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(2008) English, Warlpiri – Visual semantics

Wierzbicka, Anna (2008). Why there are no ‘colour universals’ in language and thought. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, (N.S.) 14, 407-425. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2008.00509.x

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 4 (pp. 80-101) of:

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Do all people live in a world full of colours? Perceptually, yes (unless they are visually impaired), but conceptually, no: there are many languages which have no word for ‘colour’ and in which the question What colour is it? cannot be asked and presumably does not arise. Yet the powerful and still immensely influential theory of Berlin and Kay assumes otherwise. While building on the author’s earlier work on colour semantics, this article brings new evidence against the Berlin and Kay paradigm, and presents a fundamentally different approach. The new data on which the argument is based come from Australian languages. In particular, the article presents a detailed study of the visual world reflected in the Australian language Warlpiri and in Warlpiri ways of speaking, showing that while Warlpiri people have no “colour talk” (and no “colour practices”), they have a rich visual discourse of other kinds, linked with their own cultural practices. It also offers a methodology for identifying indigenous meanings without the grid of the English concept ‘colour’, and for revealing “the native’s point of view”.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2009) Emotion research

Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). Language and metalanguage: Key issues in emotion research. Emotion Review, 1(1), 3-14. DOI: 10.1177/1754073908097175

Building on the author’s earlier work, this paper argues that language is a key issue in understanding human emotions and that treating English emotion terms as valid analytical tools continues to be a roadblock in the study of emotions. Further, it shows how the methodology developed by the author and colleagues, known as NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage), allows us to break free of the shackles of English psychological terms and explore human emotions from a culture-independent perspective. The use of NSM makes it possible to study human emotions from a genuinely cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, as well as a psychological, perspective and thus opens up new possibilities for the scientific understanding of subjectivity and psychological experience.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2009) English – GOOD LIFE

Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). What makes a good life? A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 260-272.

(2009) English – SENSE

Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). Exploring English phraseology with two tools: NSM semantic methodology and Google. Journal of English Linguistics, 37(2), 101-129. DOI: 10.1177/0075424209334338

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 10 (pp. 395-406) of:

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

The study of phraseology, which not long ago was often dismissed as a linguistic activity of only minor interest, has now come into its own and is an increasingly popular and diversified field, with many different approaches and foci of interest. Significantly, regardless of their particular focus and goals, more and more writers adopt corpus-based approaches to phraseological phenomena. This article arises from a larger study of various phraseological networks based on the English cultural key word sense (as in, e.g., a sense of humour, a sense of direction and a sense of relief), and it explores some types of sense-based collocations with two tools: the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) semantic methodology and Google. The article argues that the use of corpora and the Web combined with the use of NSM methodology opens new perspectives for the semantic and cultural study of English phraseology.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2009) ‘Reciprocity’

Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). “Reciprocity”: An NSM approach to linguistic typology and social universals. Studies in language 33(1). 103-174. DOI: 10.1075/sl.33.1.05wie

This paper develops a semantic approach to the study of “reciprocity” — an area increasingly seen as central to linguistic typology. “Reciprocal” and “reflexive-reciprocal” constructions from five languages — English, Russian, Polish, French and Japanese — are analyzed in considerable detail. The different, though interrelated, meanings of these constructions are explicated, and the proposed explications are supported with linguistic evidence. The paper challenges current approaches which tend to lump formally and semantically distinct constructions under one arbitrary label such as “RECIP”, and it seeks to show how linguistic typology can be transformed by joining forces with rigorous cross-linguistic
semantics. It also challenges the Nijmegen School approach, which privileges extensionalist “video-clipping” over conceptual analysis. The analysis presented in the paper demonstrates the descriptive and explanatory power of the NSM methodology. The results achieved through semantic analysis are shown to be convergent with hypotheses about “shared intentionality” put forward by Michael Tomasello and colleagues in the context of evolutionary psychology, and to throw new light on social universals (“human sociality”).

(2009) Polish – Emotions, speech acts, motion verbs, animal names

Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). The theory of the mental lexicon. In Sebastian Kempgen, Peter Kosta, Tilman Berger, & Karl Gutschmidt (Eds.), Die slavischen Sprachen/The Slavic languages: Eine internationales Handbuch zu ihrer Struktur, ihrer Geschichte und ihrer Erforsching/An international handbook of their structure, their history and their investigation: Volume 1 (pp. 848-863). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI : https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214475.1.11.848

The main thesis of this article is that (contrary to what, for example, Chomsky claims) a great deal is by now known about the mental lexicon. First of all, there is currently a great deal of evidence that at the heart of this lexicon lies a set of sixty or so universal semantic primes, each with its own set of combinatory characteristics. Second, cross-linguistic evidence suggests that large sections of the mental lexicon have a hierarchical structure, with several levels of semantic molecules operating and thus allowing for great conceptual complexity to be combined with relatively simple semantic structures. Third, it is now clear that many sections of the mental lexicon are organized according to a certain pattern, or template, shared by a large number of words. Fourth, a large body of research has shown that the mental lexicon of the speakers of any given language includes many words whose meanings are unique to that particular language, and that such words – a language’s cultural key words – help bind the speakers of a language into a cohesive cultural community.

The chapter focuses in particular on the relatively new areas of semantic molecules and semantic templates. The illustrative material analysed is drawn from Polish and relates to emotions (including but not limited to emotions reminiscent of envy and compassion in English), speech acts (reminiscent of to order and to ask (someone about something) in English), names of animals (mice), and motion verbs.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2009) Russian – Cultural values

Wierzbicka, Anna (2009). Pragmatics and cultural values: The hot centre of Russian discourse. In B. Fraser & K. Turner (Eds.), Language in life, and a life in language: Jacob Mey – A festschrift (pp. 423-434). Bingley: Emerald.

(2010) Cultural scripts and intercultural communication

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

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(2010) Cultural scripts

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Cultural scripts. In Louise Cummings (Ed.), The pragmatics encyclopedia (pp. 92-95). London: Routledge.

The theory of cultural scripts is an offshoot of NSM semantics. The term cultural script, first introduced in 1991, stands for a cultural norm articulated in NSM. Cultural scripts exist at different levels of generality and may relate to different aspects of thinking, speaking and behaviour. High-level scripts, sometimes called master scripts, are often closely associated with core cultural values. They articulate broad cultural themes that are typically played out in detail by way of whole families of related speech practices, which themselves can be captured by means of more specific scripts. The accessibility and transparency of cultural scripts written in semantic primes gives them a huge advantage over technical modes of description.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2010) Emotions

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). On emotions and on definitions: A response to Izard. Emotion Review, 2(4), 379-380.

(2010) English – Cultural key words: STORY

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). ‘Story’ – An English cultural keyword and a key interpretive tool of Anglo culture. Narrative Inquiry, 20(1), 153-181. DOI: 10.1075/ni.20.1.08wie

This paper draws attention to the fact that the word story, a unique English cultural key word and a key interpretive tool of modern Anglo culture, has played a significant role in the “narrative turn” in the humanities and social sciences. It discusses some of the implications of this fact. Because the uniqueness and centrality of English story has until now gone unnoticed, many semantic components associated with it have been projected onto other languages, which has lead to the positing of spurious human universals and to claims such as “story is a basic principle of mind”.

The paper also shows that the English word story is linked with a family of concepts that have no semantic equivalents in other languages and that are unique conceptual artefacts of Anglo culture. It argues that if we can pinpoint these concepts, we can also pinpoint the shared values and assumptions reflected in them. This can be done with the help of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) methodology.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2010) Emotions: happiness

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). The “history of emotions” and the future of emotion research. Emotion Review, 2(3), 269-273. DOI: 10.1177/1754073910361983

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 5 (pp. 102-126) of:

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This article focuses on the emergence of a new subfield of emotion research known as “history of emotions”. People’s emotional lives depend on the construals they impose on events, situations, and human actions. Different cultures and different languages suggest different habitual construals, and since habitual construals change over time, as a result, habitual feelings change, too. But to study construals we need a suitable methodology. The article assumes that such a methodology is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It applies the NSM approach to the history of ‘happiness’, an emotion that is very much at the forefront of current debates across a range of disciplines. The article shows how the “history of emotions” can be combined with cultural semantics and why this combination opens new perspectives for the whole interdisciplinary field of emotion research.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2010) English, Russian – Cultural key words: FATE, SUD’BA

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Cross-cultural communication and miscommunication: The role of cultural keywords. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(1), 1-23. DOI: 10.1515/IPRG.2010.001

The experience of immigrants and other people who live transcultural lives confirms that different societies and lingua-cultures have different tacit norms for interpersonal communication and that such differences matter a great deal in many people’s lives. Every lingua-culture inherits and transmits historically and culturally shaped ways of thinking. This applies to English-speaking societies no less than to any other. Given the massive scale of past and ongoing immigration to English-speaking countries as well as the growing domination of English in the global world, it is particularly important to recognize that English, too, is saturated with historically transmitted cultural assumptions. But it is above all “Anglo English” – the common core of the ‘‘Englishes of the inner circle’’ – that tends to be mistaken for a culture-neutral medium of communication. As a result, “Anglo English”, which greatly facilitates cross-cultural communication in today’s world, is also a major source of miscommunication and cross-cultural failure.

This paper takes as its starting point one of the most illuminating cross-cultural novels, Nabokov’s Pnin. The author surveys a number of ‘‘anomalies’’ in ‘‘Pninian English’’ that had an impact on Pnin’s life in America. Then the paper moves beyond Pnin, but stays with Nabokov, and explores one area of immigrant linguistic condition: the loss of cultural key words. The focus is in particular on the Russian key cultural concept of судьба sud’ba and on Nabokov’s continued reliance on this concept in his books created, through the English medium, by his post-Russian authorial self. The author’s overall purpose, however, is not to talk about Nabokov, but to illuminate the immigrant condition and the miscommunication inherent in cross-cultural communication. In her analysis, she relies on the ‘NSM’ methodology of semantic analysis, which allows us to analyse intercultural communication and miscommunication from a neutral, non-Anglocentric perspective.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2011) Bilingualism and cognition

Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Bilingualism and cognition: The perspective from semantics. In Vivian Cook, & Benedetta Bassetti (Eds.) Language and bilingual cognition (pp. 191-218). London: Routledge.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2010) Kalam – ‘Eat’, ‘drink’

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). ‘Eating’ and ‘drinking’ in Kalam. In John Bowden, Nikolaus Himmelmann, & Malcolm Ross (Eds.), A journey through Austronesian and Papuan linguistic and cultural space: Papers in honour of Andrew Pawley (pp. 651-660). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

(2010) Experience, evidence, & sense [BOOK]

Wierzbicka, Anna (2010). Experience, evidence, and sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368000.001.0001

This book is based on two ideas: first, that any language – English no less than any other – represents a universe of meaning, shaped by the history and experience of the men and women who have created it; and second, that in any language certain culture-specific words act as linchpins for whole networks of meanings, and that penetrating the meanings of those key words can therefore open our eyes to an entire cultural universe. This book demonstrates that three uniquely English words – evidence, experience, and sense – are exactly such linchpins. Using a rigorous plain language approach to meaning analysis, the book unpackages the dense cultural meanings of these key words, disentangles their multiple meanings, and traces their origins back to the tradition of British empiricism. In so doing the book reveals much about cultural attitudes embedded not only in British and American English, but other global varieties of English.

Table of contents:

Part I Introduction

1. Making the familiar look foreign

Part II Experience and evidence

2. Experience: An English keyword and a key cultural theme
3. Evidence: Words, ideas, and cultural practices

Part III Sense

4. The discourse of sense and the legacy of “British empiricism”
5. A sense of humour, a sense of self, and similar expressions
6. A strong sense, a deep sense, and similar expressions
7. Moral sense
8. Common sense
9. From having sense to making sense

Part IV Phraseology, semantics, and corpus linguistics

10. Investigating English phraseology with two tools: NSM and Google

Chapter 2 builds on: “Experience” in John Searle’s account of the mind: Brain, mind and Anglo culture (2006)
Chapter 7 builds on: Moral sense (2007)
Chapter 10 builds on: Exploring English phraseology with two tools: NSM semantic methodology and Google (2009)


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2011) Russian – Arguing

Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Arguing in Russian: Why Solzhenitsyn’s fictional arguments defy translation. Russian Journal of Communication, 4(1/2), 8-37.

This paper discusses patterns of ‘arguing’ which prevails in Russian speech culture and shows that they differ profoundly from those characteristic of modern Anglo culture(s). The author focuses on the extended arguments (spory) in Solzhenitsyn’s novel ‘In the First Circle’ and shows that many linguistic and cultural aspects of the original are lost in the English translation. She argues that this was inevitable because English doesn’t have and “doesn’t need” linguistic resources to render various aspects of Russian communicative practices, which are culture-specific and have no counterparts in Anglophone
culture(s). The paper shows too that the techniques of semantic analysis developed in the “NSM” approach to cultural semantics help explain why Solzhenitsyn’s fictional arguments defy translation, and more generally, how they can be used to identify some deep differences between Russian and Anglo
speech cultures and communicative norms.

(2011) Moral absolutes

Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Moral absolutes and the multiplicity of languages. Quadrant, …
(12), 81-88.

To delineate the conceptual structure of moral norms and to render it transparent we need also to reflect on the problem of language. We cannot achieve “a common understanding” if we don’t address the question of the multiplicity of languages. I believe that key value concepts encoded in the vocabulary of
different languages can contribute moral insights to the global pool of moral understanding. Value concepts such as “omenie”, “fairness” or “loyalty” are not empirical moral universals, recognised by all, or even most, human groups. They crystallise distinct, culture-specific perspectives arising from the moral experience of particular human groups and as such are worthy of attentive consideration by people from other groups. I would suggest that studying key moral concepts from many different cultural traditions could be one way (among others) to approach the formidable task of moral education in multicultural countries, and in the global world. At the very least, such education would stretch the moral imagination of young people, and enable them to look at life from many different moral
perspectives.

(2011) Leibniz

Wierzbicka, Anna (2011). Common language of all people: The innate language of thought. Problems of information transmission, 47(4), 378-397. DOI: 10.1134/S0032946011040065

English translation of a Russian text (2011) published in Problemy Peredachi Informatsii, 47(4), 84-103.

As is well known, Leibniz was interested in language throughout his life, and he saw in it a key to the understanding of the human mind. Many of his ideas about language were expressed in unpublished manuscripts, and what has come to us is not always clear. Nevertheless, some of his ideas — even if he did not always consistently adhere to them himself — seem to be both clear and extremely appealing.

I would summarize these ideas as follows:

1. All human thoughts can be decomposed into a relatively small number of elementary concepts;
2. All explanations depend on the existence of some concepts which are self-explanatory (otherwise, they would lead to an infinite regress);
3. The elementary concepts are common to all languages, and can be found by means of semantic analysis;
4. These concepts are the foundation of an innate language, “lingua naturae.” Just as mathematics is, as Galileo said, the language of the physical world, so the innate “lingua naturae” is the language of the inner world, the language of thoughts;
5. This language can be identified;
6. This language can serve as an auxiliary means of mutual understanding for speakers of different languages;
7. This language can help us to reach a greater clarity in our thinking;
8. This language can serve as a means for clarifying, elucidating, storing and comparing ideas.

These are also the main ideas which lie at the basis of the NSM program and from which this program has derived and continues to derive its inspiration.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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