Tag: (S) vertical model of society

(2009) Cultural scripts

Goddard, Cliff (2009). Cultural scripts. In Gunter Senft, Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and language use (pp. 68-80). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hoph.2.07god

Previously published as:

Goddard, Cliff (2006). Cultural scripts. In Jan-Ola Östman, & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics: Vol. 10. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hop.10.cul2

The term ‘cultural script’ refers to a technique for articulating culture-specific norms, values, and practices in terms which are clear, precise, and accessible to cultural insiders and outsiders alike. This result is possible because cultural scripts are formulated in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) of semantic primes, a highly constrained ‘mini-language’ of simple words and grammatical patterns which evidence suggests have equivalents in all languages. Cultural scripts exist at different levels of generality (high level and lower level; high level scripts are sometimes referred to as master scripts). They may relate to different aspects of thinking, speaking, and behaviour. The cultural scripts approach offers a promising method for describing cultural norms and practices in a way that is free from Anglocentrism and that lends itself to direct practical applications in intercultural communication and education.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2004) Korean – Address forms and social cognition / Ethnopragmatics

Yoon, Kyung-Joo (2004). Not just words: Korean social models and the use of honorifics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2), 189-210.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.189

Abstract:

This study demonstrates that it is possible to describe cultural values and their associated communicative norms in simple terms and from an insiders’ perspective, even in the case of languages such as Korean, which is widely known for its highly culture-specific and extremely elaborate system of honorifics. Adopting NSM principles, and in particular the cultural scripts approach, the study attempts to capture and articulate Korean cultural rules about social relationships and the associated communicative norms as reflected in the honorific system and present in numerous fixed expressions. Cultural scripts are presented in both the English and Korean versions of the metalanguage.

In addition, the paper tries to articulate the shared understanding behind the existence of honorifics as a social practice, namely, that differential usage of words can send specific social messages about how interactants regard each other. In the case of Korean, relevant components include a ‘vertical’ model of society in which people are commonly thought of as ‘above’ or ‘below’ oneself, a recognized category of revered senior people (Korean 노인 noin), and the importance of relative age differences in one-to-one interaction.

More information:

This paper is part of a special issue on cultural scripts.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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