Tag: (E) lykke

(2018) Ten lectures on NSM

Goddard, Cliff (2018). Ten lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring language, thought and culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/9789004357723

These lively lectures introduce the theory, practice, and application of a versatile, rigorous, and non-Anglocentic approach to cross-linguistic semantics.

Table of contents:

  1. Preliminary material
  2. From Leibniz to Wierzbicka: The history and philosophy of NSM
  3. Semantic primes and their grammar
  4. Explicating emotion concepts across languages and cultures
  5. Wonderful, terrific, fabulous: English evaluational adjectives
  6. Semantic molecules and semantic complexity
  7. Words as carriers of cultural meaning
  8. English verb semantics: Verbs of doing and saying
  9. English verb alternations and constructions
  10. Applications of NSM: Minimal English, cultural scripts and language teaching
  11. Retrospect: NSM compared with other approaches to semantic analysis

Chapter 3 discusses selected exponents of primes in Farsi (Persian). Chapter 4 provides an explication of a North-Spanish homesickness word (morriña). Chapter 7 provides an explication of Chinese 孝 xiào ‘filial piety’.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

Tagged as: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(2014) Danish – Emotions

Levisen, Carsten (2014). The story of “Danish happiness”: Global discourse and local semantics. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 174-193.

DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2013.846455

Abstract:

According to a new global narrative, the Danes are the happiest people in the world. This paper takes a critical look at the international media discourse on “happiness”, tracing its roots and underlying assumptions. Adopting the NSM approach to linguistic and cultural analysis, a new in-depth semantic analysis of the story of “Danish happiness” is developed. It turns out that the allegedly happiest people on earth do not (usually) talk and think about life in terms of ”happiness”, but rather through a different set of cultural concepts and scripts, all guided by the Danish cultural key word lykke.

The semantics of lykke is explicated along with two related concepts livsglæde, roughly, ‘life joy’ and livslyst ‘life pleasure’, and based on semantic and ethnopragmatic analysis, a set of lykke-related cultural scripts is provided. With new evidence from Danish, it is argued that global Anglo-International “happiness discourse” misrepresents local meanings and values, and that the one-sided focus on “happiness across nations” in the social sciences is in dire need of cross-linguistic confrontation. The paper calls for a post-happiness turn in the study of words and values across languages, and for a new critical awareness of linguistic and conceptual biases in Anglo-international discourse.

More information:

Reissued as:

Levisen, Carsten (2016). The story of “Danish happiness”: Global discourse and local semantics. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 45-64). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.03lev

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

Tagged as: , , , , , , ,