Tag: (S) requests
Dendenne, Boudjemaa (2017). A cross-cultural study of speech act realisations in Arabic and English: A cultural-scripts approach. Revue académique des études humaines et sociales, Series B: Littérature et Philosophie, 18, 3-15. PDF (Researchgate)
This paper reports on the findings of a cross-cultural pragmatic study into the realization of two speech acts that are common in Arabic and English, namely requests and apologies. Natural Semantic Metalanguage and cultural scripts have been employed for this purpose. The usefulness of the adopted approach lies in the fact that it describes norms, behaviours and cultural meanings in a particular language/culture in a way that is accessible to both insiders and outsiders. Cross-cultural education and intercultural communication both stand to benefit from such an approach.
The ultimate goal behind the use of NSM and cultural scripts is to reduce cultural misunderstandings and conflicts. The author strongly recommends adoption of these tools to re-describe and re-explicate findings that are regarded as empirically well founded in previous cross-cultural studies.
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tagged as: (S) apologies, (S) requests
Goddard, Cliff (2018). Ten lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring language, thought and culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/9789004357723
These lively lectures introduce the theory, practice, and application of a versatile, rigorous, and non-Anglocentic approach to cross-linguistic semantics.
Table of contents:
- Preliminary material
- From Leibniz to Wierzbicka: The history and philosophy of NSM
- Semantic primes and their grammar
- Explicating emotion concepts across languages and cultures
- Wonderful, terrific, fabulous: English evaluational adjectives
- Semantic molecules and semantic complexity
- Words as carriers of cultural meaning
- English verb semantics: Verbs of doing and saying
- English verb alternations and constructions
- Applications of NSM: Minimal English, cultural scripts and language teaching
- Retrospect: NSM compared with other approaches to semantic analysis
Chapter 3 discusses selected exponents of primes in Farsi (Persian). Chapter 4 provides an explication of a North-Spanish homesickness word (morriña). Chapter 7 provides an explication of Chinese 孝 xiào ‘filial piety’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) Alles in Ordnung, (E) ask, (E) at night, (E) believe that, (E) blink, (E) brilliant, (E) build, (E) children, (E) complex, (E) contented, (E) crawl, (E) cut, (E) delighted, (E) delightful, (E) dig, (E) during the day, (E) eat, (E) entertaining, (E) excellent, (E) exciting, (E) great, (E) happy, (E) homesick, (E) impressive, (E) know someone, (E) know that, (E) lykke, (E) memorable, (E) men, (E) morriña, (E) mouth, (E) not fair, (E) order, (E) pleased, (E) pour, (E) powerful, (E) sčitat’ čto считать что, (E) sky, (E) stars, (E) stunning, (E) suggest, (E) sun, (E) swim, (E) tell, (E) terrific, (E) tęsknić, (E) water, (E) women, (E) wonderful, (E) xiào 孝, (E) xìngfú 幸福, (S) expressiveness, (S) feelings, (S) personal autonomy, (S) personal comments, (S) personal remarks, (S) requests, (S) sincerity, (T) Chinese, (T) English, (T) Finnish, (T) semantic molecules
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
Tagged as: (S) apologies, (S) blurting out what one thinks, (S) criticism of others, (S) cushioning the blow, (S) I am someone above this someone, (S) personal remarks, (S) pleasant interaction, (S) requests, (S) self-expression, (S) self-justification, (S) softening the blow, (S) straight talk, (S) think first, (S) this someone is someone above me, (S) this someone is someone like me, (T) English
Goddard, Cliff (2010). Cultural scripts: Applications to language teaching and intercultural communication. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association) 3, 105-119.
Cultural scripts provide a powerful new technique for articulating cultural norms, values and practices using simple, cross-translatable phrasing. The technique is based on many decades of research into cross-cultural semantics by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. This paper illustrates the cultural scripts approach with three examples of pragmatics of Anglo English: request strategies, personal remarks, and phatic complimenting in American English. It argues that the cultural scripts approach can be readily adapted for use in teaching intercultural pragmatics and intercultural communication, and shows with concrete examples (so-called pedagogical scripts) how this can be done.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (S) compliments, (S) expressive positivity, (S) personal autonomy, (S) personal remarks, (S) pleasant interaction, (S) requests, (T) Chinese, (T) English
Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2008). An alternative model for the development of pragmatic competence. 언어연구 [The Journal of Studies in Language], 24(1), 125-148.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18627/jslg.24.1.200805.125 / Open access
Abstract:
With the ever increasing acknowledgement of the significant role played by pragmatic competence in second language acquisition (SLA), there is a growing need for practical models of pragmatic instruction in the L2 classroom. The author critically reviews research on pragmatic competence in SLA and argues in favour of an integrative model inspired by work in the field of cross-cultural communication and ethnopragmatics.
The proposal, which is not restricted to particular L2 teaching settings, is to combine the NSM approach’s cultural scripts theory with J.M. Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity. A call is launched for empirical studies applying the alternative model to be undertaken. The author herself provides exemplification focusing on pragmatic instruction for Korean EFL learners. A number of cultural scripts are introduced to show the utility of the proposed model in the EFL classroom in Korea.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (E) freedom, (S) address practices, (S) interactions with older people, (S) personal autonomy, (S) requests
Wong, Jock Onn (2004). Cultural scripts, ways of speaking and perceptions of personal autonomy: Anglo English vs. Singapore English. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2), 231-248. DOI: 10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.231
A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 139-179) of:
Wong, Jock O. (2014). The culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519519
Every language variety embodies a set of culture-specific ways of thinking that can be articulated with maximal clarity and minimal ethnocentrism in the form of ‘cultural scripts’ using Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). In this study, perceptions of ‘personal autonomy’ in Anglo culture and in Singapore culture are explored on the basis of linguistic evidence using NSM. These Anglo and Singaporean attitudes to personal autonomy are articulated in the form of cultural scripts, and are thus compared and contrasted. The proposed cultural scripts show that even though Anglo English speakers and Singapore English speakers can both be said to speak the same ‘language’, the cultural values reflected by the two varieties can be radically different from and even at odds with each other.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (S) doing things willingly, (S) helpfulness, (S) independent thinking, (S) influencing other people’s way of thinking, (S) requests, (S) wanting someone to do something
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.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tagged as: (S) cursing, (S) gratitude, (S) interacting with an acquaintance, (S) interaction, (S) interactions with older people, (S) non-imposition, (S) requests, (S) truth and untruth
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Etnopragmatik og interkulturel competence: Didaktiske nytænkninger i fremmedsprogsundervisningen [Ethnopragmatics and intercultural competence: Didactic innovations in foreign language teaching]. Ny forskning i grammatik, 23, 38-54.
Open access
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible pedagogical application of ethnopragmatics in the field of language learning and teaching with the purpose of promoting intercultural communicative competence. Ethnopragmatics examines cultural aspects of language and communication from an insider’s perspective. Its pedagogical potential lies in its consistent attempts to unravel the values, beliefs and norms that underpin the verbal behaviours of a cultural group and to do so without cultural bias.
More information:
Written in Danish. An earlier English version of this paper was published as:
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Possible contributions of ethnopragmatics to second language learning and teaching. In Sten Vikner, Henrik Jørgensen, & Elly van Gelderen (Eds.), Let us have articles betwixt us: Papers in historical and comparative linguistics in honour of Johanna L. Wood (pp. 185-206). Aarhus: Aarhus University.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tagged as: (E) højskole, (E) hygge, (S) hygge, (S) personal autonomy, (S) requests
