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(2005) Exploring bilingual lives with NSM

Wierzbicka, Anna (2005). Universal human concepts as a tool for exploring bilingual lives. International Journal of Bilingualism, 9(1), 7-26. DOI: 10.1177/13670069050090010201

Embodied within every language is a unique universe of meaning. This raises some key questions about the conceptual universes of bilingual persons: What meanings does a bilingual person live with? How does such a person (in contrast with a monolingual person) think and feel? How are their thoughts and emotions related to their two different languages? In order to investigate these questions we need to listen to the subjective experience of bilingual people and, in particular, bilingual writers who have been able to reflect deeply on their personal experience and to articulate their own insights. We also need to analyze semantic differences between languages and try to link the “soft” subjective experience of bilingual persons with “hard” objective evidence derived from rigorous semantic analysis. Finally, we need to recognize that in order to compare the different meanings that bilingual persons live with, we need a common measure at our disposal. In this paper, I will argue that the “Natural Semantic Metalanguage” based on empirically established lexical and grammatical universals provides such a common measure, and I will try to show how the use of this metalanguage can help us to explore the conceptual worlds of bilingual people more effectively and more revealingly.

(2006) Semantic primes

Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). Semantic primitives. In Keith Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. Second edition: Vol. 11 (pp. 134-137). Oxford: Elsevier.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2006) ‘Mind’, ‘agency’, ‘morality’

Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). On folk conceptions of mind, agency and morality. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 6(1/2), 165-179. DOI: 10.1163/156853706776931286

This paper is part of a special issue on folk conceptions of mind, agency and morality. It consists of four parts, in which the author comments on the topic at large, then singles out three of the papers in it for further comment. At the end of the first part, she makes the following main points, which apply, in one way or the other, to all papers in the special issue.

  1. To compare folk conceptions or folk concepts of any kind we need a tertium comparationis, that is, a culture-independent semantic metalanguage.
  2. English cannot serve as such a metalanguage, because like any other natural language, it is itself saturated with culture-specific folk conceptions.
  3. A culture-independent metalanguage in which unbiased comparisons can be carried out is available in “NSM”, that is, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.
  4. Language is a key issue in all cross-cultural research and all research that has as its subject human cognition. No matter how broad the empirical basis of a cross-cultural study, or the study into human cognition, is, if this study does not pay attention to the language in which its hypotheses and analyses are formulated, it is likely to impose on the data an ethnocentric perspective. Such ethnocentrism may have been unavoidable in the past, before it was known what the universal, culture-independent human concepts were. Now that this is known, however, it is no longer unavoidable. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage is available as a tested analytical tool for anyone who would wish to engage in a study of human speech practices, and human cognition, in an unbiased and maximally (if not entirely) culture-independent way. The effectiveness of this tool has been demonstrated in hundreds of analyses, carried out by many scholars across a broad spectrum of languages, cultures, and conceptual domains.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2006) English – Cultural key words: EXPERIENCE

Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). “Experience” in John Searle’s account of the mind: Brain, mind and Anglo culture. Intercultural Pragmatics, 3(3), 241-255. DOI: 10.1515/IP.2006.016

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 2 (pp. 25-93) of:

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Experience, evidence, and sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English. New York: Oxford University Press.

This paper is part of a larger study that focuses on the word experience and its semantic history. Its main point is that this word plays now, and has played for a long time, an extremely important role in the thought world associated with the English language, and that the changes in its use and meanings reflect, and provide evidence for, important cultural developments. The study argues that, to understand Anglo culture and see it in a historical and comparative perspective, we need to understand the meanings and the history of the word experience. It also argues that, given the role of English in present-day science and the importance of experience in present-day English, we need to understand the cultural underpinnings of this English key word.

The word experience plays a vital role in the ways of thinking of speakers of English; it provides a prism through which they tend to interpret the world. Its range of use is very wide and includes a number of distinct senses. However, through several of these senses (the more recent ones) runs a common theme, which reflects a characteristically ‘‘Anglo’’ perspective on the world and on human life. This is why the word experience is often untranslatable into other languages, even European, without being semantically distorted.

What, then, does the English key word experience mean and how exactly does it differ from its closest counterparts in other languages or in earlier varieties of English?

To answer such questions, one needs to engage in some rigorous semantic analysis, both synchronic and diachronic. This requires a suitable methodology such as that provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2006) English – ‘Putting pressure’

Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). Anglo scripts against “putting pressure” on other people and their linguistic manifestations. In Cliff Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (31-63). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110911114.31

Translated into Russian as:

Анна Вежбицкая (2007). Англоязычные сценарии против «давления» на других людей и их лингвистические манифестации. Жанры речи [Speech genres], 5.

No abstract available.

(2006) English – Key words

Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). The concept of ‘dialogue’ in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective. Discourse Studies, 8(5), 675-703.

DOI: 10.1177/1461445606067334

Abstract:

‘Dialogue’ is an important concept in the contemporary world. It plays a very significant role in English public discourse, and through English, or mainly through English, it has spread throughout the world. For example, the dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi calls for ‘reconciliation and dialogue’ in Burma (or so she is reported to have done in English language news reports), the Russian pro-democracy groups ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to ‘begin a dialogue’ with them, Popes Paul VI and John Paul II are praised for opening the Catholic Church to a ‘dialogue’ with other Christian churches and other faiths (or criticized for not going far enough in this direction), and so on.

But what exactly does the word dialogue mean? NSM is used in this paper in an attempt to answer that question.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

See also: , ,

(2006) Colours and vision

Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). The semantics of colour: A new paradigm. In Carole P. Biggam, & Christian J. Kay (Eds.), Progress in colour studies: Vol. 1. Language and culture (pp. 1-24). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/z.pics1.05wie

Abstract:

To be able to establish the true universals of visual semantics we must first of all reject the ones that are false. Above all, we must reject the widespread view that there are some ‘colour universals’, whether absolute or implicational. There are no ‘colour universals’ because ‘colour’ itself is not a universal concept. What is universal is the concept of SEEing. SEEing, not colour, must be the starting point, and the cornerstone, of our investigations.

It appears that in all languages there are visual descriptors referring to some features of the natural environment. Apart from such universal or widespread environmental features, all languages appear to have visual descriptors referring to some features of the local environment, in particular to visually salient local minerals and other pigments, especially those that can be used for painting, decoration, or dyeing. It also appears that in all languages there are some visual descriptors linked to the human (and sometimes animal) body. In addition to such commonalities in the visual descriptors, there is also a wide variety of more restricted and even idiosyncratic types.

To understand the human conceptualization of the visual world in both its diversity and its commonalities, we need to recognize the role of environmental and bodily prototypes recurring in human experience (such as fire, sun, blood, sky and grass), and to base our analysis on the bedrock of universal human concepts; and it is only on this basis that we can hope to arrive at a tenable and enduring synthesis.

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See also: , , , ,

(2005) Visual semantics

Wierzbicka, Anna (2005). There are no “color universals” but there are universals of visual semantics. Anthropological Linguistics, 47(2), 217-244. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25132327

The search for the “universals of colour” that was initiated by Berlin and Kay’s classic book is based on the assumption that there can be, and indeed that there are, some conceptual universals of colour. This article brings new evidence, new analyses, and new arguments against the Berlin and Kay paradigm, and offers a radically different alternative to it. The new data on which the argument is based come, in particular, from Australian languages, as well as from Polish and Russian. The article deconstructs the concept of “colour,” and shows how indigenous visual descriptors can be analysed without reference to colour, on the basis of identifiable visual prototypes and the universal concept of seeing. It also offers a model for analysing semantic change and variation from “the native’s point of view”.

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

(2006) Shape in grammar

Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). Shape in grammar revisited. Studies in Language, 30(1), 115-177. DOI: 10.1075/sl.30.1.05wie

No abstract available.

(2006) English – Meaning and culture [BOOK]

Wierzbicka, Anna (2006). English: Meaning and culture. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195174748.001.0001

It is widely accepted that English is the first truly global language and lingua franca. Its dominance has even led to its use and adaptation by local communities for their own purposes and needs. One might see English in this context as being simply a neutral, universal vehicle for the expression of local thoughts and ideas. In fact, English words and phrases have embedded in them a wealth of cultural baggage that is invisible to most native speakers.

Anna Wierzbicka, a distinguished linguist known for her theories of semantics, has written the first book that connects the English language with what she terms “Anglo” culture. Wierzbicka points out that language and culture are not just interconnected, but inseparable. This is evident to non-speakers trying to learn puzzling English expressions. She uses original research to investigate the “universe of meaning” within the English language (both grammar and vocabulary) and places it in historical and geographical perspective. For example, she looks at the history of the terms “right” and “wrong” and how with the influence of the Reformation “right” came to mean “correct.” She examines the ideas of “fairness” and “reasonableness” and shows that, far from being cultural universals, they are in fact unique creations of modern English.

Table of contents

PART I MEANING, HISTORY, AND CULTURE

1. English as a cultural universe
2. Anglo cultural scripts seen through Middle Eastern eyes

PART II ENGLISH WORDS

3. The story of RIGHT and WRONG and its cultural implications
4. Being REASONABLE: A key Anglo value and its cultural roots
5. Being FAIR: Another key Anglo value and its cultural underpinnings

PART III ANGLO CULTURE REFLECTED IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR

6. The English causatives: Causation and interpersonal relations
7. I THINK: The rise of epistemic phrases in Modern English
8. PROBABLY: English epistemic adverbs and their cultural significance

PART IV CONCLUSION

9. The “cultural baggage” of English and its significance in the world at large

Chapter 3 builds on: Right and wrong: From philosophy to everyday discourse” (2002)
Chapter 6 builds on: English causative constructions in an ethnosyntactic perspective: Focusing on LET (2002)


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

Tags listed below are in addition to those listed at the end of the entries for the earlier work on which this book builds.

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

(2007) Shape and colour

Wierzbicka, Anna (2007). Shape and colour in language and thought. In Andrea C. Schalley, & Drew Khlentzos (Eds.), Mental states: Vol. 2. Language and cognitive structure (pp. 37-60). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.93.05wie

“Colour” and “shape” are concepts important to the speakers of English and of many other languages. They are not, however, universal: there are many languages which have no words corresponding to the English words colour and shape, and in which questions like “what colour is it?” or “what shape is it?” cannot be asked at all. Clearly, speakers of such languages do not think about the world in terms of “colour” and “shape”. How do they think about it, then?

This study shows that by using an empirically discovered set of universal semantic primes which includes see and touch we can effectively explore ways of construal of the visual and tangible world different from those embedded in, and encouraged by, English.

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

(2007) English – MORAL SENSE

Wierzbicka, Anna (2007). ‘Moral sense’. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 1(3), 66-85. PDF (open access)

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 7 (pp. 313-327) of:

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Experience, evidence, and sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English. New York: Oxford University Press.

The concept of ‘moral sense’ plays an important role in books on philosophy, psychology and popular science written by authors who write in English and who take the English language for granted. Yet there is no expression like moral sense in other languages, not even European ones like Spanish or German, let alone non-European ones, like Chinese. Nor was there any moral sense in English before the phrase was invented by so-called “British moralists” – Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume. This paper traces the origins of the modern Anglo/English concept of ‘moral sense’ in the influence of Locke’s empiricist philosophy on the eighteenth-century ‘British moralists’, and through them, on the language of British natural scientists, and especially Darwin’s.

Thus, the paper argues that when contemporary scientists of the English language like Dawkins, Hauser, and others write about ‘moral sense’ and present it as a panhuman characteristic evolved through biological evolution, they are looking at “human nature” and “human morality” through the prism of the English language. Seeing the phrase moral sense, and the discourse based on it, in a cross-linguistic and historical perspective can help us to stretch our imagination as to different possible conceptions of “morality” and to go beyond the culture-bound vision of what Dawkins calls “moral sense” and Hauser, a “universal sense of right and wrong”.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

See also: , ,

(2007) English – Bodies, body parts

Wierzbicka, Anna (2007). Bodies and their parts: An NSM approach to semantic typology. Language Sciences, 29, 14-65. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2006.07.002

This paper puts forward, on the basis of evidence and analysis, seven general principles of conceptualization of the body, reflected in the semantic organization of the ‘body and body-parts’ field
across languages. It supplies a large set of semantic explications of English body-part terms, and it shows how ethno-anatomies can be described and compared through the use of the natural semantic
metalanguage (NSM). It also returns to the controversial issue of the body-centric character of language
and cognition. One of its goals is to vindicate well-established semantic universals such as body and part. More generally, the paper argues that semantic typology requires a semantic methodology and it shows what a theoretically anchored semantic typology can look like.

 

(2007) NSM and phraseology

Wierzbicka, Anna (2007). Reasonably well: Natural Semantic Metalanguage as a tool for the study of phraseology and its cultural underpinnings. In Paul Skandera (Ed.), Phraseology and culture in English (pp. 49-78). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110197860.49

No abstract available.

(2007) English, Polish – Mental states

Wierzbicka, Anna (2007). Is “remember” a universal human concept? “Memory” and culture. In Mengistu Amberber (Ed.), The language of memory in a cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 13-39). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.21.04wie

Abstract:

This paper argues that ‘remembering’ is not a universal human concept but a cultural construct, shared by some languages but not others. It also shows that culture-specific concepts like ‘remember’ and ‘memory’ can be explained and compared through genuinely elementary and universal NSM notions such as KNOW, THINK and BEFORE. To illustrate these general themes, the paper offers a detailed analysis of the Polish field of ‘memory’, linking Polish semantics with Polish history and culture.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

See also: , , , ,

(2009) Polish – Dative case

Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). Case in NSM: A reanalysis of the Polish dative. In Andrej Malchukov, & Andrew Spencer (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of case (pp. 151-169). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199206476.013.0011

Abstract:

In this chapter, I show how NSM can be applied to the study of cases by revisiting my earlier (1986) study of the Polish dative. Since that earlier study, the metalanguage has been significantly expanded and revised in the light of empirical cross-linguistic investigations. As this chapter hopes to show, its current form offers a more precise and more effective tool for exploring the meaning of cases. At the same time, this chapter continues the semantic approach to cases launched, in opposition to the then prevailing ‘autonomous syntax’ approaches, in the author’s 1980 book The case for surface case.

Translations:

Into Russian:

Chapter 9 (pp. 302-328) of Вежбицкая, Анна (2011), Семантические универсалии и базисные концепты [Semantic universals and basic concepts]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянских культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2008) Intercultural pragmatics and world-wide understanding

Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). A conceptual basis for intercultural pragmatics and world-wide understanding. In Martin Pütz, & JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer (Eds.), Developing contrastive pragmatics: Interlanguage and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 3-46). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

In her programmatic article, Anna Wierzbicka confronts the reader with the question of whether the exclusive reliance on English as a source of conceptual tools is the best way in which intercultural pragmatics can serve the cause of world-wide understanding. Her paper argues that it is not, because English itself carries with it a great deal of cultural baggage, and so comparing communicative norms and cultural values through English leads inevitably to an Anglocentric bias. Wierzbicka offers an alternative to the use of English as a tertium comparationis by proposing her well-established NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) model which as an auxiliary language (i.e. mini-language) matches the lexical and grammatical core of all languages. NSM English can be used to explain norms and values to ordinary interactants and thus to advance the cause of intercultural communication and world-wide understanding.