Anna Wierzbicka

Cliff Goddard

This book presents cross-linguistic and cross-cultural investigations of word meaning from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. The words they consider are complex, culturally important, and basic, in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri and Malay.

Lexical Semantics Across Domains, Languages, and Cultures

Words and Meanings

Imprisoned in English argues that in the present English-dominated world, social sciences and the humanities are locked in a conceptual framework grounded in English and that scholars need to break away from this framework to reach a more universal, culture-independent perspective on things human.

The Hazards of English as a Default Language

Imprisoned in English

In Imprisoned in English, Anna Wierzbicka argues that in the present English-dominated world, millions of people - including academics, lawyers, diplomats, and writers - can become "prisoners of English", unable to think outside English. In particular, social sciences and the humanities are now increasingly locked in a conceptual framework grounded in English. To most scholars in these fields, treating English as a default language seems a natural thing to do. The book's approach is interdisciplinary, and its themes range over areas of central interest to anthropology, psychology, and sociology, among others. The linguistic material is drawn from languages of America, Australia, the Pacific, South-East Asia and Europe. Wierzbicka argues that it is time for human sciences to take advantage of English as a global lingua franca while at the same time transcending the limitations of the historically-shaped conceptual vocabulary of English. And she shows how this can be done.

Mary Besemeres

Although Australia prides itself on being multicultural, many Australians have little awareness of what it means to live in two cultures at once, and of how much there is to learn about other cultural perspectives.

Living with Two Languages and Cultures

Translating Lives

Linguist Anna Wierzbicka casts new light on the words of Jesus by taking her theory of universal human concepts and bringing it to bear on Jesus' parables and the Sermon on the Mount. Her approach results in strikingly novel interpretations.

Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts

What Did Jesus Mean?

Semantics of natural language; includes some Australian language examples.

The Semantics of Natural Language

Lingua Mentalis

This set of papers represents a unique collection; it is the first attempt ever to empirically test a hypothetical set of semantic and lexical universals across a number of genetically and typologically diverse languages. In fact the word 'collection' is not fully appropriate in this case, since the papers report research undertaken specifically for the present volume, and shaped by the same guidelines. They constitute parallel and strictly comparable answers to the same set of questions, coordinated effort with a common aim, and a common methodology.The goal of identifying the universal human concepts found in all languages, is of fundamental importance, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view, since these concepts provide the basis of the psychic unity of mankind, underlying the clearly visible diversity of human cultures. They also allow us to better understand that diversity itself, because they provide a common measure, without which no precise and meaningful comparisons are possible at all. A set of truly universal (or even near-universal) concepts can provide us with an invaluable tool for interpreting, and explaining all the culture-specific meanings encoded in the language-and-culture systems of the world. It can also provide us with a tool for explaining meanings across cultures in education, business, trade, international relations, and so on.The book contains 13 chapters on individual languages including Japanese (by Masayuki Onishi), Chinese (by Hilary Chappel), Thai (by Anthony Diller), Ewe (Africa, by Felix Ameka), Miskitu languages of South America (by Kenneth Hall), Australian Aboriginal languages Aranda, Yankunytjatjara and Kayardild (by Jean Harkins & David Wilkins, Cliff Goddard, and Nicholas Evans), the Austronesian languages Samoan, Longgu, Acehnese and Mangap-Mbula (by Ulrike Mosel, Deborah Hill, Mark Durie and Robert Bugenhagen), the Papuan language Kalam (by Andrew Pawley), and, last but not least French (by Bert Peters).In addition to the chapters on individual languages the book includes three theoretical chapters; Semantic theory and semantic universals (by Goddard), Introducing lexical primitives (by Goddard and Wierzbicka), and Semantic primitives across languages: a critical review (by Wierzbicka).

Theory and Empirical Findings

Semantic and Lexical Universals

Many people today, both Christians and non-Christians, are confused about or unaware of the essentials of Christian faith. In this book, Anna Wierzbicka takes a radically new approach to the task of communicating "what Christians believe" to the widest possible audience. "The Story of God and People," the heart of the book, sets out the core tenets of Christian faith in narrative form using simple language that is accessible to anyone, even those with no familiarity with Christianity or Christian vocabulary. The Story is not only simple but also universal: though written in English, it is not phrased in full English--English as we know it today, shaped by history, culture, and tradition--but in "Minimal English." Minimal English contains only those 400 or so English words that can be translated into any other language; essentially, it corresponds to the shared core of all languages. In the introduction to the book, Wierzbicka explains Minimal English and minimal languages in general, and in "The Story of God and People" that follows, she demonstrates the effectiveness of Minimal English as a tool for global understanding. At the same time, the use of Minimal English allows her not only to retell the Christian story in a strikingly new way, but also to rethink its meaning, bringing into relief its internal cohesion, logic and beauty.

The Story of God and People in Minimal English

What Christians Believe

This book, which can be seen as both a research monograph and a text book, challenges the approaches to human interaction based on supposedly universal "maxims of conversation" and "principles of politeness", which fly in the face of reality as experienced by millions of people - refugees, immigrants, crosscultural families, and so on. By contrast to such approaches, which can be of no use in crosscultural communication and education, this book is both theoretical and practical: it shows that in different societies, norms of human interaction are different and reflect different cultural attitudes and values; and it offers a framework within which different cultural norms and different ways of speaking can be effectively explored, explained, and taught. The book discusses data from a wide range of languages, including English, Italian, Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Walmatjari (an Australian Aboriginal language), and it shows that the meanings expressed in human interaction and the different "cultural scripts" prevailing in different speech communities can be described and compared in a way that is clear, simple, rigorous, and free of ethnocentric bias by using a "natural semantic metalanguage", based on empirically established universal human concepts. As the book shows, this metalanguage can be used as a basis for teaching successful cross-cultural communication and education, including the teaching of languages in a cultural context.

The Semantics of Human Interaction

Cross-Cultural Pragmatics

medytacje semantyczne

Kocha-lubi-szanuje

This fascinating book explores the bodily expression of emotion in worldwide and culture-specific contexts.

Diversity and Universals

Emotions Across Languages and Cultures

Volume one of a set of studies that is founded on the idea that universal grammar is based on - indeed, inseparable from - meaning. The theoretical framework is the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach originated by Anna Wierzbicka and developed in collaboration with Cliff Goddard.

Meaning and Universal Grammar

To what extent are languages 'essentially the same'? Is every word in our language translatable into every other language or are some of our words and concepts 'culture specific'? In this innovative study, Wierzbicka ranges across a wide variety of languages and cultures, attempting to identify concepts which are truly universal, while at the same time arguing that every language constitutes a different 'guide to reality'. The lexicons of different languages, she shows, do indeed suggest different conceptual universes. Not everything that can be said in one language can be said in another, and this is not just a matter of certain things being easier to say in one language than in another. In the development of her argument, Wierzbicka focuses on the words for emotion, moral concepts, names, and titles.

Universal Human Concepts in Culture-specific Configurations

Semantics, Culture, and Cognition

This book provides a synthesis of Wierzbicka's theory of meaning, which is based on conceptual primitives and semantic universals, using empirical findings from a wide range of languages. While addressed primarily to linguists, the book deals with highly topical and controversial issues of central importance to several disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. - ;Conceptual primitives and semantic universals are the cornerstones of a semantic theory which Anna Wierzbicka has been developing for many years. Semantics: Primes and Universals is a major synthesis of her work, presenting a full and systematic exposition of that theory in a non-technical and readable way. It delineates a full set of universal concepts, as they have emerged from large-scale investigations across a wide range of languages undertaken by the author and her colleagues. On the basis of empirical cross-linguistic studies it vindicates the old notion of the 'psychic unity of mankind', while at the same time offering a framework for the rigorous description of different languages and cultures. - ;A major synthesis of Anna Wierzbicka's work -

