Tag: (S) relationships

(2015) Cultural scripts

Wierzbicka, Anna (2015). Language and cultural scripts. In Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 339-356). New York: Routledge.

Cultural scripts are representations of cultural norms that are widely held in a given society and are reflected in language. To be faithful to the “insider perspective” and at the same time intelligible to the outsider, these representations are formulated in simple words and phrases that are cross-translatable between English (the main lingua franca of the globalizing world) and any other natural language. This mode of representation was made possible thanks to the outcomes of the decade-long cross-linguistic semantic research conducted within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage programme. Cultural scripts articulate cultural norms, values, and practices using this metalanguage as a medium of description and interpretation.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2006) – English (Singapore) – Social hierarchy

Wong, Jock Onn (2006). Social hierarchy in the “speech culture” of Singapore. In: Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 99-125). Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110911114.99

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 3 (pp. 57-93) of:

Wong, Jock O. (2014). The Culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519519

The linguistic evidence of forms of address in Anglo English suggests that one of the prominent values of Anglo culture is that of egalitarianism. People from Anglo culture are inclined to view fellow interlocutors as social equals, rather than placing them at various levels on a social hierarchy. Many parents who consider themselves progressive encourage and accept being addressed by their children by means of their first names. This may be part of the general trend towards the suppression of asymmetric (non-reciprocal) relations which can be observed throughout the Western world.

The linguistic evidence in Singapore English, on the other hand, points to something quite different. The use of certain cultural key words suggests that in Singapore culture a person’s generational status in relation to oneself is culturally significant and determines the kind of interaction that would take place between two speakers. This means that when two Singapore English speakers of different generations interact, subject to other sociolinguistic factors such as social status, the younger interlocutor would be expected to exhibit deference for age through the use of appropriate forms of address and other linguistic devices. These two interlocutors would normally not interact on an equal footing.

This study examines three Singapore English cultural key words that reflect this emphasis on generational status with respect to self. They are the social honorific Aunty, the Singapore English-specific speech act verb call, and the child-oriented adjective guāi, roughly ‘well behaved’. The meaning of each of these words is stated in the form of a reductive paraphrase using Natural Semantic Metalanguage. On the basis of meaning, the cultural values reflected by the use of these words are discussed.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2010) Chinese (Cantonese) – Facial expressions

Sun, Jaclyn Kayen (2010). Deciphering the Chinese smile: The importance of facial expressions in linguistic communication. Cross-Sections, 6, 105-120.

This paper explores the role of facial expressions in Cantonese people’s communication, with a focus on 笑 siu3 (lit. ‘smiling’, ‘laughing’, ‘grinning’). The communicative implications underlying linguistic communication are discussed with reference to two core cultural values, 和諧關係 wo4 haai4 gwaan1 hai6 or wo6 haai4 gwaan1 hai6 (lit. ‘harmonious relationship’, ‘together relationship’) and 含蓄 ham4 chuk1 (lit. ‘implicit’, ‘contained’, ‘control’), which govern the facial movements of the Chinese. Semantic explications of cultural key words and cultural scripts are generated based on the author’s personal reflections as a native speaker of Cantonese who has resided in Hong Kong for 20 years. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is used as the methodology of this paper so that these cultural values can be captured through an insider perspective, in a language that is culture-independent. The use of NSM in this present study effectively avoids ethnocentrism, while meanings can be spelt out in an undistorted way that can be understood and translated systematically across different languages, serving as a rigorous tool for comparing different cultural norms. It is hoped that this will aid better understanding of the communicative styles involved and so help to facilitate an effective intercultural communication between Chinese speakers and cultural outsiders.

The following Cantonese words are explicated: 臉色 lim5 sik1 ‘complexion, look’; 賠笑 pui4 siu3 ‘compensating smile’; 苦笑 fu2 siu3 ‘bitter smile’

Note: Provided the first line (“many people think like this”) is dropped, the cultural scripts proposed by the author for particular types of smiles are at the same time semantic explications for the phrases used in Cantonese to identify the smiles in question.


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

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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 – Social categories

Gladkova, Anna (2013). “Is he one of ours?” The cultural semantics and ethnopragmatics of social categories in Russian. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 180-194.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.06.010

Abstract:

This study illuminates the meanings of the Russian social category terms свой svoj ‘one’s own’, чужой čužoj ‘alien/stranger/foreigner’, наш naš ‘ours’ and не наш ne naš ‘not ours’ using written and spoken data of the Russian National Corpus. The paper contributes to our understanding of Russian relationships and social cognition and establishes connections between the meanings of these terms and selected Russian communicative styles. NSM is used to formulate semantic explications of the terms and cultural scripts.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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