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(1996) Malay – “Social” emotions

Goddard, Cliff (1996). The “social emotions” of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Ethos, 24(3), 426-464. DOI: 10.1525/eth.1996.24.3.02a00020

Studies of cultural variation in emotional meanings have played an important part in the development of the interdisciplinary field of cultural psychology. It is now widely accepted that the language of emotion can be an invaluable window into culture-specific conceptualizations of social life and human nature. Such studies inevitably involve explorations in cross-linguistic semantics. Despite their undoubted value, however, from the point of view of linguistic semantics these inquiries have been informal in the sense that they have not utilized any rigorous framework for semantic analysis. It is the premise of this article that a suitably rigorous method of cross-cultural semantic analysis is the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) approach developed primarily by Anna Wierzbicka. The present study applies the NSM approach to a subset of the emotion vocabulary of Malay (Bahasa Melayu), the national language of Malaysia. The underlying theoretical question is the extent to which emotion concepts are culturally constituted. The related methodological problem is how to analyse and describe emotion terms in a way that does not take Western/English language emotion concepts as neutral or natural scientific categories.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2008) Emotions (jealousy)

Koselak, Arkadiusz (2008). Cette personne a quelque chose que je n’ai pas: une approche contrastive de réactions du type de jalousie [This person has something I do not have: A contrastive approach of jealousy-type reactions]. In Jacques Durand, Benoît Habert & Bernard Laks (Eds.), CMLF 2008 – Congrès mondial de linguistique française (pp. 2085-2100). Paris: EDP Sciences. DOI: 10.1051/cmlf08050. PDF (open access)

Written in French.

The author analyses the French words jalousie ‘jealousy’ and envie ‘envy’ as well as some of their counterparts in Polish, Swedish, German and English. The aim of this Wierzbickian inspired study is to discover differences in conceptualization and to present them schematically.


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

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(2017) Cultural scripts, abstract concepts

Lantin, Robert G. (2017). Introducing prime reduction as a method for writing cultural scripts and defining abstract concepts. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 4(1), 9-15.

Abstract:

This article proposes a method for writing cultural scripts and defining abstract concepts called ‘prime reduction’. NSM theory is used as a starting point. The theory is sketched out, along with the key notions of ‘semantic primes’ and ‘cultural scripts’. Several examples are then provided to illustrate NSM. With the examples in place, the method of ‘prime reduction’ is introduced and applied to several abstract concepts and cultural values, with particular reference to Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and American English. The claim is that prime reduction helps not only with the task of writing cultural scripts, but can also be used to define abstract concepts in the broader context of EFL learning.

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

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(2010) Persian, English (USA) – Compliments

Karimnia, Amin, & Afghari, Akbar (2010).  On the applicability of cultural scripts in teaching L2 compliments. English Language Teaching, 3(3). DOI: 10.5539/elt.v3n3p71. PDF (open access)

In this study, Natural Semantic Metalanguage (henceforth NSM) was used to carry out a comparative analysis. The compliment response behaviour of native Persian speakers was compared to that of Native American English speakers to see if it can provide evidence for the applicability of the NSM model. The descriptive technique was the cultural scripts approach, using conceptual primes proposed in the NSM theory. The cultural scripts were presented in both English and Persian metalanguages. The data were taken from a corpus of 50 hours of recorded live interviews from Persian and English TV channels. The results show the applicability of the NSM model for cross-cultural comparisons. The paper concludes with the pedagogical implications of the development of the theory of cultural scripts for teaching L2 socio-pragmatics in general and compliments in particular.


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

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(2006) Translatability

Afrashi, Azita (2006). On the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory and the issue of translatability. Translation Studies [http://journal.translationstudies.ir], 4(15), 71-84.

Written in Persian.

After introducing the NSM theoretical framework, the paper addresses the idea of the innateness and universal translatability across languages of the basic semantic components that make up the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.


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

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(2006) Spanish (Spain) – Sincerity

Aznárez Mauleón, Mónica, & González Ruiz, Ramón (2006). Semántica y pragmática de algunas expresiones de sinceridad en español actual [Semantics and pragmatics of some expressions of sincerity in modern Spanish]. In Manuel Casado, Ramón González Ruiz, & M. Victoria Romero (Eds.), Análisis del discurso: lengua, cultura, valores [Discourse analysis: language, culture, values]: Vol. 1 (pp. 1211-1228). Madrid: Arco Libros.

Written in Spanish.

This study, which deals with “sincerity” in Spanish, focuses on the use of the clausal adverbs sinceramente ‘sincerely’ and francamente ‘frankly’, and of phrases with the verbs hablar ‘speak’ and decir ‘say’ (e.g. hablar/decir con sinceridad, francamente, con el corazón en la mano ‘speak/say [something] with sincerity, frankly, with your heart in your hand’). In addition, the authors look at conditional structures in peripheral positions (e.g. si quieres que te diga la verdad ‘if you want me to tell you the truth’). The study involves an analysis, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, of semantic differences between the concepts of sinceridad ‘sincerity’ and franqueza ‘frankness’, and of the pragmatic and discursive functions of these expressions.

