Anna Gladkova

Sympathy, Compassion, and Empathy in English and Russian: A Linguistic and Cultural Analysis

In this corpus-based study I contribute to the description and analysis of linguistic and cultural variation in the conceptualization of sympathy , compassion, and empathy. On the basis of a contrastive semantic analysis of sympathy, compassion, and empathy in English and their Russian translational equivalents, sočuvstvie , sostradanie, and sopereživanie, I demonstrate significant differences in the conceptualization of these words, which I explain by reference to the prevalence of different models of social interaction in Anglo and Russian cultures, as well as different cultural attitudes towards emotional expression. As a methodology I apply the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), which is based on empirically established lexical and grammatical universals, and argue that it is a powerful tool in contrastive studies.

A Linguist’s View of “Pride”

This commentary offers a linguistic perspective on “pride”. On the basis of a semantic analysis it demonstrates that the interpretation of pride put forward by Tracy, Shariff, and Cheng (2010) is Anglocentric and is consistent with the contemporary use of the English word pride. It compares the English concept of pride with the Russian concept of gordit’sja and demonstrates their differences. It calls for a psychological account of “pride” free from an ethnocentric bias.

A Cultural Semantic and Ethnopragmatic Analysis of the Russian Praise Words Molodec and Umnica (with Reference to English and Chinese)

Using data from the Russian National Corpus the chapter explores the semantics and ethnopragmatics of two Russian praise words molodec and umnica. The methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is employed 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 (guāi). The investigation allows us to formulate culturally valued modes of behaviour in Russian.

‘Intimate’ Talk in Russian: Human Relationships and Folk Psychotherapy

The paper explores and describes communicative aspects of ‘intimate’ relations in Russian. Using data from the Russian National Corpus, it illuminates the meanings of the social category terms drug ‘close friend’, rodnye ‘dear/kin’ and blizkie ‘close (ones)’ and demonstrates their relationship to the culturally salient terms duša ‘soul, heart’ and sokrovennyj ‘innermost, dear, hidden’. The paper contributes to understanding of Russian relationships and social cognition and establishes connections between the meanings of these terms and selected Russian ways of talking. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is used to formulate semantic explications of the terms and cultural scripts.

Anna Wierzbicka, Words and the World

This introduction to the Special Issue summarises Anna Wierzbicka’s contribution to the linguistic study of meaning. It presents the foundations of the approach known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) developed by Wierzbicka. The current state of the approach is discussed in the article with the ideas of 65 semantic primitives, universal grammar and the principle of reductive paraphrase in semantic explications. It traces the origin of Wierzbicka’s ideas to Leibniz. The framework has been tested on about thirty languages of diverse origin. The applications of the approach are broad and encompass lexical areas of emotions, social categories, speech act verbs, mental states, artefacts and animals, verbs of motion, kinship terms (among others), as well as grammatical constructions.

The English and the Russians: language, culture and communication

a very pronounced Russian way (either through religious preoccupations or through the Soviet institutionalized model of ‘Marxism–Leninism’) has run its course, and is ready to be replaced by a different mode of thinking, but whether it will be the one practiced by the post-communist globalizing world, or something different again, remains to be seen. Russian philosophy, similar to Russia’s complex geography, history, and culture, seems to be subject to both centripetal and centrifugal forces that pull it into two opposite directions, toward self-exploration and toward integration with the West. Yet, the great Russian novelists never wasted their time debating about whether their literature was Russian or universal. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov wrote their masterpieces for their Russian audiences while clearly setting the standard for the rest of the world. In other words, these two pulls are not necessary opposed to each other; the more these authors became involved with concrete Russian realities, the more universal they became. Maybe one of these days, Russian philosophy will accomplish a similar feat. Without any attempt to either embody or repudiate its Russian roots, it will find the way toward universal recognition. If we trust Alyssa DeBlasio, all preliminary steps have already been taken.

Propositional attitudes and cultural scripts

In the linguistic literature inspired by the philosophical tradition, the key concepts of analysing ‘propositional attitudes’ are ‘belief’, ‘hope’, ‘doubt’, ‘know’, among others. Yet, this distinction ignores cultural and linguistic variation in the conceptualisation of mental states that can be labelled as ‘propositional attitudes’. Moreover, this approach overlooks the fact that categorisation 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 terms of ‘propositional attitudes’ in English and Russian (to believe vs. scitat’ and belief vs. mnenie) in terms of universal meanings as they are identified in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). 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 demonstrates that the analysed concepts differ in meaning and can be related to culture-specific cognitive styles which can be formulated as cultural scripts. The chapter demonstrates that the supremacy of logical concepts does not correlate to the architecture of mental lexicon as it is revealed in universal human concepts. It argues that NSM semantic universals can be regarded as more appropriate elements in the analysis of propositional attitudes.

The third all-Russian NAMMI conference ‘Current issues in media studies – 2014’, 30 May 2014, Moscow, Russia

On 30 May 2014, the School of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU), hosted the third all-Russian NAMMI conference entitled ‘Current issues in media studies – 2014’. NAMMI stands for ...