Tag: (E) complain

(1987) English – Speech act verbs


Wierzbicka, Anna (1987). English speech act verbs: A semantic dictionary. Sydney: Academic Press.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1991) Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction [BOOK]


Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Reissued, with a new preface, as:

Wierzbicka, Anna (2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

DOI (2003): https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110220964

Abstract:

This book challenges approaches to human interaction that are based on supposedly universal maxims of conversation and principles of politeness, which fly in the face of reality as experienced by millions of people – refugees, immigrants, cross-cultural families, and so on. By contrast to such approaches, which are of no use in cross-cultural communication and education, this book is both theoretical and practical. It shows that in different societies, norms of human interaction are different and reflect different cultural attitudes and values. It offers a framework within which different cultural norms and different ways of speaking can be effectively explored, explained, and taught.

The book discusses data from a wide range of languages, including English, Italian, Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Walmatjari. It shows that the meanings expressed in human interaction and the different cultural rules (called ‘cultural scripts’ in more recent work) prevailing in different speech communities can be described and compared in a way that is clear, simple, rigorous, and free of ethnocentric bias. It relies on NSM to do so, and argues that the latter can be used as a basis for teaching successful cross-cultural communication and education, including the teaching of languages in a cultural context.

Table of contents:

  1. Introduction: Semantics and pragmatics
  2. Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts
  3. Cross-cultural pragmatics and different cultural values
  4. Describing conversational routines
  5. Speech acts and speech genres across languages and cultures
  6. The semantics of illocutionary forces
  7. Italian reduplication: Its meaning and its cultural significance
  8. Interjections across cultures
  9. Particles and illocutionary meanings
  10. Boys will be boys: Even truisms are culture-specific
  11. Conclusion: Semantics as a key to cross-cultural pragmatics

More information:

Chapter 2 builds on: Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts: Polish vs. English (1985)

Chapter 5 builds on: A semantic metalanguage for a crosscultural comparison of speech acts and speech genres (1985); a more recent publication building on this chapter is chapter 5 (pp. 198-234) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1997), Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 6 builds on: A semantic metalanguage for the description and comparison of illocutionary meanings (1986)

Chapter 7 builds on: Italian reduplication: Cross-cultural pragmatics and illocutionary semantics (1986)

Chapter 8 builds on: The semantics of interjections (1992)

Chapter 9 builds on: Precision in vagueness: The semantics of English ‘approximatives’ (1986); The semantics of quantitative particles in Polish and in English (1986)

Chapter 10 builds on: Boys will be boys: ‘Radical semantics’ vs. ‘radical pragmatics’ (1987)

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

Tags listed below are in addition to those listed at the end of the entries for the earlier work on which this book builds.

(2014) Words and meanings [BOOK]


Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668434.001.0001

Abstract:

This book presents a series of systematic, empirically based studies of word meanings. Each chapter investigates key expressions drawn from different domains of the lexicon – concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. The examples chosen are complex and culturally important; the languages represented include English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri, and Malay. The authors ground their discussions in real examples and draw on work ranging from Leibniz, Locke, and Bentham, to popular works such as autobiographies and memoirs, and the Dalai Lama’s writings on happiness.

The book opens with a review of the neglected status of lexical semantics in linguistics and a discussion of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage methodology, which is used in all chapters. The discussion includes a wide range of methodological and analytical issues including lexical polysemy, semantic change, the relationship between lexical and grammatical semantics, and the concepts of semantic molecules and templates.

Table of contents:

  1. Words, meaning, and methodology
  2. Men, women, and children: The semantics of basic social categories
  3. Sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp: Physical quality words in cross-linguistic perspective
  4. From “colour words” to visual semantics: English, Russian, Warlpiri
  5. Happiness and human values in cross-cultural and historical perspective
  6. Pain: Is it a human universal? The perspective from cross-linguistic semantics
  7. Suggesting, apologising, complimenting: English speech act verbs
  8. A stitch in time and the way of the rice plant: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay
  9. The meaning of abstract nouns: Locke, Bentham and contemporary semantics
  10. Broader perspectives: Beyond lexical semantics

More information:

Chapter 3 builds on: NSM analyses of the semantics of physical qualities: sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp in cross-linguistic perspective (2007)
Chapter 4 builds on: Why there are no “colour universals” in language and thought (2008)
Chapter 5 builds on: “Happiness” in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective (2004); The “history of emotions” and the future of emotion research (2010); What’s wrong with “happiness studies”? The cultural semantics of happiness, bonheur, Glück and sčas’te (2011)
Chapter 6 builds on: Is pain a human universal? A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective on pain (2012)
Chapter 8 builds on an unpublished English original translated in Russian as: Следуй путем рисового поля”: семантика пословиц в английском и малайском языках [“Sleduy putem risovogo polya”: semantika poslovits v angliyskom i malayskom yazykakh / “Follow the way of the rice plant”: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay (Bahasa Melayu)] (2009)

The proverbs explicated in Chapter 8 include: (English) A stitch in time saves nine, Make hay while the sun shines, Out of the frying pan into the fire, Practice makes perfect, All that glitters is not gold, Too many cooks spoil the broth, You can’t teach an old dog new tricks; Where there’s smoke there’s fire; (Malay) Ikut resmi padi ‘Follow the way of the rice plant’, Seperti ketam mangajar anak berjalan betul ‘Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight’, Binasa badan kerana mulut ‘The body suffers because of the mouth’, ‘Ada gula, ada semut ‘Where there’s sugar, there’s ants’, Seperti katak di bawah tempurung ‘Like a frog under a coconut shell’, Keluar mulut harimau masuk mulut buaya ‘Out from the tiger’s mouth into the crocodile’s mouth’, Bila gajah dan gajah berlawan kancil juga yang mati tersepit ‘When elephant fights elephant it’s the mousedeer that’s squashed to death’.

Tags listed below are in addition to those listed at the end of the entries for the earlier work on which this book builds.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners