Tag: (S) questions

(2002) Russian – Cultural scripts

Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Russian cultural scripts: The theory of cultural scripts and its applications. Ethos, 30(4), 401-432.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.2002.30.4.401

Abstract:

Cultural scripts reflect shared cultural understandings. They are representations of cultural norms that are widely held in a given society and that are reflected in language (in culture-specific key words, phrases, conversational routines, and so on). A key methodological principle in the theory underlying this article (a study in ethnopragmatics avant la lettre) is that the proposed cultural scripts must be formulated in NSM. The author argues that cultural scripts formulated in universal human concepts allow us to understand cultural norms and attitudes from within, that is, from the perspective of cultural insiders, while at the same time making them intelligible to outsiders as well.

In this article, the theory of cultural scripts is applied to Russian culture and, in particular, the Russian cultural scripts concerning speech, truth, and interpersonal communication (“obščenie”).

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2014) Japanese – Politeness and impoliteness

Rilliard, Albert; Erickson, Donna; De Moraes, João Antônio; & Shochi, Takaaki (2014). Cross-cultural perception of some Japanese politeness and impoliteness expressions. In Fabienne Baider & Georgeta Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions in context (pp. 251-276). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: 10.1075/pbns.241.15ril

Abstract:

Prosodic strategies may express polite or impolite speech acts. Five such strategies in Japanese were studied in a cross-cultural experiment. The attitudes were presented to subjects in different modalities: audio-only, video-only, audio-video; they were also described in NSM scripts written in Japanese, American English, Brazilian Portuguese and French. Native subjects of these languages took a pair comparison test, as a way to measure the perceived proximity of presented stimuli. A multidimensional statistical analysis of the results allows a description of the main expressive dimensions perceived by subjects. The test shows the similarity of the perceptive patterns obtained via NSM scripts and visual and audio modalities. It also shows that subjects of different cultural origins shared about 60% of the global representation of these expressions, that 8% are unique to modalities, while 3% are unique to language background.

Rating:


Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner

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