Tag: (S) non-imposition

(2018) Cultural key words, cultural scripts, Minimal English

Gladkova, Anna, & Larina, Tatiana (2018). Anna Wierzbicka, language, culture and communication. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(4), 717-748.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22363/2312-9182-2018-22-4-717-748 / Open access

Abstract:

This introduction to the second part of a special issue of the Russian Journal of Linguistics marking Anna Wierzbicka’s 80th birthday focuses on her research in the area of language and culture. It surveys some of the fundamental concepts of Wierzbicka’s research program in cultural semantics and ethnopragmatics, in particular cultural key words and cultural scripts, both of which she unpacks using the universal human concepts of NSM. The article also discusses the concept of Minimal Language as a recent development in the NSM program and presents associated research in a variety of fields.

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Simultaneously published in English and Russian. The Russian version follows the English one.

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(2015) English, Russian – Ethnosyntax

Gladkova, Anna (2015). Grammatical structures in cross-cultural comparisons. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 19(4), 57-68.

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Abstract:

This paper discusses how cultural information is embedded at the level of grammar. It treats grammar as inseparable from semantics and pragmatics. The study is done within the approach known as ethnosyntax. The article provides examples of cultural meaning embedded at the level of syntax relying on examples from Russian and English. In particular, it demonstrates variation in impersonal constructions in Russian (linked up with the cultural themes of ‘irrationality’ and ‘unpredictability’) and causative constructions in English (linked up with the cultural ideas of ‘personal autonomy’ and ‘non-imposition’). It then discusses variation in the use of grammatical structures due to the influence of cultural factors on the basis of ways of wording requests in English and Russian.

The linguistic examples in the discussion are sourced from the Russian National Corpus for Russian and Collins Wordbanks Online for English. The article argues for the importance of culture-sensitive linguistic studies in language teaching.

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(2011) Cultural scripts

Gladkova, Anna (2011). Cultural variation in language use. In Gisle Andersen, & Karin Aijmer (Eds.), Pragmatics of society (pp. 571-592). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214420.571

Abstract:

The methodology known as the cultural scripts approach is based on principles that meet the requirements formulated by Clifford Geertz. Section 1 of this paper is a description of this approach. It is followed by an analysis of different culture-specific linguistic practices carried out with the help of this methodology. Section 3 discusses how cultural values are embedded in language- and culture-specific ways of speaking. In this section, examples are drawn from Anglo English and Singapore English in relation to the value of ‘personal autonomy’, from Russian in relation to the values of pravda ‘truth’ and iskrennost’ ‘sincerity’, and from Yiddish in relation to the cultural practice of cursing. Section 4 illustrates how social categories affect ways of interaction on the basis of Korean, Chinese and Russian cultures. Section 5 demonstrates how a communicative practice of ‘gratitude’ can have different cultural interpretations. Examples are drawn from Anglo English, Indian, Korean, Yiddish and West African cultures. Section 6 concludes.

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(2013) Russian – Address forms and social cognition / Cultural key words / Ethnopragmatics

Gladkova, Anna (2013). The Russian social category svoj: A study in ethnopragmatics. In Istvan Kecskes, & Jesús Romero-Trillo (Eds.), Research trends in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 219-238). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614513735.219

Abstract:

Terms for social categories provide a window into understanding culture. They conceptualize relationships and also relate to a culture’s communicative practices. The term for the Russian social category свой svoj possesses the status of a cultural key word. It is associated with important cultural rules of behaviour specific to people of this kind. It also exists at the intersection of other cultural rules, namely искренность iskrennost’ ‘sincerity’ and сокровенный sokrovennyj ‘innermost meanings’. The cultural scripts approach and NSM constitute reliable tools for describing these rules in terms that are universal, accessible and easily translatable into other languages.

The results of the study support the idea of a textual character of culture. Culture is best represented as a collection of rules or texts (Geertz), rather than by means of over-riding universalist concepts. The cultural scripts approach as it is implemented in ethnopragmatics is arguably the most adequate way to describe this variety of texts from a linguistic point of view.

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(2013) Russian – Cultural key words / Ethnopragmatics

Gladkova, Anna (2013). A cultural semantic and ethnopragmatic analysis of the Russian praise words molodec and umnica (with reference to English and Chinese). Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2013, 249-272.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6250-3_12

Abstract:

Using data from the Russian National Corpus, this chapter explores the semantics and ethnopragmatics of two Russian praise words, молодец molodec and умница umnica. NSM is used to formulate semantic explications of the words in question as well as cultural scripts as a reflection of underlying cultural ideas. Cultural specificity of the terms is established by comparison with other Russian cultural key words and ideas as well as comparison with their closest pragmatic equivalents in English (good boy/girl) and in Chinese (乖 guāi). The investigation allows us to formulate culturally valued modes of behaviour in Russian.

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(2015) Ethnosyntax

Gladkova, Anna (2015). Ethnosyntax. In Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 33-50). New York: Routledge.

Abstract:

The author provides an account of research on ethnosyntax, the study of how syntax, including morphology, encodes culture. Maintaining that the theoretical foundations of ethnosyntax were laid by Sapir and Whorf, she makes a distinction between a narrow and a broad sense of ethnosyntax. Ethnosyntax in the narrow sense explores cultural meanings of particular grammatical structures, whereas ethnosyntax in the broad sense examines how pragmatic and cultural norms influence the choice of grammatical structures. Several examples are provided for each approach. As an example of morpho-syntax encoding cultural meaning, the author presents the case of Russian, where address forms often reveal attitudes of endearment and intimacy encoded by a diminutive. As an example of the second broader sense, she compares request speech acts in Russian and English, and examines how these languages employ different grammatical structures to perform the same speech act and how this usage is compatible with broader cultural norms.

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(2016) English, Russian – Cultural scripts / Mental states

Gladkova, Anna (2016). Propositional attitudes and cultural scripts. In Alessandro Capone, & Jacob L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 329-352). Berlin: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_12

Abstract:

In linguistic literature inspired by work in philosophy, the key concepts for the analysis of ‘propositional attitudes’ include mental states such as ‘belief’, ‘hope’, ‘doubt’ and ‘know’, among others. This literature, and the work on which it is based, ignores cultural and linguistic variation in the conceptualization of mental states that can be labelled as ‘propositional attitudes’. It also overlooks the fact that categorization of mental states, in general, and ‘propositional attitudes’, in particular, is aligned with cultural attitudes and understandings.

This chapter proposes a comparative analysis of selected words reflecting propositional attitudes in English and Russian. The focus is on to believe vs. считать sčitat’ and on belief vs. мнение mnenie, and the analysis is undertaken in terms of universal meanings, using NSM. It is demonstrated that the supremacy of logical concepts in current scientific thinking is not reflected in the architecture of the mental lexicon as it is revealed in universal human concepts. Instead, it is argued that NSM semantic universals can be regarded as more appropriate elements in the analysis of propositional attitudes.

The concepts central to the analysis are KNOW and THINK, which have been shown to have exact semantic equivalents in Russian and English as well as other languages. The chapter shows that the analysed concepts differ in meaning and can be related to culture-specific cognitive styles that can be formulated as cultural scripts.

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