically grounded universals
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Uniwersalia ugruntowane empirycznie [Empirically grounded universals]. Teksty Drugie, 2011(1/2), 13-30. PDF (open access)
Written in Polish.
One of the central debates in human sciences concerns the relation between human universals and human diversity. Some scholars – for example the cognitivist Stephen Pinker – emphasize the unity of human nature and treat the diversity as more or less superficial. Others – for example the anthropologist Clifford Geertz – emphasize the diversity and are sceptical of any proposed universals. The NSM theory of language, culture and cognition developed by linguists Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard rejects the “either-or” approaches to universality and diversity and explores cultural diversity with analytical techniques based on empirically grounded universals. Through decades of cross-linguistic investigations, NSM researchers have identified a set of universal human concepts, lexically embodied, as evidence suggests, in all languages, together with their inherent grammar. In hundreds of descriptive studies, they have applied this approach to the investigation of culturally-shaped systems of meaning, using as their common measure the set of “universal words”, that is, lexically embodied concepts found in the intersection of all sampled languages.
This article argues that the NSM approach can bring a resolution of the stalemate between universalists such as Pinker and relativists (or “anti-antirelativists”) such as Geertz: NSM provides a conceptual basis on which human sciences can build, without ethnocentrism, even in the era of a global domination of English and its use, in scholarship and in education, can facilitate genuine cross-cultural understanding.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) English – HUMANITIES
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Defining ‘the humanities’. Culture & Psychology, 17(1), 31-46. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X10388841
The division of knowledge into ‘science,’ ‘social science,’ and ‘the humanities’ is deeply entrenched in ways of thinking prevailing in the English-speaking world and is reflected in many institutional structures. The English word science, which excludes not only ‘the humanities’ but also logic and mathematics, does not have exact equivalents in other European languages. It is a conceptual artefact of modern English and is saturated, so to speak, with British empiricism. There is a pressure on speakers of English to regard ‘natural sciences’ as a paradigm of all knowledge, or at least all knowledge that modern
societies should value and pursue. The semantic changes that the English word science has undergone in the last two centuries or so make empirically-based knowledge of the external world seem central to all human knowledge. This paper shows why ‘the humanities’ constitute a field of inquiry that is fundamentally different from ‘science’ (and from ‘social sciences’ modelled on ‘science’) and yet essential to human knowledge and ‘human understanding.’ In doing so, the paper draws on the thought of the
18th-century Italian philosopher Giambatista Vico and on the methodology of linguistic semantics, and in particular on the ‘NSM’ theory of language and thought.
(2011) Leibniz
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Common language of all people: The innate language of thought. Problems of information transmission, 47(4), 378-397. DOI: 10.1134/S0032946011040065
English translation of a Russian text (2011) published in Problemy Peredachi Informatsii, 47(4), 84-103.
As is well known, Leibniz was interested in language throughout his life, and he saw in it a key to the understanding of the human mind. Many of his ideas about language were expressed in unpublished manuscripts, and what has come to us is not always clear. Nevertheless, some of his ideas — even if he did not always consistently adhere to them himself — seem to be both clear and extremely appealing.
I would summarize these ideas as follows:
1. All human thoughts can be decomposed into a relatively small number of elementary concepts;
2. All explanations depend on the existence of some concepts which are self-explanatory (otherwise, they would lead to an infinite regress);
3. The elementary concepts are common to all languages, and can be found by means of semantic analysis;
4. These concepts are the foundation of an innate language, “lingua naturae.” Just as mathematics is, as Galileo said, the language of the physical world, so the innate “lingua naturae” is the language of the inner world, the language of thoughts;
5. This language can be identified;
6. This language can serve as an auxiliary means of mutual understanding for speakers of different languages;
7. This language can help us to reach a greater clarity in our thinking;
8. This language can serve as a means for clarifying, elucidating, storing and comparing ideas.
These are also the main ideas which lie at the basis of the NSM program and from which this program has derived and continues to derive its inspiration.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Moral absolutes
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Moral absolutes and the multiplicity of languages. Quadrant, …
(12), 81-88.
To delineate the conceptual structure of moral norms and to render it transparent we need also to reflect on the problem of language. We cannot achieve “a common understanding” if we don’t address the question of the multiplicity of languages. I believe that key value concepts encoded in the vocabulary of
different languages can contribute moral insights to the global pool of moral understanding. Value concepts such as “omenie”, “fairness” or “loyalty” are not empirical moral universals, recognised by all, or even most, human groups. They crystallise distinct, culture-specific perspectives arising from the moral experience of particular human groups and as such are worthy of attentive consideration by people from other groups. I would suggest that studying key moral concepts from many different cultural traditions could be one way (among others) to approach the formidable task of moral education in multicultural countries, and in the global world. At the very least, such education would stretch the moral imagination of young people, and enable them to look at life from many different moral
perspectives.
(2011) Russian – Arguing
Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Arguing in Russian: Why Solzhenitsyn’s fictional arguments defy translation. Russian Journal of Communication, 4(1/2), 8-37.
This paper discusses patterns of ‘arguing’ which prevails in Russian speech culture and shows that they differ profoundly from those characteristic of modern Anglo culture(s). The author focuses on the extended arguments (spory) in Solzhenitsyn’s novel ‘In the First Circle’ and shows that many linguistic and cultural aspects of the original are lost in the English translation. She argues that this was inevitable because English doesn’t have and “doesn’t need” linguistic resources to render various aspects of Russian communicative practices, which are culture-specific and have no counterparts in Anglophone
culture(s). The paper shows too that the techniques of semantic analysis developed in the “NSM” approach to cultural semantics help explain why Solzhenitsyn’s fictional arguments defy translation, and more generally, how they can be used to identify some deep differences between Russian and Anglo
speech cultures and communicative norms.
(2011) Semantic universals and basic concepts [BOOK]
Вежбицкая, Анна [Wierzbicka, Anna] (2011). Семантические универсалии и базисные концепты [Semantic universals and basic concepts]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянских культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].
Abstract:
This book is an anthology of papers and chapters by Anna Wierzbicka, originally published in English and appearing here in a Russian translation. Chapter 11 may have been originally written in Russian.
Table of contents:
Семантические универсалии (Semantic universals)
1. Из введения в книгу «Семантика: примитивы и универсалии» [From the introduction to the book Semantics: Primes and universals]
2. Семантические универсалии и «примитивное мышление» [Semantic universals and “primitive thought”]
3. Прототипы и инварианты [Prototypes and invariants]
4. Приложение [Illustration; Russian versions of NSM explications for flowers, animals and apples]
Семантика грамматики (Semantics of grammar)
5. Семантическая основа грамматического описания и типология: переходность и возвратность [A semantic basis for grammatical description and typology: Transitivity and reflexives]
6. Что значит имя существительное? (или: Чем существительные отличаются по значению от прилагательных?) [What’s in a noun? (Or: How do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?)]
7. Лексические прототипы как универсальное основание межъязыковой идентификации «частей речи» [Lexical prototypes as a universal basis for cross-linguistic identification of “parts of speech”]
8. Дело о поверхностном падеже [The case for surface case]
9. Семантическое описание падежей в терминах ЕСМ: новый анализ польского дательного падежа [Semantic description of case in NSM: A reanalysis of the Polish dative]
Ключевые темы в русской культуре и языке (Key themes in Russian culture and language)
10. Русский язык [The Russian language]
11. Русские культурные скрипты и их отражение в языке [Russian cultural scripts and their reflection in the language]
12. Судьба и предопределение [Fate and destiny]
Семантический анализ евангельских текстов (Semantic analysis of gospel texts)
13. Значение Иисусовых притч: семантический подход к Евангелиям [The meaning of Jesus’ parables: A semantic approach to the Gospels]
14. Как люди могут понимать чувства других, как они могут «читать» их лица? Иисус в Гефсимании [How can people understand the feelings of others, how can they “read” their faces? Jesus in Gethsemane]
More information:
Chapter 1 is a translation of: Semantics: Primes and universals (1996), chapter 1
Chapter 2 is a translation of: Semantic universals and primitive thought: The question of the psychic unity of humankind (1994)
Chapter 3 is a translation of: Semantics: Primes and universals (1996), chapter 4
Chapter 5 is a translation of: Semantics: Primes and universals (1996), chapter 14
Chapter 6 is a translation of: What’s in a noun? (Or: How do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?) (1986)
Chapter 7 is a translation of: Lexical prototypes as a universal basis for cross-linguistic identification of “parts of speech” (2000)
Chapter 8 is a translation of: Excerpts of The case for surface case (1980)
Chapter 9 is a translation of: Case in NSM: A reanalysis of the Polish dative (2009)
Chapter 10 is a translation of: Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations (1992), chapter 12
Chapter 11 is a reprint of: Russian cultural scripts and their reflection in the language (2002)
Chapter 12 is a translation of: Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations (1992), chapter 2
Chapter 13 is a translation of: The meaning of Jesus’ parables: A semantic approach to the Gospels (1998)
Chapter 14 is a translation of: ?
See the original chapters for abstracts and links to explications and cultural scripts.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(2011) Semantics and cognition
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Semantics and cognition. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews: Cognitive science, 2(2), 125-135. DOI: 10.1002/wcs.101
The words and grammar of any language encode a vast array of complex prepackaged concepts, most of them language-specific and culture-related. These concepts are manipulated routinely in almost every waking hour of most people’s lives. They are largely acquired in infancy and they are intersubjectively shared among members of the speech community. It is hard to imagine such elaborate and variable representation systems not having a substantial role to play in ordinary cognition, and yet the language-and-thought question continues to be a contested one across the various disciplines and sub-disciplines of cognitive science. This article provides an overview from the vantage point of linguistic semantics.
(2012) English – New Testament translations
Wierzbicka, Anna (2012). The history of English seen as the history of ideas: Cultural change reflected in different translations of the New Testament. In Terttu Nevalainen, & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of English (pp. 434-445). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199922765.013.0037
Research on the history of English has often been undertaken in a somewhat atomistic spirit, with an emphasis on particular areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, and (to a far lesser degree) lexicon, or on aspects of what Ferdinand de Saussure termed “external history.” However, there is no attempt to take a broader view of the overall direction in which the English language was going. This article argues that the history of English is closely linked with the history of ideas and spiritual culture. It looks at some aspects of the hidden cultural legacy of English by analysing selected examples from the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament and its successor, the New Revised Standard Version, and comparing them with the King James Version. It also examines some close links between semantic change, cultural history, and the history of ideas, and shows that these links can be investigated in a rigorous and illuminating manner with the aid of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.
(2012) English – SEX
Wierzbicka, Anna (2012). The semantics of “sex” in a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective. In Jurij Apresjan, Igor Boguslavsky, Marie-Claude L’Homme, Leonid Iomdin, Jasmina Milicevic, Alain Polguère, & Leo Wanner (Eds.), Meaning, text, and other exciting things: A festschrift to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Professor Igor Alexandrovič Mel’čuk (pp. 641-649). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kultury. PDF (open access)
This paper explores the meanings of the English word sex in a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective, and argues that – unlike the universal and indefinable concept ‘die’ – the concept encoded in the present-day English word sex is culture-bound and is, in fact, a relatively recent conceptual artefact of Anglo culture. The paper seeks to show that the meanings of this word can be elucidated through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) based on simple and universal concepts.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
