Cliff Goddard

Cultural values and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu)☆

Abstract This paper documents some Malay ‘rules of speaking’ and articulates their connections with Malay cultural values, using the new theory of ‘cultural scripts’ developed by Anna Wierzbicka. Aspects of the preferred Malay discourse style, which is normally described as refined, restrained, and charming, are shown to be linked with the Malay social emotion of malu ‘shame, propriety’, with the personal qualities of maruah ‘dignity’ and harga diri ‘self-esteem’, and with the ideal of senang hati ‘(lit.) easy heart’. It is argued that the cultural scripts approach enhances descriptive accuracy, helps reduce ethnocentricism, and facilitates the integration of pragmatics and cultural semantics.

Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in cultural context.

Using cultural scripts and semantic explications, the authors show how speech practices can be contextualised and understood in terms of the values, norms and beliefs of speakers themselves. These fascinating studies cover a gamut of culturally shaped ways of speaking from settings around the world - Australia, China, Colombia, Ghana, Japan, and Singapore. The book also serves as an introduction to powerful new techniques for pragmatic analysis which have emerged from 20 years of cross-linguistic semantic research. Key features: The book presents case studies from a diverse range of languages. It demonstrates how prevailing cultural attitudes, norms and beliefs can be modelled in a clear, precise and non-ethnocentric fashion.

Words and meanings : lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures

Cover blurb: In a series of cross-cultural investigations of word meaning, Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka examine key expressions from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. They focus on complex and culturally important words in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri and Malay. Some are basic like men, women, and children or abstract nouns like trauma and violence; others describe qualities such as hot, hard, and rough, emotions like happiness and sadness, or feelings like pain. This fascinating book is for everyone interested in the relations between meaning, culture, ideas, and words. They ground their discussions in real examples from different cultures and draw on work ranging from Leibniz, Locke, and Bentham, to popular works such as autobiographies and memoirs, and the Dalai Lama on happiness. The book opens with a review of the neglected status of lexical semantics in linguistics. The authors consider a range of analytical issues including lexical polysemy, semantic change, the relationship between lexical and grammatical semantics, and the concepts of semantic molecules and templates. Their fascinating book is for everyone interested in the relations between meaning, culture, ideas, and words.

Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology

Abstract The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach has a long track record in crosslinguistic lexical semantics (Wierzbicka 1992, 1996, 1999; Goddard 1998, 2006, 2008, 2011; Harkins and Wierzbicka 2001; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002; Peeters 2006; Gladkova 2010; Ye 2007a, 2007b, 2010; Bromhead 2009, 2011; Wong 2005, 2010; and other works). It is therefore not surprising that it has a clear theoretical position on key issues in lexical semantic typology and a well-developed set of analytical techniques. From a theoretical point of view, the overriding issue concerns the tertium comparationis. What are the optimal concepts and categories to support the systematic investigation of lexicons and lexicological phenomena across the worlds languages? To this question, the NSM approach offers the following answer: the necessary concepts can — and must — be based on the shared lexical-conceptual core of all languages, which NSM researchers claim to have discovered over the course of a thirty-five year program of empirical crosslinguistic semantics. This shared lexical-conceptual core is the minilanguage of semantic primes and their associated grammar. In addition, over the past 10 or so years, NSM researchers have developed certain original analytical constructs which promise to enhance the power and systematicity of the approach: in particular, the notions of semantic molecules and semantic templates. This paper sets out to explain and illustrate these notions, to report some key analytical findings (updated, in many cases, from previously published accounts), and to extrapolate their implications for the further development of lexical typology.

Not taking yourself too seriously in Australian English: Semantic explications, cultural scripts, corpus evidence

Abstract In the mainstream speech culture of Australia (as in the UK, though perhaps more so in Australia), taking yourself too seriously is culturally proscribed. This study applies the techniques of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) semantics and ethnopragmatics (Goddard, Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context, Mouton de Gruyter, 2006b, Goddard, Cross-linguistic semantics, John Benjamins, 2008; Wierzbicka, Semantics: Primes and universals, Oxford University Press, 1996, Wierzbicka, Cross-cultural pragmatics, Mouton de Gruyter, 2003, Wierzbicka, English: Meaning and culture, Oxford University Press, 2006a) to this aspect of Australian English speech culture. It first develops a semantic explication for the language-specific expression taking yourself too seriously, thus helping to give access to an “insider perspective” on the practice. Next, it seeks to identify some of the broader communicative norms and social attitudes that are involved, using the method of cultural scripts (Goddard and Wierzbicka, Cultural scripts 1, 2004). Finally, it investigates the extent to which predictions generated from the analysis can be supported or disconfirmed by contrastive analysis of Australian English corpora as against other English corpora, and by the use of the Google search engine to explore different subdomains of the World Wide Web.

BAD ARGUMENTS AGAINST SEMANTIC PRIMITIVES

Semantic primitives have fallen on hard times. Though their existence was once widely accepted in linguistics, a variety of counter-arguments have since engendered widespread scepticism. This paper examines a selection of anti-primitives arguments with the aim of showing that they fail to apply to the most resilient and well-developed theory of semantic primitives, namely, Anna Wierzbickas natural semantic metalanguage theory. The most serious of the faulty arguments invalidly link semantic primitives with objectivism, or with abstractness and non-verifiability, or with implausible views about language acquisition or language processing. Others rely on misanalysed linguistic facts, or simply fail to come to grips with the most credible pro-primitives position. The anti-primitives arguments are drawn from a broad range of sources, including the philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, language acquisition studies, and cognitive linguistics

Sabar, ikhlas, setia — patient, sincere, loyal? Contrastive semantics of some ‘virtues’ in Malay and English

Abstract The words sabar, ikhlas, and setia arguably identify core personal virtues in traditional Malay culture. Using Anna Wierzbickas ‘natural semantic metalanguage’ (NSM) approach, this paper undertakes a contrastive semantic analysis of these terms and their usual English translations, such as patient, sincere, and loyal. A number of significant meaning differences are brought to light, allowing an improved understanding of the cultural semantics of the Malay concepts.

Whorf meets Wierzbicka: variation and universals in language and thinking

Abstract Probably no contemporary linguist has published as profusely on the connections between semantics, culture, and cognition as Anna Wierzbicka. This paper explores the similarities and differences between her “natural semantic metalanguage” (NSM) approach and the linguistic theory of Benjamin Lee Whorf. It shows that while some work by Wierzbicka and colleagues can be seen as “neo-Whorfian”, other aspects of the NSM program are “counter-Whorfian”. Issues considered include the meaning of linguistic relativity, the nature of conceptual universals and the consequences for semantic methodology, the importance of polysemy, and the scale and locus of semantic variation between languages, particularly in relation to the domain of time. Examples are drawn primarily from English, Russian, and Hopi.

Interjections and Emotion (with Special Reference to “Surprise” and “Disgust”)

“All languages have ‘emotive interjections’ (i.e., interjections expressing cognitively based feelings)” (Wierzbicka 1999, p. 276)—and yet emotion researchers have invested only a tiny research effort into interjections, as compared with the huge body of research into facial expressions and words for emotion categories. This article provides an overview of the functions, meanings, and cross-linguistic variability of interjections, concentrating on non-word-based ones such as Wow!, Yuck!, and Ugh! The aims are to introduce an area that will be unfamiliar to most readers, to illustrate how one leading linguistic approach (natural semantic metalanguage [NSM]) deals with interjectional meaning, and to start a discussion about an interdisciplinary research agenda for the study of emotive interjections. Examples are drawn from English, Polish, and Cantonese.

Semantic primitives of time and space in Hong Kong Cantonese

Abstract This paper takes a subset of the semantic primitives currently proposed in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (Wierzbicka, 1996) and addresses two questions: Do these meanings have lexical equivalents in Cantonese? If so, does their combinatorial syntax conform to Wierzbickas hypotheses? The temporal primitives ( when/time, now, before, after, a long time, a short time ) are all found to have clear Cantonese exponents which can be combined as predicted with other metalanguage elements—but for two exceptions: the combinations a very short time and before/after now are apparently not possible in Cantonese. We also argue that the Cantonese evidence suggests that ‘when-time’ (as in the phrase at this time ) and ‘frequency time’ (as in it happened two times ) may be distinct semantic primes. As for the spatial primitives ( where/place, here, near, far, inside, side, above, below ), they all appear to have Cantonese exponents with the predicted syntax, but the tentative proposal that on may be a universal primitive is challenged by the apparent lack of an equivalent expression in Cantonese.