Tag: (E) malu

(1998) Indonesian – Emotions (shame)

Mulyadi (1998). Makna malu dalam Bahasa Indonesia (Kajian “wacana kebudayaan”) [Shame-related meanings in Bahasa Indonesia (A study in “cultural discourse”)]. Linguistika, 6, 46-57.

Written in Indonesian.

This article discusses the meaning of malu in Indonesian. The two problems the author focuses on are the semantic description of malu and
its socio-cultural aspects. The analysis is based on the “cultural scripts” approach. The results show that the semantic explication of malu in prototypical scripts involves components such as ‘thinking, ‘feeling’, ‘wanting’, and ‘seeing’, while the sociocultural aspects include the norm of politeness in speaking as well as social relationships like intimacy and non-intimacy.


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

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(2000) Iban – Emotions

Metom, Lilly (2000). An application and interpretation of Iban emotion concepts of shame/shyness, anger and apology using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage and concrete/abstract cultural continuum. In Michael Leigh (Ed.), Borneo 2000: Ethnicity, culture and society. Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Borneo Research Conference (pp. 250-277). Kuching: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

Cultures differ in their style of communication. Iban culture is no exception. The style of interaction and communication of the Ibans is also unique; expressions of emotion in Iban cannot be simply explained or translated into English since meanings and use of the expressions are culture-specific. Furthermore, drawing on the fact that Iban people are more “concrete” in their relation with other members of the group, expressions of emotion such as anger, embarrassment, joy, fear and others are normally conveyed non-verbally. Hence, this paper explores and investigates how these emotion concepts are expressed and used in the daily conduct of the Iban people. Three categories of selected Iban emotions are explicated and analysed here, namely the emotion expression of shame/shyness, the emotion expression of anger, and the emotion expression of apology. In order to explain culturally the emotion words, Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is used as an analytical tool to explicate the words, so as to avoid ethnocentric bias.


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

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(1997) Malay – Cultural values

Goddard, Cliff (1997). Cultural values and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Journal of Pragmatics, 27(2), 183-201. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(96)00032-X

This paper documents some Malay ‘rules of speaking’ and articulates their connections with Malay cultural values, using the new theory of ‘cultural scripts’ developed by Anna Wierzbicka. Aspects of the preferred Malay discourse style, which is normally described as refined, restrained, and charming, are shown to be linked with the Malay social emotion of malu ‘shame, propriety’, with the personal qualities of maruah ‘dignity, self-respect, pride’ and harga diri ‘self-esteem’, and with the ideal of senang hati ‘a heart at ease; (lit.) easy heart’. It is argued that the cultural scripts approach enhances descriptive accuracy, helps reduce ethnocentricm, and facilitates the integration of pragmatics and cultural semantics.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(1996) Malay – “Social” emotions

Goddard, Cliff (1996). The “social emotions” of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Ethos, 24(3), 426-464. DOI: 10.1525/eth.1996.24.3.02a00020

Studies of cultural variation in emotional meanings have played an important part in the development of the interdisciplinary field of cultural psychology. It is now widely accepted that the language of emotion can be an invaluable window into culture-specific conceptualizations of social life and human nature. Such studies inevitably involve explorations in cross-linguistic semantics. Despite their undoubted value, however, from the point of view of linguistic semantics these inquiries have been informal in the sense that they have not utilized any rigorous framework for semantic analysis. It is the premise of this article that a suitably rigorous method of cross-cultural semantic analysis is the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) approach developed primarily by Anna Wierzbicka. The present study applies the NSM approach to a subset of the emotion vocabulary of Malay (Bahasa Melayu), the national language of Malaysia. The underlying theoretical question is the extent to which emotion concepts are culturally constituted. The related methodological problem is how to analyse and describe emotion terms in a way that does not take Western/English language emotion concepts as neutral or natural scientific categories.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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