Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). *Intercultural communication in Australia. In G. Schulz (Ed.), The languages of Australia (pp. 83-103). Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities.
(1993) Ethnopsychology
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). A conceptual basis for cultural psychology. Ethos, 21(2), 205-231.
At the present stage of its development, cultural psychology is indeed still dependent on the English language – not just as a medium of expression but as a source of its conceptual tools. The hypothesis that I wish to put forward is this: In trying to identify conceptual universals and in trying to develop a language that can be used for comparing cultures without an ethnocentric bias, a crucial role can be given to the universals of language and, in particular, to lexical universals. Needless to say, in proposing a set of universal human concepts (arrived at on the basis of linguistic evidence) as a possible conceptual
basis for cultural psychology, I do not wish to engage in an act of linguistic imperialism. Obviously, there is room for many different approaches, many different models, and many different perspectives.
Nevertheless, linguistic evidence has quite unique value in trying to elucidate categories of thought. It is time for this evidence to be finally given the attention that it deserves.
(1993) Facial expressions
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). Reading human faces: Emotion components and universal semantics. Pragmatics and Cognition, 1(1), 1-23. DOI: 10.1075/pc.1.1.03wie
It is widely believed that there are some emotions (so-called “basic emotions “) which are universally associated with distinctive facial expressions and that one can recognize, universally, an angry face, a happy face, a sad face, and so on. The “basic emotions ” are believed to be part of the biological makeup of human species and to be therefore “hardwired”. In contrast to this view, it has been suggested that it is not emotions but some components of emotions which are universally linked with certain facial expressions, or rather with some components of facial expressions. The theory will be even more convincing – and indeed more verifiable – if the postulated “dissociable components of emotions”
are formulated in a rigorous, and culture-independent manner. This paper argues that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, based on universal semantic primitives and devised by the author and colleagues, provides a suitable culture-independent framework.
(1993) French – NSM primes
Peeters, Bert, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). Présentation. Langue française, 98, 3-8.
(1993) NSM primes (history of search)
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). La quête des primitifs sémantiques: 1965-1992 [The search for semantic primes: 1965-1992]. Langue française, 98, 9-23. DOI : 10.3406/lfr.1993.5831
Written in French.
This paper provides a state of the art report on the search for semantic primitives as carried out over the last 28 years. It is argued that the failure of the philosophical speculation triggered by the reflections of the great 17th century thinkers (Leibniz, Descartes, Pascal, Arnauld) is not irreversible: the challenge lies in replacing the speculation with a linguistic approach based on the observation of the most diverse languages in the world.
(1993) NSM syntax
Wierzbicka, Anna (1993). Les universaux de la grammaire [Universals of grammar]. Langue française, 98, 107-120. DOI : 10.3406/lfr.1993.5836
Written in French.
This paper explores the area of universal grammar, a concept which, in the context of natural semantics, is to be understood as the set of grammatical universels and other strategies allowed as part of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. It is very much a tentative paper with a large number of proposals and observations which await further exploration.
(1994) Categorization, NSM primes (KIND)
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). *The universality of taxonomic categorization and the indispensability of the concept ‘kind’. Rivista di Linguistica, 6(2), 347-364.
(1994) English – Emotions
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Cognitive domains and the structure of the lexicon: The case of emotions. In Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, & Susan A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 431-452). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In trying to discover how knowledge (or at least basic, “foundational” knowledge) is stored and organized in the human mind we can rely, in a considerable measure, on language. There may be concepts that are not lexicalized in natural language, but these are probably less common, less basic, and less salient in a given speech community than those that have achieved lexicalization; they are also less accessible to study. Words provide evidence for the existence of concepts. Lexical sets, sharing a similar semantic structure, provide evidence for the existence of cohesive conceptual wholes (or fields). If it is hypothesized that knowledge is organized in the mind in the form of “cognitive domains,” then conceptual fields detectable through semantic analysis of the lexicon can be regarded as a guide to those domains. These general assumptions are illustrated in this paper by reference to a specific semantic domain: that of emotion terms. For reasons of space, the discussion must remain brief, sketchy, and selective.
(1994) English – PRAYER
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). What is prayer? In search of a definition. In Laurence Binet Brown (Ed.). The human side of prayer: The psychology of praying (pp. 25-46). Birmingham: Religious Education Press.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1994) English, Polish – Emotions and cultural scripts
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Emotion, language, and cultural scripts. In Shinobu Kitayama, & Hazel Rose Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual influence (pp. 133-196). Washington: American Psychological Association.
Abstract:
This chapter explores the relationship between emotion and culture, and between emotion and cognition. It examines the concept of emotion, and argues that it is culture-specific and rooted in the semantics of the English language, as are also the names of specific emotions, such as sadness, joy, anger, or fear. It shows that both the concept of emotion and the language-specific names of particular emotions can be explicated and elucidated in universal semantic primes (NSM).
NSM provides a necessary counterbalance to the uncritical use of English words as conceptual tools in the psychology, philosophy, and sociology of emotions. It offers a suitable basis for description and comparison of not only emotions and emotion concepts but also of cultural attitudes to emotions. Different cultures do indeed encourage different attitudes toward emotions, and these different attitudes are reflected in both the lexicon and the grammar of the languages associated with these cultures.
The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the language-specific character of emotion concepts and grammatical categories; the need for lexical universals as conceptual and descriptive tools; the doctrine of basic emotions and the issue of the discreteness of emotions; and the relationships among emotions, sensations, and feelings. The second part, on cultural scripts (with special reference to the Anglo and Polish cultures), explores attitudes toward emotions characteristic of different cultures (in particular, the Anglo and Polish cultures) and shows how these attitudes can be expressed in the form of cultural scripts formulated by means of universal semantic primes.
Translations:
Into Polish:
Chapter 5 (pp. 163-189) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1999), Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1994) English, Polish, Japanese – Cultural scripts
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). ‘Cultural scripts’: A new approach to the study of cross-cultural communication. In Martin Pütz (Ed.), Language contact and language conflict (pp. 69-87). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/z.71.04wei [sic]
According to Edward Hall, writing in 1983, one element lacking in the cross-cultural field was the existence of adequate models that enable us to gain more insight into the processes going on inside people while they are thinking and communicating. It is the purpose of the present paper to develop and validate a model of the kind that Hall is calling for. The model developed here, which can be called the “cultural script model”, offers a framework within which both the differences in the ways of communicating and the underlying differences in the ways of thinking can be fruitfully and rigorously explored. It is shown how cultural scripts can be stated and how they can be justified; this is done with particular reference to Anglo, Japanese, and Polish cultural norms.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1994) Evidentials
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Semantics and epistemology: The meaning of ‘evidentials’ in a cross-linguistic perspective. Language Sciences, 16(1), 81-137. DOI: 10.1016/0388-0001(94)90018-3
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 15 (pp. 427-458) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Meaning is encoded not only in words but also in grammatical categories. The meanings encoded in grammar (just like those encoded in the lexicon) are language-specific. Attempts to identify the meanings encoded in different languages by means of arbitrarily invented labels only conceals and obfuscates the language-specific character of the categories they are attached to. To be able to compare grammatical categories across language boundaries, we need constant points of reference, which slippery labels with shifting meanings cannot possibly provide. Universal (or near-universal) semantic primitives (or near-primitives) can provide such constant and language-independent points of reference. They offer a secure basis for a semantic typology of both lexicons and grammars. At the same time, they offer us convenient and reliable tools for investigating the universal and the language-specific aspects of human cognition and human conceptualization of the world.
In this paper, the author illustrates and documents these claims by analysing one area of grammar in a number of different languages of the world: the area that is usually associated with the term evidentiality. As the goal of the paper is theoretical, not empirical, the data are drawn exclusively from one source: a volume entitled Evidentiality, edited by Chafe and Nichols (1986). The author reexamines the data presented in this volume by experts on a number of languages, and tries to show how these data can be reanalysed in terms of universal semantic primitives, and how in this way they can be made both more verifiable (that is, predictive) and more comparable across language boundaries.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1994) Japanese, English (incl. Black) – Cultural scripts
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). “Cultural scripts”: A semantic approach to cultural analysis and cross-cultural communication. Pragmatics and Language Learning [Monograph Series], 5, 1-24. PDF (open access)
This paper argues that the ways of speaking characteristic of a given speech community cannot be satisfactorily described (let alone explained) in purely behavioral terms. They constitute a behavioral manifestation of a tacit system of “cultural rules” or “cultural scripts”. To understand a society’s ways of speaking, we have to identify and articulate its implicit “cultural scripts”. Furthermore, it is argued that to be able to do this without ethnocentric bias we need a universal, language-independent perspective; this can be attained if the”rules” in question are stated in terms of lexical universals, that is, universal human concepts lexicalized in all languages of the world.
To illustrate these general propositions, the author shows how cultural scripts can be stated and how they can be justified. This is done with particular reference to Japanese, (White) Anglo-American, and Black American cultural norms.
The cultural scripts advanced in this paper are formulated in a highly constrained Natural Semantic Metalanguage, based on a small set of lexical universals (or near-universals) and a small set of universal (or near-universal) syntactic patterns. It is argued that the use of this metalanguage allows us to portray and compare culture-specific attitudes, assumptions, and norms from a neutral, culture-independent point of view and to do so in terms of simple formulae that are intuitively self-explanatory while at the same time being rigorous and empirically verifiable.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1994) NSM primes
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Introducing lexical primitives. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 31-54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.05god
The main part of this chapter surveys the proposed primitive inventory whose cross-linguistic validity is being put to the test in the entire volume. Before embarking on this exercise, we address some methodological issues.
(1994) NSM primes across languages
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Semantic primitives across languages: A critical review. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 445-500). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hunting for semantic and lexical universals is not like pearl-fishing. Primitives do not present themselves glittering and unmistakable. Identifying them is an empirical endeavour but one that calls for much interpretative effort.
Although the overwhelming conclusion emerging from the 1994 Semantic and lexical universals survey of languages is that there is indeed a universal “alphabet of human thoughts”, this by no means implies that no problems have arisen in testing our hypothetical set of conceptual and lexical universals. This closing chapter is devoted mainly to a survey of these problems.
(1994) Primitive thought and psychic unity of humankind
Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). Semantic universals and primitive thought: The question of the psychic unity of humankind. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 4(1), 23-49.
Abstract:
This article argues that the belief in the “psychic unity of humankind,” which the author shares, can degenerate into an empty rhetorical posture if it is not linked with an empirical search for a shared conceptual basis linking different cultures and languages. The author argues that the reasoning of believers in “primitive thought” is fallacious, and she tries to show where exactly it goes wrong. In particular, she argues that the proponents of the primitive-thought doctrine do not understand the phenomenon of polysemy and have no methodology that would allow them to establish whether a word has one or more meanings. More generally, she tries to show how the claims of the proponents of the primitive-thought doctrine can be refuted on the basis of solid evidence, sound analysis, and rigorous methodology.
Translations:
Into Russian:
Chapter 2 (pp. 54-90) of Вежбицкая, Анна (2011), Семантические универсалии и базисные концепты [Semantic universals and basic concepts]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянских культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 6 (pp. 184-210) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1994) Semantic and lexical universals [BOOK]
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (Eds.) (1994). Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25
This set of papers represents a unique collection; it is the first attempt ever to empirically test a hypothetical set of semantic and lexical universals across a number of genetically and typologically diverse languages. In fact the word ‘collection’ is not fully appropriate in this case, since the papers report research undertaken specifically for the present volume, and shaped by the same guidelines. They constitute parallel and strictly comparable answers to the same set of questions, coordinated effort with a common aim, and a common methodology. The goal of identifying the universal human concepts found in all languages, is of fundamental importance, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view, since these concepts provide the basis of the “psychic unity of mankind”, underlying the clearly visible diversity of human cultures. They also allow us to better understand that diversity itself, because they provide a common measure, without which no precise and meaningful comparisons are possible at all. A set of truly universal (or even near-universal) concepts can provide us with an invaluable tool for interpreting, and explaining all the culture-specific meanings encoded in the language-and-culture systems of the world. It can also provide us with a tool for explaining meanings across cultures — in education, business, trade, international relations, and so on.
The book contains 13 chapters on individual languages including Japanese (by Masayuki Onishi), Chinese (by Hilary Chappell), Thai (by Anthony Diller), Ewe (Africa, by Felix Ameka), Miskitu languages of South America (by Kenneth Hale), Australian Aboriginal languages Aranda, Yankunytjatjara and Kayardild (by Jean Harkins & David Wilkins, Cliff Goddard, and Nicholas Evans), Austronesian languages Samoan, Longgu, Acehnese and Mangap-Mbula (by Ulrike Mosel, Deborah Hill, Mark Durie and Robert Bugenhagen), the Papuan language Kalam (by Andrew Pawley), and, last but not least, French (by Bert Peeters). In addition to the chapters on individual languages the book includes three theoretical chapters: “Semantic theory and semantic universals” (by Goddard), “Introducing lexical primitives” (by Goddard and Wierzbicka), and “Semantic primitives across languages: a critical review” (by Wierzbicka).
Each chapter has a separate entry, where more information is provided.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1995) Adjectives vs. verbs
Wierzbicka, Anna (1995). *Adjectives vs. verbs: The iconicity of part-of-speech membership. In Marge E. Landsberg (Ed.), Syntactic iconicity and linguistic freezes (pp. 223-245). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110882926.223
(1995) Cultural key words
Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (1995). Key words, culture and cognition. Philosophica, 55(1), 37-67.
Abstract:
How much does language influence how we think? How far are the categories of our language contingent and culture-specific? Few questions are of greater significance to the social sciences. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate that linguistic semantics can address these questions with rigour and precision. It analyses some examples of cultural key words in several languages. Two complementary positions are presented, and both are endorsed. On the one hand, it is argued there are enormous differences in the semantic structuring of different languages and these linguistic differences greatly influence how people think. On the other, it is argued all languages share a small set of universal concepts that can provide a solid basis for cross-cultural understanding and for the culture-independent formulation of philosophical problems.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
(1995) Dictionaries vs. encyclopedias
Wierzbicka, Anna (1995). Dictionaries vs. encyclopaedias: How to draw the line. In Philip W. Davis (Ed.), Alternative linguistics: Descriptive and theoretical modes (pp. 289-315). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: 10.1075/cilt.102.09wie
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 11 (pp. 335-350) of:
Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Abstract:
If by analysing language we find evidence suggesting that ‘linguistic knowledge’ differs somehow from ‘non-linguistic knowledge’, and that a distinction between the two can be drawn in a non-arbitrary way, this would support the view that the mind itself draws a distinction between a ‘mental dictionary’ and a ‘mental encyclopaedia’. This paper argues that this indeed is the case, and that by examining linguistic evidence we can indeed learn how to draw the line between ‘meaning’ and ‘knowledge’, or between ‘linguistic knowledge’ and ‘encyclopaedic knowledge’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
