Tag: (E) unhappy

(2016) NSM and Minimal English in second language teaching

Tully, Alex (2016). Applications of NSM and Minimal English in second language teaching. Master’s thesis, Australian National University.

This thesis proposes a new approach to second language teaching to adults aiming at developing their “strategic competence”, the ability to use paraphrase to communicate meaning when confronted with gaps in their vocabulary. The importance of this skill has been widely acknowledged, yet in comparison to other aspects of linguistic competence, very little has been published on practical ways to develop it. To do so, this thesis draws the link between the theoretical framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and its expanded version Minimal English, and practical applications involving the use of paraphrase by both learners and teachers. It argues for explicit teaching of the vocabulary of Minimal English (and its equivalents based on other languages), including contrastive analysis of the “mini-grammar” encapsulated in each NSM prime, and illustrates how this can be done.

By doing this, this new approach wholeheartedly rejects methods such as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which are based on the view that a second language (L2) is “acquired” via an unconscious, implicit process similar to the learning of a first language (L1). The empirical studies underpinning CLT have only been replicated when typological similarities between L1 and L2 enable positive transfer of grammatical features. In contrast, the proposed methodology aims to be applicable to all learners, especially those facing large typological L1-L2 typological differences. In light of the large and growing numbers of speakers of Asian languages learning English, this thesis makes an innovative contribution to current language teaching by moving away from methodologies such as CLT, which have not proven themselves useful or popular outside Europe. Rather, this thesis outlines a theoretical framework that avoids assumptions about positive transfer, and is thus more suitable for the global nature of language teaching in the 21st century.


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

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(1992) Various languages – Emotion concepts

Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Defining emotion concepts. Cognitive Science, 16(4), 539-581. DOI: 10.1207/s15516709cog1604_4

This article demonstrates that emotion concepts – including the so-called basic ones, such as anger or sadness – can be defined in terms of universal semantic primitives such as GOOD, BAD, DO, HAPPEN, KNOW, and WANT, in terms of which all areas of meaning, in all languages, can be rigorously and revealingly portrayed.

The definitions proposed here take the form of certain prototypical scripts or scenarios, formulated in terms of thoughts, wants, and feelings. These scripts, however, can be seen as formulas providing rigorous specifications of necessary and sufficient conditions (not for emotions as such, but for emotion concepts), and they do not support the idea that boundaries between emotion concepts are “fuzzy”. On the contrary, the small set of universal semantic primitives employed here (which has emerged from two decades of empirical investigations by the author and colleagues) demonstrates that even apparent synonyms such as sad and unhappy embody different – and fully specifiable – conceptual structures.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2002) Emotions

Goddard, Cliff (2002). Explicating emotions across languages and cultures: A semantic approach. In Susan R. Fussell (Ed.), The verbal communication of emotions: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 19-53). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

This chapter sketches out the integrated and meaning-based approach to the study of emotions that has been pioneered by Anna Wierzbicka. It seeks to bring together the study of the emotion lexicon of different languages with the study of different “cultural scripts” that are one factor (among others, of course) influencing the expression of emotions in discourse. More than this, it also aims to take in the encoding of emotional meanings by means of other linguistic devices, such as exclamations and specialized grammatical constructions, and even the encoding of emotional meanings in facial expressions and kinaesthetics. Because the Natural Semantic Metalanguage is based on simple, universally available meanings, it provides a tool that enables us to undertake this very broad range of investigations across languages and cultures, while minimizing the risk of ethnocentrism creeping into the very terms of description.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2010) English, Chinese, Korean, Russian – Ethnopsychology and personhood / Mental states

Goddard, Cliff (2010). Universals and variation in the lexicon of mental state concepts. In Barbara C. Malt, & Phillip Wolff (Eds.), Words and the mind: How words capture human experience (pp. 72-92). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195311129.003.0005

Abstract:

The first two sections of this chapter provide an overview of NSM research and findings, with a particular focus on mental state concepts. The next two sections show how NSM techniques make it possible to reveal complex and culture-specific meanings in detail and in terms that are readily transposable across languages. Examples include emotion terms, epistemic verbs, and ethnopsychological constructs in English, Chinese, Russian, and Korean. The next section discusses the relationship between linguistic meanings (word meanings) and cognition and elucidates the theoretical and methodological implications for cognitive science. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that people’s subjective emotional experience can be shaped or coloured to some extent by the lexical categories of their language.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2017) English (Ireland) – Emotions

Romero-Trillo, Jesús & Avila-Ledesma, Nancy E. (2017). The ethnopragmatic representation of positive and negative emotions in Irish immigrants’ letters. In Keith Allan, Alessandro Capone & Istvan Kecskes (Eds.), Pragmemes and theories of language use (pp. 393-420). Cham: Springer.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-43491-9_21

Abstract:

This chapter explores the ethnopragmatic conceptualization of happiness and sadness in the language of the Irish citizens who immigrated to North America between 1811 and 1880, on the basis of a corpus of Irish emigrants’ personal correspondence. In particular, this study proposes a Natural Semantic Metalanguage examination of the emotional load of the positive adjectives happy and glad, and their negative counterparts, unhappy and sad, to elucidate Irish emigrants’ psychological states of mind and emotional responses to transatlantic migrations and life abroad. It investigates the pragmatic uses of key emotion terms in the corpus based upon the semantic explications developed by Wierzbicka and adds to these an explication of the adjective glad. It is shown that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework can be fruitfully used as an analytic tool to unveil the linguistic specificities embedded in the conceptualization of psychological acts such as emotions.

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

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