Tag: (S) truth and untruth

(2018) English, French – (WHITE) LIES, (PIEUX) MENSONGES

Peeters, Bert (2018). (White) lies and (pieux) mensonges: Ethnolinguistic elaborations on not telling the truth. Etnolingwistyka, 30, 169-188. DOI: 10.17951/et.2018.30.169. PDF (open access)

The fact that most European languages have a word similar to the verb lie has led many to believe that lying is a universal cognitive category, that all human beings have an intuitive understanding of what it means to lie, and that all forms of discourse involving a lack of truth can be analysed as forms of lying, wherever they occur. This is a myth. Within Europe itself, there are differences, and these become more outspoken once we move further away. Even a Melanesian creole such as Bislama, in spite of being English-based, has no strict equivalent to the verb lie; the closest it gets is by means of the verb giaman, which, unlike lie, refers to a fairly common, sometimes even a necessary course of action.

On the other hand, whereas, at least from an Anglo point of view, lying is mostly felt to be morally reprehensible, there are instances that are not as straightforward. In English, lies that are deemed less bad than others are often referred to as white lies. Other terms exist, but this one is by far the commonest and has a high degree of cultural salience. Does the concept exist in other languages, e.g. French? The phrase pieux mensonge comes to mind. White lies and pieux mensonges are shown to be overlapping categories, but carry different connotations, which are spelled out using a tool known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.


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(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”).

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(2002) English – Cultural key words: RIGHT, WRONG

Wierzbicka, Anna (2002). Right and wrong: From philosophy to everyday discourse. Discourse Studies, 4(2), 225-252. DOI: 10.1177/14614456020040020601

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 3 (pp. 61-102) of:

Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). English: Meaning and culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

One of the most interesting phenomena in the history of the English language is the remarkable rise of the word right, in its many interrelated senses and uses. This article tries to trace the changes in the meaning and use of this word, as well as the rise of new conversational routines based on right, and raises questions about the cultural underpinnings of these semantic and pragmatic developments. It explores the hypothesis that the “discourse of truth” declined in English over the centuries; that the use of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as parallel concepts (and opposites) increased; and it notes that the use of right as an adjective increased enormously in relation to the use of true.

Originally, right meant ‘straight’, as in a right line (straight line). Figuratively, perhaps, this right in the sense ‘straight’ was also used in an evaluative sense: ‘good’, with an additional component building on the geometrical image: ‘clearly good’. Spoken of somebody else’s words, right was linked (implicitly or explicitly) with ‘true’. However, in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, right appears to have begun to be used more and more with reference to thinking rather than speaking. The association of right with thinking seems to have spread in parallel with a contrastive use of right and wrong – a trend apparently encouraged by the influence of the Reformation, especially within its Calvinist wing. Another interesting development is that, over the last two centuries or so, the discourse of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ appears to have found a competitor in a discourse of ‘cooperation’ and mutual concessions. Judging by both the frequency and range of its use, the word right flourished in this atmosphere, whereas wrong was increasingly left behind.

This article traces the transition from the Shakespearean response “Right.”, described by the OED as ‘you are right; you speak well’, to the present-day “Right.” of non-committal acknowledgement and it links the developments in semantics and discourse patterns with historical phenomena such as Puritanism, British empiricism, the Enlightenment and the growth of democracy.


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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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(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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