For a more comprehensive version of this chapter, see González Ruiz, Ramón, & Aznárez Mauleón, Mónica (2005). Approximación desde el Metalenguaje Semántico Natural a la semántica y la pragmática de algunas expresiones de sinceridad del español actual.

For a more comprehensive English version of this chapter, see Aznárez Mauleón, Mónica, & González Ruiz, Ramón (2006). Francamente, el rojo te sienta fatal: Semantics and pragmatics of some expressions of sincerity in present-day Spanish.


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

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(2017) French (L2) – Stance-taking

Peeters, Bert (2017). Du bon usage des stéréotypes en cours de FLE: le cas de l’ethnolinguistique appliquée [Making good use of stereotypes in the French foreign language classroom: the case of applied ethnolinguistics]. Dire, 9, 43-60. http://epublications.unilim.fr/revues/dire/816.

Written in French.

The stereotypes envisaged in this paper serve as a starting point for a research protocol aimed at corroborating the reality, in French languaculture, of the cultural value of stance-taking. The protocol adopted here is part of a research paradigm called applied ethnolinguistics, elaborated for use with and by foreign language students whose linguistic competence is sufficiently advanced to enable them to use their language resources to discover, through essentially (but not uniquely) linguistic means, the cultural values typically associated with the languaculture they study. Since the posited values are hypothetical, corroboration will be required. A specific protocol (the one illustrated here) has been set aside for this purpose. The cultural value of stance-taking will be presented in the form of a pedagogical script expressed in minimal French, a descriptive tool based on the French version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Precautions are taken to ensure that end-users of such scenarios are aware that they are dealing with generalizations (which are unavoidable as languacultures are never homogeneous).

Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2017) Creoles – Semantic molecules, NSM primes: logical concepts

Levisen, Carsten & Aragón, Karime (2017). Lexicalization patterns in core vocabulary: A cross-creole study of semantic molecules. In Peter Bakker, Finn Borchsenius, Carsten Levisen & Eeva Sippola (Eds.), Creole studies – Phylogenetic approaches (pp. 315-344). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/z.211.14lev. PDF (open access)

The study of semantic domains is important for creolistics, given the complex label-meaning configuration in creoles vis-à-vis the European lexifiers. Due to lexical semantic creativity in the creolization process as well as subsequent developments and contacts with lexifiers, substrates, and other contact varieties, each domain seems to have its own history, its own configuration.

Comparing creole words in four different semantic domains, the authors contrast the labels and lexicalizations of social concepts, body part terms, environmental concepts and logical concepts. They focus on the following meanings:

‘children’, ‘women’, ‘men’, ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘wife’, ‘husband’ (social molecules)
‘head’, ‘eyes’, ‘ears’, ‘mouth’, ‘nose’, ‘hands’, ‘legs’ (body part molecules)
‘sun’, ‘sky’, ‘ground, ‘water’, ‘fire’, ‘day’, ‘night’ (environmental molecules)
‘not’, ‘maybe’, ‘can’, ‘because’, ‘if’, ‘very’ and ‘more’ (semantic primes: logical concepts)

Phylogenetic networks are used to compare and contrast lexicalization patterns between domains.

It is shown that the core semantic-conceptual constructs investigated in the study tend to cluster with their lexifiers, but that there are important differences across domains as well: the label-meaning configurations of the social domain stand out as the most diverse, and the environmental domain as the most homogenous.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2017) Creoles – NSM primes

Levisen, Carsten & Bøegh, Kristoffer Friis (2017). Cognitive creolistics and semantic primes: A phylogenetic network analysis. In Peter Bakker, Finn Borchsenius, Carsten Levisen & Eeva Sippola (Eds.), Creole studies – Phylogenetic approaches (pp. 293-313). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/z.211.13lev. PDF (open access)

This study presents a semantically driven lexical comparison of 20 creole languages and five European lexifier languages. Breaking new ground into understanding creole semantics, it uses insights from both cognitive semantics (in particular, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach) and phylogenetic approaches to linguistics comparisons. The authors provide an extensive study of label-meaning correlations as a way to explore the relationship between word labels and word meanings across creoles and lexifiers. They conclude that creoles are not simply “versions” of their lexifier languages, and that it is misleading to say that creoles are “based” on European languages in their basic lexical-semantic configuration. At the same time, they find that creoles do relate more closely to their historical lexifiers than to other creoles, and that the lexical-semantic perspective adds a new dimension to the typology of creoles, nuancing the picture provided by grammar-based comparisons.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2017) English, Japanese – Ethnopragmatics

Wakefield, John; Itakura, Hiroko (2017). English vs. Japanese condolences: What people say and why. In Vahid Parvaresh, & Alessandro Capone (Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation: The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 203-231). Berlin: Springer.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-55759-5_12

Abstract:

This paper uses the ethnopragmatics approach to discover the sociopragmatic knowledge that influences what English and Japanese speakers say when condoling bereaved people who have recently lost someone close to them. Linguistic data are drawn from previous studies on English and Japanese condolences, discourse completion tasks, movies and the authors’ native-speaker intuitions. Analyses from the literature on condolences contribute to the discussion. Cultural scripts — one for English and one for Japanese — are presented as hypotheses to account for the observed verbal and non-verbal behaviour of English and Japanese speakers when offering condolences. It is proposed that the social closeness between the deceased and the bereaved affects what all condolers say, but that this effect is different for English and Japanese speakers. Another key difference is that the perceived role of the condoler is different between the two languacultures: Japanese speakers sense a greater responsibility to share in the mourning process.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2017) Chinese – Pragmemes in the wake of someone’s passing

Tien, Adrian (2017). To be headed for the West, riding a crane: Chinese pragmemes in the wake of someone’s passing. In Vahid Parvaresh, & Alessandro Capone (Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation: The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 183-202). Berlin: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-55759-5_11

Abstract

Jia he xi gui ‘to be headed for the West, riding a crane’ is among those words and phrases that Chinese employ in mentioning someone’s passing. Words and phrases such as this not only represent culturally and socially appropriate expressions featured in the wake of someone’s passing but, pragmatically speaking, they also form part of a tactful set of situation- and context-bound pragmatic acts that should be used around the event of death. This chapter presents an overview of the range of pragmatic acts that Chinese typically exploit to express the pragmeme in connection with the event of death. Important extralinguistic pragmatic acts besides speech that are integral to Chinese interactions surrounding this unfortunate event are also taken into consideration.

To articulate the pragmemes as represented by the pragmatic acts, this chapter adopts the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), as advanced by Anna Wierzbicka, as its theoretical framework. NSM is, essentially, a set of semantically basic and universally identifiable primitive concepts or primes that can be used to reduce culturally complex meanings – including meanings of pragmemes – into semantically simple elucidations. Preliminary findings indicate that Chinese socio-cultural conventions encourage an emotionally expressive yet indirect style of interactions in the wake of someone’s passing, in a way that is consistent with the hierarchical relationship between the deceased and the living.

Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2007) French – Discourse particles: BEN, VOILÀ, QUOI

Waters, Sophia (2007). “Ben, voilà, quoi”: les significations et les emplois des particules énonciatives en français parlé [“Ben, voilà, quoi”: The meanings and uses of discourse particles in spoken French]. BA(Hons) thesis, University of New England, Armidale.

Written in French.

The aim of this thesis is to extract the meanings of three French utterance particles, used in the spoken language, viz. quoi, voilà and ben. The author relies on authentic examples to describe the use of each. The tool used to this end is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, which allows us to make explications accessible both to speakers of French and to those for whom French is a second language.

The author also emphasizes the importance of a thorough understanding of the particles of a language.


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

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(2016) Vietnamese – Ethnopragmatics

Vo, Lien-Huong (2016). Responding to informational inaccuracy in family talk: A Vietnamese ethnopragmatic perspective. Language, Culture and Society, 39, 57-67.

Open access

Abstract:

This paper discusses common Vietnamese ways of thinking about responding to the inaccuracy of information provided by different interactional participants in family talk. The findings show that Vietnamese family interaction, although relaxing and sincere, is strictly hierarchical, which is evident in the way younger interactants respond to misinformation provided by older interactants. Different ways of thinking about appropriate responses to information inaccuracy are articulated using cultural scripts. Furthermore, parental power in the family, as well as the psychological power of older siblings over younger siblings, is touched upon in the discussion, suggesting implications for both prospective research on Vietnamese language and culture and for non-Vietnamese who have intercultural encounters with speakers of Vietnamese.

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

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(2016) Vietnamese – Ethnopragmatics

Vo, Thi Lien Huong (2016). The ethnopragmatics of Vietnamese: A study of the cultural logic of interaction focussing on the speech act complex of disagreement. PhD thesis, Griffith University.

