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Wierzbicka, Anna (1985). A semantic metalanguage for a crosscultural comparison of speech acts and speech genres. Language in Society, 14(4), 491-514.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500011489

Abstract:

This paper discusses a number of speech acts and speech genres from various languages, approaching them through the words that name them. It is claimed that folk names of speech acts and speech genres are culture-specific and provide an important source of insight into the communicative routines most characteristic of a given society; and that to fully exploit this source one must carry out a rigorous semantic analysis of such names and express the results of this analysis in a culture-independent semantic metalanguage. The author proposes such a metalanguage and illustrates her approach with numerous detailed semantic analyses. She suggests that analyses of speech acts and speech genres carried out in terms of English folk labels are ethnocentric and unsuitable for cross-cultural comparison. She shows how folk labels of speech acts and speech genres characteristic of a given language reflect salient features of the culture associated with that language, and how the use of the proposed semantic metalanguage, derived from natural language, helps to achieve the desired double goal of insight and rigour in this area of study.

More information:

A more recent publication building on this one is:

Chapter 5 (pp. 149-196) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1991), Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Rating:

Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners