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Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Cultural scripts and intercultural communication. In Anna Trosborg (Ed.), Pragmatics across languages and cultures (pp. 43-78). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110214444.1.43

Insights from cross-cultural literature written in English by authors of non-Anglo backgrounds throw a great deal of light on the challenges of cross-cultural lives and cross-cultural encounters. NSM techniques allow the author to translate such experiential evidence into cultural scripts written in a controlled mini-language based on simple and cross-translatable words. The scripts can either portray how cultural insiders think, or they can specifically target outsiders and newcomers to a culture. The paper provides a large range of examples involving more than a dozen different languages in different social situations including, for example, Russian and English scripts for “making a request”, scripts against “criticizing the person you are with”, scripts for “pleasant interaction”, scripts against “blurting out what one thinks”, to mention just a few.

Although cultural scripts may be seen by some as stereotypes, their use, provided it is consistent with the “objective evidence” of lexical facts and the “subjective evidence” from bicultural writers, can lead to increased cross-cultural understanding and serve as a basis for intercultural training. The methodology of cultural scripts formulated in simple and universal human concepts can help explain shared assumptions and values embedded in ways of speaking in different languages and cultures and can at the same time be practically useful in intercultural education.

Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners