Gladkova, Anna (2013). The Russian social category svoj: A study in ethnopragmatics. In Istvan Kecskes, & Jesús Romero-Trillo (Eds.), Research trends in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 219-238). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614513735.219
Abstract:
Terms for social categories provide a window into understanding culture. They conceptualize relationships and also relate to a culture’s communicative practices. The term for the Russian social category свой svoj possesses the status of a cultural key word. It is associated with important cultural rules of behaviour specific to people of this kind. It also exists at the intersection of other cultural rules, namely искренность iskrennost’ ‘sincerity’ and сокровенный sokrovennyj ‘innermost meanings’. The cultural scripts approach and NSM constitute reliable tools for describing these rules in terms that are universal, accessible and easily translatable into other languages.
The results of the study support the idea of a textual character of culture. Culture is best represented as a collection of rules or texts (Geertz), rather than by means of over-riding universalist concepts. The cultural scripts approach as it is implemented in ethnopragmatics is arguably the most adequate way to describe this variety of texts from a linguistic point of view.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) po-svojski по-свойски, (E) svoj свой, (S) feelings and thoughts, (S) interaction, (S) non-imposition, (S) relationships, (T) Russian
Gladkova, Anna (2013). “Is he one of ours?” The cultural semantics and ethnopragmatics of social categories in Russian. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 180-194.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.06.010
Abstract:
This study illuminates the meanings of the Russian social category terms свой svoj ‘one’s own’, чужой čužoj ‘alien/stranger/foreigner’, наш naš ‘ours’ and не наш ne naš ‘not ours’ using written and spoken data of the Russian National Corpus. The paper contributes to our understanding of Russian relationships and social cognition and establishes connections between the meanings of these terms and selected Russian communicative styles. NSM is used to formulate semantic explications of the terms and cultural scripts.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) čužoj чужой, (E) naš наш, (E) ne naš не наш, (E) svoi ljudi свои люди, (E) svoj свой, (S) interaction, (S) relationships
Gladkova, Anna (2013). ‘Intimate’ talk in Russian: Human relationships and folk psychotherapy. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3), 322-343.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2013.846453
Abstract:
This paper explores and describes communicative aspects of so-called ‘intimate’ relations in Russian. It illuminates the meanings of the social category terms друг drug ‘close friend’, родные rodnye ‘dear/kin’ and близкие blizkie ‘close (ones)’ and demonstrates their relationship to the culturally salient terms душа duša ‘soul, heart’ and сокровенный sokrovennyj ‘innermost, dear, hidden’. The paper contributes to our understanding of Russian relationships and social cognition and establishes connections between the meanings of these terms and selected Russian ways of talking. NSM is used to formulate semantic explications of the terms and cultural scripts.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) blizkij близкий, (E) drug друг, (E) duša душа, (E) govorit’ po dušam говорить по душам, (E) pogovorit’ po dušam поговорить по душам, (E) rodnye родные, (E) sokrovennyj сокровенный, (S) desired way of talking when one’s thoughts and feelings are openly revealed, (S) ways of talking about one’s dear and intimate knowledge
Gladkova, Anna (2013). Grammar and the influence of society and culture. In Carol A. Chapelle (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics (pp. 2355-2362). Oxford: Blackwell.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0471
Abstract:
Language is highly sensitive to cultural and societal processes. Grammatically elaborated areas of a language commonly embed meanings or ideas that are particularly salient in the collective psyche of a people. Knowledge of these meanings or ideas can equip cultural outsiders with more effective and successful tools of communication with the representatives of the culture.
This encyclopedia entry provides some examples of studies illustrating the cultural significance of grammar within the approach of ethnosyntax. These investigations are of particular importance to applied linguistics in general and language teaching in particular. The proposed explications (referred to as formulas) can be applied in language teaching to explain meanings and use of grammatical constructions. The use of universal human concepts makes it possible to translate these explications into any language without any change in meaning.
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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) (diminutives), (S) feelings
Gladkova, Anna (2013). A cultural semantic and ethnopragmatic analysis of the Russian praise words molodec and umnica (with reference to English and Chinese). Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2013, 249-272.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6250-3_12
Abstract:
Using data from the Russian National Corpus, this chapter explores the semantics and ethnopragmatics of two Russian praise words, молодец molodec and умница umnica. NSM is used to formulate semantic explications of the words in question as well as cultural scripts as a reflection of underlying cultural ideas. Cultural specificity of the terms is established by comparison with other Russian cultural key words and ideas as well as comparison with their closest pragmatic equivalents in English (good boy/girl) and in Chinese (乖 guāi). The investigation allows us to formulate culturally valued modes of behaviour in Russian.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) good boy/girl, (E) guāi 乖, (E) molodec молодец, (E) umnica умница, (E) umnyj умный, (S) non-imposition, (S) praise, (S) praiseworthy behaviour
Gladkova, Anna, & Romero-Trillo, Jesús (2014). Ain’t it beautiful? The conceptualization of beauty from an ethnopragmatic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 140-159.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.005
Abstract:
This study addresses the question of the ethnopragmatic conceptualization of ‘beautiful’ in three European languages – English, Russian and Spanish. Specifically, it investigates the polysemy and the spheres of application of English beautiful, Russian красивый krasivyj, and Spanish bonito/a. Through corpus analysis methodology, the authors investigate the most common collocations and the pragmatic and contextual uses of these terms. On the basis of the analysis, the study then adopts NSM to propose semantic explications of the three words in universal human concepts. In particular, it investigates the presence of the perception universals SEE, HEAR, and FEEL, which in the data are central to the analysis of the aesthetics vocabulary, along with the primes GOOD, SOMEONE, SOMETHING and THINK.
The data for the study comes from three online corpora: the Russian National Corpus (Russian), Cobuild’s Wordbanks Online (English) and the Corpus de referencia del español actual (Spanish).
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) beautiful, (E) bonito, (E) krasivyj красивый, (E) sympathy, (T) Russian, (T) Spanish
Gladkova, Anna (2014). HERE, NEAR, FAR: Spatial conceptualisation and cognition in a cross-linguistic perspective (English vs. Russian). In Luna Filipović, & Martin Pütz (Eds.), Multilingual cognition and language use: Processing and typological perspectives (pp. 121-150). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.44.05gla
Abstract:
This chapter explores variation and similarities in the conceptualization of space in Russian and English on the basis of selected terms of ‘location’ and ‘proximity/distance’. It adopts the NSM approach, which identifies eight semantic universals of space, three of which, HERE, NEAR, FAR, were tested for their realization in both languages. A semantic analysis of terms denoting ‘here’, ‘near’, ‘not far’, and ‘far’ confirms the presence of the three universal primes in English and Russian, though they differ in how they conceptually carve up the notion of space.
The study has implications for research into bilingualism and language acquisition and demonstrates that the NSM formulae can be used experimentally to test spatial conceptualization and cognition cross-linguistically.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) afar, (E) close by, (E) close to, (E) ne daleko не далеко, (E) nearby, (E) nedaleko недалеко, (E) nepodaleku неподалеку, (E) nevdaleke невдалеке, (E) next to, (E) otsjuda отсюда, (E) poblizosti поблизости, (E) rjadom рядом, (E) sjuda сюда, (E) vblizi вблизи, (E) vdaleke вдалеке, (E) vdali вдали, (T) Russian
Gladkova, Anna (2015). Ethnosyntax. In Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 33-50). New York: Routledge.
Abstract:
The author provides an account of research on ethnosyntax, the study of how syntax, including morphology, encodes culture. Maintaining that the theoretical foundations of ethnosyntax were laid by Sapir and Whorf, she makes a distinction between a narrow and a broad sense of ethnosyntax. Ethnosyntax in the narrow sense explores cultural meanings of particular grammatical structures, whereas ethnosyntax in the broad sense examines how pragmatic and cultural norms influence the choice of grammatical structures. Several examples are provided for each approach. As an example of morpho-syntax encoding cultural meaning, the author presents the case of Russian, where address forms often reveal attitudes of endearment and intimacy encoded by a diminutive. As an example of the second broader sense, she compares request speech acts in Russian and English, and examines how these languages employ different grammatical structures to perform the same speech act and how this usage is compatible with broader cultural norms.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) (diminutives), (E) rabotaet'sja работаеться, (E) spit'sja спиться, (E) verit'sja вериться, (E) xočet'sja хочеться, (S) emotions, (S) non-imposition
Gladkova, Anna; Vanhatalo, Ulla; & Goddard, Cliff (2016). The semantics of interjections: An experimental study with Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(4), 841-865.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716415000260
Abstract:
This paper reports the results of a pilot experimental study aimed at evaluating NSM explications of English interjections. It proposes a novel online survey technique to test NSM explications with language speakers. The survey tested recently developed semantic explications of selected English interjections used to mark either ‘surprise’ (wow, gosh, gee, yikes) or ‘disgust’ (yuck, ugh). The results provide overall support for the proposed explications and indicate directions for their further development. It is interesting that respondents’ preexisting knowledge of NSM and other background variables (age, gender, being a native speaker, or studying linguistics) were shown to have little influence on the test results.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) Gee!, (E) Gosh!, (E) Ugh!, (E) Wow!, (E) Yikes!, (E) Yuck!, (T) English
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.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) belief, (E) believe, (E) mnenie мнение, (E) sčitat’ считать, (S) categoricalness, (S) non-imposition, (S) opinions, (S) refusal to compromise, (S) sincerity, (S) truth and untruth, (T) Russian
Gąsior, Weronika (2015). Cultural scripts and the speech act of opinions in Irish English: A study amongst Irish and Polish university students. ELOPE (English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries), 12(1), 11-28. DOI: 10.4312/elope.12.1.11-28. PDF (open access)
Studies in pragmatics have been limited to a handful of illocutionary acts such as requests, apologies or compliments, and opinions remain underrepresented in the existing literature. In this paper I present the results of a study of opinions in Irish English, conducted in an intercultural environment of Irish-Polish interactions. Departing from a traditional approach of speech act realisation studies, I applied the theory of cultural scripts to analyse opinions. In contrasting the Irish and Polish formulas for expressing opinions, as well as sociopragmatic attitudes towards this speech act, a difference in the cultural scripts for opinions in each culture was observable. Apart from already documented Polish frankness in opinions, the study discovered also a rational approach to presenting good arguments to support one’s assertions among the participants. In relation to the Irish script for opinions, the findings are in line with previous classifications of opinions in Australian English, showing a certain level of variational uniformity amongst the English-speaking cultures in this regard.
Crude application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
See also: (S) opinions
François, Jacques (2015). Trois questionnements sémantiques encore largement méconnus en France [Three semantic approaches that remain largely unknown in France]. In Alain Rabatel, Alice Ferrara-Léturgie, & Arnaud Léturgie (Eds.), La sémantique et ses interfaces: Actes du colloque 2013 de l’Association des Sciences du Langage (pp. 23-46). Limoges: Lambert-Lucas.
Written in French. No abstract available.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
See also: (E) happy, (E) heureux, (E) joyeux
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Etnopragmatik og interkulturel competence: Didaktiske nytænkninger i fremmedsprogsundervisningen [Ethnopragmatics and intercultural competence: Didactic innovations in foreign language teaching]. Ny forskning i grammatik, 23, 38-54.
Open access
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible pedagogical application of ethnopragmatics in the field of language learning and teaching with the purpose of promoting intercultural communicative competence. Ethnopragmatics examines cultural aspects of language and communication from an insider’s perspective. Its pedagogical potential lies in its consistent attempts to unravel the values, beliefs and norms that underpin the verbal behaviours of a cultural group and to do so without cultural bias.
More information:
Written in Danish. An earlier English version of this paper was published as:
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Possible contributions of ethnopragmatics to second language learning and teaching. In Sten Vikner, Henrik Jørgensen, & Elly van Gelderen (Eds.), Let us have articles betwixt us: Papers in historical and comparative linguistics in honour of Johanna L. Wood (pp. 185-206). Aarhus: Aarhus University.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
See also: (E) højskole, (E) hygge, (S) hygge, (S) personal autonomy, (S) requests
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Possible contributions of ethnopragmatics to second language learning and teaching. In Sten Vikner, Henrik Jørgensen & Elly van Gelderen (Eds.), Let us have articles betwixt us: Papers in historical and comparative linguistics in honour of Johanna L. Wood (pp. 185-206). Aarhus: Aarhus University.
Open access
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible pedagogical application of the theory of Ethnopragmatics in the field of second and foreign language learning and teaching with the purpose of promoting intercultural communicative competence.
Ethnopragmatics can be seen as part of the broad paradigm of Cognitive Linguistics. Unlike other theories of pragmatics, its focus is on examining cultural aspects of language and communication from an insider’s perspective, without relying on universal concepts such as politeness, directness/indirectness, etc. that can be foreign to many cultures. Its main methodological tool is NSM, used in so-called explications but also in cultural scripts that reflect widely shared ways of thinking. The latter can be reformulated into pedagogical scripts that can be used in second language learning and teaching.
More information:
A more recent publication building on this one is:
Fernández, Susana S. (2016). Etnopragmatik og interkulturel competence: Didaktiske nytænkninger i fremmedsprogsundervisningen [Ethnopragmatics and intercultural competence: Didactic innovations in foreign language teaching]. Ny forskning i grammatik, 23, 38-54.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
See also: (E) højskole
Farrell, Patrick (2006). Portuguese saudade and other emotions of absence and longing. In Bert Peeters (Ed.), Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical evidence from the Romance languages (pp. 235-258). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.81.16far
Relying on semantic primes and universal syntax, this study underscores the culture-specificity and explicates the meaning of the Portuguese emotion word saudade. It makes comparisons with related concepts in Portuguese and, to some extent, English. Among the kinds of evidence included are claims encountered in previous studies, native-speaker intuitions about the acceptability of constructed expressions employing the word in different ways, actual use in literary works and internet sources, aspects of the word’s grammar and its distributional properties, and contrasts with respect to these matters between saudade and other emotions. The approach differs from that of earlier work not only in its use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage but also in its heavy reliance on distributional evidence and colloquial corpora.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) coração, (E) falta, (E) nostalgia, (E) saudade
Farese, Gian Marco (2015). Hi vs. ciao: NSM as a tool for cross-linguistic pragmatics. Journal of Pragmatics, 85, 1-17.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.05.020
This paper presents the results of the semantic analysis of two salutations, hi (English) and ciao (Italian), using NSM. The analysis is aimed at making two points: first, that ‘‘greetings’’ have a proper semantic content consisting of expressed attitudes and feelings that can be described in simple, cross-translatable words; second, that salutations are not only performed differently, but also conceived differently across languages. This can create potential cases of miscommunication in cross-cultural interactions. To show this, the interactional meaning of hi is compared with that of ciao; two different semantic explications are proposed to capture various aspects of their meaning emerging from linguistic evidence. The implications for cross-linguistic pragmatics are also discussed.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) ciao, (E) hi, (T) Italian
Farese, Gian Marco (2016). The cultural semantics of the Japanese emotion terms ‘haji’ and ‘hazukashii’. New Voices in Japanese Studies, 8, 32-54.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21159/nvjs.08.02 / Open access
Abstract:
This paper presents a cultural semantic analysis of the Japanese emotion terms 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii. The paper has three aims: (i) to pinpoint the conceptions of 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii as emotion terms in Japanese language and culture; (ii) to highlight the differences in meaning with their typical English translations shame and embarrassing, and show that 恥 haji and 恥ずかしい hazukashii reflect two different, culture-specific emotion conceptions; (iii) to emphasize the suitability of NSM for cross-cultural comparisons of emotion terms in different languages and, in turn, for cross-cultural training.
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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) embarrassment, (E) haji 恥, (E) hazukashii 恥ずかしい, (E) shame, (T) Japanese
Farese, Gian Marco, & Farese, Piergiorgio (2016). L’italiano in musica: an NSM-based semantic analysis of the musical terms vivace and rubato. Quaderni di semantica, N.S. 2, 131-165.
Abstract:
This paper presents a semantic analysis of two musical terms with which most teachers and students struggle: vivace and rubato. The scope of the paper is twofold: firstly, to elucidate the meaning of these two terms in a clear way; secondly, to analyse the meaning of these terms from the point of view of cultural semantics, which adopts the methodology of the NSM approach to analyse the meaning of words, thus highlight the connection with the meaning of the Italian adjectives from which they derive. Ultimately, the analysis is aimed at illustrating the advantages that NSM-based semantic explications of vivace and rubato can have for pedagogical purposes.
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) rubare, (E) tempo rubato, (E) vivace, (T) Italian
Evans, Nicholas (1992). ‘Wanjh! Bonj! Nja!’: Sequential organization and social deixis in Mayali interjections. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(2/3), 225-244. DOI:10.1016/0378-2166(92)90053-E
This paper examines the semantics and pragmatics of a number of interjections in Mayali, a language of Arnhem Land, Australia. Definitions using Natural Semantic Metalanguage are used to make explicit the complex relations between the lexical meanings of interjections and their
interpretation in context. One class of interjections, which I call organizing interjections, play an important role in structuring discourse and in many cases constitute complete turns in conversational (and also in basically non-verbal) sequences. Their behaviour is explained by making explicit the presuppositions about discourse context, or ‘discourse placedness conditions’, that are part of their lexical meaning. Another two sets of interjections, the ‘Gesundheit set’ and the ‘sorry-for-the-swearing set’, exhibit highly specific presuppositions about social context, or ‘social placedness conditions’. Other interjections have a substantial degree of indirection, making inference necessary for their interpretation. To illustrate this, the interjection mah ‘time to do something!‘, whose agent is not semantically specified, is compared with others like nja ‘you take this now!’, whose agent is made explicit in the semantic representation. To cover cases like mah, it is useful to introduce a distinction between overt indirection, the lack of formally explicit coding of some aspect of meaning (e.g. argument or complement ellipsis), and covert indirection, the absence of some aspect of meaning from the semantic representation itself. All interjections, on this definition, are overtly indirect, but only some (such as mah) are in addition covertly indirect.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
See also: (E) balmarded, (E) bebba, (E) bonj, (E) mah, (E) med, (E) nadjalaminj, (E) ngoi, (E) nja
Evans, Nicholas (1994). Kayardild. In Cliff Goddard & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 203-228). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.12eva
Kayardild is an Australian language spoken in the South Wellesley Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria by a population traditionally numbering
around 120 people. Most of the proposed primitives find unproblematic translations into the language. The problems that arise can be divided into problems of combinability and problems of exuberance. Viewed from another angle, these two types of problem underscore the distinction between semantic and lexical universalis: the Kayardild evidence suggests that all the primitives considered in this volume are semantic universals, but that some fail to be lexical universals. In a case like THINK or DO there exist many Kayardild words that contain the relevant semantic component, supporting the claim that they are semantically universal, but they have not been lexicalised in a pure form. The case of putative universals expressible only as senses of gramemes is directly comparable: WANT and COULD are required in the explication of certain gramemes, but are not available in a pure form as lexemes. Yet only when a meaning is lexicalised does it become fully available for translation, which requires the ability to combine freely. Conversely, it may not be until one attempts translation that a particular lexical gap is even noticed, since all the commonest configurations involving a particular semantic primitive may be lexicalised — Kayardild, for example, has ‘do this’, ‘do that’, ‘do well’, ‘do badly’, ‘do what’, ‘do like someone else’ and so forth. By lexicalising all the regularly used combinations, a language can in some cases get by perfectly well without lexical exponents of the primitives themselves.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