Primes and Universals

Semantics : Primes and Universals

praca zbiorowa

Semantyka i słownik

“The semantics of grammar” presents a radically semantic approach to syntax and morphology. It offers a methodology which makes it possible to demonstrate, on an empirical basis, that syntax is neither “autonomous” nor “arbitrary”, but that it follows from “semantics”. It is shown that every grammatical construction encodes a certain semantic structure, which can be revealed and rigorously stated, so that the meanings encoded in grammar can be compared in a precise and illuminating way, within one language and across language boundaries. The author develops a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals or near-universals (and, ultimately, on a system of universal semantic primitives), and shows that the same semantic metalanguage can be used for explicating lexical, grammatical and pragmatic aspects of language and thus offers a method for an integrated linguistic description based on semantic foundations. Analyzing data from a number of different languages (including English, Russian and Japanese) the author explores the notion of ethnosyntax and, via semantics, links syntax and morphology with culture. She attemps to demonstrate that the use of a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals makes it possible to rephrase the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested and treated as a program for empirical research.

The Semantics of Grammar

Non-Aboriginal; semantics of concrete objects in English e.g. household objects, cars and bicycles, animals, fruit and vegetables.

Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis

Piotr Rypson

Maciej Górny

Anna Brzezińska

Robert Traba

Georges Mink

Andrzej Mencwel

Hans Henning Hahn

Włodzimierz Borodziej

Piotr T. Kwiatkowski

Piotr Szlanta

Wojciech Szymański

Zbigniew Machej

Paweł Stachowiak

Marta Baranowska

Lena Magnone

Milena Woźniak-Koch

Małgorzata Tarnowska

Peter Oliver Loew

Łukasz Galusek

Żanna Komar

Michał Wiśniewski

Natalia Żak

Adrianna Sznapik

Florentine Zurek

Anna Dżabagina

Piotr Mitzner

Do kogo należy „polskość”? Jakie postawy narodowe reprezentowali Polacy? Czy „polskość” definiowana przez państwo może wykluczać innych obywateli uważających się za Polaków? Czy można być Polakiem w Niemczech, nie będąc Wallenrodem? A może „dziś można być tylko Polakiem bez zastrzeżeń albo nie być nim wcale”? Te i wiele innych, również obecnie aktualnych, tematów podejmują historycy, literaturoznawcy, historycy sztuki, politolodzy, antropolodzy, socjologowie. Książka składa się z 23 artykułów podzielonych na cztery rozdziały: Co to jest „polskość”?, Wojna i jej pamiętanie: wartości i postawy, Tradycja i nowe konstrukcje tożsamościowe oraz Artystyczne i literackie (de)konstrukcje „polskości”. Zamknięciem czterech rozdziałów analitycznych jest dyskusja zatytułowana: Co to jest „polskość”? Tożsamości indywidualne wobec zbiorowych wyobrażeń. Wśród autorek i autorów znaleźli się m.in. Włodzimierz Borodziej, Hans Henning Hahn, Basil Kerski, Andreas Lawaty, Andrzej Mencwel, Georges Mink, Piotr Mitzner, Piotr Rypson, Anna Wolff-Powęska oraz kilkunastu innych przedstawicieli czołowych ośrodków akademickich w Polsce, Niemczech i Francji.

„Polskość” jako zadanie pokoleniowe

Niedokończona wojna?

This work demonstrates that every language has its "key concepts" (expressed in key words) and that these concepts reflect the core values of the culture in question. Examining empirical evidence from five lanuages, and using its own "natural semantic metalanguage" to provide an analytical framework, it shows that cultures can be revealingly studied, compared and explained to outsiders through their key concepts.

English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese

Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words

It is widely accepted that English is the first truly global language and lingua franca. Anna Wierzbicka, the 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. 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. This engrossing and fascinating work of scholarship should appeal not only to linguists and others concerned with language and culture, but the large group of scholars studying English and English as a second language.

Anna Wierzbicka

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