Open access

Abstract:

This study investigates the cultural logic underpinning interactions in Vietnamese language and culture, adopting the ethnopragmatic research paradigm originating within the NSM framework. First, it seeks to elaborate the semantic and pragmatic content of key words for Vietnamese cultural conceptualization using semantic explications and cultural scripts. The key words could be roughly translated by means of the English words friend, colleague, boss and workplace. In this exploration, two overarching cultural schemas, namely quan hệ (‘relationship’) and thứ bậc (‘hierarchy’), are identified and several intertwined social categories, normative values and communicative virtues, underpinning the cultural logic of interaction, are explained. The study then seeks to discover how this cultural logic illuminates Vietnamese ideas about the management of ‘disagreement’ in interaction, under various scenarios and with various interlocutor types (e.g., older vs. younger, family members vs. outsiders).

The findings indicate that the conceptualization of quan hệ (‘relationship’) is affected by family-relatedness. Based on this, a distinction between người nhà (‘family people’) and người ngoài (‘outsiders’) is made. In addition, mutual understanding, shared experience and time length of acquaintanceship qualify an interpersonal relationship and characterize various subcategories among người ngoài (‘outsiders’), including người lạ (‘strangers’), người quen (‘acquaintances’), and người thân (‘close people’). Other sociolinguistic variables (such as gender, personality, and interest) also contribute to the conceptualization of quan hệ (‘relationship’). From a normative perspective, the cultural schema thứ bậc (‘hierarchy’) and its coexisting set of moral rules for behaviour, lễ phép (‘respectfulness’), provide standards and principles for accepted behaviour in Vietnamese interaction.

The findings also show that both cultural schemas inform the way of Vietnamese thinking about appropriate verbal performance in disagreement-type interaction. For example, in instances of disagreement over content accuracy, Vietnamese speakers tend to be more frank as this frankness indicates awareness of collective responsibility. In contrast, they show a propensity towards implicit disagreement with an evaluation. Furthermore, to a certain degree at least, disagreement over content accuracy in family interaction has a didactic orientation, inasmuch as it prepares family members for social interaction and spares them the possible risk of losing face.

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

See also: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(2017) Chinese (Mandarin) – Social relation nouns

Ye, Zhengdao (2017). The semantics of social relation nouns in Chinese. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (63-88). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0003

Abstract:

This study investigates the nature of Chinese social grouping by analysing the meaning and conceptual structure of a set of nouns that denote salient social relations in Chinese and that form two pairs of complementary opposites. It discusses in detail the commonalities and differences underlying the construals of semantic relation within and between both pairs and offers a semantic method to represent them. The study brings to attention the social categories and associated ways of conceptualizing social and meaning relations that are not often talked about in English, and illustrates that an in-depth analysis of social relation nouns enables researchers to access non-obvious aspects of human social cognition, therefore contributing to a deeper knowledge and understanding of the priorities at play in human social categorization.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

See also: , , , , , , , , , ,

(2017) Nouns

Ye, Zhengdao (2017). The semantics of nouns: A cross-linguistic and cross-domain perspective. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 1-18). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0001

This introductory chapter explains the distinctive features which give the volume its coherence and uniqueness in the studies of the semantics of nouns. It explains the rationale of the volume, the importance of adopting a cross-linguistic and cross-domain perspective, and the unified framework which the contributors use for meaning analysis and meaning representation. In particular, it introduces the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) methodology, its approach to the studies of semantic content and the conceptual structure of concrete vocabulary over the last four decades, and its latest methodological developments, such as semantic molecules and semantic templates. The introduction also provides an overview of each chapter in the volume.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2017) Solega – Honeybee terms

Si, Aung (2017). The semantics of honeybee terms in Solega (Dravidian). In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (221-245). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0009

In this chapter, the semantics of three honeybee words from the Dravidian language Solega is discussed, with particular attention paid to methodological issues. These include sourcing naturalistic data for an under-described language, and objectively determining the boundary between core meaning elements and peripheral encyclopedic knowledge. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) explications for perceptually similar honeybees are presented, with notes on challenging issues, such as unambiguously placing the honeybees along a gradient of physical size, as well as incorporating information on ecological relationships between honeybees and other named species. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the Solega folk taxonomy of honeybees.


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

See also: , , , , , ,

(2017) English – Demonyms

Roberts, Michael (2017). The semantics of demonyms in English: Germans, Queenslanders, and Londoners. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 205-220). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0008

This chapter explores the semantics of demonyms, as they are used in the English language, and demonstrates using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) that demonyms can be divided into a number of categories. Using ‘semantic templates’, it shows that the demonyms Germans, Queenslanders, and Londoners can be separated into categories based on their relationship to the semantic molecule ‘country’, and that without this semantic molecule, subtle differences in the use of the demonyms cannot be fully explained. For instance, corpus analysis reveals that the terms used refer to people from countries (Australians, Germans, Danes) do not occur with terms that refer to people from cities or town (Melbournians, Londoners, Parisians). Conceptually, people seem to understand that all demonyms are not the same, and that there are different types of demonyms. Therefore, this study focuses on identifying the types of demonyms, by exploring both their use and their semantic characteristics.


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

See also: ,