Tag: (E) the bush

(2018) Ethnogeographical categories


Bromhead, Helen (2018). Landscape and culture – Cross-linguistic perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/clscc.9

This book is based, in part, on the author’s PhD thesis:

Bromhead, Helen (2013). Mountains, rivers, billabongs: Ethnogeographical categorization in cross-linguistic perspective. PhD thesis, Australian National University.

The relationship between landscape and culture seen through language is an exciting and increasingly explored area. This ground-breaking book contributes to the linguistic examination of both cross-cultural variation and unifying elements in geographical categorization.

The study focuses on the contrastive lexical semantics of certain landscape words in a number of languages. It presents landscape concepts as anchored in a human-centred perspective, based on our cognition, vision, and experience in places. The aim is to show how geographical vocabulary sheds light on the culturally and historically shaped ways people see and think about the land around them. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is used throughout, because it allows an analysis of meaning which is both fine-grained and transparent, and culturally sensitive.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2011) English (Australia) – Cultural key words: THE BUSH


Bromhead, Helen (2011). The bush in Australian English. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 31(4), 445-471. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2011.625600

Individual landscape terms in various languages do not always have exact equivalents in other languages, or even in different varieties of the same language. One example is the term the bush in Australian English. The bush denotes an Australian landscape zone, but the word has developed additional senses related to culture and human geography. This study delineates the semantics of the bush in Australian English in relation to Australian culture. These meanings of the bush are described using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to linguistic analysis.

The study finds that the bush is a key word in Australian culture. The author shows that in Australian English and other settler Englishes the meanings of national landscape terms can shed light on the relationship between settlers’ cultures, and their new environments and ways of life.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners