Minimal Languages in Action [1 ed.] 3030640760, 9783030640767

Table of contents :
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1: In Praise of Minimal Languages
1.1 What Is a “Minimal Language”? What Are Minimal Languages Good For?
1.2 Issues, Terms, and Labels
1.3 Design of a Minimal Language
1.3.1 Why “Plain English” Is Not Enough
1.3.2 Choosing Words That Everyone Can Understand
Semantic Primes
Semantic Molecules
Other
1.3.3 Expanding the Minimal Lexicon
1.3.4 Using Simple Translatable Grammar
1.4 Minimal Language Vignettes
1.4.1 An Angel Visits Mary (Mariam)
1.4.2 What is a Tropical Cyclone?
1.5 Review of Chapters
1.6 Where to from here?
References
Part I: Finding the Best Words
2: Balancing the Local with the Universal: Minimal English and Agricultural Training in the Pacific
2.1 Introduction
2.2 How Minimal English Focuses on the Local
2.3 Language and Development: Adapting Universal Concepts to Local Contexts
2.4 Lessons from One Pacific Context to Another
2.4.1 Minimal English Vocabulary
2.4.2 Investigating Semantic Molecules and Explaining New Terms
2.5 Participatory Action Research and Minimal English
2.6 Conclusion
References
3: The Hunt for the Simplest Possible Vocabulary: Minimal Finnish Meets Easy Finnish
3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 The Concept of Easy Language
3.1.2 Guidelines and Difficulty Levels for Easy Finnish
3.1.3 Guidelines for Vocabulary in Easy Finnish
3.1.4 Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Minimal Languages
3.1.5 Research Questions
3.2 Material and Methods
3.2.1 Original Text in Standard Finnish: Criteria Words in the Non-discrimination Act
3.2.2 Text Modification Process
3.2.3 Feedback from Experts Modifying the Texts
3.2.4 User Testing with L2 Students and Comments from L2 Teachers
3.3 Results and Analysis of the Text Modification Process
3.3.1 Counting the Words and Sentences
3.3.2 Changes in Word Classes
3.3.3 Explaining and Rephrasing Criteria Words
3.3.4 Examples of Modifications of Criteria Words
3.3.5 Comments from Participating Easy Finnish Experts
3.3.6 Comments from L2 Teachers
3.4 Discussion
3.4.1 Was the Hunt for the Easy Finnish Core Vocabulary Successful?
3.4.2 Lessons Learnt for Future Studies on Minimal Finnish and Easy Language
3.4.3 Conclusion
References
4: Minimal English and Revitalisation Education: Assisting Linguists to Explain Grammar in Simple, Everyday Words
4.1 Background
4.1.1 Language Endangerment and Revitalisation
4.1.2 Language Education and the Communication Gap Between Communities and Linguists
4.2 Explaining “parts of speech” Using Minimal English
4.2.1 A First Approach, Using Lexical Prototypes
4.2.2 An Additional Strategy: Using Question-Answer Frames
4.2.3 Benefits of the Question-and-Answer Texts
4.2.4 Limitations and Extensions
4.3 Explaining “root and suffix” Using Minimal English
4.3.1 Explaining “suffix”
4.3.2 Explaining “root” and “suffix” Together
4.4 Explaining “forms of a word/suffix” Using Minimal English
4.4.1 A First Approach to “allomorphs”
4.4.2 Explaining “forms of a word”
4.4.3 Explaining “forms of a suffix”
4.5 Conclusions and Future Directions
References
Learner’s Guides and Language Resources
Other References
Part II: Language Learning and Intercultural Education
5: Using Minimal English (Minimal Spanish, Etc.) for Non-circular Learners’ Dictionaries
5.1 Introduction
5.1.1 Minimal English for Learners’ Dictionaries
5.1.2 Vocabulary Challenges
5.1.3 Why Non-circular?
5.1.4 Defining Vocabulary Size
5.1.5 New Multi-layer Structure for Learners’ Dictionaries
5.2 Learn These Words First
5.2.1 Lessons 1–2: The Core Vocabulary’s 61 NSM Semantic Primes
5.2.2 Lessons 3–12: The Core Vocabulary’s 300 Semantic Molecules
5.2.3 Longman Defining Vocabulary: Definitions for 2000 Words
5.2.4 Longman Dictionary: Definitions for More than 70,000 Words
5.2.5 Word Finding Tool
5.2.6 Why a Monolingual Dictionary?
5.3 Dictionary Development
5.3.1 NSM-LDOCE Non-circular Dictionary
5.3.2 LTWF Learners’ Dictionary
5.3.3 Tools for Checking Vocabulary and Circularity
5.4 Dictionary Evaluation
5.4.1 Definition Quality (Maximise)
5.4.2 Breadth of Coverage (Maximise)
5.4.3 Core Vocabulary Size and Definition Length
5.5 Universal Molecules and Cross-translation
5.5.1 Allolexes and Portmanteaus (26 Headwords)
5.5.2 Universal Semantic Molecules (57 Headwords)
5.5.3 Common Semantic Molecules (87 Headwords)
5.5.4 Other LTWF Molecules (96 Headwords)
5.6 Conclusion and Future Work
5.6.1 Organisational Improvements to Lessons
5.6.2 Other Improvements and Additional Features
5.6.3 Other Languages
References
6: Standard Translatable English: A Minimal English for Teaching and Learning Invisible Culture in Language Classrooms
6.1 Introduction
6.1.1 Why Use Minimal Languages for Teaching Cultural and Pragmatic Competence?
6.1.2 The Plan for the Present Project: The Importance of Teacher Input
6.2 A Minimal English for Teachers
6.3 From Minimal English to Standard Translatable English
6.3.1 The Inclusion of Semantic Molecules (and Other Useful Words)
6.3.2 Grammatical Changes
6.3.3 Stylistic Changes
6.3.4 Changes Made to Presentation
6.3.5 Applying STE to Existing Cultural Scripts
6.4 Using STE in Classroom Practice
6.4.1 In Classroom Activities
6.4.2 Developing Skills in Students
6.4.3 As Teacher-Talk
6.4.4 As a Dictionary Resource
6.5 A Teacher’s Resource
6.5.1 The Modules
6.5.2 The Entries
6.5.3 The Indexes
6.5.4 Worksheets
6.6 Conclusion
References
7: From Cultural to Pedagogical Scripts: Speaking Out in English, French, and Russian
7.1 Introduction
7.2 The Unhindered Expression of Personal Opinions
7.3 From Cultural to Pedagogical Scripts
7.4 Anglo Epistemic Reserve and Openness
7.5 The French Propensity to Take a Stand
7.6 Expressiveness
7.7 Russian ‘sincerity’: iskrennost’
7.8 Conclusion
References
8: Using Minimal Language to Help Foreign Learners Understand Korean Honorifics
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Background to This Study
8.2.1 Complexity of the Honorific System and Difficulties in Explanation
8.2.2 Classification of Speech Levels: Difficulties and Problems
8.2.3 Difficulties with Terms for Social Factors
8.2.4 Direction of Discussion
8.3 Cultural Scripts for Understanding Korean Honorific Usage
8.3.1 Cultural Script for ‘chomyen’ Consciousness
8.3.2 Cultural Script for Consciousness of Vertical Rank
8.3.3 Cultural Script for ‘Intimacy’ in Korean
8.4 Forms of Folk Speech: Contaymal and Panmal
8.4.1 Explicating Contaymal
8.4.2 Explicating Panmal
8.4.3 Negotiations About Speech
8.5 Conclusion
References
Part III: Health
9: Adapting the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) into Minimal English and Seven Other Minimal Languages
9.1 Introduction
9.2 The WECS-CETL Development Process
9.3 The Positive Anchors in WECS-CETL
9.3.1 The Headings (Parameter Labels)
9.3.2 Mom and Child Both Want to Be Very Close (‘Attraction’)
9.3.3 Mom and Child Both Want to Say Something to the Other. They Both Want to Know What the Other Wants to Say (‘Communication’)
9.3.4 Mom and Child Both Look at the Other’s Face. They Want to Know What the Other Feels (‘Facial Communication’)
9.3.5 Mom and Child Both Know What the Other Feels All the Time (‘Sensitivity/Reciprocity’)
9.4 The Negative Anchor Texts and Overall Assessment (‘Emotionally Connected or Not Connected’)
9.5 Discussion
Appendix: WECS-CETL Negative
1. Mom and Child Don’t Want to Be Close
2. Mom and Child Don’t Often Say Something to the Other
3. Mom and Child Don’t Often Look at the Other’s Face
4. Mom and Child Don’t Know What the Other Feels
References
10: Ways of Thinking and Talking about Cancer
10.1 Introduction
10.2 The Importance of Using Minimal Language for Talking About Cancer
10.2.1 Minimal Languages in Health Communication
10.3 A First View of Cancer in Polish, French and Spanish Discourse
10.3.1 Brief Observations from Corpora
10.3.2 Different Cultural Orientations Towards Cancer in Poland, France and Spain
10.4 Analysis of the Ways of Thinking and Speaking About Cancer in the Three Countries
10.4.1 Cancer on Websites in Poland
10.4.2 Cancer on Websites in France
10.4.3 Cancer on Websites in Spain
10.5 Final Remarks
Appendix 1: Corpora Consulted
Poland
France
Spain
Appendix 2: The Websites Consulted (November 2019)
Poland
France
Spain
References
11: Minimal English for Health: Reader Accessibility in Public Health Communication About COVID-19 in Australia (with Contrastive Reference to Denmark)
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Case Study: COVID-19 Public Health Posters in Australia and Denmark
11.2.1 Australian Materials
11.2.2 Danish Material
11.2.3 Comparison of the Australian and Danish Material
11.3 Minimal English for Health: A Proposed Solution
11.4 Re-writing COVID-19 Prevention Messages in Minimal English
11.4.1 Staying at Home
11.4.2 Keeping a Distance from Others When Out
11.4.3 Covering Mouth and Nose When Coughing or Sneezing
11.4.4 Washing Hands
11.5 Re-writing COVID-19 Symptoms in Minimal English
11.5.1 Fever
11.5.2 Cough
11.5.3 Sore Throat
11.5.4 Shortness of Breath
11.6 Summing Up
11.7 Concluding Remarks
References
12: Seven Essential Messages for the Time of the Coronavirus
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Message 1
12.2.1 Line 1 of Message 1
12.2.2 Line 2 of Message 1
12.2.3 Line 4 of Message 1
12.2.4 Line 5 of Message 1
12.2.5 Lines 6 and 7 of Message 1
12.2.6 Lines 8 and 9 of Message 1
12.3 Message 2
12.4 Message 3
12.5 Message 4
12.6 Message 5
12.7 Message 6
12.8 Message 7
12.8.1 ‘Island’
12.8.2 ‘Earth’
12.9 Concluding Remarks
References
Index

Citation preview

Minimal Languages in Action

Edited by Cliff Goddard

Minimal Languages in Action “Minimal English is one of the most exciting developments in linguistics. It has an excellent academic pedigree, and it should make an enormous difference to the world. As this volume makes clear, while Minimal English is valuable to academic researchers, it is in solving very real communicative problems that it comes into its own. Covering everything from dictionaries to public health, from cancer to honorifics, this is a work of great scope, clarity and relevance. This volume is both accessible and rigorous and should be read (and used) very widely.” —Annabelle Mooney, University of Roehampton, UK

Cliff Goddard Editor

Minimal Languages in Action

Editor Cliff Goddard Sch Humanities, Languages & Soc Sci Griffith University Brisbane, QLD, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-64076-7    ISBN 978-3-030-64077-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Oranut Fankhaenel / EyeEm / Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 In Praise of Minimal Languages  1 Cliff Goddard 1.1 What Is a “Minimal Language”? What Are Minimal Languages Good For?   1 1.2 Issues, Terms, and Labels   4 1.3 Design of a Minimal Language   6 1.4 Minimal Language Vignettes  16 1.5 Review of Chapters  21 1.6 Where to from here?  23 References 24 Part I Finding the Best Words  27 2 Balancing the Local with the Universal: Minimal English and Agricultural Training in the Pacific 29 Deborah Hill 2.1 Introduction  29 2.2 How Minimal English Focuses on the Local  33 2.3 Language and Development: Adapting Universal Concepts to Local Contexts  36 v

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2.4 Lessons from One Pacific Context to Another  39 2.5 Participatory Action Research and Minimal English  46 2.6 Conclusion  47 References 49 3 The Hunt for the Simplest Possible Vocabulary: Minimal Finnish Meets Easy Finnish 53 Leealaura Leskelä and Ulla Vanhatalo 3.1 Introduction  53 3.2 Material and Methods  60 3.3 Results and Analysis of the Text Modification Process  65 3.4 Discussion  74 References 80 4 Minimal English and Revitalisation Education: Assisting Linguists to Explain Grammar in Simple, Everyday Words 83 Elita Machin 4.1 Background  83 4.2 Explaining “parts of speech” Using Minimal English  88 4.3 Explaining “root and suffix” Using Minimal English  94 4.4 Explaining “forms of a word/suffix” Using Minimal English 97 4.5 Conclusions and Future Directions 102 References103 Part II Language Learning and Intercultural Education 109 5 Using Minimal English (Minimal Spanish, Etc.) for Non-­circular Learners’ Dictionaries111 David Bullock 5.1 Introduction 111 5.2 Learn These Words First 115 5.3 Dictionary Development 120

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5.4 Dictionary Evaluation 124 5.5 Universal Molecules and Cross-translation 129 5.6 Conclusion and Future Work 132 References136 6 Standard Translatable English: A Minimal English for Teaching and Learning Invisible Culture in Language Classrooms139 Lauren Sadow 6.1 Introduction 139 6.2 A Minimal English for Teachers 145 6.3 From Minimal English to Standard Translatable English 147 6.4 Using STE in Classroom Practice 156 6.5 A Teacher’s Resource 159 6.6 Conclusion 163 References165 7 From Cultural to Pedagogical Scripts: Speaking Out in English, French, and Russian171 Bert Peeters 7.1 Introduction 171 7.2 The Unhindered Expression of Personal Opinions 174 7.3 From Cultural to Pedagogical Scripts 177 7.4 Anglo Epistemic Reserve and Openness 180 7.5 The French Propensity to Take a Stand 182 7.6 Expressiveness 184 7.7 Russian ‘sincerity’: iskrennost’186 7.8 Conclusion 189 References190 8 Using Minimal Language to Help Foreign Learners Understand Korean Honorifics195 Jeong-Ae Lee 8.1 Introduction 195 8.2 Background to This Study 196

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8.3 Cultural Scripts for Understanding Korean Honorific Usage202 8.4 Forms of Folk Speech: Contaymal and Panmal210 8.5 Conclusion 217 References219 Part III Health 223 9 Adapting the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) into Minimal English and Seven Other Minimal Languages225 Cliff Goddard, Ulla Vanhatalo, Amie A. Hane, and Martha G. Welch 9.1 Introduction 225 9.2 The WECS-CETL Development Process 232 9.3 The Positive Anchors in WECS-CETL 234 9.4 The Negative Anchor Texts and Overall Assessment (‘Emotionally Connected or Not Connected’) 241 9.5 Discussion 246 Appendix: WECS-CETL Negative 248 References252 10 Ways of Thinking and Talking about Cancer255 Magdalena Juda 10.1 Introduction 255 10.2 The Importance of Using Minimal Language for Talking About Cancer 257 10.3 A First View of Cancer in Polish, French and Spanish Discourse259 10.4 Analysis of the Ways of Thinking and Speaking About Cancer in the Three Countries 267 10.5 Final Remarks 272 Appendix 1: Corpora Consulted  274 Appendix 2: The Websites Consulted (November 2019)  275 References277

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11 Minimal English for Health: Reader Accessibility in Public Health Communication About COVID-19 in Australia (with Contrastive Reference to Denmark)281 Ida Stevia Diget 11.1 Introduction 281 11.2 Case Study: COVID-19 Public Health Posters in Australia and Denmark 284 11.3 Minimal English for Health: A Proposed Solution 302 11.4 Re-writing COVID-19 Prevention Messages in Minimal English 303 11.5 Re-writing COVID-19 Symptoms in Minimal English 308 11.6 Summing Up 311 11.7 Concluding Remarks 313 References315 12 Seven Essential Messages for the Time of the Coronavirus319 Anna Wierzbicka 12.1 Introduction 319 12.2 Message 1324 12.3 Message 2329 12.4 Message 3331 12.5 Message 4332 12.6 Message 5334 12.7 Message 6335 12.8 Message 7338 12.9 Concluding Remarks 342 References343 Index347

Notes on Contributors

David  Bullock  has worked as a computational linguist for over two decades, building a variety of dictionaries, language models and grammars in multiple languages. These have been used for proofing tools, machine-translation systems and speech-recognition applications. His academic base is University of Washington. Ida  Stevia  Diget  is a PhD candidate at Griffith University, Australia. Diget researches accessibility and cross-translatability of public health communication in Australia. Her PhD project is entitled “Minimal English for accessible public health messaging: Mapping the terrain”. Diget has a Master of Linguistics and Cognitive Semiotics from Lund University, Sweden. Cliff Goddard  is Professor of Linguistics at Griffith University, Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. Much of his research lies at the intersection of language, meaning and culture. He has published widely in descriptive, theoretical and applied semantics, language description and typology, ethnopragmatics and intercultural communication. Amie A. Hane  is a developmental psychologist with expertise in developmental neuroscience, parent-infant mental health, and behavioural paediatrics. She conducts clinical research in the Nurture Science Program in xi

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Notes on Contributors

the Department of Pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, and runs the Early Experience and Physiology Laboratory at Williams College. Deborah Hill  is a member of the Centre for Sustainable Communities at the University of Canberra, Australia. She has extensive experience with linguistic research in Solomon Islands. Her interests include lexical semantics, Oceanic languages and cultures, and language and development practices. Magdalena Juda  studied at University of Wrocław, Poland, where she completed her Master degree in Spanish philology. Her main research interests are cross-cultural pragmatics, narrative medicine and health communication. In addition, she coordinates clinical trials in a medical centre in Opole, Poland. Jeong-Ae  Lee is Professor of Korean language in Jeonbuk National University, South Korea. Her speciality lies in Korean semantics and pragmatics. Aside from other publications she is the lead translator of Anna Wierzbicka’s Cross-cultural Pragmatics into Korean. She also has interests in education research. Leealaura Leskelä  is head of Selkokeskus, the Finnish Centre for Easy Language, Helsinki, Finland. In her career she has developed the guidelines for Easier Finnish for both written and spoken language, promoted the use of Easy Language in Finland and carried out various projects with persons who need linguistic support. Leskelä is undertaking doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki concerning guidelines for Easy Language in interaction. Elita  Machin  completed her Bachelor of Languages and Linguistics (Honours) at Griffith University in 2019. She is studying her Master of Information Studies, with a view to pursue a career in libraries. In doing so, she hopes to contribute to language revitalisation by connecting communities with heritage documents on their languages. Bert Peeters  Until his untimely death in February 2021, Bert Peeters was a long-standing advocate of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. Working mainly on French and (Australian) English,

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his main interests were in language as a key to cultural values, intercultural communication and language teaching. He published prolifically on these topics and was editor of many collective volumes. Lauren Sadow  completed her PhD at the Australian National University (ANU) in 2019, creating The Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers. Her research focuses on the semantics and pragmatics of language, and how linguistics can improve language education. She works as a sessional lecturer at the ANU, teaching Cross-cultural Communication. Ulla Vanhatalo  is a Docent in General Linguistics at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests are in lexical semantic methodology, Finnish language, and easy languages. Vanhatalo has been applying NSM outside linguistics and popularising lexical semantics. Her mission is to reduce language-related misunderstandings and help people to communicate better in everyday life. Martha  G.  Welch, MD is Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Departments of Pediatrics and Pathology & Cell Biology at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), New York. She is the Director of CUMC’s multidisciplinary Nurture Science Program in Pediatrics. Anna Wierzbicka  is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the Australian National University. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies, as well as linguistics. She is the author of many books, most recently What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English (2018).

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Semantic primes (English version) Samples of semantic molecules of different kinds. (After Goddard 2018c) Components of a minimal language lexicon Family taking their garden produce to market (Nangali, North-East Guadalcanal) Part 1 of the list of semantic primes and molecules in Finnish used for Minimal Finnish, based on the English lists in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) Part 2 of the list of semantic primes and molecules in Finnish used for Minimal Finnish, based on the English lists in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) Sample text from the modification process, translated from Finnish. The task for the participants was to create a text based on Minimal Finnish word list and Easy Finnish grammatical and textual instructions. This text was also used in the user testing situations Minimal English explications of the words ‘noun’, ‘verb’ and ‘adjective’, demonstrating the first strategy for explicating grammatical terms Minimal English explications of the words ‘noun’, ‘verb’ and ‘adjective’, demonstrating the question-answer strategy for explicating grammatical terms

8 11 14 32 58 59

63 89 91 xv

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Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4 Fig. 9.5

Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2

List of Figures

Minimal English explications of the words ‘demonstrative’ and ‘pronoun’, using the lexical prototypes strategy for explicating grammatical terms 94 A late-stage explication of ‘root’ and ‘suffix’, showing how colours and demonstration can be used with Minimal English to explain the concepts 95 Diagram of layers in the Learn These Words First dictionary 115 Screenshot of the table of contents from the AusDICT ebook, showing the titles of the different modules on the left in ‘Short Contents’. The ‘Section Contents’ on the right shows the expansion of the modules to their sub-headings. The full ‘Section Contents’ are four pages 160 Screenshot of the entry for ‘she’ll be right’ from the AusDICT ebook, illustrating the parts-of-speech, comments, examples, and cross-referencing applied to each entry 161 Expressions for Korean relationships, according to the degree of intimacy 209 A baby in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. (Photo by Meghan Wyvill, used with permission) 227 Section of the original WECS research rating form (Hane et al. 2018). The full form had five sections. © 2017, 2020 The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York228 Section of Clinical WECS rating form. The anchors at the low, middle, and high ranges guide scoring. © 2017, 2020 The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York229 Example of an interim English/Finnish parallel text used in translatability testing. The numbers in the right column flag issues for follow-up 233 The WECS-CETL form uses the CETL language for the four domains. Shown here is the section of the form for rating the domain corresponding to ‘Attraction’. © 2020 The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York245 Public health communication concerning COVID-19 at a restaurant and at a public toilet in Brisbane, Australia (photos taken by the author) 282 Poster informing about Coronavirus, retrieved on March 1, 2020. © Australian Government Department of Health (2020c)286

  List of Figures 

Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4 Fig. 11.5 Fig. 11.6 Fig. 11.7 Fig. 11.8 Fig. 11.9 Fig. 11.10 Fig. 11.11 Fig. 11.12 Fig. 11.13 Fig. 11.14 Fig. 11.15 Fig. 11.16 Fig. 11.17 Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3 Fig. 12.4 Fig. 12.5 Fig. 12.6 Fig. 12.7

Excerpt of Figure 11.2 Excerpt of Figure 11.2 Excerpt of Figure 11.2 Excerpt of Figure 11.2 Poster about the symptoms of Coronavirus, retrieved on March 1, 2020. © Australian Government Department of Health (2020b) Excerpt of Figure 11.7 Excerpt of Figure 11.7 Excerpt of Figure 11.7 Excerpt of Figure 11.7 Poster about COVID-19, retrieved on March 1, 2020. © Sundhedsstyrelsen (2020). Reprinted with permission Excerpt of Figure 11.12 Excerpt of Figure 11.12 Excerpt of Figure 11.12 Excerpt of Figure 11.12 Excerpt of Figure 11.12 Essential Message 1 Essential Message 2 Essential Message 3 Essential Message 4 Essential Message 5 Essential Message 6 Essential Message 7

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287 288 289 290 291 292 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 324 330 331 332 334 335 339

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Supplementary words (allolexes, portmanteaus, grammatical function words) of Minimal English 10 Table 3.1 A comparison showing the simplification from the original text to the easier versions in terms of the number of words and sentences, number of words per sentence, and percentage of concrete nouns in each text 66 Table 3.2 Number of texts in each of the three categories of simple text which used the criteria words or equivalents. Equivalents to the criteria words appear in parentheses 70 Table 5.1 Accuracy of identifying missing headwords for definitions 125 Table 5.2 Coverage of word tokens in the British National Corpus (BNC)127 Table 5.3 Number of words used to define each sense of each headword: Average (Avg) and interquartile range (IQR) 128 Table 6.1 Key features of good materials for culture 143 Table 6.2 Defining vocabulary used in the AusDICT—comprising primes (italics) and molecules 149 Table 6.3 Other Minimal English words which could potentially be used in STE, if needed 150 Table 8.1 Korean speech styles 198

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List of Tables

Table 8.2 Korean speech forms and honorific expression elements (after Yoon 2004: 191–200; Brown 2011: 23–45; Kim 2016: 29) Table 9.1 Sample descriptors from WECS training materials (Expanded WECS v1.2) in use in February 2018, for Positive anchor points

201 230

1 In Praise of Minimal Languages Cliff Goddard

1.1 W  hat Is a “Minimal Language”? What Are Minimal Languages Good For? The year 2018 saw the launch of a new approach to clearer and more accessible communication, in the book Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words (Goddard 2018a).1 The key idea was that great benefits can be often gained by making the effort to express important thoughts and messages not in “full English”, with all its wonderfully expressive resources of vocabulary and grammar, but in so-called Minimal English: a radically simplified, core version of English, consisting only of words and grammar which are easily translatable into other languages. The concept and basic design of Minimal English had emerged from decades of linguistic research in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage

C. Goddard (*) Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_1

1

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(NSM) framework into how meanings are packaged and expressed differently in different languages. That research indicated that notwithstanding the dazzling global diversity of culture, history, and geography, all languages apparently share a small common core of meaning. It follows from this that there is nothing linguistically special about Minimal English: it is just one minimal language among many (Minimal Spanish, Minimal Chinese, Minimal Finnish, and so on), all of which correspond very closely to one another. Minimal English has a special utility, however, on account of the status of English as a global lingua franca. Also, as a “de-­ Anglicised” form of English it presents a special opportunity to push back against the Anglocentrism of global English. The minimal version of any language represents the bare essentials of that language: a core vocabulary of as few as 200–300 words and a restricted grammar. Expressing oneself in a language of minimal size can be difficult (that’s for sure). It is a skill that has to be learnt and practised; but what is to be gained is maximal clarity and accessibility, on the one hand, and maximal translatability, on the other; and from this, many societal benefits can flow. Minimal English for a Global World provided a set of proof of concept studies, showing how complex ideas in law, diplomacy, ethics, science education, and medicine could be re-worked into minimal language (Cf. also Sadow et al. 2020; Jordan 2017) This book—Minimal Languages in Action—explores how early adopters have been putting Minimal English and other minimal languages into action across diverse fields: language teaching and learning, “easy language” projects, agricultural development training, language revitalisation, intercultural education, paediatric assessment, and health messaging. The projects and researchers come from Australia, the USA, Finland, Poland, the Pacific, and South Korea. The focus is twofold: how are minimal languages being put into service, and what we are learning from this? That is, how are our ideas about minimal languages changing in response to practical experiences in different contexts? How can minimal languages be expanded, adapted, localised, and implemented differently for different purposes? Before moving to these and other matters, I would like to briefly itemise some of the benefits of Minimal English and other minimal languages. I will do so under four interrelated points. First, any minimal

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language, be it Minimal English or any other minimal language, is a tool or method for putting thoughts into words in a way that makes it easier for these thoughts and words to travel across a language barrier. It is important to point out that minimal languages are not only useful for translating or adapting existing texts. In much information-based writing, it makes sense to try to write in translatable words and grammar from the beginning. The resulting texts will be clearer and less “accident-­ prone” when they come to be translated. This should lead to financial savings on translation costs and greater effectiveness with the target audience. It also helps reduce the so-called invisible misunderstandings that often occur when words of global English circulate in international discourse without necessarily being understood in the same way in different countries and contexts. Second, using minimal language makes thoughts and messages clearer and more explicit. The point is, it is not just a matter of communication: using a minimal language helps one to think more clearly. With fewer words to choose from, one is forced to focus on the essentials, to avoid woolly thinking, and to forsake any temptation to indulge in rhetoric or linguistic virtuosity. Third, from the consumers point of view, texts expressed in minimal language are more accessible to people without high-level language skills on account of cognitive impairments or lack of formal education, or because they are children, or because they are L2 learners, such as immigrants and refugees or language learners at school or university. Fourth, texts expressed in simple and clear words are often more moving—“closer to the heart”—than those expressed in “higher” levels of language (cf. Wierzbicka, this volume Chap. 12). Finally, it should be emphasised that minimal languages are solidly grounded in empirical linguistic research, conducted over 40 years in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework. This is what makes them different from, and much better than, other attempts over the years to simplify English (see Sect. 1.4). Minimal languages are the result of taking the findings of NSM research “out of the lab” and adapting them for practical use by non-specialists in a wide and open-ended range of functions (cf. Sadow 2020).

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The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. Section 1.2 gives a preview of some of the insights and issues discussed in this book. Section 1.3, the longest section of the present chapter, is a descriptive outline of minimal languages. It covers the core vocabulary and grammar of minimal languages and discusses several ways in which the core vocabulary can be expanded to suit particular domains or user communities. Section 1.4 follows with two brief examples of Minimal English and I take the chance to compare them with similar texts in Basic English and Wikipedia Simple English, with the aim of highlighting that Minimal English is more accessible, more evidence-based, and more cross-translatable. Section 1.5 gives an overview of the chapters. Section 1.6 looks briefly to the future for minimal languages.

1.2 Issues, Terms, and Labels How strict should one be with the vocabulary and grammar of a minimal language? How precise with the expression? There is a spectrum of views. Depending on which end of the spectrum one falls closest to, one is likely to view a minimal language either as a language variety of sorts, with delimitable contents and boundaries, or alternatively as an “approach”, that is, as primarily a set of guidelines and heuristics. Oversimplifying, one may say that the strict and precise end of the spectrum is represented by Wierzbicka’s (2019) ‘The Story of God and People’, while the “free form” or “approach” end of the spectrum is represented by Vanhatalo and Torkki’s (2018) advocacy of what they call the “65 words approach” for public discourse in Finland. On closer examination, however, one can see that these differing attitudes towards minimal language are connected to the differing purposes of the respective authors. At about 25,000 words, Wierzbicka’s (2019) ‘The Story of God and People’ is the longest single Minimal English text yet written. It is a “high end” product by an advanced practitioner, years in the making and with no effort spared. All this is connected with the author’s goal, which is to distil the essentials of “what Christians believe” into maximally clear and cross-translatable language. Scholars in translation studies have often

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observed that prestige texts, such as holy books and high literature, typically receive the most detailed and concentrated attention from translators. Vanhatalo and Torkki (2018), on the other hand, are not focussing on any particular text at all. Rather, they are trying to inspire Finns to see the advantages of using shared simple words to discuss contentious public issues. They wish to inject greater clarity into public discourse and to encourage the Finnish public to rely less on contested “trigger words” which often amplify conflict. From their point of view, it does not matter greatly whether a high standard of minimal Finnish is achieved, so long as there is improvement in public discourse. Complementary to the spectrum just described, minimal languages also vary along several other dimensions of difference, such as: the nature of the targeted user community, the intended purposes of the minimal language, and the degree to which the cross-translatable core vocabulary is augmented by domain-specific vocabulary. The latter issue can be deferred till Sect. 1.3, which deals with the linguistic aspects of minimal languages. To get a quick overview of the other two factors (users and purposes), it is instructive to take a look at various terms and labels employed by different contributors as purpose-specific alternatives to ‘Minimal Language’—different brandings, if you will. • Basic Human: used by Wierzbicka when using minimal language to reach the broadest possible audience—potentially, people everywhere—as in her work on global ethics (Wierzbicka 2018) or the ‘Seven Essential Messages in the time of Coronavirus’ (this volume, Chap. 12). • Easy Language (formerly Easy-to-Read or EtR): used in the EU, especially for simplified language forms for people with cognitive challenges and other language difficulties (cf. Lindholm and Vanhatalo Forthcoming; Leskelä and Vanhatalo, this volume, Chap. 3). Easy Language is favoured by these users because it is itself easy to understand. • Standard Translatable English: for use by teachers and students in English as a Second Language classrooms (Sadow 2019; this volume, Chap. 6). For these users, the idea of a “minimal” version of English was unappealing.

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• Clear Explicit Translatable Language (acronym CETL, pronounced “settle”): for use by outward-facing medical professionals, such as paediatricians and community health workers (Vanhatalo et  al. Forthcoming; this volume, Chap. 9). Despite the value of these customised brandings, the term ‘minimal language’ (and specific language versions, such as Minimal English, Minimal Spanish) still has much to recommend it and is regarded as unproblematical in the chapters by Hill, Machin, Bullock, Lee, and Juda. In my view, the best way to view the multiplicity of labels is to use the expression ‘minimal language’ to designate radically reduced language forms informed by the findings and principles of NSM linguistics. Domainspecific or purpose-specific labels such as CETL and Standard Translatable English can be explained as “based on research into minimal languages”.2 The designation Basic Human is somewhat different because it is intended to be domain-general and not tied to any specific purpose (precisely the opposite in fact). Compared with ‘minimal language’, it has a couple of important advantages: it is easier to “get” at first sight and it conveys immediately the idea of a common language for all people. Obviously though, the term Basic Human is only appropriate for a minimal language which is entirely free of any culture-specific elements.

1.3 Design of a Minimal Language 1.3.1 Why “Plain English” Is Not Enough The idea of writing or speaking in simple cross-translatable words strikes many people as nothing more than common sense. After all, doesn’t everyone recognise the value of putting things into plain English that everyone can understand? Actually though, it is a big mistake to equate “plain”, that is, non-technical, jargon-free, English with simple, cross-­ translatable English. Many intuitively “plain” English sentences are not cross-translatable, because they use English-specific words or Englishspecific grammar. Examples (a)–(c), for instance, would strike most English speakers as pretty plain and simple English but none of them are as simple as they look.

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(a) That’s not fair. (b) Let’s stick to the facts. (c) We have to do something about that. In (a) the word fair is highly English-specific (arguably, an Anglo cultural keyword) and untranslatable into most languages of the world, and the same goes for the word facts in (b) (cf. Wierzbicka 2006; Goddard and Ye 2015). Additionally, (b) also includes the near-idiom stick to …. Though compact in English, sentence (b) would take a short paragraph to render accurately in many languages. As for (c), the problem here is a matter of grammar. Although the word ‘do’ is a semantic prime (and hence has equivalents in all languages), the expression ‘do something about (something)’ is semantically quite complex and English-specific. Fortunately, after decades of cross-linguistic research into the deep semantics of many languages, we now know how to avoid such translation traps. Let’s now take a look at the vocabulary and grammar of minimal languages, with a particular focus on Minimal English.

1.3.2 C  hoosing Words That Everyone Can Understand At the core of any minimal language are (1) the 65 semantic primes discovered by NSM research, together with (2) a couple of hundred other basic meanings (termed ‘semantic molecules’ in NSM theory) which also appear to have equivalents in all or most languages. If necessary for specific purposes, this core minimal vocabulary can be expanded in various ways, provided that such expansion is done cautiously. In this and the next sub-section, I will elaborate on these points one by one.

Semantic Primes The English versions of the 65 primes are shown in a user-friendly display in Fig. 1.1, arranged into groups. Semantic primes are also often listed in a table format. Comparable figures and tables are available for about 30 languages from various language families and geographical locations around the world.3

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Fig. 1.1  Semantic primes (English version)

The words displayed in Fig. 1.1 strike most English speakers as very basic and common vocabulary—and so they are. It has to be noted though that many of these words in fact have several meanings, a situation linguists term ‘lexical polysemy’. High-frequency words in any language tend to be polysemous. In such a situation, the simplest of the meanings concerned is the semantic prime. Usually it is straightforward to indicate the intended meaning by giving a couple of simple sentences (see also Sect. 1.3.3). For example, the English word see has several different meanings. The semantically primitive one is found in sentences like ‘I can’t see anything’ and ‘I want to see more’. Likewise, the English word word(s) has several different meanings. The semantically primitive one is found in sentences like ‘She said the same, but in different/other words’ and ‘In this language, the word for ‘dog’ (bird, tree, etc.) is—’.4 Lexical polysemy can work quite differently in different languages, so when working in any individual minimal language (e.g. Minimal English or Minimal Spanish), one has to be careful to use the words for semantic primes appropriately. It is also important to note that Fig. 1.1 only gives

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a single word for each prime. There are often variant forms for a prime, however, and these are also allowed in the minimal version of any language. Very often such so-called allolexes are grammatical or discursive variants, for example I and me, this and that in English. Sometimes they are different words altogether, for example the English word well can be an adverbial allolex of ‘good’; person can be an allolex of ‘someone’. As well as allolexes, minimal languages can also employ portmanteau words, that is, words that package several primes together, for example English everyone for “all someone(s)”; often for ‘at many times’.5 In order to combine the words for semantic primes into phrases and sentences, the English language makes use of various grammatical ‘function words’, such as the prepositions in, at, of, with, and about, among others. When they are used to support and combine the primes, such function words also appear in Minimal English, as would their counterparts in other minimal languages. In some languages, of course, the equivalents of English function words are not separate words, but different case forms; in other languages, the same functions may be served by grammaticalised uses of certain verbs; and there are other possibilities too. The general point is that in any minimal language, the semantic primes bring with them a certain amount of grammatical machinery—or grammatical glue, if you will—needed to allow the vocabulary of semantic primes to combine into phrases and sentences in a natural way. Table 1.1 lists most of the supplementary items—allolexes, portmanteaus, grammatical function words—needed in Minimal English.

Semantic Molecules Unlike semantic primes, semantic molecules are not ultimately simple (indefinable) meanings. On the contrary, they are themselves decomposable into primes and some of them turn out to be rather complex in meaning, especially since there can be molecules within molecules (cf. Goddard 2018b: Ch. 5; 2018c). These complications are not important for practical users of minimal languages. What is important is, first, that like semantic primes, semantic molecules are high-value “building blocks of meaning”, and second, that many of them are likely to be universal or

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Table 1.1  Supplementary words (allolexes, portmanteaus, grammatical function words) of Minimal English ‘in’, e.g. in this place, in the same place; in one moment ‘at’, e.g. at this time, at the same time; at this moment ‘of’, e.g. one of these people; one part of this thing; something of one kind ‘with’, e.g. do something with someone; live with someone; say something with words ‘about’, e.g. think about something; say something about someone ‘that’ (complementiser), e.g. I didn’t know that this can happen ‘to’ (complementiser), e.g. I want to do something ‘it’ (dummy subject), e.g. it is good if …, it is bad if… ‘a lot’ (a variant of ‘much~many’) ‘well’ (an adverbial variant of ‘good’) ‘as’, ‘such’, ‘way’ (variants of ‘like’, or portmanteau of ‘like’ and ‘this’) ‘during’ (variant of ‘for …’ about time periods) ‘it’ for ‘this thing’ ‘these’ (variant of ‘this’ used with a plural noun) ‘he’ or ‘she’ for ‘this someone’; ‘they’ or ‘them’ for ‘these people’ or ‘these things’ ‘both’, ‘every’ (portmanteau words based on ‘two’ and ‘all’) ‘nothing’, ‘no-one’, ‘nowhere’, ‘anyone’, ‘anything’, ‘anywhere’ ‘often’, ‘sometimes’, ‘always’, ‘never’ ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘how’, ‘why’

near-universal, for example body-part terms such as ‘head’, ‘legs’, and ‘mouth’; environmental words such as ‘water’, ‘fire’, and ‘sky’; descriptors such as ‘long’ and ‘hard’; and some verbs, such as ‘hold’ and ‘laugh’. Some semantic molecules which are known to be not absolutely universal are still likely to have near-equivalents in most languages, for example ‘eat’, ‘fish’, ‘bird’. All of these words can be safely used in minimal languages. Other semantic molecules are culture-specific in global and world-­ historical perspective, but are present in many (perhaps most) languages in today’s world and are essential for talking and thinking about important topic areas. Examples are words expressing meanings like ‘money’, ‘God’, ‘doctor’, and ‘number’. Still other semantic molecules are more localised, in the sense of being linked with particular geographic or cultural zones; but within these zones, they are widely known and thus may present no significant barrier to accessibility or translatability. Figure 1.2 gives 100 or so words representing different kinds of semantic molecules that form part of the core vocabulary of minimal languages.

Fig. 1.2  Samples of semantic molecules of different kinds. (After Goddard 2018c)

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Other It appears that there are other words which are not necessarily semantic molecules, but which are still widely cross-translatable and may be very important for particular purposes; for example, words expressing meanings like ‘hungry’, ‘stars’, ‘school’, and ‘mosquitoes’.6 Such words too can be used in minimal languages. Widely known international words, such as taxi, hotel, passport, and cigarette (or tobacco), are also probably acceptable in minimal languages, if needed.

1.3.3 Expanding the Minimal Lexicon What about situations in which one wishes to use non-translatable vocabulary in minimal language texts? There are two further strategies, and the choice of which to use, or whether to use both in combination, may depend on the purpose and context of use. The first is to simply add a certain number of words, striving to keep the number to a minimum. If the minimal language text is intended for translation, it is a good idea to identify these words in a glossary, with explanations composed in core minimal language. In narrative or procedural texts, it is often necessary to describe the settings and characters with terms designating items of local geography, material culture, occupations, and social categories. ‘The Story of God and People’, for example, was largely set in Biblical Palestine and included many scenes of daily life from that cultural context. Wierzbicka (2019) used the “local” words listed below, in addition to the more general words discussed in the previous section. Biological: lamb, dove, rooster, oxen, bush. Geographical: lake, desert, rock. Material culture: table, cup, bread, wine, linen. People: carpenter, fisherman, shepherd, soldier, slave. Kinship: son, brother

In this book, Hill’s chapter on agricultural training in the Pacific (Chap. 2) discusses localisation issues at some length. She explains that the words ‘village’, ‘garden’, and ‘food’ are essential to describing everyday life in the Pacific.

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A second way in which additional words can be brought into minimal languages is the “called mechanism”. It rests on the fact that the expression ‘be called’ is posited as a universal semantic molecule.7 This means that new words can be introduced into minimal language texts and briefly glossed at first mention. In Chap. 4, Machin uses the “called mechanism” to introduce the names of different parts of speech. For example, after mentioning ‘tree’, ‘dog’, and ‘house’ as sample words, her Minimal English text continues: ‘words like these are called nouns’. Machin’s strategy depends on adducing examples. Another strategy is to give a brief, partial explanation. For example, in ‘The Story of God and People’, the word ‘prophet’ is introduced as follows: When God wanted to say something to the people of Israel, God said it to someone not like many other people. After this, this someone said it to the people of Israel; someone like this was called a prophet.

Similarly, new words can be introduced by describing an event, and adding ‘when this happens, people say…’ (or similar); see Sect. 1.4.2 for some examples. Overall, the structure of minimal language vocabularies can be diagrammed as in Fig.  1.3. Despite the need for minimal languages to include a selection of local and/or domain-specific words in many contexts, it is important to be cautious in selecting them and to keep the number as small as possible. Adding complex and non-translatable words willy-nilly for “convenience” is a trap to be avoided. In particular, it is wise to be wary of abstract words, such as words for emotions and values. Deeply cultural words like these are often extremely difficult, if not impossible, to match across languages  (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014; Levisen and Waters 2017).

1.3.4 Using Simple Translatable Grammar Learning Minimal English isn’t just learning how to choose and use simple translatable words. It also involves learning how to choose and use simple grammar.

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Fig. 1.3  Components of a minimal language lexicon

Staying within the bounds of translatable grammar is in some ways the trickiest thing for writers of minimal language texts. The problem is not that little is known about the topic. As research into semantic primes has proceeded over past decades, a great deal has been learnt about “universal grammar”. The grammar of semantic primes (their grammatical properties and the patterns by which they combine) is part and parcel of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage and can rightly be regarded as the core of universal grammar. The problem, in part at least, is that it is more difficult to summarise and teach about this grammar than it is to summarise and teach about semantic primes. After all, one can list the semantic primes (no matter that such lists necessarily leave some questions unanswered), but how does one go about “listing” a grammar? Actually, the NSM literature does include a number of studies which have discussed the grammatical frames available to each and every prime (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002). There is also a summary Chart of NSM Semantic Primes available on the internet.8 This Chart gives some of the key grammatical frames and combinatorial possibilities for each of the 65 primes. Though a valuable resource, however, it is not exactly “easy reading” for the non-linguist. To further cloud the issue, there is the following to consider. The core vocabulary of minimal languages consists not only of semantic primes but also includes universal and near-universal semantic molecules, even

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though these are decomposable into primes. The same applies to the grammar of minimal languages. Some grammatical constructions are widespread in the world’s languages, despite being decomposable into simpler elements; for example, expressions like ‘I know that…’ and ‘they knew that…’ (Wierzbicka 2018; Goddard 2020). Likewise, it seems highly probable that so-called yes/no or polar questions, for example, ‘What happened?’, ‘Who’s there?’ are sayable in all languages. If so, there is no harm using these in minimal language texts. There is a pressing need for user-friendly materials designed for non-­ linguists who want to use minimal languages. In the meantime, a couple of “Do’s and Don’ts” are as follows, expressed with reference to Minimal English. • DO use simple sentence patterns as far as possible. • DO use when-clauses and if-clauses when necessary, but only one of each per sentence. • DO use semantic primes in all the grammatical patterns listed on the Chart of NSM Semantic Primes, which can include using English function words like about, to, for, and with. For example, it is alright to use ‘do’ and ‘say’ in the patterns below. –– do something good for someone, do some things with some other people –– say something (good/bad) about something, say something to someone All four of the above patterns are translatable, though their equivalents in other languages may use different function words or different linguistic devices, for example case endings, serial verb constructions, word-order. • DON’T use so-called indirect speech, that is, the ‘say that…’ construction in a sentence like ‘Mary said that John did it’. It is not possible in some languages. It is best to re-phrase using direct speech, for example: ‘Mary said: “John did it”’. • DON’T use relative clauses (it is alright, however, to use structures such as ‘in a place where…’ and ‘at a time when…’)

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• DON’T use comparative constructions, for example expressions like ‘better (than)’ or ‘bigger (than)’. Some languages don’t have words like better and bigger. In addition, it is advisable to avoid using and, but, and or, as far as possible. Some languages do not have matching words. For example, Polish has two words (i and a) corresponding to English and, and though the difference is subtle neither is an exact match for and. Many Australian languages lack words corresponding to or. Admittedly, it can be difficult to eliminate these seemingly essential discourse-binding elements from Minimal English, but it is always possible. It usually calls for more use of repetition and parallelism in the text. This can make the text less natural sounding, but, on the other hand, greater use of parallelism can make a text clearer and easier to digest.

1.4 Minimal Language Vignettes To flesh out the picture of minimal languages, this section presents two short Minimal English texts, titled ‘An angel visits Mary (Mariam)’ and ‘What is a Tropical Cyclone?’. One is a narration (an incident from the New Testament), the other a scientific explanation. These examples have been chosen because they afford the opportunity to contrast the Minimal English texts with comparable versions in Basic English and Wikipedia Simple English, respectively.

1.4.1 An Angel Visits Mary (Mariam) When many people first hear about Minimal English, they think “Oh, that sounds like Basic English”—even though they may have no very clear idea about what Basic English actually is, or was. Basic English is usually credited to C.K.  Ogden (1930, and other works), a Cambridge philosopher of language. He and his associate I.A. Richards were the prime movers in devising and popularising a system originally called BASIC (British American Scientific International Commercial). Especially popular in the wake of WW II, BASIC was

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intended as an international auxiliary language, “covering everything necessary for everyday purposes” with a primary lexicon of 850 words. BASIC lost impetus in the 1950s and it is now essentially lost in its original conception. The legacy of BASIC lingers on, however, in both the popular and scholarly imaginations. It is instructive therefore to look briefly at what BASIC actually is (or was). Though the figure of “850 words” is often cited, most people have no idea what these 850 looked like in reality. Many would be surprised to learn they include hundreds of complicated and highly English-specific terms, such as those listed below. Notice the high proportion of abstract nouns. agreement, authority, business, chemical, competition, control, distribution, experience, fiction, humour, industry, manager, organisation, political, private, power, representative, responsible, request, right, suggestion, sense, society, structure, system, violent

The abstractness and Anglo character of much of the BASIC vocabulary is due to two factors, one attitudinal and one technical. Firstly, Ogden was a firm believer in the superiority of the English language and its associated ways of thinking. Cross-translatability into other languages was not a consideration for him. Secondly, to get by with a minimum of verbs, the BASIC system ingeniously relied on an English-specific paraphrasing strategy based on multi-functional grammatical verbs, such as come, have, give, make, let, and put. For example, in BASIC one would not say decide, but come to a decision. One would not say know, but have knowledge of. All these factors give BASIC a curiously distant and abstract “feel”, quite different to that of Minimal English. To see this, we can consider two closely parallel passages based on a scene from the New Testament (Luke 1: 28–31).9 ‘An Angel visits Mary’ in BASIC And the angel came in to her and said, Peace be with you, to whom special grace has been given; the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at his words, and said to herself, What may be the purpose of these words?

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And the angel said to her, Have no fear, Mary, for you have God’s approval. And see, you will give birth to a son, and his name will be Jesus. ‘An Angel visits Mary (Mariam)’ in Minimal English The angel said: “I want to say something very good to you, Mariam. God is with you, God feels something very good towards you.” Mary didn’t know why this was happening to her. She didn’t know what she could think about it. Then the angel said: “Don’t think like this, Mariam: ‘something bad can happen to me now’. Think like this: ‘something very good is happening to me now.’” In a very short time, something will happen to you; it will happen because God wants it to happen. Because of this, after some time you will give birth to a child (a son). You will call him Jesus.

These examples show, I hope, that BASIC is not what most people imagine it to be. BASIC doesn’t look or feel particularly simple, and it isn’t. For example, the passage above uses the passive construction (‘to whom special grace has been given’), difficult lexical expressions such as ‘greatly troubled’, and complex grammar and phrasing (‘What may be the purpose of these words?’ and ‘for you have God’s approval’). The Minimal English text, in contrast, is phrased in much simpler vocabulary and grammar. Admittedly, it does include some unusual-­ sounding expressions (such as ‘God feels something very good towards you’ and ‘something very good is happening to me now’), but these are easy to understand.

1.4.2 What is a Tropical Cyclone? Just as many people believe that there is a thing called Basic English, so too many people believe that there is something called “Simple English”— particularly because there is a division of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia called Simple English Wikipedia, with nearly 150,000 articles. Wikipedia deserves to be commended for supporting the use of simple English, but it is important to understand that there is no system of simple English as such, and very few guidelines. The main guideline is: “use Basic English words and shorter sentences”. The articles are generally

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re-written into simple English, based on entries in the main encyclopaedia. They are evaluated and deemed to have reached a threshold standard before publication, but there is great variety in their consistency and quality from a minimal language point of view. For the purpose of demonstration, I undertook to adapt part of an existing Simple English Wikipedia entry on Tropical Cyclone. ‘What is a tropical cyclone?’ (Extract from entry in Simple English Wikipedia) Tropical cyclones, hurricanes or typhoons form when convection causes warm, moist air above the ocean to rise. They begin as a group of storms when the water gets as hot as 80 °F (27 °C) or hotter. The Coriolis effect made by the Earth’s rotation causes the winds to rotate. Warm air rises quickly. … The “eye of the storm” is the center. It has little rain or wind. Tropical cyclones are powered by warm, humid ocean air. When they go onto land, they weaken. They die when they spend a long time over land or cool ocean water.

The goal of the Minimal English version (below) was to render the key scientific information in this passage. Some of the challenges were as follows: (1) the passage uses the term convection without explanation (albeit with a hot link to another entry), (2) it uses the expressions warm, moist air and warm humid air as synonyms, but without explaining either, (3) it uses the word rotates without explanation, and without linking it explicitly to the expression circular air movement, (4) there is a lot English-­ specific grammar and phraseology, such as causes, gets hot, made by, go onto land. To order to unpack the key information using a much smaller vocabulary, the Minimal English text turned out to be about three times longer than the “simple English” text. Partly this comes from the need to do without semantically complex words like convection, storms, humid, and rotates, and partly it is because the Minimal English text spells out the chains of causation more explicitly. ‘What is a tropical cyclone?’ in Minimal English10 Some people (scientists) know many things about cyclones. They know why there are cyclones in some parts of the earth (tropical places) at some times of the year. It is because at this time of year in these

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places the water in the sea is hot. Likewise, the air above the sea is hot. Because of this, there is a lot of water in the air. (People can’t see this water, at the same time they can feel something not like at other times. When air is like this in a place, people say: the air is ‘humid’.) When air is hot, it moves upwards quickly. When there is much humid air in the sky above the sea, it rains a lot because of it; at the same time the wind blows very much because of it. After some time, there is a cyclone above the sea. They (scientists) know that in a cyclone the air (wind) moves not like air moves at other times. It moves like something moves when it is turning around in one place. When something turns around in one place like this, it is called ‘rotating’. People say: in a cyclone the wind ‘rotates’ around one place. This place is in the middle of the cyclone. The wind blows very little there. This place is called the ‘eye of the cyclone’. Scientists know why the wind in a cyclone moves like this, they know why it rotates. It is because planet Earth is always turning around. Because of this, there is something called the ‘Coriolis effect’. Many people don’t know what this is.

One linguistic point of detail worthy of note is that this Minimal English text uses verb-based expressions for “weather phenomena” (e.g. ‘it rains a lot’, ‘the wind blows very much’) in preference to noun-based expressions (e.g. ‘there is a lot of rain’, ‘there is a lot of wind’). This is because the verb-based expressions appear to be freely cross-translatable into a greater range of languages. Working with minimal languages is not easy. Why should it be? It requires learning and practice, concentration and collaboration. It is an iterative process, involving repeated cycles of conceptual analysis, drafting, trialling, and revision. It is time to preview how and why the contributors to this book approached these tasks, and what they have to show us.

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1.5 Review of Chapters The studies in Minimal Languages in Action are arranged into three parts. Part I: Chapters 2–4 are concerned with ‘Finding the Best Words’—in different minimal language versions, for different purposes, and in different locations. In Chap. 2, ‘Balancing the Local with the Universal: Minimal English and Agricultural Training in the Pacific’, Deborah Hill reports on efforts to decide the optimal balance of universal and local words in settings that will be, for many readers, a world away: the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Chapter 3, ‘The Hunt for the Simplest Possible Vocabulary: Minimal Finnish Meets Easy Finnish’ is by two Finnish authors, Leealaura Leskelä and Ulla Vanhatalo. Finland is one of the most advanced countries in the European Union in providing “easy language” materials for people who have various linguistic troubles. The authors report on experiments and trials that endeavour to assess whether Minimal Finnish can provide core vocabulary for the simplest level of Easy Finnish. Language revitalisation is a huge challenge for Indigenous and minority language communities in many countries, none more so than in Australia. In Chap. 4, ‘Minimal English and Revitalisation Education: Assisting Linguists to Explain Grammar in Simple, Everyday Words’, Elita Machin addresses one part of the problem: how to make basic linguistic terminology accessible for use with and by indigenous communities. Part II: Chapters 5–8 are concerned with ‘Language Learning and Intercultural Education’. David Bullock’s Chap. 5, titled ‘Using Minimal English (Minimal Spanish, Etc.) for Non-circular Learners’ Dictionaries’ reports one of the largest and most successful implementations of minimal language principles: namely, the creation of the ‘Learn These Words First’ online dictionary. Dictionaries and other language education resources are also a key concern of Lauren Sadow’s Chap. 6, titled ‘Standard Translatable English: A Minimal English for Teaching and Learning Invisible Culture in Language Classrooms’. Sadow reports on the development of a cultural dictionary of Australian English, based on minimal language principles adapted to meet the needs of classroom teachers.

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Until his untimely death in February 2021, Bert Peeters was one of the pioneers of using NSM in pedagogical applications. In Chap. 7, titled ‘From Cultural to Pedagogical Scripts: Speaking Out in English, French and Russian’ he uses examples from three European languages to argue that minimal languages can provide a user-friendly vehicle to articulate unfamiliar cultural knowledge. Intercultural education is also the goal of Jeong-Ae  Lee’s Chap. 8, ‘Using Minimal Language to Help Foreign Learners Understand Korean Honorifics’. Lee ventures to unpack the formidable honorific system of Korean into cultural scripts and meaning explications that can help immigrants better understand Korean society and to navigate its different ways of speaking. Part III is about ‘Health’. Chapter 9 is titled ‘Adapting the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) to Minimal English and Seven Other Minimal Languages’. It is co-authored by Cliff Goddard and Ulla Vanhatalo, together with Amie Hane and the originator of the WECS, Martha Welch. The WECS is an instrument for assessing mother-infant emotional connection. Different aspects of the adaptation process are described: conceptual, linguistic, and practical, including translatability testing into Finnish, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Korean, Chinese, and Akan. Chapter 10, by Magdalena Juda, is titled ‘Ways of Thinking and About Cancer: Poland, France, Spain’. The author uses a minimal language approach to summarise different ways in which cancer is perceived in three European countries. Juda’s ultimate goal is to improve communication and reduce the anxiety produced by unhelpful discourse patterns about the illness. At the time this book was being written, the world was in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The final two chapters respond to different aspects of that crisis. Ida Stevia Diget’s Chap. 11 focusses on public health communication about the virus. It is titled ‘Minimal English for Health: Reader Accessibility in Public Health Communication About COVID-19 in Australia (with Contrastive Reference to Denmark)’. Finally, in Chap. 12 Anna Wierzbicka describes and reflects on the development process for her ‘Seven Essential Messages for the Time of the Coronavirus’. Seeking to formulate messages which are accessible to everyone, everywhere on earth, truly puts to the universal reach of NSM-­ based minimal languages to the test.

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1.6 Where to from here? Minimal languages face many obstacles, such as (1) the misplaced impression that using Minimal English (for good reasons, when necessary) means denigrating or even giving up on full English (the “love of English” factor); (2) fear of sounding “childish” or of not being taken seriously; (3) sheer disbelief that anything much can be accomplished using a reduced vocabulary and a simpler grammar. In the end, the best way to work around these obstacles is to simply show that a minimal language approach works, that it helps, that it can make a difference. As well as nay-sayers and sceptics, there are many open-minded people who welcome new tools for clearer, more accessible, less Anglocentric ways of speaking and thinking. Aside from the uses covered in this book and its predecessors (Goddard 2018a; Sadow et al. 2020), other potential uses include: combatting “academic Anglocentrism” in psychology, discourse studies, education research, linguistics, and other social science fields (cf. Levisen 2019), promoting more effective communication in mediation and counselling, in legal contexts with child witnesses, for “safety messaging” to children, for example, on matters of internet safety, and for public discussion of social, scientific, and economic challenges facing humanity. There is obviously a burning need for more resources and training about how to use minimal languages. But it is also true that there is a great deal to be learnt from the practical and inspirational experience of others. This book is an important contribution.

Notes 1. It was foreshadowed in Wierzbicka’s (2014) Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language (Ch. 14, pp. 185–196). 2. In the English writing system, it seems advisable to use initial capital letters when referring to a minimal version of particular language (e.g. ‘Minimal English’, ‘Minimal Korean’) and lower case otherwise (e.g. ‘minimal languages’, ‘a minimal language approach’).

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3. For sources, and further discussion, see Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014: 10–18), Goddard (2018b: 25–62). For downloadable tables of primes and other NSM resources, go to [https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/ schools-­departments/natural-­semantic-­metalanguage/downloads] or [nsm-­approach.net]. 4. Cf. ‘150 Sentences for identifying NSM semantic primes in different languages’, available at the URLs given in the previous Note. 5. Certain patterns of polysemy, allolexy and portmanteau expressions are known to recur in languages around the world. For discussion, see Goddard (2002: 20–30), Goddard and Wierzbicka (2021) Goddard (2012). 6. Mosquitoes are responsible for spreading many serious diseases throughout the world. 7. The corresponding expressions in other languages do not, of course, have to have the same “passive-like” formal structure as English ‘be called’. 8. The Chart of NSM Semantic Primes is available at [nsm-­approach.net]. 9. The BASIC text is from Luke 1:28–31 [http://ogden.basic-­english.org/ bbe/bbeluke1.html#2]. The Minimal English text is from What Christians Believe (Wierzbicka 2019: 84). The latter is not intended as a strict translation of the Bible passage, but this can be disregarded for our purposes. 10. Written by me, with input from Helen Bromhead, Anna Wierzbicka and Alena Kazmaly. It was originally  presented at the KLAARA conference  on easy-to-read language research, held in Helsinki September 2019 (Goddard 2019).

References Goddard, Cliff. 2002. The Search for the Shared Semantic Core of All Languages. In Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and Empirical Findings. Vols I and II, ed. Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka, 5–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ———. 2012. Semantic Primes, Semantic Molecules, Semantic Templates: Key Concepts in the NSM Approach to Lexical Typology. Linguistics 50 (3): 711–743. ———, ed. 2018a. Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

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———. 2018b. Ten Lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring Language, Thought and Culture Using Simple, Translatable Words. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2018c. Minimal English: The Science Behind It. In Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, ed. C. Goddard, 29–70. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2019. ‘Minimal Languages’. Keynote Address at First International Klaara Conference on Easy-to-Read Language. Helsinki University, 20 September 2019. ———. 2020. Overcoming the Linguistic Challenges for Ethno-Epistemology: NSM Perspectives. In Ethno-Epistemology: New Directions for Global Epistemology, ed. Masaharu Mizumoto, Jonardon Ganeri, and Cliff Goddard, Ch. 6. London: Routledge. ———. 2021. De-Anglicising Humour Studies. European Journal of Humour Research, 8(4), 48–58 [open access: www.europeanjournalofhumour.org] Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka, eds. 2002. Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and Empirical Findings. Vols I and II.  Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ———. 2014. Words and Meanings: Lexical Semantics Across Domains, Languages and Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2018. Minimal English and How It Can Add to Global English. In Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, ed. C. Goddard, 5–27. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2021. “We”: Conceptual semantics, linguistic typology and social cognition. Language Sciences 83 (January) [online publication October 2020] Goddard, Cliff, and Zhengdao Ye. 2015. Ethnopragmatics. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, ed. F.  Sharifian, 66–83. London: Routledge. Jordan, Paul. 2017. How to Start, Carry on, and End Conversations. Scripts for Social Interaction for People on the Autism Spectrum. London: Jessica Kingsley Publications. Levisen, Carsten. 2019. Biases We Live By: Anglocentrism in Linguistics and Cognitive Sciences. Language Sciences 76 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2018.05.010] [Epub 2018]. Levisen, Carsten, and Sophia Waters, eds. 2017. Cultural Keywords in Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lindholm, Camilla, and Ulla Vanhatalo, eds. Forthcoming. Easy Language in Europe. Berlin: Frank & Timme. Ogden, Charles Kay. 1940 [1930]. Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar. London: Paul Treber & Co., Ltd.

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Peeters, Bert, ed. 2006. Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar: Evidence from the Romance Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sadow, Lauren. 2019. An NSM-Based Cultural Dictionary of Australian English: From Theory to Practice. PhD Thesis: Australian National University. https:// doi.org/10.25911/5d514809475cb. ———. 2020. Taking NSM ‘Out of the Lab’. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication: Minimal English (and Beyond), ed. Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan, 1–12. Singapore: Springer. Sadow, Lauren, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan, eds. 2020. Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication: Minimal English (and Beyond). Singapore: Springer. Vanhatalo, Ulla, and Juhana Torkki. 2018. Introducing the Concept of the ‘65 Words’ to the Public in Finland. In Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, ed. Cliff Goddard, 225–258. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Vanhatalo, Ulla, Cliff Goddard, Diana C. Litsas, Amie A. Hane, and Martha G. Welch. Forthcoming. Translating the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) into Clear Explicit Translatable Language (WECS-CETL) increases accessibility across languages and education levels. [Under Review]. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. English: Meaning and Culture. New  York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2014. Imprisoned in English. The Hazards of English as a Default Language. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2018. Charter of Global Ethic in Minimal English. In Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, ed. Cliff Goddard, 113–142. Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2019. What Christians Believe. The Story of God and People in Minimal English. New York: Oxford University Press.

Part I Finding the Best Words

2 Balancing the Local with the Universal: Minimal English and Agricultural Training in the Pacific Deborah Hill

2.1 Introduction The field of Development is replete with terms that express Western1 concepts applied to culturally and linguistically diverse contexts, for example, Sustainable Development Goals, Gender Equity, Savings and Banking. Funding bodies and international organisations involved in fields such as agricultural training, humanitarian aid, social support and legal protections for indigenous knowledge aim to provide development, training and policy that is contextualised within a local environment. Yet the evidence suggests that the goal of ensuring the successful and appropriate implementation of development policies and training in local contexts is not always achieved. This chapter discusses ways in which Minimal English can contribute to a more local perspective in agricultural training by discussing lessons learned from one agricultural training program in the Pacific and the application of these lessons to a different Pacific D. Hill (*) University of Canberra, Bruce, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_2

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context. More broadly, it discusses why and how Minimal English can contribute to the adaption of Western concepts to non-Western contexts. In addition, it argues that, within Minimal English, we should pay considerable attention to culture-specific semantic molecules, as it is these semantic molecules that most explicitly reflect the local context. Minimal English employs a limited number of words to explicate the meanings of words and expressions. The Minimal English vocabulary of about 300 words include semantic primes (65), (i.e. words that cannot be paraphrased and are expected to be lexical universals) (Goddard 2018a), semantic molecules that seem to be near-universal and that reflect our shared human experience (perhaps 60–80 semantic molecules), and culture-­specific semantic molecules. For example, Goddard (2018b) suggests that locally important words for natural kinds and concrete things in the Pacific might include kava or betel nut. Within Minimal English, then, there are words that are universal (semantic primes) and words that are more local (see also Chap. 1). This chapter takes these two categories—universal and local—as a starting point to discuss the use of language and the adaption of concepts in an agricultural training approach in the Pacific. The agricultural training approach that is discussed is the Family Farm Teams program (see https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/faculty-­ research-­centres/csc/family-­farm-­teams-­program). The Family Farm Teams (FFT) program is a family-based program that was developed to encourage more effective, sustainable and gender equitable farming and business practices in Papua New Guinea. It was developed in conjunction with communities participating in the program in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The program uses a peer education approach: local farmers are trained as Village Community Educators (VCEs) to train others in their family and community. The research from the FFT (PNG) program explored the family, cultural and gender factors that impact on the economic development of women semi-subsistence farmers (Pamphilon 2019). The discussion in this chapter is based on research within the FFT program PNG. Additional discussion addresses lessons learned from the PNG program that will inform an FFT project in Solomon Islands (planned for 2020). The Solomon Islands project will explore ways in which the FFT program is applicable to a new Melanesian setting. It

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provides the opportunity to explore, with the community, the peer education approach to learning in this context. It introduces a new term (an English term): Family Farm Team, to a community that does not use English in everyday interaction, that works in “gardens” [gaden—Solomon Islands Pijin], and introduces new concepts and practices for the community to consider. The FFT program has two components. The first is a series of four training modules on topics such as communication, planning your family farm, nutrition and equitable workloads within the family. The second component consists of facilitated sustainable livelihood and agricultural training. Examples of sustainable livelihood training are training in banking and savings and water and sanitation. Agricultural training depends on the agricultural training needs of the community. In PNG, participants included coffee and cocoa growers, communities growing sweet potato and other fresh vegetable produce. Training in the four FFT modules was carried out by a team of facilitators from Australia and PNG and the language of instruction was English. At the same time, workshops were multilingual settings and communication between facilitators and participants, and between participants, were in English, Tok Pisin and local languages. It is anticipated that, as in PNG, in Solomon Islands the FFT modules will be delivered in English, Solomons Pijin (rather than Tok Pisin) and the local language. Written materials will be in English and the local language.2 Sustainable livelihood training and agricultural training will be delivered in Solomons Pijin. Solomons Pijin, a variety of Melanesian Pidgin (spoken in PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu) is the lingua franca of Solomon Islands, but it is English, the official language and language of education, that is the written language in Solomon Islands. As Jourdan and Angeli note of the position of English and Pijin in the urban center: ‘All written communication in the public domain is in English, save for the odd sign in Pijin here and there in government and private offices, and in the streets’ (2014: 268). Because English is the language of education, and because few written materials in any of the 70 or so indigenous languages have been developed, participants in the program are more likely to be literate in English than in their own language. Research suggests that in the past, literacy skills in local languages were developed by transferring literacy skills developed in English

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Fig. 2.1  Family taking their garden produce to market (Nangali, North-East Guadalcanal)

(Watson-Gegeo et al. 2018). Literacy in local languages can be developed through the development of language materials in the local language. For that reason, using Minimal English as the starting point for written materials in the FFT program is appropriate as (a) English is the language that is used in writing in Solomon Islands, and (b) Minimal English can be translated into other local languages leading to the development of language materials for the communities that participate in the program. This chapter summarises the contribution Minimal English can make toward localizing the language used in the FFT (PNG) (Caffery and Hill 2019; Hill 2020) and, based on that research, explains how Minimal English can be of value in this Solomon Islands FFT program. The chapter is organised in the following way. Section 2.2 provides an overview of ways in which Minimal English can contribute to a “local” perspective when communicating ideas and explaining concepts. Section

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2.3 reviews research on the issue of adapting concepts from a Western perspective to locations that do not necessarily share these concepts or related practices. Section 2.4 summarises lessons from the FFT (PNG) that can be applied to Solomon Islands, focusing on the incorporation of Minimal English vocabulary in written materials, and explicating the term Family Farm Teams for the purpose of explaining this concept in a different Pacific setting. Section 2.5 discusses the alignment in the process of developing explications, testing their efficacy and revising them for improved clarity, with the method of participatory action research that underpins the FFT. The final section reviews the importance of highlighting the “local” as well as the “universal” in Minimal English for the purpose of localising agricultural training in the Pacific.

2.2 H  ow Minimal English Focuses on the Local There are (at least) three ways in which Minimal English allows us to pay attention to what is important in a local context. As Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) note, Minimal English is a tool that can be used by people working in different disciplines and in different contexts—it is something to use in the field rather than in the lab. This brief overview outlines three ways in which Minimal English allows us to value what is local or culture specific, as well as what is universal or shared. Firstly, Minimal English (like NSM) is primarily used to explicate the meaning of a term. This can be done for any language, that is we can explain an English word and concept (e.g. X) using simpler language. This helps us to clarify our own thinking (e.g. when I say X, this is what I want to say), and the meaning of the term for listeners or readers. This process of explication has been used for over four decades in NSM. However, Minimal English includes a broader vocabulary and has less stringent syntactic constraints. One could argue that Minimal English, as opposed to NSM, incorporates more of what is local because it is not restricted to universal semantic primes and molecules.

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Minimal English and NSM are useful in explaining terms across languages and cultures. Levisen and Priestley (2017), for example, have explicated Melanesian terms kastom ‘traditional culture’ and tumbuna ‘ancestors’. Similarly, the Longgu (an Oceanic language spoken in North-­ East Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands) concept anoa ‘spirit’ has been explicated to show that it does not mean the same as ‘spirit’ in another language, and has a different meaning to another Longgu word, agalo, that can also be glossed as ‘spirit’ (Hill 2019). The process of explicating these terms can clarify the meaning expressed in one culture (e.g. Longgu) for speakers of other languages (e.g. English). Locally important words that are used within an explication can also be explicated; for example, to explicate the Longgu term anoa ‘spirit’, it was necessary to include the name of the island (Marapa) where spirits live; Marapa was then separately explicated (Hill 2019). Minimal English, then, is designed to account for the local context as well as the universally shared world through its vocabulary and process of explicating the meanings of words. A second way in which Minimal English can be used to pay attention to the local context is when Minimal English vocabulary is used as a guide to improve the clarity of communication. Using Minimal English as a tool in this way does not rely on explicating terms, rather it relies on choosing Minimal English vocabulary to ensure greater clarity in communication. The application of this in PNG is outlined in Caffery and Hill (2019) (see also Hill 2020), where more complex English was made more accessible to readers with low levels of literacy by replacing semantically complex words such as divided, imagine, identify, and logical with semantically simpler words. Semantic primes such as ‘know’, ‘think’ and ‘want’ were particularly useful, as was the prime ‘part’ to describe training words such as session. We did not leave out some of these words (e.g. session) but we attempted to explain them (e.g. “A course has different parts. Each part is called a session. Each session has one main point that you want people to learn”.) This process of making language more accessible included additional strategies, such as using shorter sentences and including more repetition of noun phrases (as opposed to extensive use of pronouns). Minimal English, nevertheless, underpinned the process and provided the linguistic resources to improve communication.

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In the example discussed in Caffery and Hill (2019), a dominant language (English) was the medium of instruction. However, the context was a multilingual and multi-dialectal one: Australian English and PNG English, Tok Pisin and local languages were all used at different times. Within the training setting not all people shared the same variety or experience of English. All trainers were familiar with academic English, but there was variation in their main experiences of English, that is within a monolingual setting (Australia) or a multilingual setting (PNG). Participants had a range of literacy levels, with most having low levels of literacy. Some were unfamiliar with academic English, and all experienced English (PNG English) in a multilingual setting. Using Minimal English vocabulary as a guide, the training manual, written in English and Tok Pisin was revised by reviewing the English and substituting vocabulary from Minimal English where possible. The Tok Pisin translations in the manual provided a source of possible vocabulary to include. As discussed in Caffery and Hill (2019), despite the Tok Pisin translations in the manual, many participants relied on the English version as Tok Pisin is largely a spoken language, with dialect variation throughout the country. They did not necessarily find the Tok Pisin translations reflected their own use of Tok Pisin. The Minimal English goal of using language that is easy to understand was achieved by including some words that were local to PNG English and had counterparts in the language of wider communication in PNG, Tok Pisin. For example, the quantifier ‘many’ is a semantic prime, but participants preferred the word ‘plenty’ as they were familiar with that term through Tok Pisin planti ‘plenty’.3 The process of using Minimal English vocabulary, and paying attention to local preferences, resulted in English that was marginally more local. I would argue that there is an affective reason for making small changes such as this—participants feel greater ownership of the training and the messages conveyed through the training by making the language more accessible and familiar. The third way in which Minimal English can attend to the local is through the explication of concepts that may be assumed to be universally understood but which reflect the perspectives, experiences and attitudes of Western communities. Researchers in NSM and Minimal English have a strong record of explicating and discussing English terms

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(e.g. ‘reasonable’ and ‘fair’ (Wierzbicka 2006)) that are not as cross-­ translatable as English speakers may assume. Explicating important and frequently used terms from Development (e.g. ‘sustainable livelihoods’) allows their meanings to be clearly explained. At the same time, these concepts cannot be localised simply through explicating them. Rather, a reciprocal, iterative, process is required to assess whether the concept is something that can be easily adapted to the local setting. There is a wealth of literature in the field of Development and related disciplines to show that the success of development programs may rest on this issue. This issue is discussed in more detail in the next section.

2.3 L anguage and Development: Adapting Universal Concepts to Local Contexts Language and Development is often approached from one of two perspectives. The first perspective, evident in Development literature, highlights the use of terms; for example, inclusion or exclusion of terms, changing meanings or use of terms (Smyth 2007; Alfini and Chambers 2007), inappropriate use of terms (Smyth 2007) and assumptions around the capacity of those involved in aid to communicate effectively in the appropriate language (Crack 2019). The second perspective, evident in research from a range of disciplines, such as linguistic anthropology (Krijtenburg 2017), law (Farran 2014) and disability support (Manderson et  al. 2016), highlights the issue of the adaption of concepts from a Western perspective to a local context. Within this perspective, the choice of language as a factor in success or lack of success has also been a focus, for example English and local languages in the success of sustainable development goals in Africa (Bamgbose 2014; Khan 2014), English and Bengali for explaining climate science through news media in India (Ghosh and Boykoff 2019). Indeed, within Development research it has been noted, although as a footnote, that “sustainable livelihoods language and concepts have proven very difficult to translate into other languages—and sometimes fit uncomfortably with other culturally-defined intellectual traditions” (Scoones 2009: 183, footnote 13). Moreover, it

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has been argued that the concept [author’s word, Ziai 2013)] Development itself should be abandoned “because it causes so many misunderstandings and through this obstructs the academic and political debate” (Ziai 2013). However, a suitable replacement for that term has not been suggested. There is considerable awareness of the challenges related to language and development (and language in development), but uncertainty about how to resolve them. One additional perspective from language and development research is one of “communicative sustainability” (Bearth 2008). Communicative sustainability is concerned with the use of the “right language” in multilingual settings; it does not necessarily imply that the use of a local language will always be the solution (although it should not be neglected). Bearth (2008) argues that, “Whatever its mode of transmission, information has its cost. In evaluating the transactional cost of development, we must distinguish between cost of production and cost of accessing information” (Bearth 2008: 44). It is perhaps within this transactional framework that Minimal English can reduce the cost both of production and certainly the cost of accessing information. Scoones’s (2009: 183) footnote, above, acknowledges that conceptualizations of development terms from English do not always fit easily in other cultures, especially cultures of the Global South. Differing conceptualizations can have implications for policies and their implementation. The application of this has been discussed for the terms “family” in the discourse of social care in the Pacific (Manderson et al. 2016); “family farms” and “family farming” in agricultural development in Asia and the Pacific (Ye and Pan 2016) and Brazil and Africa (Cabral et al. 2016); borrowing and lending in Kenya (Krijtenburg 2017); livelihoods (Scoones 2009); and intellectual property rights in the Pacific (Farran 2014). Underpinning this research is what Farran (2014) refers to as “framing issues in the discourse of Western concepts”. A similar point has been made within linguistics. Ameka and Terkourafi (2019: 73) argue that “the main way in which non-Western pragmatics continues to be understood is that of taking a concept, a paradigm, or a model developed based on Western modes of thinking and interaction and testing whether it is applicable to non-Western societies”.

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In the development context, it is not just a matter of using easily translatable language to improve communication, but of investigating how concepts developed from Western perspectives are applied in other contexts. Manderson et al. (2016) argue that programs designed to support people in need of social care and people with disabilities in Solomon Islands take insufficient account of the variation in domestic arrangements in the Pacific. They attribute this, in part, to the way regional and national policy statements and programs “typically refer to ‘the family’ as a universal and culturally consistent form” (Manderson et al. 2016: 336). Manderson et al. argue that it is the Western interpretation of what constitutes a “Pacific family” that can lead to poor outcomes in program delivery. At the heart of the agricultural training discussed here is the concept “family farm”. It forms part of the name of the program (Family Farm Teams program). It is worth noting that while “family farming” has taken place for many generations, the terms “family farming” and “family farms” are relatively new. Ye and Pan (2016) suggest that in China the term was first used in 2008, despite a centuries-long history of family farming. Describing the situation in the Asia and Pacific region, Ye and Pan (2016) analyze the broad principles of family farming presented by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and demonstrate how the term “family farm” has been “mainly reduced to a unit of agricultural production with certain indicators”. They argue against defining family farm primarily as a unit of production and for “taking into account the historical and current cultural contexts in which it [family farm] is rooted” (Ye and Pan 2016: 1). One of their key recommendations is that “A prerequisite for the formulation of policies on land and agriculture is the definition and clear understanding of ‘family farming’”. They suggest this, while acknowledging the difficulties of defining “family farming” because of the diversity of local contexts in the Asia Pacific region. Explaining “Family Farm Teams” in the current chapter responds to this recommendation. Ye and Pan’s report highlights the importance of clarifying terms, like family farm, that have been developed in the West and applied in locations where family farms exist, but the term and concept has not.

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2.4 L essons from One Pacific Context to Another This section summarises the use of Minimal English and the lessons from the FFT program (PNG). It discusses the differences between PNG and Solomon Islands’ contexts and suggests ways in which Minimal English can be used in the Solomon Islands FFT project, based on these lessons. Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are both multilingual Pacific nations, yet it is important to investigate each context. As discussed above, research in other disciplines (Manderson et  al. 2016) has highlighted the problem of a one-size-fits-all approach within the Pacific. Embedded in this project is a focus on the local sociocultural context. As noted above, the FFT program consists of four training modules. The modules are taught to approximately 40 participants (male and female). The participants, called Village Community Educators (VCEs), then teach other members of their families and community using a peer-to-­ peer model of learning, which has been promoted as an appropriate and culturally relevant model of community learning in the Pacific (PIFS 2018). From the perspective of language, lessons from the PNG project include ways that Minimal English can contribute to the Solomon Islands’ project. These are: 1. Drawing on Minimal English vocabulary to develop appropriate materials (e.g. instructions for activities; descriptions of activities). 2. Investigating semantic molecules that reflect local culture and using those terms (e.g. replacing ‘case study’ with the semantic molecule ‘story’) (discussed in Hill (2020)). 3. Explaining terms (e.g. Family Farm Teams, livelihoods) and discussing explications and concepts within workshops to assess the appropriateness of the concepts to the local context. 4. Translating Minimal English explications into the local language. 5. Developing Minimal language explications of local semantic molecules (e.g. ‘garden’ in Solomon Islands).

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6. Developing peer-to-peer language skills to provide workshop participants with language that supports them in teaching others.

2.4.1 Minimal English Vocabulary Caffery and Hill (2019) discussed the process of improving the accessibility of language in agricultural training. In that research, we explained how Minimal English could contribute to language that was more local and less expensive. The term Expensive English is used in PNG to refer to English that is not easily understood by most people. Expensive English can create barriers, and it can be (literally) expensive for funding bodies and donor organizations when programs are not successfully implemented because of lack of understanding. One of the findings from the FFT (PNG) program was that some participants who engaged in peer-to-peer teaching found it challenging to teach new concepts when they had learnt the concepts in one language (i.e. English) but then had to teach it in another language. The issue was not one of language proficiency, but of finding words in a local language to express ideas that were not local. Participants were aware that language was an important part of being a successful Village Community Educator, as expressed in the following quotation: We all have different levels of knowledge and understanding, so we must understand the levels. We can’t be too high. We must use the right language. [Bolding—DH] You must be part of the group and participate. You also must have experience—you can’t teach what you don’t know, you must have done it yourself. (Quote from VCE in Pamphilon 2019: 48)

A second finding relates to what the right language is. As discussed above, Minimal English offers a way in to the local because it includes semantic molecules that are culture specific. In general, semantic primes (especially verbs) were very useful in making the English more accessible to workshop participants, but where there were local words (not semantic

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molecules, but familiar words from Tok Pisin or PNG English) then it was the local word rather than the prime that was preferred. To summarise, Minimal English vocabulary allows us to develop materials written in English that are more suitable to the local context. At the same time, we need to check with speakers whether there are other, preferred, expressions that are even more locally appropriate. The right language in the Solomon Islands will be different again. The FFT Solomon Islands project will adapt the training modules and activities developed in and for PNG. The research approach is one of participatory action research (Cameron and Gibson 2005). Activities are trialed and developed in consultation with participants. Solomon Islands participants will not all be literate in English and the workshop materials will be written in English and the local language. The 2009 Solomon Islands Census puts the rate of literacy in Guadalcanal (the first project location) at 90.5% for Males and 87.2% for Females aged 15–24. These rates are slightly lower than the national average and do not identify whether literacy is in English, Solomons Pijin or a local language. The census data show that literacy levels in English are around 66% for the same age group. This data reflects only a positive answer to the following question: “Can you read and write a simple sentence in one or more of the following languages: English, Pidgin, Local language, or Other language?” It does not reflect fluent literacy. The response also refers to self-reported literacy (SIG 2009). In other words, the Census data does not provide evidence that the intended participants (i.e. rural communities involved in semi-subsistence gardening and fishing) have literacy levels (in any language) that will make it easy for them to understand and use written materials. This suggests that, as in PNG, the development of activities to support written materials will play a significant role. These activities include role plays, using pictures to elicit discussion, using stories to exemplify key ideas, developing local story books which are bilingual and illustrated with objects and scenes that are identifiable within the culture. Solomons Pijin, the language of wider communication, differs from Tok Pisin. In comparison with Tok Pisin, it has more phrases and words that are similar to English. It has a different quantifier (staka, rather than planti), and it is likely that the prime ‘many’ will be a more appropriate term to use than the vaguely similar English phrase ‘stacks of ’ (for staka).

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However, findings from the PNG project, such as the importance of providing concrete, local examples when explaining terms, will inform the investigation of the appropriate language in Solomon Islands.

2.4.2 Investigating Semantic Molecules and Explaining New Terms Identifying culturally important semantic molecules will contribute to the development of written materials that reflect the local Solomon Islands’ context. The process of developing materials can include the investigation of semantic molecules that could be useful in explaining concepts. As discussed above, it is likely that ‘family’ and ‘garden’ are semantic molecules in the Solomon Islands and the Pacific more generally. However, these words need investigation and explications. Suggested semantic molecules, based on their inclusion in the explication of the term Family Farm Team (below) and the research in PNG include: story, family, garden, village, food, women, men, children, buy, sell and money. The challenge of introducing English concepts and applying them in other settings has been acknowledged across a range of disciplines. It is not just the language used that is at issue, but the lack of shared understanding of concepts. For this reason, it is important that the term Family Farm Team is explicated in Minimal English, and then translated into the local language so that the overall aim of the program is understood.4 Although the semantic molecule ‘family’ needs explication, as a molecule it can be used in an explication. As Manderson et al. (2016) suggested, it is important not to assume what a family looks like (in terms of its composition and the ways of interacting between family members) in the Pacific and this project does not do that. At the same time, we need to say what a family can be like. The explication below does not exclude the possibility of what families can be like (e.g. families in which the husband or wife has died or has left) but presents a familiar description. Because Solomon Islands households typically consist of more than a husband, wife and children (e.g. grandparents, adult relatives), I have explicated it using plural nouns (people, men, women). Note, also, that the explication is not of household and that families can live in more than

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one hut or house in a village. A central idea in the FFT program is that people work together. This is expressed in the explication by saying that people want the same things and that all kinds of people (men, women, children) can do some things. The explication clarifies that ‘some children’ can do some things, to exclude young children or children who should be at school rather than working in a garden. The explication has four sections. In [A] the family is described. [B] describes what the family ‘wants’ because they want to do things. This is purposely vague and suggests the idea of goals. Section [C] describes the things the family does and [D] describes the way of thinking. These three components (wanting, doing, thinking) are part of being a ‘family farm team’. Each section refers separately to women, men and ‘some children’. The explication reflects the daily lives of semi-subsistence smallholders in the Solomon Islands. That is, the garden is the focus of their livelihood. The word ‘garden’ is mentioned in sections [A] and [C]. In addition, family life includes obligations and work in the home, in the garden and in the village. Section [C], then, which describes what people do, is a description of life in a village, as well as a description of the source of their livelihood: the need to work in a garden. In the first draft of the explication the word ‘grow’ was used (e.g. in [B] ‘They want to grow food to eat’.) However, the Longgu translation of ‘grow’, in this context, is vasia ‘plant something’. Thus, the English version was adjusted in line with the Longgu to read: ‘They want to plant food to eat’. This accords with the finding from the PNG project that using words that are more familiar in the local context improve the readability of the English version. That is, as vasia ‘plant something’ is the way this is expressed in Longgu, the English is more accessible if it includes ‘plant’ rather than ‘grow (something)’. The lines ‘They want to plant food to give to other people’ [B] and ‘When this family lives like this, they can plant food to eat, food to give to others, food to sell to other people’ [D] reflects the cultural practice of contributing to the lives of other family and community members when they are in need, at times of feasting and events such as bride-price exchange and funerals, or as a means of exchange for work; for example, if someone helps you to build a house it is more typical for it to be done in exchange of other work or food rather than money.

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The Minimal English explication (in English and Longgu) has been incorporated into a pamphlet, including illustrations based on photographs of daily activities in Longgu, to support the explanation of the project to people in the village. The explication can be read, but it can also be spoken, providing a way of clearly explaining the Family Farm Team concept to Longgu people who are literate in neither English nor Longgu. The effectiveness of Minimal English can be tested by translating Minimal English explications, such as the one suggested for Family Farm Teams, into a local language. It can explain concepts that are important from the Western perspective. It can also contribute to an understanding of local concepts, some of which will inform the FFT program. This reciprocal process can contribute to establishing whether and how the program can be implemented in a local context; to what extent the program fits with local values; and perhaps forewarn whether there will be issues arising because of conflicting conceptual frameworks. Family Farm Team (English and Longgu) [A] FAMILY FARM TEAM It is like this: E liva’ana nene: Women, men, children work together. Genigi, mwanegi, mwelagi ara ho to’i kolukolu. They are all in the same family. Gira sosoko ara ubuna taotaova thada. They live in the same place. Ara ii’o tana te komu. They work in the same garden. Ara thaia to’i kolukolu tana malabai. [B] TAI ARA NGAUAI (WHAT THIS FAMILY WANTS) People in the family want the same things: Inonigi ubuna toutouva ara thaia ngaua te thada ni maa. They want to plant food to eat. Ara ngaua vasia vanga ni aniai. They want to plant food to give to other people. Ara ngaua vasia vanga ni watea wada tabalu inonigi. They want to plant food to sell.

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Ara ngaua vasia vangai ni sabiri. When this family plants food to sell, they can buy some things with money, they can do good things for their family, they can do good things for other people. Taleasi toutouva ne ara vasia vangai ni sabiri, ara thaia volia te ma ania seleni, ara thaia gonia ma metage wana toutouva, ara thaia gonia ma metagi wada tabalu inonigi. This family wants to work in the garden because of this. Toutouva-ne ara ngaua to’I tana malabai ania nene. [C] TAI TOUTOUVA ARA THAIA GONIA (WHAT THE FAMILY DOES) Because this family wants this, people in this family do some things. Ania toutouva-ne ara ngaua nene, inoni ubuna toutouvai ara thaia goni-i magi. They do some things in the house. Ara thaia gonia tabalu magi ubuna lumai. They do some things in the garden. Ara thaia gonia tabalu magi tana malabai. They do some things in the village. Ara thaia gonia tabalu magi tana komui. Because this family wants this, people in this family plan some things. Ania toutouva-ne ara ngaua nene, inoni ubuna toutouvai ara onioni-i magi. They plan food to plant in the garden. Ara onioni vanga ni vasia ubuna malabai. They plan the food to sell. Ara onioni vanga ni sabiri They plan the things they want to do with money. Ara onioni maa ara tali gonia ania selenigi. [D] TAI TOUTOUVA ARA THAIA HANAHANA (HOW THIS FAMILY THINKS) It is good if this family thinks like this: E meta ho toutouva nene ara hanahana liva’ana nene: Women do some things in the garden, in the house, in the village. Genigi ara thaia to’i tana malabai, tana lumai, tana komui. Men do some things in the garden, in the house, in the village. Mwanegi ara thaia to’i tana malabai, tana lumai, tana komui.

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Some children do some things in the garden, in the house, in the village. Tabalu mwela ara thaia to’i tana malabai, tana lumai, tana komui. If only women do all things in the garden, in the house, in the village, it is not good. Ho genigi mola ara ho goni-i mole t’oigi tana lumai, tana malabai, tana komu, ho se meta. If only men do all things in the garden, in the house, in the village, it is not good. Ho mwanegi mola ara ho goni-i mole t’oigi tana lumai, tana malabai, tana komu, ho se meta. If only some children do all things in the garden, in the house, in the village, it is not good Ho tabalu mwelagi mola ara ho goni-i mole t’oigi tana lumai, tana malabai, tana komu, ho se meta. It is good if all people in the family do some things. E meta ho gira sosoko toutouva ara ho goni-i mola ni magi. When this family lives like this, they can grow food to eat, food to give to others, food to sell to other people. Toutouva ara ho ii’o liva’ana nene, ara thaia vasia vanga ni aniai, ni watea, ni sabiri ni inoni ve’etegi. Because of this, this family can do many good things as they want. Ania nene, toutouva ne ara goni-i vutinga ma metagi, liva’ana ara ngaua.

2.5 P  articipatory Action Research and Minimal English Methodologies and practices within the field of Development share some of the methods, practices and aims evident in the Minimal English approach (indeed, in much of descriptive linguistics). The focus on localisation is embedded in the Australian Red Cross’s approach to humanitarian aid (Australian Red Cross 2017), and the international NGO Live & Learn’s approach to aid and development (https://www.livelearn.org). The local perspective has underpinned research on gender equality and economic empowerment in the Pacific (McKinnon et al. 2016), and a place-based pedagogy has been developed in PNG to design and develop learning activities for gender-inclusive community education (Pamphilon

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and Mikhailovich 2017). As discussed above, one of the objectives of the FFT project (Solomon Islands) is to explore the local sociocultural context in order to adapt the program and assess its suitability for other locations in the Solomon Islands. Minimal English’s aim of improving communication by making language easier to translate and easier to understand fits well with the Development approaches of localisation, place-based research approaches and pedagogies. Participatory action research (Cameron and Gibson 2005), specifically strength-based participatory action research, looks at the existing strengths (e.g. human and physical resources and capacities) of a community and works with those strengths. It values local and indigenous knowledge as a basis for actions that will improve people’s lives (Cameron and Gibson 2005: 318). Language is a key strength of a community that needs to be better incorporated into these Development research methodologies. The processes of identifying culture-specific semantic molecules, explicating Western and local concepts, and improving the readability of English materials for communities with varying levels of English literacy are also participatory. They involve a cycle of proposing, testing, clarifying and refining that necessarily involves contributions from linguists and communities or language users. Minimal English is a tool that can form part of participatory action research and be embedded within it.

2.6 Conclusion A key idea in Minimal English is that something that is easy to translate is also easy to understand. The evidence so far, from the incorporation of Minimal English in an agricultural training program, supports this claim. The discussion in this chapter has shown that Minimal English is a valuable tool in localising development projects not only because it eases the process of translation between one language and another, but also because it eases the process of explaining concepts across language and cultural boundaries. It can support the explanation of Western concepts and new terms in local Pacific contexts, and the explanation of local Pacific concepts for development practitioners.

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The chapter also argues for continued exploration of semantic molecules in minimal languages. For Minimal English to successfully contribute to the localisation of development programs, we need to explore the role of semantic molecules and explore the local varieties of dominant languages and influences on the dominant languages spoken. In parts of the Pacific, these influences come from the languages of wider communication (e.g. Tok Pisin in PNG and Solomons Pijin in Solomon Islands). Balancing the local with the universal in agricultural training in the Pacific requires investigating where local words can be included in English materials, understanding that Western concepts are not easily transferred to different cultures and realising that explicating terms is one step (but not the only step) toward meeting this challenge.

Notes 1. The term ‘Western’ is used here to refer to ideas and cultures that are associated with European culture. The term is used in a number of sources referred to in this paper (e.g. Farran (2014) and Ameka and Terkourafi (2019)). As European countries are economically developed countries, the term ‘Western’ overlaps with the term ‘Global North’, used in the Development Studies and related disciplines. However, ‘Global North’, contrasting with ‘Global South’, is associated more with economic development than ways of thinking. 2. The Solomon Islands FFT program will be undertaken in three locations, resulting in the use of three different local languages, as well as English and Solomons Pijin. The first location is Longgu district, North-East Guadalcanal. Longgu is the language discussed in this chapter. 3. Note that in Minimal Tok Pisin planti is an exponent of the prime ‘many’, but here we are referring to the use of English word plenty, which is not a prime. 4. I have not explicated ‘family’ or ‘family farm’ here, but they will be done at a later stage in consultation with participants. Other words that require explication are ‘team’ and ‘garden’.

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References Alfini, Naomi, and Robert Chambers. 2007. Words Count: Taking a Count of the Changing Language of British Aid. Development in Practice 17 (4–5): 492–504. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614520701469377. Ameka, Felix K., and Marina Terkourafi. 2019. What If? Imagining Non-­ Western Perspectives on Pragmatic Theory and Practice. Journal of Pragmatics 145: 72–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.04.001. Australian Red Cross. 2017. Going Local: Achieving a More Appropriate and Fit-­ For-­Purpose Humanitarian Ecosystem in the Pacific. Department of Foreign Affairs: Canberra. Bamgbose, Ayo. 2014. The Language Factor in Development Goals. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35 (7): 646–657. Bearth, Thomas. 2008. Language and Sustainability, in Language and Development. Ed. Rose Marie Beck. Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blatter 20: 15–60. Cabral, Lidia, Arilson Favareto, Langton Mukwereza, and Kojo Amanor. 2016. Brazil’s Agricultural Politics in Africa: More Food International and the Disputed Meanings of ‘Family Farming’. World Development 81: 47–60. Caffery, Jo, and Deborah Hill. 2019. Expensive English: An Accessible Language Approach for Agricultural Development in PNG. Development in Practice 29 (2): 147–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2018.1530195. Cameron, Jenny, and Katherine Gibson. 2005. Participatory Action Research in a Poststructuralist Vein. Geoforum 36 (3): 315–331. Crack, A.M. 2019. Language, NGOs and inclusion: the donor perspective. Development in Practice 29 (2): 159–169. Farran, Sue. 2014. Aid, Trade and Taboo: The Place of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge in Development Strategies: A Pacific Perspective. Development Students Research. An Open Access Journal 1 (1): 28–41. https://doi.org/10. 1080/21665095.2014.909289. Ghosh, Aditya, and Maxwell Boykoff. 2019. Framing Sustainability and Climate Change: Interrogating Discourses in Vernacular and English-Language Media in Sundarbans, India. Geoforum 99: 142–153. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.11.014. Goddard, Cliff. 2018a. Ten Lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004357723_008. ———. 2018b. Introduction. In Minimal English for a Global World, ed. Cliff Goddard, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­62512-­6_1.

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Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2018. Minimal English and How It Can Add to Global English. In Minimal English for a Global World, ed. Cliff Goddard, 5–28. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­31962512-­6_2. Hill, Deborah. 2019. Longgu: Conceptualizing the Human Person from the Inside Out. In Heart- and Soul-Like Constructs across Languages, Cultures, and Epochs, ed. Bert Peeters. New York and London: Routledge. ———. 2020. From Expensive English to Minimal English. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics and Intercultural Communication: Minimal English and Beyond, ed. Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan, 31–51. Singapore: Springer. Jourdan, Christine, and Johanne Angeli. 2014. Pijin and Shifting Language Ideologies in Urban Solomon Islands. Language in Society 43 (3): 265–285. Khan, Mariama. 2014. Indigenous Languages and Africa’s Development Dilemma. Development in Practice 24 (5–6): 764–776. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09614524.2014.941789. Krijtenburg, Froukje. 2017. The Sociality of Debt: A Case Study of Kamba (Kenya) Conceptualisations of Borrowing and Lending. In The Language of Money and Debt, ed. A.  Mooney and E.  Sifaki. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-­3-­319-­57568-­1_11. Levisen, Carsten, and Carol Priestley. 2017. Social Keywords in Postcolonial Melanesian Discourse: Kastom ‘Traditional Culture’ and Tumbuna ‘Ancestors’. In Cultural Keywords in Discourse, ed. Carsten Levisen and Sophia Waters. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chapter 3. Manderson, Lenore, Alexandra Gartrell, Megan Jennaway, Judith Fangalasu’u, and Simon Dolaiano. 2016. Care Arrangements, Disability and Family Contingencies in Solomon Islands: A Comparative Example. Social Dynamics 42 (2): 335–351. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2016.1218140. McKinnon, Katharine, Michelle Carnegie, Katherine Gibson, and Claire Rowland. 2016. Gender Equality and Economic Empowerment in the Solomon Islands and Fiji: A Place-Based Approach. Gender, Place & Culture 23 (10): 1376–1391. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2016.1160036. Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS). 2018. First Quadrennial Pacific Sustainable Development Report: Executive Summary. Suva, Fiji: Council of Regional Organisation in the Pacific, UN Agencies in the Pacific. Pamphilon, Barbara. 2019. Final Report: Improving Opportunities for Economic Development for Women Smallholders in Rural Papua New Guinea.

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ASEM/2014/095. FR2019-06 Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. Pamphilon, Barbara, and Katja Mikhailovich. 2017. Bringing Together Learning from Two Worlds: Lessons from a Gender-Inclusive Community Education Approach with Smallholder Farmers in Papua New Guinea. Australian Journal of Adult Learning 57 (2): 7–32. Scoones, Ian. 2009. Livelihoods Perspectives and Rural Development. The Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (1): 171–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03066150902820503. Smyth, Ines. 2007. Talking of Gender: Words and Meanings in Development Organisation. Development in Practice 17 (4–5): 585–588. https://doi. org/10.1080/09614520701469591. Solomon Islands Government (SIG). 2009. Provincial Profile of the 2009 Population and Housing Census: Guadalcanal. Honiara: Solomon Islands Government. Watson-Gegeo, Karen A., David W.  Gegeo, and Billy Fito’o. 2018. Critical Community Language Policies in Education: Solomon Islands Case. In The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning, ed. James W. Tollefson and Miguel Pérez-Milans, 398–419. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. English Meaning and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ye, Jingzhong, and Lu Pan. 2016. Concepts and Realities of Family Farming in Asia and the Pacific, International Policy Chapter for Inclusive Growth. Working Chapter No. 139, FAO, United Nations Ziai, Aram. 2013. Discourse of ‘Development’ and Why the Concept Should Be Abandoned. Development in Practice 23 (1): 123–136.

3 The Hunt for the Simplest Possible Vocabulary: Minimal Finnish Meets Easy Finnish Leealaura Leskelä and Ulla Vanhatalo

3.1 Introduction This empirical pilot study combined Minimal Finnish (MF) and Easy Finnish (EF), and aimed to find new recommendations for vocabulary guidelines, especially for Easiest Easy Finnish (EEF), that is the simplest level of Easy Finnish. The research question was whether Minimal Finnish, consisting of semantic primes and molecules (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018), could provide the core vocabulary for Easiest Easy Finnish. The present study followed earlier pilots that have combined EF and MF (Arle 2018; Vanhatalo and Lindholm 2020), and tried to find research-based answers to the questions raised in recent EF guidelines (Leskelä 2019).

L. Leskelä (*) • U. Vanhatalo University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_3

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3.1.1 The Concept of Easy Language The concept of Easy Language (abbr. EL; also easy-to-read language, Germ. Leichte Sprache, Finn. selkokieli, etc.)1 has been formatted in many European countries as an artificial language form that aims to help people with severe linguistic challenges (e.g. Bohman 2017; Bredel and Maaß 2016a, 2019; Bock et  al. 2017; Leskelä 2015, 2017, 2019; Kulkki-­ Nieminen 2010; Lindholm and Vanhatalo Forthcoming). Related practical work entails publishing Easy Language materials such as news, literature, and official information; training experts; developing guidelines; and lobbying for accessible language use in society. People who need Easy Language form a heterogeneous group, ranging from those who have only minor problems understanding complex texts to people who cannot read at all (e.g. Rink 2019). According to the definition established in Finland, Easy Finnish is targeted towards three different groups: (1) Individuals who have congenital neurobiological limitations in their linguistic capacities, for example those with an intellectual disability, on the spectrum of autism or dysphasia; (2) individuals whose linguistic capacity has diminished during their lifetime due to a trauma or illness, for example those with memory-related illnesses or aphasia; and (3) individuals who have not (yet) reached native or close to native linguistic skills in Finnish, for example language learners, sign language natives (Leskelä and Lindholm 2012: 17–18). The heterogeneity of the groups makes it rather challenging to estimate the amount of people needing Easy Language in Finland. Some might need it throughout their lifetimes, others only occasionally. Growth, maturation, and ageing; access to learning and education; the progressivity or stability of a disease, condition or mental state; and possible (linguistic) rehabilitation or support all have a potential impact on the need for EL.  In Finland, however, the estimated size of the target group varies from 11 to 14%, meaning approximately 750,000 people (Juusola 2019).

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3.1.2 Guidelines and Difficulty Levels for Easy Finnish In many countries, Easy Language materials are produced according to specific guidelines or rules. The two most influential international guidelines are The IFLA Guidelines for Easy to Read Material (IFLA 2010) and Inclusion Europe’s Standards for Making Information Easy to Read and Understand (IE 2009). Both of these have been considered when adapting EL guidelines for the Finnish language.2 Recently, it has been suggested that the Easy Finnish guidelines for written language be divided into three difficulty levels in order to answer to the multiple needs of different users (Leskelä 2019): • Advanced level Easy Finnish (AEF) is targeted towards people with minor linguistic problems, who need only little support and motivation to move forward in reading Standard Finnish. For them, semantic simplifications are usually unnecessary, but their reading fluency can be improved by certain modifications on the surface of the language. • Basic level Easy Finnish (BEF) is the most commonly used level and has the largest user groups. Most of the materials, as well as the main focus in developing the guidelines for EL in Finland, has concerned this level. The linguistic principles of this level have been documented in the Easy-to-Read Finnish Meter (EtR Finnish Meter 2018). • Easiest Easy Finnish (EEF) aims to offer access to literal materials for people with significant linguistic problems. At this level, the text needs to go through profound changes in semantics, syntax, and morphology, and needs to function with an extremely narrowed vocabulary. The reader might have such severe reading problems that they do not read the text alone, but are assisted by someone else. In this chapter, we focus on Easiest Easy Finnish (EEF).

3.1.3 Guidelines for Vocabulary in Easy Finnish The guidelines for suitable vocabulary in Easy Finnish give the writers the following general recommendations: use short words; avoid long words;

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favour frequent, everyday vocabulary that can be considered familiar to the target groups; and avoid words of foreign origin (e.g. Rajala and Virtanen 1986: 32; Sainio and Rajala 2002: 27; Leskelä and Virtanen 2006: 13; Virtanen 2009: 82; Leskelä and Kulkki-Nieminen 2015: 43; Leskelä 2019: 131–132, 140; EtR Finnish Meter, sections 33, 34, 35). They also urge writers to avoid abstract, difficult terms, and expressions (especially typical of officialese or professional jargon), and if these words are not avoidable, to explain them well (Sainio and Rajala 2002: 27; Virtanen 2009: 82; Leskelä and Virtanen 2006: 13; Leskelä 2019: 132–133; EtR Finnish Meter, section 37, 40). Most of these vocabulary recommendations are included in some form in different international Easy Language guidelines (e.g. Bredel and Maaß 2016a; IFLA 2010; NLS 2013). For instance, the frequency of words and their familiarity to the target groups is emphasised in one way or another in all of them, for example, by a request to use easy-to-understand words that people know well (IE 2009), to choose words with a central position in the meaning field (Bredel and Maaß 2016b: 78) and to avoid technical terms and foreign words (NLS 2013). It is generally assumed that people better recognise words they encounter regularly on multiple occasions (e.g. Bock 2019: 34–35). Frequency lists are often used as a tool to define whether a word does or does not suit Easy Language text (Bredel and Maaß 2016b: 74). However, frequency lists correspond to the corpus on which they are based, and this corpus may be very different from that which the person needing Easy Language encounters (Bredel and Maaß 2016a: 342). For instance, Bock concluded that even though frequency seems to provide an approximate orientation to vocabulary for Easy Language texts, Easy Language readers can recognise many less frequent words. Personal interest in a certain topic, as well as hints offered by the text, can be decisive in choosing suitable vocabulary for Easy Language texts (Ibid.: 35, 38–39). The Finnish guidelines encourage writers’ awareness in respect to frequency, but if a less frequent word is unavoidable in a text, it can be used in a simple context that fosters its understanding (Leskelä 2019: 131). In general, the Easy Finnish vocabulary guidelines are not very precise; they are rather flexible and loose. They rely on the EF writer’s expertise, their personal knowledge of the reader groups, and their understanding

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of the text context. Even the EtR Meter does not provide very precise vocabulary recommendations for writers. Because of this, the lexicological difficulty of the EF texts published in Finland varies considerably. This is not a problem for Basic Level Easy Finnish (BEF), but for Easiest Easy Finnish (EEF), which is targeted towards the linguistically weakest readers, this might present a problem. On what basis should the writers choose the recommended short, frequent, everyday words for a reader who operates with minimal linguistic capacity? This practical question brings us to minimal languages.

3.1.4 N  atural Semantic Metalanguage and Minimal Languages The relationship between Easy Languages and Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), especially minimal languages, has recently been the focus of pilot studies (Arle 2018; Vanhatalo and Lindholm 2020). The concept of minimal languages (such as Minimal Polish, Minimal English, Minimal Finnish) is based on the basic assumptions of the NSM approach; in particular, the assumption that a relatively small number of ultimately simple words can be found in all languages (Wierzbicka 1972; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018). These ‘semantic primes’ can be used for explaining complex concepts and vocabulary. The resulting explanations or re-phrasings can be translated from one language to another with a minimised risk of meaning change. Minimal languages consist of the 65 semantic primes augmented by 200–300 ‘semantic molecules’, mainly near-universal concrete words that have been explained by semantic primes (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018; Chap. 1) (see Figs. 3.1 and 3.2). Compared to the original NSM, minimal languages provide the flexibility and usability needed when applying the method outside of linguistics in particular.

Fig. 3.1  Part 1 of the list of semantic primes and molecules in Finnish used for Minimal Finnish, based on the English lists in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018)

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Fig. 3.2  Part 2 of the list of semantic primes and molecules in Finnish used for Minimal Finnish, based on the English lists in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018)

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3.1.5 Research Questions The objective of this pilot study was to determine whether the limited vocabulary set of minimal languages could serve as the core vocabulary of Easiest Easy Finnish (EEF). In order to attain the objective, we defined two research questions: (1) What kind of text modifications can the EF experts create based on the Minimal Finnish word list (without getting much support or training about NSM)? (2) Is a text based on Minimal Finnish easier to understand than comparable texts: the original text in Standard Finnish (SF), Basic EF, or Easiest EF?

3.2 Material and Methods In addition to the original text on discrimination in Standard Finnish (see Sect. 3.2.1 below), several kinds of material were collected for this pilot study: text modifications made by EL experts, comments on the modification processes by the experts modifying the texts, questionnaire data from L2 test readers, and comments by the language teachers of the test readers. All of the material was collected in 2019 in Helsinki, Finland. As the present study is a pilot by nature, the data collection process changed slightly during its course due to unexpected issues. Some preliminary plans were discarded and some new ideas were added. This section describes the data and data collection process.

3.2.1 O  riginal Text in Standard Finnish: Criteria Words in the Non-discrimination Act The original two-page text used in this study can be found on the website of the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman in several languages. Our study used the Finnish version. While the text itself explains non-­discrimination in free form, some wordings come directly from the legal text. According to section 8 of the Act:

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No one may be discriminated against on the basis of age, origin, nationality, language, religion, belief, opinion, political activity, trade union activity, family relationships, state of health, disability, sexual orientation or other personal characteristics. (www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2014/ en20141325.pdf )

The text dealing with the Non-Discrimination Act was chosen for this study over two other candidates because the theme is highly relevant for the target groups of Easy Languages and consists of relatively abstract and complex vocabulary. As the idea of the text is to explain what the Non-­ Discrimination Act says about discrimination, the criteria words at the beginning describe and define the life areas in which discrimination may specifically occur and is forbidden. The list thus constructs the legislative base of the Non-Discrimination Act. In terms of readability and perception, the list is difficult for multiple reasons. First, the words are in the Finnish genitive form,3 thus some of them are under consonant gradation (e.g. ikä ‘age’ > iän ‘of age’, mielipide ‘opinion’ > mielipiteen ‘of opinion’), which makes them morphologically somewhat more complicated and less transparent. Secondly, the list contains 14 words that are all connected to the same list preamble. This implies that the reader must keep the preamble in mind while reading through the long list, meaning a heavy burden for the working memory. Third, although some of the concepts in the list are quite common (age, language, religion), most of them are less frequent (e.g. trade union activity, sexual orientation), and the readers do not encounter them in their daily lives. Furthermore, these mainly abstract words (e.g. belief, state of health, family relationships) create a barrier for weak readers, who often tend to interpret the content of a text in a concrete way.

3.2.2 Text Modification Process The text modification process consisted of two steps, both followed by brief feedback sessions. The modifications were made by EL experts located with the help of the Finnish Centre for Easy Language. A call for interested participants was sent to an email list of experts, and ten experts

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expressed their willingness to participate in the study. We emailed the instructions to these ten experts and received answers from seven. In the first step, the experts received the original text and were instructed to make a normal EL modification. In the second step, the experts received a list of semantic primes and molecules in Finnish and were instructed to make the easiest level EL modification to the original text by favouring only the words in the list. The list was based on the word list introduced in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018), which the authors roughly translated into Finnish for this study. Based on earlier studies popularising NSM in Finnish (Vanhatalo and Torkki 2018), some additional words were included: for example, ja ‘and’ and vai/tai ‘or’. The participants received two versions of the list. In the first, the words were grouped thematically, while in the second, the words were in alphabetical order (see Figs. 3.1 and 3.2). The instruction was to make a single text, preferably during one writing session, and return the modification by email. After completing both tasks, the participants were asked to reflect on their working process and fill in an online feedback form. We received seven Basic Easy Finnish texts (step one), and six Minimal Finnish texts (step two). It is to be noted here that these experienced EF experts were not given much support or training. This means that the pilot study is also a test of whether these skilled experts could apply MF vocabulary ‘cold’, so to speak; and, accordingly, the texts referred to as Minimal Finnish may not always conform to ideal MF phrasing. After the two modification steps, we wanted one more modification version. We decided to ask one additional expert (who had not participated in steps one or two) to make the easiest level EF modification following the suggestions in Leskelä (2019), that is not using the MF word list. After the entire modification process, we had the following text versions: (1) the original text, (2) seven texts in Basic Easy Finnish, (3) six texts in Minimal Finnish, and (4) one text in Easiest Easy Finnish. For statistical analysis, we used all the texts (the averages were calculated from the BEF and MF texts). For test reading, we chose only one good BEF text and one good MF text (see Fig.  3.3), on the basis that both the selected texts had closely followed the recommendations. These texts were used in addition to the original text and the one EEF version.

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Mitä syrjintä on?

What is discrimination?

Joskus joku toinen ihminen voi ajatella, että sinä et ole hyvä, koska et ole samanlainen kuin muut. Toinen ihminen voi ajatella, että sinä et ole hyvä - koska olet syntynyt toisessa paikassa tai - koska olet nainen tai - koska et äänestä samalla tavalla tai - koska olet elänyt kauan tai - koska olet elänyt vähän aikaa tai - koska et voi tehdä kaikkia asioita samalla tavalla kuin muut.

Sometimes someone can think that you are not good, because you are not like others. Someone can think that you are not good because you were born in another place or because you are a woman or because you don’t vote in the same way or because you have lived for a long time or because you have lived for a short time or because you can’t do everything in the same way as others.

Jos toinen ihminen ajattelee, että sinä et ole hyvä, se voi olla syrjintää. Syrjintää on se, jos toinen ihminen tekee sinulle pahaa, koska et ole samanlainen kuin muut. Hän voi sanoa sinulle pahoja asioita tai hän ei tee sinulle samoja asioita kuin muille ihmisille.

If someone thinks that you are not good it may be discrimination. It is discrimination if someone does something bad to you because you are not like others. They can say bad things to you or not do the same things to you as they do to others.

Laki sanoo, että syrjintä on erittäin paha asia. On aina paha asia, jos syrjintää tapahtuu.

The law says that discrimination is a very bad thing. It is always bad if discrimination happens.

Jos joku ihminen tekee sinulle pahaa tai jos näet muuta syrjintää, voit soittaa puhelimella 0295 666 817. Puhelimessa ihminen sanoo sinulle, mitä sinä voit tehdä ja mitä muut ihmiset tekevät sen jälkeen. Kun soitat, se ei maksa sinulle mitään.

If someone does something bad to you or if you see some other discrimination, you can phone 0295 666 817. On the phone a person will tell you what you can do and what other people do after that. It costs you nothing to call.

Fig. 3.3  Sample text from the modification process, translated from Finnish. The task for the participants was to create a text based on Minimal Finnish word list and Easy Finnish grammatical and textual instructions. This text was also used in the user testing situations

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3.2.3 Feedback from Experts Modifying the Texts Both written and oral feedback was collected from the Easy Finnish experts participating in the study. Written comments were collected via online questionnaires after both modification processes; the experts and the authors of this study made oral comments in a face-to-face meeting. The online questionnaire included both multiple choice and open-ended questions, aiming to understand the modification processes and to let the participants explain their choices. The original purpose of the face-to-face meeting was to discuss the process, analyse the individual modifications, and finally co-create one ‘best’ Minimal Finnish version of the text. Although the discussion was lively, the goal of agreeing on a single preferred MF version of the text in such a limited time was overly optimistic.

3.2.4 U  ser Testing with L2 Students and Comments from L2 Teachers The user tests were conducted at the Axxell and Helsingin Aikuisopisto institutes for adult learning in October 2019. Altogether 50 students from four groups participated in the tests. The participants were Finnish as a Second Language learners, in the early beginners’ groups (mainly A1.3–A2.1 at the Common European Framework for Languages (CEFR) levels of language proficiency). Some groups were ‘slow proceeding’, meaning that the students had limited literacy in their mother tongues and therefore the course was paced to cater to these additional needs. Although we achieved our goal of identifying the weakest Finnish learners or readers, the testing process itself, including the written instructions, was too challenging for the majority of the participants. The questionnaire used for testing consisted of a page of background questions, the text itself, and questions measuring whether the text was understood. The instructions were simple: read the text and underline any words or sentences you do not understand. Even though the questions were formulated as simply as possible with prior consultation with a teacher of one of the test groups, the responses showed that the questions were still too difficult. There were great contradictions between what was

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underlined and the questions measuring understanding. Based on this observation, the results from the test process did not prove sufficiently reliable to be systematically analysed. Although the original idea of test readers did not succeed very well, an unexpected source of material came from the teachers of the L2 students participating in the tests. Altogether five L2 teachers looked at the four different variants of the texts and gave their oral or written comments. The teachers ordered the texts according to their perceived degree of difficulty and marked the level at which the text would be suitable for the Common European Framework for Languages (CEFR). They also told us how they would use the texts in language teaching.

3.3 R  esults and Analysis of the Text Modification Process In this section we report what happened to the original text during the modification processes at both the Basic Easy Finnish and Minimal Finnish levels. We first analyse all the texts with respect to the following features: the total word count per text, the amount of words per sentence and clause, the number of sentences and clauses per text (Sect. 3.3.1), and word classes (Sect. 3.3.2). We then focus on the modification process of the criteria words, such as ikä ‘age’, alkuperä ‘origin’, kansallisuus ‘nationality’, kieli ‘language’, uskonto ‘religion’, mielipide ‘opinion’ (Sects. 3.3.3 and 3.3.4). We also report the participating Easy Finnish experts’ opinions (Sect. 3.3.5), and finally briefly present the reader tests (Sect. 3.3.6).

3.3.1 Counting the Words and Sentences Even though morphosyntactic and semantic content are essential for assessing the difficulty level of a text, basic statistics may help focus on adjustments to make the text easier to comprehend. The changes in total word count per text, the number of words per sentence and clause, and the number of sentences and clauses per text guide our attention to the

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Table 3.1  A comparison showing the simplification from the original text to the easier versions in terms of the number of words and sentences, number of words per sentence, and percentage of concrete nouns in each text

Original text (N = 1) Basic Easy Finnish (average of N = 7) Minimal Finnish (average of N = 6) Easiest Easy Finnish (N = 1)

Total word count

Total sentence count

Words per sentence

Percentage of concrete nounsa (%)

408

48

8.5

23

249

41

6

34

115

23

4.9

34

82

19

4.3

38

Compared to abstract nouns

a

adjustments made in the modification. Table  3.1 shows the statistical changes in the modification processes, starting with the original text and continuing with the Basic Easy Finnish, Minimal Finnish, and Easiest Easy Finnish texts. The total word count per text gives the approximate length of each text. A widely recognised observation suggests that weak readers often lose their motivation to read longer texts, and may avoid reading texts with a massive word count. The maximal length of the text is generally not defined by Easy Language Finnish Guidelines, but the advice is to, for example, restrict the amount of contents to the most relevant, to consider the information burden of the text, and to strive towards language that would motivate a weak reader to continue reading (Leskelä 2019: 116–119; Leskelä and Kulkki-Nieminen 2015: 42–44; Virtanen 2009: 77–78; 80–82). In our study, the original text had 408 words. In the BEF texts the word count ranged from 192 to 328 words, in the MF texts from 47 to 293 words, and in the EEF text it was 82 words. Thus, all the simplified versions were significantly shorter in terms of words than the Standard Finnish version. The total sentence count per text, particularly in connection to the words per sentence count, describes the distribution of the words in the

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text. Knowing that long sentences create a considerable barrier for weak readers, these figures provide one means through which to observe the difficulty level of the text.4 The number of the original text (48 sentences, appr. 8.5 words/sentence) set a benchmark against which to compare the numbers of the simplified text versions, which all included fewer sentences and words per sentence count (Table 3.1). All three simplified versions differed from the original in many aspects, as expected. On average, they were shorter in word and sentence count than the original text. They also used fewer words per sentence, and the number of concrete nouns in comparison to abstract nouns was higher than in the original standard language text. On the basis of these figures, we can deduce that the experts mainly followed the common Easy Finnish guidelines. The Basic EF text was also different to some extent from the Minimal Finnish and Easiest EF version. For instance, the total word count in the Basic EF text, as well as the total sentence count and words per sentence, was significantly higher than those in the other simplified versions. This gives us reason to assume that while writing the Minimal Finnish and Easiest EF texts, the experts strived, as they were asked to, to produce even easier texts than the Basic EF.  Some minor contradictory results were found; for example, the percentage of concrete nouns was almost identical in the Basic EF and the Minimal Finnish texts, but somewhat higher in Easiest EF text, which in turn suggests that the ambition towards concrete use of language was most obvious in the Easiest EF text. It is, however, worth noting the wide distribution of features described above: the total sentence count varied in the Basic EF texts from 29 to 58 sentences and in the Minimal Finnish from 11 to 57. In contrast, the distribution of words per sentence was moderate, ranging from 5.4 to 6.6 in the Basic EF and from 4.1 to 5.4 in the Minimal Finnish texts. This suggests that the experts may have adopted different strategies when simplifying these texts: some of them strived to reduce the number of words and information burden to a minimum (reductive strategy), while others apparently tended to add explanatory elements to the texts (additive strategy) (cf. Bredel and Maaß 2016a: 489). As the word per sentence count did not vary notably, the experts using additive strategies obviously used more subordinate clauses.

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3.3.2 Changes in Word Classes We also carried out a word class classification of our data, which included the number of nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, and numerals, and the percentage of concrete and abstract nouns in all the texts. According to current recommendations for Easy Finnish, predicate verb-based sentence constructions should be favoured and constructions with heavy and abstract nouns, especially as attributives, should be avoided. Also, pronoun references should be in a close proximity to the antecedent, so that they are easy to follow for the reader. However, the prominence of a certain word class itself does not determine the simplicity of a text; rather, other factors such as the frequency, inflection, and conjugation, as well as function of the word in the sentence, are much more important (Leskelä 2019: 130; Kulkki-Nieminen 2010: 39). We noted some differences in the word class occurrences between the texts, especially in the distribution of nouns, verbs, and pronouns. The most distinctive text was the Minimal Finnish text, in that the percentage of nouns was smaller than verbs, and less than half of that in the other versions. Also, the percentage of verbs and pronouns in the Minimal Finnish text was higher than in other versions. In the Basic EF text, the distribution of the nouns, verbs, and pronouns was almost parallel to the Standard Finnish text, although the number of words in general was considerably smaller: relative to each other, nouns were in the majority, followed by verbs, and then pronouns, in the Basic EF text. In the Easiest EF text, there was also a majority of nouns, but verbs and pronouns were divided evenly. Although we conclude that these differences may be relevant to the simplicity of the text, we were unable to accurately identify them in this pilot study. Examining the differences would have required more detailed analysing at the sentence level, as word classes themselves do not reveal their true potential, but we hope this would be a research topic in some future research.

3.3.3 Explaining and Rephrasing Criteria Words The original text begins with a list of words that constructs the legislative base of the Finnish Non-discrimination Act by naming the criteria upon which it is forbidden to discriminate against a person in Finland. This list

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of explanatory words, including 14 criteria, was then chosen for further analysis, as it is crucial for understanding the rest of the text contents. For the reasons described earlier (Sect. 3.2.1), we assumed that the experts would have made some changes to the list, such as shortening it by selecting only a few of the words as examples; changing the genitive case to nominative; reorganising the list, at least visually, so that it would look shorter, or completely disassembling the list, favouring the more frequent words on the list over less frequent ones; or, if choosing to include some of the less frequent and more abstract words in their list, equipping them with explanations. To some extent, this was done. Table 3.2 shows the occurrences of the criteria words in the original text and in the simplified versions (equivalents, if they occur, in parentheses): The Basic EF texts mentioned all the criteria words for discrimination and most of them were the same as in the original text, while Minimal Finnish and Easiest EF exploited more equivalents (alkuperä ‘origin’ > ihonväri ‘skin colour’). Thus, in the Basic EF texts, the experts did not reduce the lexical variety as much as in the Minimal Finnish and in Easiest EF texts. For instance, the criteria ammattiyhdistystoiminta ‘trade union activity’ was mentioned in three and seksuaalinen suuntautuminen ‘sexual orientation’ in four Basic EF texts, despite their obvious semantic complexity. These words did not occur in the Minimal Finnish or Easiest EF texts. The criteria words with the most occurrences in the Minimal Finnish texts were alkuperä ‘origin’, kansallisuus ‘nationality’, uskonto ‘religion’, and vamma ‘disability’, which is not surprising, as these can be seen as words closely related to the life spheres of the targeted reader groups (lexical proximity to one’s personal life sphere, cf. Bock 2019: 35, 38–39).5 What is noteworthy in the Basic EF texts is the paucity of explanations in connection with difficult words. As explaining difficult words is recommended in the guidelines for Easy Finnish (e.g. Leskelä 2019: 134–136; Virtanen 2009: 82–86), one would expect to find explanations in the Easy Language texts for terms such as ‘political activity’, ‘trade union activity’, ‘sexual orientation’, and ‘other personal characteristics’, but these terms were used in several texts without explanation. As this runs counter to the Easy Finnish principles, there must be reasons why the experts chose this solution. One reason could be that they were trying to name all or most of

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Table 3.2  Number of texts in each of the three categories of simple text which used the criteria words or equivalents. Equivalents to the criteria words appear in parentheses Easiest Easy Finnish Minimal Finnish (N = 6) (N = 1)

Criteria words in the original text

Basic Easy Finnish (N = 7)

Age

0 7 (old; young and old) 1 (have lived long or have lived for a short time)

Origin

3 (skin colour; of wrong colour)

1 (other skin colour)

Nationality

5 (not Finnish; foreigner)

1 (from 3 (from another country, not from the another country) same country; born in a different place)

Language

4 (mother tongue)

0

0

Religion

7

2 (not the same god)

1

Belief

1

0

0

Opinion

5

0

1

Political activity

4

1 (not voting the same 0 way)

Trade union activity

3

0

0

Family relationships

4 (family)

2 (discriminated against because of family; husband and wife)

0

State of health

3

0

0

Disability

7 (illness or disability, disabled and abled; have a handicap)

2 (have handicap; their 1 body is different to others’)

Sexual orientation

4 (homosexuality)

0

0

Other personal characteristics

2 (gender)

1 (woman)

0

1 (skin colour)

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the criteria, in order to be as faithful as possible to the original text in which the legislative base of the Non-Discrimination Act is expressed using these words, while at the same time trying to keep the list as short as possible. If they had equipped the words with the relevant explanations, the list would be even longer and harder to read, so they chose not to explain them. On the one hand, this solution increased the obscurity of the text, but on the other, the shortening of the list is understandable because it diminishes the risk of the reader giving up on reading and leaving the text.

3.3.4 Examples of Modifications of Criteria Words In order to illustrate the outcome of the study, we present four examples of the modifications.6 The first example comes from the Basic Easy Finnish version: Laki (yhdenvertaisuuslaki) sanoo, että ketään ihmistä ei saa syrjiä. Syrjimisen perusteena ei saa olla ikä, alkuperä, ihonväri tai kansalaisuus, kieli, uskonto, poliittinen mielipide, ammattiyhdistystoiminta, perhe, sairaus tai vamma, seksuaalinen suuntautuminen (esimerkiksi homoseksuaalisuus). ‘The Law (The Non-Discrimination Act) says that no person should be discriminated against. The reason for discrimination must not be age, origin, colour of skin or nationality, language, religion, political opinion, trade union activity, family, illness or disability, sexual orientation (for instance homosexuality).’

The expert chose to name 12 of the 14 criteria, in nominative form, excluding only 2 (‘belief ’ and ‘other personal characteristics’). The sentence is still rather long, 29 words. The expert has reorganised the list somewhat by combining some criteria (‘origin’ and ‘nationality’, ‘opinion’ and ‘political activity’, ‘state of health’ (actually ‘illness’) and ‘disability’), which makes the list at least visually a little shorter to read. The expert has also given explanations for words that are presumably difficult for a weak reader to understand (‘origin’ > ‘colour of skin’, ‘sexual orientation’ > ‘homosexuality’).

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The second example comes from the Minimal Finnish version (see also Fig. 3.3): Ihminen voi olla paha toiselle ihmiselle, jos toinen ei ole samasta maasta tai toisella ei ole sama jumala. Silloin ihminen syrjii toista ihmistä. ‘A person can be bad to another person, if the other is not from the same country or does not have the same god. When this happens, the person is discriminating against the other person.’

Instead of giving the reader a wide range of the criteria for not being discriminated against, the expert chose to name just two, nationality and religion, and delivered them to the reader with the equivalents ‘not from the same country’ and ‘does not have the same god’. The last sentence suggests that these expressions are used as examples to explain the word syrjiä ‘discriminate’ which, according to some of the experts, was unavoidable in this text. Generally, in the Minimal Finnish versions, the modifications to the list were radical. Only one expert retained the list formulation, while the others had decompressed the list into separate sentences. The MF texts included 8 of the 14 criteria. However, characteristic of the MF versions, these criteria words were not used as such but expressed with paraphrase or equivalents; for instance, instead of the word ikä ‘age’ the expert explained the word as [you] ‘have lived long or have lived for a short time’. This was as expected, as the experts strived to use only the semantic primes and molecules. At the same time, this kind of approach to lexicon differs a great deal from conventional Easy Finnish, in which the guidelines clearly discourage writers from explaining words that are presumably known by the readers (e.g. EtR Finnish Meter, section 38), because the reader often reacts to such explanations by disregarding them or questioning reader’s  intelligence (Leskelä 2019: 134–135). The third example comes from the Easiest Easy Finnish version: Syrjinnän syy on jokin piirre, joka sinulla on. Syy voi olla, että tulet toisesta maasta. Syy voi olla myös vamma, ihonväri, uskonto, mielipide.

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‘The reason for discrimination is some feature that you have. The reason may be that you come from another country. The reason may also be disability, skin colour, religion, opinion.’

In this Easiest EF example, the expert has chosen to give 5 criteria of the 14 in the original text. Two of these are mentioned with equivalents, which, interestingly, are the same as in the other simplified versions. Three of them are used in the original, but alkuperä ‘origin’ is changed to the equivalent ihonväri ‘skin colour’ and kansallisuus ‘nationality’ to the expression ‘from another country’. The criteria ‘nationality’ is also differentiated from the list into its own sentence, thus shortening the list visually. As the obvious aim of this EF expert in this text was lexical reduction, it is not surprising that the list was also radically shorter than those in the Basic EF texts. The analysis also exposed some unexpected lexical features in the texts. Despite the ambition to use concrete language in the Easiest EF text, the first sentences included rather abstract words such as syy ‘reason’, piirre ‘feature’, and kohdella ‘to treat’, which are neither very frequent nor concrete and as such, surprising in the Easiest EF text. The Basic EF texts surprisingly used many difficult, abstract terms with no explanations, for example, halventaa ‘to treat with contempt’, nöyryyttävä ‘humiliating’, loukkaava käytös ‘offensive behaviour’, sopimaton ‘inappropriate’, ilmapiiri ‘atmosphere’. The full text of the Minimal Finnish version can be seen in Fig. 3.3 (page 62).

3.3.5 C  omments from Participating Easy Finnish Experts After completing the modification tasks, the Easy Finnish experts were asked to answer some reflective questions about the process. Whereas the first task (the Basic EF) was generally considered pretty normal, the second task (Minimal Finnish) was considered extremely challenging. The wide variation in features, especially in the Minimal Finnish texts, may also be related to the fact that the experts were trying to carry out a new kind of writing task that was unusual for them. The conventional Easy Language strategies and Easy Finnish guidelines they were used to

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following did not provide much support when they were implementing the text using the word list of semantic primes and molecules, striving at the same time for maximal grammatical and semantical simplicity. Different participants solved this in different ways. The confusion was also expressed in their feedback: two experts rated the task as difficult and four as really difficult. The difficulty of writing the Minimal Finnish version was commented on as follows: ‘The writing process was extremely slow; I was thinking what the heck is this all about; I obviously have no idea about Minimal Finnish; Using the word list felt artificial; The abstraction level seemed to rise, and I felt like expressing everything at a more general level’.

3.3.6 Comments from L2 Teachers Although our original idea of user testing did not turn out as we had expected (Sect. 3.2.4), the L2 teachers commented on the understandability and usability of the texts from their teacher’s perspective. They ordered the texts independently from the most challenging to the easiest as follows: the original text, the Basic EF text, the Minimal Finnish text, and the Easiest EF text. The judgements and the comments from the five teachers were in line with this: ‘The length of the text is very important for a weak reader. If the text looks long, the reader can’t glance it, and doesn’t necessarily even start reading it. Balancing the length of the text, easy vocabulary and easy grammatical structures is challenging. The role of spoken assistance is important’. According to the teachers, the best understanding of the topic could possibly be reached by combining the short Easiest EF written text and the slightly longer spoken Minimal Finnish explanations.

3.4 Discussion The objective of this study was to determine whether the core vocabulary proposed for minimal languages could serve as the core vocabulary of Easiest EF. We explored this objective by allowing experts to modify texts

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from Standard Finnish to the easiest possible Easy Finnish, using Minimal Finnish vocabulary. We monitored the process, analysed the outcome, and asked for comments from the Easy Language target audience. In the discussion, we reconsider our objective: could the results of this pilot study have some effect on future Easy Finnish? Do we have any suggestions for Easiest EF vocabulary recommendations? What are the limitations of Minimal Finnish in the context of Easy Language? What should be taken into account when planning future studies of Easy Language vocabulary?

3.4.1 W  as the Hunt for the Easy Finnish Core Vocabulary Successful? As discussed earlier in this chapter, the guidelines for Easy Finnish vocabulary have followed the relatively vague guidelines for Easy Language in general: use simple, frequent words; avoid long, abstract words and words of foreign origin. Few recommendations have been given for the relatively new concept of Easiest EF. As far as we are aware, no lists for suggested or ‘safe’7 vocabulary have thus far been given in the contexts of any Easy Languages. Interest in Natural Semantic Metalanguage research and in minimal languages is growing: can the idea of simple universal words serve the most practical purposes in modifying language for those who do not understand standard languages? Based on the pilot results and analysis above, the short answer is: yes it can, but not alone. Although the Minimal Finnish task in this pilot was experienced as very demanding, the participating Easy Finnish experts were surprisingly able to modify simple, easily readable texts using a very limited vocabulary, most of them with no prior knowledge of NSM or minimal language principles. Compared with the Basic EF texts, the Minimal Finnish texts went further in the direction of the simplification process: the total word count per text, the number of words per sentence and clause, and the number of sentences and clauses per text decreased (Table 3.1). In regard to word classes, the proportion of verbs increased. Even though these figures do not reveal much about textual level complexity, they show the desired direction. The Minimal Finnish texts had

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many inventive solutions, such as rephrasing alkuperä ‘origin’ as ‘someone who was born in another country’. Our recommendation for Easy Language authors is as follows: familiarise yourself with the list of words emerging from minimal languages research (see Chap. 1). These are the words you can use freely, as they most likely will require no further explanation. Especially when modifying or creating texts aimed at the weakest readers, that is in easiest level, this limited set of vocabulary may help you explain abstract things using simple words. However, we cannot recommend staying strictly within the boundaries of Minimal Finnish. Some constructions were marked as artificial by both the participating Easy Language experts themselves and the L2 teachers, for example rephrasing nuori ‘young’ as ‘someone who has lived for a short time’. While ‘young’ is not in the minimal language word list, it is a frequent, well-known, and semantically invisible concept, and in the Easy Language context, it must obviously be preferred to the clumsy paraphrase. Sometimes avoiding a certain word caused a highly obscure and abstract explanation: for example avoiding the word vamma ‘disability’ led to the following: ‘Sometimes a person cannot do things in the same way as others. Maybe their body is different to others’, and ‘they cannot move in places where other people move. Maybe they live in a place where they cannot do the same things as others’. To get a weak reader to understand that this means a person with a disability might be difficult, because the description ‘inability to do things, to move in places and to live somewhere’ may also apply to many other things, persons, or conditions. Obtaining the right meaning requires reading between the lines, and weak readers do not usually do this. It is also noteworthy that these paraphrases considerably lengthen the text. Thus, if the reader intends to read the text themselves, this might be too hard. In the Easiest EF texts, however, the reader is not necessarily the target, but someone close to them. We would suggest that the Minimal Finnish version with a longer text could be used as a basis for discussions, something that a more competent reader reads and shares with the target group. To conclude, if you need a word that is not included on the list, but you consider it easy enough for the required purpose, feel free to use it.

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However, always remember the other Easy Language recommendations: short sentences, simple grammatical structures, textual level simplicity, and coherence. Based on the comments from L2 teachers, combining elements from Easiest EF and Minimal Finnish leads to the most understandable texts. Minimal Finnish may be especially useful in spoken contexts, when the otherwise compact EL text can be explained in oral form.

3.4.2 L essons Learnt for Future Studies on Minimal Finnish and Easy Language It is useful to look critically at our pilot study, and possibly offer some suggestions for further studies in the area. As described in the material and method section (Sect. 3.2), we adjusted the original study idea several times during the research process. Our first remark deals with the word list we used in the study. We translated the word list (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018) roughly for the purpose of the current pilot study. We made no cultural adaptations, meaning that concepts foreign to Finnish culture were kept on the list (e.g. ‘earthquake’). Based on earlier work on popularising NSM in Finnish (Vanhatalo and Torkki 2018), some lexical items were added to the list (ja ‘and’, tai/vai ‘or’). Further studies on Minimal Finnish (or any minimal language) would require a careful rethinking of the list of molecules, also possible changing of some of the concepts. In order to complete the selection of texts, we decided to obtain one additional text variant outside of the actual research process. After obtaining this Easiest EF version, we had four variants: the original Standard Finnish text, the Basic EF text, the Easiest EF text, and the Minimal Finnish text. Had we done this at the beginning and included this task in our experts’ test setting, we could have had six to seven versions of the Easiest EF. Although our main interest in this pilot was the usability of Minimal Finnish, it would be important to also study it in the context of other variants of Easy Finnish  —  possibly Plain Finnish, which was excluded from this pilot study. We could also have done some of the practical parts of the modifying process differently: we could have told the participating experts more

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about the task, most importantly, that the text was for a website. In addition, giving more time for individual work and group discussion would have helped the experts feel more comfortable with the admittedly challenging and somewhat stressful task. Overall, instead of giving the experts the word list with practically no instructions, it would have been better to allow questions and to favour communication on how to use Minimal Finnish, probably also to have allowed the entire task to be completed as collaborative group work. In regard to user testing, it has become increasingly impossible to conduct any study on Easy Language without connection to the actual end users or target audience. Although it is important to reach the audience with the weakest language skills, it proved very challenging to study the texts in written form only. For future studies, we suggest favouring face-­ to-­face individual interviewing instead of classroom testing, and involving culture-sensitive interviewing methods. Even though this is labour-intensive, it is the direction in which Minimal Finnish studies should move in the future. The evidence gained from texts and linguistic complexity need to be carried into the context of reception and understanding.

3.4.3 Conclusion Making a text easy to read and understand is a complicated task — even more so if the text aims to reach the weakest readers at the easiest level of Easy Language. On the one hand, the task deals with the complexity or simplicity of the language as such, and on the other hand, the issue is the recipient’s ability to understand. Studies focusing on language need to explore morphosyntactic, lexical, textual, and pragmatic levels, whereas reception studies need to consider recipients with highly diverse language backgrounds and abilities. Collaborative research is needed in all directions, and all possible methods and approaches are needed to solve the challenge. Simple, understandable language plays an extremely important role in the current world. Language can either open or close access to information; it can enable or prevent participation, cause inclusion or exclusion. Minimal Finnish may be one tool for creating equality and

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strengthening the sense of belonging in Finnish society. Research conducted on any aspects of easy and understandable language has a maximum societal impact.

Notes 1. Not to be confused with Plain Language (or Plain English), a language modification targeted at average language speakers with no special linguistic needs. 2. Finnish is a Uralic language with a complicated morphosyntactic system and vocabulary which differs significantly from Indo-European languages. These characteristics set special requirements for Easy Finnish guidelines, especially in the area of morphosyntax. The international guidelines for Easy Language are mainly developed for audiences of the Indo-European language family, and thus, not unreasonably, ignore features relevant to the languages of other language families. It has been of great importance to develop guidelines that are adapted to the Finnish language (Leskelä 2019: 111–112). 3. The conventional genitive form itself is not considered problematic in EF (compared to e.g. Easy German), but in a list construction it may cause comprehension challenges. 4. There is no maximal word per sentence recommendation in EF, but Virtanen (2009: 97) recommends considering shortening a sentence if it contains over 14 words. 5. The decision to keep complex or non-frequent words in an Easy Language text is related to earlier studies on relatively complex but important vocabulary in German Leichte Sprache: 93% of people with intellectual disability and functionally illiterate people recognised the words Arbeitgeber ‘employer’ (frequency ranking 3000) (Bock 2019: 36). 6. For space saving purposes, the examples provided here do not follow the EF layout guidelines. The translations from Finnish to English are approximate. 7. ‘Safe’ in the sense that they can be used freely with minimal risk of misunderstanding, and with no need for explanation.

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References Arle, Solveig. 2018. Hur används primord för att skriva lättläst? En undersökning av tre återberättade romaner. MA Thesis. University of Helsinki. Bock, Bettina M. 2019. Leichte Sprache. In Kein Regelwerk. Sprachwissenschaftliche Ergebnisse und Praxisempfehlungen aus dem LeiSA-Projekt. Leipzig: University of Leipzig. Bock, Bettina M., Ulla Fix, and Daisy Lange. 2017. ‘Leichte Sprache’ im Spiegel theoretischer und angewandter Forschung. Berlin: Frank & Timme. Bohman, Ulla. 2017. Easy-to-Read in Sweden. In ‘Leichte Sprache’ im Spiegel theoretischer und angewandter Forschung, ed. B.M. Bock, U. Fix, and D. Lange, 447–456. Berlin: Frank & Timme. Bredel, Ursula, and Christiane Maaß. 2016a. Leichte Sprache. Theoretische Grundlagen, Orientierung für die Praxis. Berlin: Duden Verlag. ———. 2016b. Ratgeber. Leichte Sprache. Die wichtigsten Regeln und Empfehlungen für die Praxis. Berlin: Duden Verlag. ———. 2019. Leichte Sprache. In Handbuch Barrierefreie Kommunikation, ed. Christiane Maaß and Isabel Rink, 215–271. Berlin: Frank & Timme. EtR Finnish Meter. 2018. Selkeästi kaikille. Selkomittari [Clear to Everyone. Easy Language Meter]. Accessed 26 February 2020. https://selkokeskus.fi/wp-­ content/uploads/2018/10/SELKOMITTARI_2018_11.10.18.pdf. Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka. 2018. Minimal English and How It Can Add to Global English. In Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, ed. Cliff Goddard, 5–27. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­62512-­6_2. IE (Inclusion Europe). 2009. Information for All. European Standards for Making Information Easy to Read and Understand. Accessed 26 February 2020. https:// easy-­to-­read.eu/wp-­content/uploads/2014/12/EN_Information_for_all.pdf. IFLA (International Federation of Library Association). 2010. Guidelines for Easy-to-Read. International Federation of Library Association and Institutions IFLA Professional Reports, No. 120. Accessed 26 February 2020. https:// www.ifla.org/files/assets/hq/publications/professional-­report/120.pdf. Juusola, Markku. 2019. Selkokielen tarvearvio [Needs Assessment of Easy Finnish]. Accessed 26 February 2020. https://selkokeskus.fi/wp-­content/ uploads/2019/02/Tarvearvio-­2019.pdf. Kulkki-Nieminen, Auli. 2010. Selkoistettu uutinen. Lingvistinen analyysi selkotekstin erityispiirteistä [News in Easy-to-Read. A Linguistic Analysis of Special Features of Easy-to-Read Text]. Tampere: University of Tampere. (Doctoral Dissertation.)

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Leskelä, Leealaura. 2015. Von Selko zu Leicht Lesen. Ein nordischer Blick auf die praktische Durchsetzung eines Bürgerrechtes. In Leicht Lesen. Der Schlüssel zur Welt, ed. Klaus Candussi and Walburga Fröhlich, 169–186. Wien: Böhlau Verlag. ———. 2017. Textgenre-orientierte Prinzipien für Leichtes Finnisch. In ‘Leichte Sprache’ im Spiegel theoretischer und angewandter Forschung, ed. Bettina M. Bock, Ulla Fix, and Daisy Lange, 431–446. Berlin: Frank & Timme. ———. 2019. Selkokieli. Saavutettavan kielen opas [Easy-to-Read. A Guidebook for Accessible Language]. Helsinki: Opike. Leskelä, Leealaura, and Auli Kulkki-Nieminen. 2015. Selkokirjoittajan tekstilajit [Text Genres in Easy Language]. Helsinki: Opike. Leskelä, Leealaura, and Camilla Lindholm. 2012. Näkökulmia kielellisesti epäsymmetriseen vuorovaikutukseen [Perspectives on Linguistically Asymmetrical Interaction]. In Haavoittuva keskustelu. Keskustelunanalyyttisia tutkimuksia kielellisesti epäsymmetrisestä vuorovaikutuksesta, ed. Leealaura Leskelä and Camilla Lindholm. Helsinki: Kehitysvammaliitto. Leskelä, Leealaura, and Hannu Virtanen. 2006. Selkokielen ABC. [ABC of Easy Language]. In Toisin sanoen. Selkokielen teoriaa ja käytäntöä, ed. Leealaura Leskelä and Hannu Virtanen, 7–14. Helsinki: Opike. Lindholm, Camilla, and Ulla Vanhatalo, eds. Forthcoming. Easy Language in Europe. Berlin: Frank & Timme. NLS (Netzwerk Leichte Sprache). 2013. Die Regeln für Leichte Sprache. Accessed 26 February 2020. https://www.leichte-­sprache.org/wp-­content/ uploads/2017/11/Regeln_Leichte_Sprache.pdf. Rajala, Pertti, and Hannu Virtanen. 1986. Selkokieli. Miten sanoma perille? [Easy Language. How to Get the Message Through?]. Helsinki: Kirjastopalvelu. Rink, Isabel. 2019. Kommunikationsbarrieren. In Handbuch Barrierefreie Kommunikation, ed. Christiane Maaß and Isabel Rink, 29–66. Berlin: Frank & Timme. Sainio, Ari, and Pertti Rajala. 2002. Ohjeita selkokirjoittajille. [Instructions for Easy Language Writers]. In Selko-opas, ed. Hannu Virtanen, 23–32. Tampere: Kehitysvammaliitto. Vanhatalo, Ulla, and Camilla Lindholm. 2020. Prevalence of NSM primes in Easy-to-Read and Standard Finnish: Findings from Newspaper Text Corpora. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication. Vol. 3. Minimal English (and Beyond), ed. Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan, 213–234. Springer.

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Vanhatalo, Ulla, and Juhana Torkki. 2018. Introducing the Concept of the ‘65 Words’ to the Public in Finland. In Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, ed. Cliff Goddard, 225–258. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­62512-­6_2. Virtanen, Hannu. 2009. Selkokielen käsikirja [The Handbook of Easy-to-Read]. Helsinki: Opike. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1972. Semantic Primitives. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum.

4 Minimal English and Revitalisation Education: Assisting Linguists to Explain Grammar in Simple, Everyday Words Elita Machin

4.1 Background 4.1.1 Language Endangerment and Revitalisation Put simply, a language can be considered endangered when there is a risk that it will no longer be spoken in the near future. This is determined by three main factors: (1) population—a language is considered endangered when its speaker population is in steady decline, (2) range of use—a language is considered endangered when it is no longer actively spoken in all its traditional contexts or domains, (3) inter-generational transmission— a language is considered endangered when it is no longer passed on to children. In many cases, it is difficult to pinpoint a single cause for these factors. They are often the result of a complex combination of social issues, for example lack of economic and educational opportunity, political upheaval, persecution, globalisation, westernisation. However, left

E. Machin (*) Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_4

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unchecked, they can cause a language to ‘fall silent’ or ‘disappear’ within a matter of generations (UNESCO 2003; Austin and Sallabank 2011). Language revitalisation encompasses any effort to reverse the effects of language endangerment—to bring an endangered language back into everyday use (Hinton and Hale 2001; Tsunoda 2004; Hinton et  al. 2018). The process of revitalisation is incredibly broad and multi-faceted. Depending on the nature of the language community in question, as well as the relative health of the language itself, it can involve many different steps and elements. These include, but are not limited to: • Reconstruction: using historical materials to ‘piece’ an extinct language back together (Amery 2016) • Documentation: recording remaining native speakers for posterity. This should be done in a format which is useful and accessible to a variety of different groups (scientific disciplines as well as the language community itself ) (Fitzgerald 2019) • Language development: adding to the language so that it meets the needs of contemporary speakers (Amery 2009, 2016) • Language education: teaching the language to new generations of speakers through immersive or more traditional classroom methods (Hinton and Hale 2001: 179) • Planning and policymaking: implementing official safeguards to ensure the growth and maintenance of the language (Hinton and Hale 2001: 39–44) • Activism: raising awareness of the plight of the endangered language and its speech community, lobbying for official recognition (Abley 2003) Clearly, language revitalisation is no easy undertaking. The above list only gives a first indication of the enormity of this task. Further, it is important to realise that, for communities affected by endangerment, revitalisation is about much more than reclaiming a means of communication. It also promises the revival of culture, tradition, history and identity, all of which are embodied within language (Hinton et al. 2018). With such high stakes, it is no wonder that revivalists (those at the forefront of revitalisation) are so committed to their cause. Community language warriors

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are constantly seeking ways to improve their practice and ensure their projects are as successful as possible. In recent times especially, much progress has been made. This is due in part to the worldwide awareness and support generated by initiatives such as the UN International Year of Indigenous Languages (2019) and the UN Decade of Indigenous Languages (due to launch in 2022) (UNESCO 2018, 2020). Despite this, many major obstacles still remain. One such obstacle exists at what is arguably the heart of revitalisation—language education.

4.1.2 L anguage Education and the Communication Gap Between Communities and Linguists Although revitalisation may involve different steps depending on the language and the community in question, there is perhaps one universal aspect: language education. Without passing the language onto new generations of learners, the core goal of revitalisation—bringing the language back into everyday use—would be impossible (Hinton and Hale 2001: 179). It is widely recognised that education initiatives must be community-­ led if they are to be successful. The motivation to teach and learn the language, as well as decisions regarding how the language is taught and learnt, must come from within the community itself (Dobrin 2008; Gale 2016). However, in cases where community members lack the technical knowledge required to implement education programmes, they often enlist the help of university-trained linguists. In many cases, these are “field linguists” who are or have been involved with the community, or with a related community, in describing and documenting the language. Other times they may be recruited by a community to help interpret and adapt pre-existing language documentations (Amery 2014; Gerdts 2010; Hinton et al. 2018). Once onboard, linguists are often tasked with explaining aspects of grammar in an accessible way, that is in everyday words that community learners can be reasonably expected to already know. Such accessible language explanations may be used as the basis for learning resources, or they may form the basis for community lessons (Yamamoto 2004; Rice 2006; Yamada 2007;

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Speas 2009; Amery 2009; Gerdts 2010; Penfield and Tucker 2011; Nathan and Fang 2009; Quinn 2015). Explaining grammar in everyday words may sound straightforward, but in practice is by no means easy. Almost always, linguists’ and community members’ understanding of accessible communication does not align. The linguist will explain aspects of grammar in what they believe are simple, everyday words, only to find that their language is still too technical. It can take a great deal of time and iterative negotiation for the linguist and community to find a ‘common language’: a way of talking about grammatical concepts that both can relate to (Yamada 2007; Couzens et al. 2014; Gale 2016; Woods 2019). To readers unfamiliar with revitalisation, this issue may seem minor. Surely the current ‘trial-and-error’ approach (in which the linguist reviews and reapproximates their message until the community can understand it) is workable. Whilst this may be true, it is difficult to over-emphasise how much time and resources would be saved if this process could be streamlined. If there were some kind of ready-made ‘common language’ that could facilitate linguist-community communication, these groups  could spend less time negotiating the  meaning of grammar terms and more time collaborating on language work. This would enable language education programmes to get off the ground a lot sooner. Minimal English potentially offers such a common language. As many readers will know, this framework consists of words which are either fundamentally simple (and therefore intuitively knowable and universal) or else widely shared across cultures. As Wierzbicka stated in a recent interview with Minimal English practitioner Maria Giulia Marini (2020a), “because these basic concepts are, as evidence indicates, shared by all human beings—regardless of their language, culture, education, etc.— they enable us to connect potentially with all human beings”. By using Minimal English to frame their language explanations, linguists would no longer have to rely on their impressionistic understanding of what constitutes accessible communication. They would have an inventory of words which they could safely assume that they share with community members. These shared words would form the springboard for a productive mutual exchange of knowledge and ideas.

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Though Minimal English has the potential to help linguists and community members to collaborate more effectively, it is important to acknowledge that its use does not automatically guarantee mutually accessible communication. Minimal English is not intended as a solution to misunderstanding, but rather a tool to support efforts to prevent it. Like any tool, its efficacy depends on how it is used and applied. Aspiring authors of Minimal English should realise that there is no single, correct way of communicating a message in this framework. Despite its reduced lexicon, the Minimal English framework is deceptively powerful. Its limited vocabulary has a wide combinatorial potential which means it is often possible to convey a message in a variety of different ways. These options increase if one is willing to “bend the rules” (e.g. by not insisting on full cross-translatability) in contexts where such flexibility can be justified. When developing a text, it is important that authors identify and carefully consider the different ways of conveying their intended message and choose the option that holds the most benefit for the audience. One factor that may affect the efficacy of Minimal English grammar explanations is the way they are sequenced. It goes without saying that some linguistic ideas are relatively simple and others are more complex. Often it is necessary to understand the simpler concepts first in order to grasp the more complex (see Chaps. 1, 5). For a linguist in a revitalisation situation, it might be tempting to gloss over the basics in order to arrive at the ‘meatier’ concepts sooner. The way Minimal English works, however, prevents this. Because this framework consists only of universal and widely shared words, it naturally includes no technical linguistic terminology. This effectively forces the linguist to start at the beginning. They must first use the core Minimal English vocabulary to introduce the most basic linguistic concepts. By using the “called mechanism” (see Chap. 1; cf. Wierzbicka 2019: 59–62), they can introduce these terms into their working vocabulary and thus use them to define the next layer of concepts. If a linguist attempts to introduce a grammatical term out of order, the text will be unsuccessful. With the terms required to define a higher-­ level concept absent from their working concept inventory, there will be no way of defining it effectively. In this way, working with Minimal English can help guide linguists to introduce concepts in a more incremental manner.

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Whilst this layered vocabulary approach is certainly desirable in revitalisation contexts and can prevent linguists from unknowingly reverting to technical language, it can present challenges. Despite their experience, linguists may not always be consciously aware that a particular concept forms part of the basis for another. This can make for many ‘false turns’ in the development of Minimal English grammar explanations. In many cases, the optimal order for presenting linguistic ideas can emerge only through trial-and-error experimentation with the Minimal English writing process. We will see repeatedly as we work through the three case studies that follow.

4.2 E  xplaining “parts of speech” Using Minimal English 4.2.1 A First Approach, Using Lexical Prototypes When asked to develop or deliver community language classes, something that linguists will more than likely have to refer to is the idea of ‘parts of speech’, specifically concepts such as ‘noun’, ‘verb’ and ‘adjective’. How should such concepts be explained in Minimal English? For readers familiar with language teaching, traditional notional definitions will come to mind. For example: A noun is a word for a person, place or thing. A verb is a doing word. An adjective is a describing word.

Many will be familiar with these kinds of definitions. They are staples of language education (Denison 2013). Although they are not ideal from an academic perspective (distribution-based definitions are recognised as more accurate in the linguistics literature), they have consistently provided a reliable reference point for students and are reasonably functional from a pedagogical angle (Fromkin et al. 2015: 111–112; Schachter and Shopen 2007). Many of the words they use are semantic primes or

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Fig. 4.1  Minimal English explications of the words ‘noun’, ‘verb’ and ‘adjective’, demonstrating the first strategy for explicating grammatical terms

equivalents (person, place, thing, do, word), meaning they could easily be adapted into Minimal English, for example, as in Fig. 4.1. The parallels between these Minimal English texts and the above notional definitions for the same concepts are clear. In the Minimal English Noun text, the words ‘person’, ‘place’ and ‘thing’ (the distinguishing elements of the notional definition) are incorporated as examples. In the Verb text, the idea of a ‘doing word’ is expressed through the explanatory phrase ‘words like this say what something is doing at some time’. Similarly, in the Adjective text, the idea of a ‘describing word’ is communicated through the phrase ‘words like this say what something is like’. All three explanations demonstrate a principle for describing parts of speech in Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) first proposed by Wierzbicka (2000), namely, the use of universal semantic primes as lexical prototypes for different word classes: that is, ‘person’, ‘place’ and ‘thing’ in the noun script; ‘do’, ‘see’, ‘move’ and ‘happen’ in the verb script; ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in the adjective script. By considering these prototypes, it is expected that learners will be able to extrapolate the function and behaviour of each word class and name other examples that display the same characteristics.

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4.2.2 A  n Additional Strategy: Using Question-Answer Frames Re-casting notional definitions into Minimal English vocabulary and adding lexical prototypes presumably makes part of speech explanations clearer and more effective; but further improvement may yet be possible. There is an additional strategy which may prove even more effective in a pedagogical context. This is the “questionand-answer” strategy shown in the texts below.1 It is expressed using English lexical prototypes (all of them either semantic primes or proposed universal or near-universal semantic molecules), but communities might decide to adapt the script by substituting the corresponding words from their own language, or to use English and indigenous language versions in parallel (Fig. 4.2). Rather than emulating the ‘declarative’ style of notional definitions, each of the above texts uses a question-and-answer sequence to explain its part of speech concept. The question element serves to illustrate the function of the part of speech. ‘What is it?’ shows the identifying function of nouns. “What is it like?” shows the qualifying function of adjectives ‘What are you doing?’ and ‘What’s happening?’ show the narrating function of verb. The answer element allows the inclusion of supporting examples. On a surface level, these texts may not appear to differ greatly from the notional-based versions presented above. They still share the same basic elements. Like the notional-based definitions, the question-and-answer explanations incorporate lexical prototypes. The most striking differences are that they are presented using full sentences, rather than being stand-­ alone statements, and that they use specific lexical examples—not just semantic primes. It might be difficult to imagine that such small variations could have an impact. Closer examination, however, reveals that they significantly alter the effect of the texts, with the question-and-answer-based versions ultimately offering more benefits for the learner.

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Fig. 4.2  Minimal English explications of the words ‘noun’, ‘verb’ and ‘adjective’, demonstrating the question-answer strategy for explicating grammatical terms

4.2.3 Benefits of the Question-and-Answer Texts Like the notional definitions, the question-and-answer texts convey the main functions of nouns, verbs and adjectives, and both text types incorporate lexical prototypes. The question-based texts go beyond this, however, in that they also illustrate prototypical environments in which words of these different categories can occur; that is, nouns can occur after questions like ‘What is it?’; verbs in response to questions like ‘What is happening?’ and adjectives after questions like ‘What is it like?’. By providing these sentence frames, these texts equip learners with a more concrete means of identifying different parts of speech than the notional definitions.

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The question-and-answer frames also link the texts more strongly to language curricula. Among the first things students learn to say in any new language are paired sentences like: ‘What is it?’ and ‘It is an (x)’ (Hinton 2002: 11). Using these two frames in the Minimal English explanation for ‘noun’ allows students to practise and reinforce this language knowledge. Along the same line of thinking, the question-and-­ answer explanations could be easily incorporated into a lesson plan. They give teachers a very natural ‘place’ to introduce the concept of noun—at the same time that they introduce the phrases ‘What is it?’ and ‘It is an (x)’. Relatedly, of course, the question frame gives language students a good vocab learning tool. Once they know how to say ‘What is it?’, they can use this question to elicit words from more advanced students or from native speakers (if native speakers are available). The question frame also makes the explanation interactive. The question ‘What is it?’ seems to go very naturally with the action of pointing. A classroom activity could be for students to identify noun words by pointing to different objects and asking each other this question. From the above, it will be clear that I have put a lot of thought into the functionality of these scripts. One could say that this is also a key part of the Minimal English mindset. Minimal English is not just about choosing the most universal words, it is also about choosing the words that best suit the purpose at hand. In this case, the question ‘What is it?’ offers more benefits for learning than ‘person, place or thing’.

4.2.4 Limitations and Extensions The Minimal English texts proposed above have a number of limitations; in particular, there is the fact that they do not provide ‘all-encompassing’ definitions. Consider the ‘noun’ explanation. The question ‘What is it?’ lends itself mainly to concrete nouns, that is, to things one can physically point to. It does not cover abstract nouns (it is impossible to point at an abstract concept and ask ‘what is that?’). More seriously perhaps, it lends itself mainly to what I will call ‘non-people’ nouns. In English, it would seem strange to ask ‘What is it?’ or ‘What is that?’ about a person, or even about a place. In this respect, the disjunctive ‘person, place or thing’ definition is clearly more inclusive.

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Viewed from a different angle, however, it is possible this limitation can be seen as a strength. If one sets out to cover all kinds of nouns in a single text, it could potentially cause information overload in the learner. ‘Leaving out’ certain details at the beginning gives learners a chance to process and absorb the concept at a more controlled pace. Once learners master concrete nouns (and words for ‘real world’ objects will probably be the first kind of nouns they want to learn in the language anyway), it is possible to extend their knowledge through further Minimal English texts. The point is: there is no reason why there cannot be more than one script per grammatical concept. For example, the fact that nouns can also be used to talk about people, not just concrete objects, could be explained through the following ‘extension explanation’. “PEOPLE NOUNS” When someone wants to know about something: “What is it?” They can know if you say a noun. When someone wants to know about a person: “What kind of person is that?” they can also know if you say a noun. They can know if you say something like this: “It’s a man”. “It’s a woman”. “It’s a child”. Words like these (man, woman, child) are all ‘people nouns’. There are many other ‘people nouns’.

Beyond this, it has to be recognised that the question-and-answer strategy cannot be elegantly applied to all parts of speech concepts; in particular, they cannot be applied to “closed class” part of speech concepts, such as ‘demonstrative’ and ‘(personal) pronoun’. I cannot demonstrate this here for reasons of space, but after some experimentation I reached the conclusion that for ‘demonstrative’ and ‘pronoun’ it is both possible and preferable to explain them purely using lexical prototypes, as shown below (Fig. 4.3). On one hand, this may seem an unsatisfactory solution, but, as closed classes, demonstratives and personal pronouns encompass far fewer words

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Fig. 4.3  Minimal English explications of the words ‘demonstrative’ and ‘pronoun’, using the lexical prototypes strategy for explicating grammatical terms

than open-class categories. It is probably easier for revitalisation students to rote-learn examples of these parts of speech, rather than attempt to recall them with the aid of a question. Earlier I mentioned that developing explanatory texts in Minimal English is not necessarily a straight-line process, because it often calls upon the writer to identify and rethink taken-for-granted assumptions. In the next two sections, as well as presenting my results, I will try to give a sense of the trial-and-error aspect of the development process.

4.3 E  xplaining “root and suffix” Using Minimal English This section deals with the development of an explanation for root and suffix. So the reader can have a sense of where we are going with this, the following (Fig. 4.4) is a text from a late stage in the development process. It is notable, of course, that the text below is a two-part text: it explains the terms root and suffix together. When I first approached this part of the project, however, I had not planned on including both terms in a single explanation. The intention was to define the term suffix. I eventually arrived at the two-part explanation after a process of experimentation outlined below.

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ROOT AND SUFFIX Look at the coloured words in these (English) sentences: The child is playing That is the man’s dog He cooks every day I worked today These words have two parts. One of these parts is not like the other. One part (in green) is like this: when someone says this part of a word, other people can know well what they are talking about. This part is called a root. The other part (in blue) is not like this. You say this part after you say the root. This part is called a suffix . In English, many words have a root and a suffix . There are words like this in (Language X) too. Fig. 4.4  A late-stage explication of ‘root’ and ‘suffix’, showing how colours and demonstration can be used with Minimal English to explain the concepts

4.3.1 Explaining “suffix” Many introductory linguistic resources describe suffixes in terms of three characteristics. First: a suffix is a part of a word. Second: a suffix attaches to the end of a word. Third: a suffix does not carry the core meaning of a word; rather, it adds something extra. To begin with, therefore, I tried to find ways of with expressing these ideas in semantic primes, the ‘first layer’ of words in the Minimal English vocabulary. The following was an early draft. SUFFIX (Early version, Example 1) A part of a word. You say it after the other parts in a word. When a word does not have a suffix, it says one thing. When a word has a suffix, it says something more.

It was relatively simple to capture the first characteristic, that is, that a suffix is part of a word. When I consulted existing revitalisation resources, I

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found that most  already expressed this idea using the semantic primes ‘part’ and ‘word’ (For a list of these sources, see the ‘Learner’s Guides and Language Resources’ section of Reference List). The second element— the idea that a suffix attaches to the end of a word—could be effectively captured using the primes ‘say’ and ‘after’. For the third element, I used the idea that a word can ‘say something’ to express the relationship between suffixes and semantic content. At first glance, this initial explanation seemed workable enough. Through dialogue with other researchers, however, I came to see that aspects of it were not ideal. Most obviously, to say that a suffix comes ‘after the other parts in a word’ is unacceptably vague. Learners might be left wondering, what other parts? In an attempt to address this issue, I made the following alteration: SUFFIX (Early version, Example 2) A part of a word. It is after all the other parts in a word. When a word does not have a suffix, it says one thing. When a word has a suffix, it says something more.

Once again, however, this is not completely ideal. Introducing the word ‘all’ has not made the script any less vague. Worse, stating that suffixes come ‘after all the other parts of a word’ could cause learners to believe that suffixes are always word-final elements and that there can be only one suffix per word, neither of which is true.

4.3.2 Explaining “root” and “suffix” Together Following this, I worked through several other alternate versions, all of which proved to be unsuccessful (due to space restrictions, it is not possible to discuss them here). The fact that I couldn’t unpack the meaning of suffix using basic Minimal English words suggested that I was probably “missing” a concept, that is, that there was another concept which needed to be defined and introduced before the concept of suffix could be effectively explained. After some experimentation, I determined that this concept was root.

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Below is a later version of the text. It uses the same ideas as the version presented at the beginning of this section, but adds one new idea (implicit, but unstated in the earlier version), namely, that dividing a word into root and suffix can be literally “seen” if one writes the word.2 ROOT AND SUFFIX Some words are like this: They have two parts. One of these parts is not like the other. One part is like this: when someone says this part of a word, people can know well what they are talking about. This part is called a root. The other part is not like this. You say this part after you say the root. This part is called a suffix. We can see these two parts (the root and the suffix) if we write the word: (EXAMPLE)

The reader will notice that I first explain ‘root’ in Minimal English and then explicitly introduce this term into my working vocabulary by using the ‘called mechanism’. This enables me to use it in the explanation of ‘suffix’. Defining ‘suffix’ in terms of ‘root’ helps give a more concrete indication of where this element occurs in a word. It also overcomes the problem encountered in the second early version shown above. Stating that a suffix comes after a root does not imply that suffixes cannot come before other morphemes.

4.4 E  xplaining “forms of a word/suffix” Using Minimal English My texts for explaining about the different “forms” of words and suffixes emerged through a similar trajectory.

4.4.1 A First Approach to “allomorphs” In many revitalisation languages, suffixes (nominal case markers, as well as verbal suffixes) have a series of phonologically determined variants, known in linguistic jargon as “allomorphs”. Like suffix, the concept of

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allomorphs is something which learners must tackle quite early on. Defining this concept, however, proved to be difficult. The following is one of my early attempts. It uses language examples from Yankunytjatjara, a language from Central Australia. ALLOMORPHS (early version) Often when you say something with a word, the word has a suffix. Some words can say the same kind of thing if they have the same suffix. Look at these verbs in Yankunytjatjara: pakani  “someone is getting up now” kulini  “someone is listening now” These verbs say the same kind of thing. They both say “(something) is happening now”. They both have the same suffix. You can know this if you say the verbs. You will hear that the second part of the verbs is the same. Some words say the same kind of thing not with the same suffix. Look at these verbs in Yankunytjatjara: pakani  “someone is getting up now” wangkanyi  “someone is speaking now” These verbs both say the same kind of thing. They both say: “something is happening now”. You know that pakani and kulini have the same suffix. Wangkanyi does not have the same suffix. You can know this if you say the verbs. For pakani and pulini, you can hear that the second part is the same. For wangkanyi you can hear that the second part is different.

Clearly, this text had many issues. It is obviously too long and unwieldy to be useful to learners. Additionally, like my first attempts at the suffix script, it is quite vague. Rather than ‘getting to the core’ of the allomorphs concept, it seems merely to circle around it. This is seen particularly in its repetitive nature. Though some repetition is good in pedagogical contexts, this goes beyond what is necessary. This version also uses some non-translatable vocabulary (e.g. ‘second’) and grammatical constructions (e.g. ‘hear that …’) which are best avoided if possible. Based on this, I once again came to suspect that I was missing a concept, that is, that there was an intermediate concept one needed to have in place before a clear explanation of allomorphs is possible. After again consulting existing revitalisation resources, I concluded that this was a

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concept which I will call “one unit, many forms”. In explaining the idea of allomorphs, many of the guides invoke the idea that a single suffix can have several different versions. The following excerpts are typical: “This suffix takes different forms depending on the end of the word to which it is attached…The basic form of this suffix is -ga, and this occurs after words ending in a and u. However, when words end in any other letters, the suffix takes a different form.” (Ash et al. 2003: 265) “Kaurna has a suffix -rti meaning ‘don’t’ which does not change, whether one, two or more than two people are addressed. However, like the future tense suffix, it does appear to have several forms including -rti, -urti and -ngurti.” (Amery and Simpson 2013: p.127) “There are two distinct forms of the ergative ending in Warlpiri: +ngku and +rlu.” (Laughren et al. 1996: 83)

Initially I was quite surprised by this. Personally, I had never thought of the “one unit, many forms” concept as particularly linguistic in nature— probably because it does not sound as overtly technical as many other linguistic terms, for example case marking, tense, ergativity. In a classroom setting, it would be easy to refer to this idea without much thought or explanation—to assume that learners already know what it means. Interestingly, many of existing resources fail to define ‘forms’, indicating that the authors of these resources also took this concept for granted. After further thought, however, I realised that when linguists use the word ‘forms’, they are giving it a specialised meaning (e.g. the idea that there are abstract linguistic units which can be realised in different ways in different environments—Adamson 2019: p.222; Wong 2017). This increased my confidence that this word needed a Minimal English script of its own.

4.4.2 Explaining “forms of a word” By itself, the concept of ‘forms’ is quite broad and abstract. Because of this, I doubted it would be possible to develop a Minimal English explanation that would cover ‘forms’ in all its applications, for example, forms

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of a sound: allophones; forms of a morpheme: allomorphs; forms of a word: allolexes. To overcome this, I decided to start by creating an explanation for ‘forms of a word’. I figured that out of all of the linguistic units that can have different forms (phonemes, morphemes, words, etc.), words would be the most familiar and salient to learners. This conclusion was also motivated by the fact that ‘words’ is a semantic prime and is therefore already part of the Minimal English vocabulary. The following is the final script I came up with, illustrated using English word forms. FORMS OF A WORD Look at these words (in bold): Do something She always does it I am doing something He did it When you hear these words (do, does, doing, did), you can think: “they are not the same”. At the same time, you can know: “it is the same word”. When it is like this, you can say: “Do, does, doing and did are different forms of the same word”. In English, many words have different forms. It is the same in (language X).

This script relies heavily on selected examples to illustrate the ‘forms of a word’ concept. It is probably safe to say that, on an unconscious level, learners are already cognizant of the fact that a word can manifest differently in different grammatical contexts (this is part of their linguistic competence as native speakers). But by juxtaposing the words do, does, doing and did—words all learners will be familiar with—this script aims to bring this unconscious knowledge to their conscious attention. I then introduce the technical term for this phenomenon (forms) using the locution ‘can say’ (you can say: ‘these are different forms of the same word’).

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4.4.3 Explaining “forms of a suffix” Having established the concept of ‘forms of a word’, it is now possible to use this as the basis for explaining ‘forms of a suffix’. The sample text below uses Yankunytjatjara words as examples. In Yankunytjajara, there are four different ways of forming imperative verbs, depending on the “verb class” to which the verb belongs (Goddard 1993). Verbs from one class take no imperative suffix, but verbs from the other three classes each use a different form of the imperative suffix, as shown below, using selected high-frequency verbs as exemplars. FORMS OF A SUFFIX (final version) You know that words can have different forms. Suffixes can also have different forms. Look at these words in Yankunytjatjara. These words have suffixes: paka-la  “get up!” ya-ra “go!” yu-wa “give (it)!” When you see these suffixes, you can think: “They are not the same”. At the same time, you can know: “They say the same thing (they say: do something!)”.3 Because of this, you can say: “they are different forms of the same suffix”.

The first line of this text refers back to the idea established in the explanation above, that is, that words can have different forms. This serves to refresh the learner’s memory. The same idea is then extended to suffixes. As in the ‘forms of a word’ text, the ‘forms of a suffix’ text relies on selected examples.4 Finally, I once again use the ‘can say’ locution to introduce the technical way of describing this concept. Because it does not apply exclusively to suffixes (other kinds of bound morphemes, e.g. prefixes, can also have variants), it seems best not to introduce the term ‘allomorphs’ here. My chosen alternative, that is, ‘different forms of the same suffix’, is just as effective and it “leverages” the parallel expression ‘different forms of the same word’.

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4.5 Conclusions and Future Directions This chapter has explored how Minimal English can help address a recurrent issue in endangered language revitalisation: the communication gap between linguists and community members in revitalisation pedagogy. I have explored several strategies for employing the shared everyday words of Minimal English for explaining grammar concepts, with the aim of cutting down on the time spent negotiating the  meaning of grammar terms, and thus allowing for much more productive collaboration between linguists and community people. I have emphasised throughout that although Minimal English has the potential to greatly improve linguist-community communication, it does not offer an instant solution. To ensure its effectiveness in revitalisation education, Minimal English must be applied mindfully and strategically. Linguists should be aware of the challenges that may arise in developing Minimal English grammar texts. They should be conscious of the fact that there are often multiple ways of presenting a message in Minimal English. They should not be afraid of “bending the rules” to meet their audience’s needs, but they should also be prepared to take their time with the development process of Minimal English. In particular, it is not always easy for linguists to judge the relative complexity of grammar concepts. I hope I have demonstrated how trial-and-error and critical reflection can help address this, and how, by fully engaging themselves in the Minimal English writing process, linguists may come across new ideas and possibilities they had not considered before. This brings us to the question of future directions. How can the ideas explored in this chapter be taken further? The most obvious next step would be to apply Minimal English in actual revitalisation contexts. This would require both linguists who are willing to undergo training in this framework and community members who are willing to test this new mode of communication. Whilst responses might be reluctant at first, once the potential benefits are seen, I believe it will catch on quickly. There is also the possibility of expanding Minimal English into other areas of revitalisation. As mentioned in Sect. 4.1.1, there are many more aspects to endangered language projects than language education. It is likely that Minimal English could prove useful in areas such as language documentation, language development, planning and policy making,

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and activism as well. Clearly, revitalisation is an area in which Minimal English can have a meaningful and far-reaching impact.

Notes 1. While known to be conceptually complex (Wierzbicka 2002: 282–283) and therefore not permissible in NSM, simple questions are allowed in Minimal English because it is believed that they have equivalents in all or most languages (see Chap. 1). 2. The idea that the possibility of breaking words into parts depends in some important way on seeing them in the written form deserves much fuller attention, not possible here for reasons of space. 3. Although imperative sentences are conceptually complex and are therefore not allowed in NSM explications and scripts, they appear to have equivalents in all languages, and so are acceptable in Minimal English texts (see Chap. 1). 4. Obviously, this is not a full explanation of the Yankunytjatjara verb class system. It is just a way of illustrating different forms of a suffix, using common and salient examples. The most suitable examples will differ from language to language.

References Learner’s Guides and Language Resources Amery, Robert, and Jane Simpson. 2013. Kulurdu Marni Ngathaitya! Sounds Good to Me! A Kaurna Learner’s Guide. Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi. Andersen, Elena. 2015. Learner’s Grammar for Paakantyi. Master’s dissertation, University of Sydney. Ash, Anna, John Giacon, and Amanda Lissarrague. 2003. Gamilaraay, Yuwaalaraay & Yuwaalayaay Dictionary. IAD Press. Eckert, Paul, and Joyce Hudson. 1988. Wangka Wiru: A Handbook for the Pitjantjatjara Language Learner. South Australian College of Advanced Education. Gale, Mary-Anne, and Dorothy French. 2010. Ngarrindjeri Learner’s Guide. 2nd ed. Raukkan Community Council. Glass, Amee. 2006. Ngaanyatjarra Learner’s Guide. IAD Press.

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Goddard, Cliff. 1993. A Learner’s Guide to Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. IAD Press. Green, Jenny. 1984. A Learner’s Guide to Eastern Arrernte. IAD Press. ———. 1994. A Learner’s Guide to Eastern and Central Arrernte. IAD Press. Heffernan, John, and Kuyata Heffernan. 1999. A Learner’s Guide to Pintupi-­ Luritja. IAD Press. Laughren, Mary, Robert Hoogenraad, Ken Hale, and Robin Japanangka Granites. 1996. Wangkamirlipa Warlpirilki A Learner’s Guide to Warlpiri  – Tape Course for Beginners. IAD Press. Morelli, Steve. 2008. Gumbaynggirr Dictionary and Learner’s Grammar. Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-op. ———. 2012. Yaygirr Dictionary Muurrbay. Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-op. Rudder, John, and Steve Grant. 1999. Wiradjuri Language – How It Works – A Grammar in Everyday English. Restoration House. Simpson, Jane. 2002. A Learner’s Guide to Warumungu. IAD Press. Turpin, Myfany. 2000. A Learner’s Guide to Kaytetye. IAD Press. Woods, Lesley. forthcoming. Ngiyampaa Learner’s Guide. Ph.D. thesis in preparation, Australian National University.

Other References Abley, M. 2003. Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Adamson, H.D. 2019. Linguistics and English Literature: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Amery, R. 2009. Phoenix Or Relic? Documentation of Languages with Revitalization in Mind. Language Documentation & Conservation 3 (2): 138–148. ———. 2014. Reclaiming the Kaurna Language: A Long and Lasting Collaboration in an Urban Setting. Language Documentation & Conservation 8: 409–429. ———. 2016. Warraparna Kaurna! Reclaiming an Australian Language. Adelaide, South Australia: University of Adelaide. Austin, P.K., and J. Sallabank, eds. 2003. The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2011. The Cambridge Hankbook of Endangered Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Corris, M., C. Manning, S. Poetsch, and J. Simpson. 2004. How Useful and Useable Are Dictionaries for Speakers of Australian Indigenous Languages? International Journal of Lexicography 17 (1): 33–68. Couzens, V., C. Eira, and T. Stebbins, eds. 2014. Tyama-teeyt yookapa: Interviews from the Meeting Point Project. Melbourne, VIC: Victoria Aboriginal Corporation for Languages. Denison, D. 2013. Parts of Speech: Solid Citizens Or Slippery Customers? Journal of the British Academy 1: 151–158. Dixon, R.M.W. 2002. Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. In Cambridge Language Surveys Series. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dobrin, L.M. 2008. From Linguistic Elicitation to Eliciting the Linguist: Lessons in Community Empowerment from Melanesia. Language 84 (2): 300–324. Fitzgerald, C.M. 2019. Understanding Language Documentation and Revitalization as a Feedback Loop. In Amazonian Spanish: Language Contact and Evolution, ed. Stephen Fafulas. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fromkin, V., R. Rodman, N. Hyams, M. Amberber, F. Cox, and R. Thornton. 2015. An Introduction to Language. 8th ed. Melbourne, VIC: Cengage Learning Australia. Gale, M. 2016. A Hitch-Hikers Guide to Aboriginal Language Retrieval and Revival. In Language, Land & Song: Studies in Honour of Luise Hercus, ed. P.K. Austin, H. Koch, and J. Simpson, 539–554. London: EL Publishing. Gerdts, D.B. 2010. Beyond Expertise: The Role of the Linguist in Language Revitalisation Programs. In Language Documentation: Practice and Values, ed. L.A. Grenoble and F.N. Furbee, 173–192. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Goddard, Cliff, ed. 2018a. Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words. Cham: Palgrave. ———. 2018b. Minimal Languages and Cross-translatability. Paper Presented at the 2018 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, University of South Australia, Adelaide. ———. 2018c. Ten Lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring Language, Thought and Culture Using Simple, Translatable Words. Leiden: Brill. Himmelmann, N. 1998. Documentary and Descriptive Linguistics. Linguistics 36 (1): 161–195. Hinton, L. 2002. How to Keep Your Language Alive. Berkeley: Heyday Books. Hinton, L., and K. Hale. 2001. The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Hinton, L., L.  Huss, and G.  Roche, eds. 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization. New York: Routledge.

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Machin, Elita. 2019. Minimal English for Accessibility in Revitalization Language-Learning: Explaining Grammatical Concepts in Simple, Cross-­ translatable Words. Bachelor of Languages and Linguistics Honours thesis, Griffith University, Brisbane. ———. forthcoming. Minimal English for Revitalization Language Learning: Explaining Grammar in Universal Words. Proceedings of the Australasian Society for Lexicography Conference, 2019, Australian National University. Marini, Maria Giulia. 2020a. Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Its Future Perspectives: Interview with Anna Wierzbicka, Bert Peeters and Cliff Goddard, Part 1. https://www.medicinanarrativa.eu/interview-­with-­ wierzbicka-­goddard-­and-­peeters-­on-­nsm-­part-­i. ———. 2020b. Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Its Future Perspectives: Interview with Anna Wierzbicka, Bert Peeters and Cliff Goddard, Part 2. https://www.medicinanarrativa.eu/interview-­with-­wierzbicka-­peeters-­and­goddard-­on-­nsm-­part-­ii?utm_source=nl62. Nathan, D., and M.J. Fang. 2009. Language Documentation and Pedagogy for Endangered Languages: A Mutual Revitalisation. Language Documentation & Description 6: 132–160. Retrieved from http://www.elpublishing.org/ PID/074. Penfield, S.D., and B.V. Tucker. 2011. From Documenting to Revitalizing an Endangered Language: Where Do Applied Linguists Fit? Language and Education 25 (4): 291–305. Quinn, C. 2015. Taking Down the Barriers: Accessibility by Detechnicalization and Minimalist Presentation. Paper Presented at the 4th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation, 2015, University of Hawaii. Rice, K. 2006. A Typology of Good Grammars. Studies in Language 30 (2): 385–415. Sadow, Lauren. 2019. An NSM-Based Cultural Dictionary of Australian English: from Theory to Practice. Doctoral dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra. ———. 2020. Minimal English: Taking NSM ‘Out of the Lab’. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication: Minimal English (and Beyond), ed. Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan, 1–12. Singapore: Springer. Sadow, Lauren, and Kerry Mullan. 2019. A Brief Introduction to the Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication: Vol. I.  Ethnopragmatics and Semantic Analysis, ed. Kerry Mullan, Bert Peeters, and Lauren Sadow, 13–34. Singapore: Springer.

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Schachter, P., and T.  Shopen. 2007. Parts-of-Speech Systems. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, ed. T.  Shopen, vol. 1, 2nd ed., 1–60. New York: Cambridge University Press. Speas, M. 2009. Someone Else’s Language: On the Role of Linguists in Language Revitalization. In Indigenous Language Revitalization: Encouragement, Guidance and Lessons Learned, ed. J.  Reyhner and L.  Lockard, 23–36. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University. Tsunoda, T. 2004. Language Endangerment and Language Revitalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. UNESCO. 2003. Language Vitality and Endangerment. http://www.unesco. org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Language_vitality_ and_endangerment_EN.pdf. ———. 2018. The International Year of Indigenous Languages Homepage. https://en.iyil2019.org/. ———. 2020. Making a Decade of Action for Indigenous Languages. https:// en.iyil2019.org/events/high-­level-­event-­making-­a-­decade-­of-­action-­for­indigenous-­languages/. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2000. Lexical Prototypes as a Universal Basis for Cross-­ Linguistic Identification of “parts of speech”. In Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes, ed. P.M. Vogel and B. Comrie, 285–317. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ———. 2002. Semantic Primes and Linguistic Typology. In Meaning and Universal Grammar: Theory and Empirical Findings, ed. Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka, vol. 2, 257–293. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ———. 2019. What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English. (esp. Ch 4. ‘Minimal English’, pp.  45–66). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wong, Jock O. 2017. The ‘emes’ of Linguistics. In Pragmemes and Theories of Language Use, ed. Keith Allan, A.  Capone, and Istvan Kecskes, 567–583. Cham: Springer. Woods, Lesley. 2019. Situating the Thesis. Unpublished manuscript, School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra. Yamada, R.M. 2007. Collaborative Linguistic Fieldwork: Practical Application of the Empowerment Model. Language Documentation & Conservation 1 (2): 257–282. Yamamoto, A. 2004. Retrospect and Prospect on New Emerging Language Communities. In Proceedings of the Second FEL Conference 25–27 September 1988, ed. N.  Ostler, 113–120. Edinburgh, Scotland: The Foundation for Endangered Languages.

Part II Language Learning and Intercultural Education

5 Using Minimal English (Minimal Spanish, Etc.) for Non-circular Learners’ Dictionaries David Bullock

5.1 Introduction This chapter tells how a small Minimal English vocabulary has been successfully used for writing the definitions in a learners’ dictionary. With this approach, there are several advantages for beginning-level second-­ language learners, including an easy-to-learn core defining vocabulary and the elimination of circular definitions. The chapter explores the structure and development of ‘Learn These Words First’, an online monolingual dictionary written using the semantic primes of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and an additional 300 semantic molecules. Section 5.2 describes the features of the Learn These Words First dictionary; Sect. 5.3 looks at the development process used to create the dictionary; Sect. 5.4 uses metrics to evaluate and compare the quality and coverage of the dictionary; Sect. 5.5 discusses cross-translation and the

D. Bullock (*) University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_5

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use of universal semantic molecules; Sect. 5.6 considers feature improvements and non-circular dictionaries in other languages.

5.1.1 Minimal English for Learners’ Dictionaries Minimal English (Goddard 2018) is a practical vocabulary to use for defining words in a learners’ dictionary. It offers a number of benefits to second-language learners: • A 300-word Minimal English vocabulary is small enough to learn quickly. • Minimal English is powerful enough to explain the meaning of any word. • The words are simple enough that beginning-level learners can understand definitions written in Minimal English. • Most of the Minimal English vocabulary is cross-translatable to concepts in the learner’s mother tongue. • Since each word is always explained with simpler concepts, circular definitions can be eliminated. • The wide range of dictionary definitions can provide learners with examples of how to talk about nearly any topic using Minimal English. Minimal English is an extension of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and consists of: • the English versions of the 65 NSM semantic primes (in effect, ‘semantic atoms’) and • about 300 cross-translatable ‘semantic molecules’, defined using semantic primes.

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5.1.2 Vocabulary Challenges Learners of a second language (L2) face two broad kinds of vocabulary challenges (Zhou 2010): • Receptive: You want to know the meaning of a new L2 word you read (or heard). If you look it up (or ask someone), do you have the L2 vocabulary to understand an explanation of its meaning? • Productive: You know what you want to say in your first language (L1), but you don’t know the equivalent L2 word. Do you have the L2 vocabulary to paraphrase what you mean? Given that learners begin with a limited L2 vocabulary, how can they focus on learning the most useful words for explaining and paraphrasing meaning? A monolingual learners’ dictionary could be a good model, provided the headwords are explained using non-circular definitions and a small defining vocabulary.

5.1.3 Why Non-circular? Here is an example of a circular definition. If a learner does not already know any of these words (illness, sickness, sick), they will not get a helpful explanation of what they mean from these circular definitions: • illness = sickness of body or mind. • sickness = the condition of being sick. • sick = suffering from an illness. Most dictionaries contain hundreds of circular definitions like these, especially for the most basic words. This may not be a problem for someone who already has a large vocabulary (Atkins et  al. 2008), but for beginning-level learners, circular definitions can be a frustrating experience. Looking up unknown words in a definition can lead to more

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unknown words and ultimately to unhelpful circular references that fail to explain the meaning of the original word.

5.1.4 Defining Vocabulary Size Most dictionaries have two layers: • The long alphabetical list of all headwords and their definitions. • The ‘defining vocabulary’ = the words used to write all the definitions. To understand a dictionary’s definitions, you need to understand the words in the defining vocabulary. Since a typical learners’ dictionary has a defining vocabulary containing 2000 or more words, you must already have at least an intermediate-level vocabulary to use the dictionary (Moon 2015). Beginning-level learners need to have words explained using a much smaller vocabulary.

5.1.5 N  ew Multi-layer Structure for Learners’ Dictionaries To accommodate beginning-level learners, the organisation of a learners’ dictionary can use a new structure: Definitions can be arranged in layers so they can be understood by learners with different levels of vocabulary: • Core vocabulary (Minimal English): The most basic words are explained for beginning-level learners, using illustrations, translations, explications, and so on. These words are presented in a series of short lessons. • Defining vocabulary: These intermediate-level words are explained using only the Minimal English words from the core vocabulary lessons. • Full dictionary: This includes advanced-level words, all explained using only the defining vocabulary.

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With this structure, words in each layer are explained using only the simpler words from the previous layers, so non-circular definitions can be eliminated.

5.2 Learn These Words First A multi-layer structure is implemented in the Learn These Words First (LTWF) non-circular dictionary (Bullock 2014). This learners’ dictionary is available online (https://learnthesewordsfirst.com). The LTWF dictionary consists of these layers (see Fig. 5.1): • Lessons 1 and 2 use pictures with captions to illustrate the NSM semantic primes. Translations of the primes are given in multiple languages. • Lessons 3 through 12 build the core vocabulary one word at a time. These 300 semantic molecules are each explained in English, using

Fig. 5.1  Diagram of layers in the Learn These Words First dictionary

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only words that have already been introduced. The lessons include example sentences and quiz questions to help review new vocabulary. • The next layer is an alphabetical reference section listing the 2000 words in the Longman Defining Vocabulary. Each of these words is defined using only the 360 words from the lessons. • The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English can be considered the final layer, since every word is defined using only the 2000-word defining vocabulary.

5.2.1 L essons 1–2: The Core Vocabulary’s 61 NSM Semantic Primes Lessons 1 and 2 introduce the semantic primes used in the core vocabulary. This is the inventory of 61 semantic primes that was current when the development of the dictionary began (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002; Bullock 2011). This version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory has been termed NSM2. Since then, a small number of additions and other updates to the list of NSM primes have been proposed (Goddard 2018). The following shows how the meanings of these new and updated primes are dealt with in the Learn These Words First dictionary: • LITTLE~FEW = regarded as equivalent to ‘not much’ or ‘not many’. • DON’T WANT = regarded as equivalent to ‘want it not to happen’. • MINE = paraphrased using the older form of prime HAVE~BELONGS TO. • BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) = regarded as equivalent to ‘is the same person/thing/kind’.

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5.2.2 L essons 3–12: The Core Vocabulary’s 300 Semantic Molecules The lessons are divided into sections (3A, 3B, 3C., etc.). In each section, explications are given for three or four semantic molecules. There is an illustration and multiple-choice quiz question at the end of each section to help students learn and review the NSM primes and 300 molecules. Lessons 3A through 11E define the central senses of 263 semantic molecules, which are later used to define all the words in the Longman Defining Vocabulary. Each molecule is explained using only the primes and molecules that were previously introduced in the lessons. The LTWF core vocabulary is very similar to the cross-translatable Minimal English vocabulary proposed by Goddard (2018). About two-­ thirds of the molecules are the same. (More details are given in Sect. 5.5.) The words defined in the remaining lessons (11F through 12H) are not used to define any other words. Instead, these lessons introduce some extra words that are especially useful to learners: • Words for explaining grammar (noun, verb, question). • Words for instructions on how to use the dictionary (lesson, explain, first). • Words for politeness (hello, please, sorry) and emergencies (doctor, toilet, police). • Words for directions (left, right, yes, no). • Common words with unusual syntactic frames. • Other useful high-frequency words. By Lesson 12, the vocabulary is large enough that it can be used to discuss some very basic grammar information. Some of the Lesson 12 quiz questions briefly mention: • • • •

Interrogative sentences (12B) Plural inflections for nouns (12D) Past-tense inflections for verbs (12E) Possessive endings for nouns (12G)

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In short, the 12 lessons teach a 360-word vocabulary that is powerful for explaining other words. If you learn these words first, you can understand the definitions of the 2000 words in the next layer.

5.2.3 L ongman Defining Vocabulary: Definitions for 2000 Words In the Longman dictionaries for English learners, definitions are written using the Longman Defining Vocabulary, a controlled vocabulary of 2000 high-frequency words and their most common meanings (Fontenelle 2009). These 2000 words form the next layer of LTWF.  The words in the Longman Defining Vocabulary are listed in an alphabetical reference, and the commonly used senses of each word are defined using only the 360 core vocabulary words introduced in the lessons. Occasionally, a word outside the 360-word core vocabulary may be used in a definition, but only when a derived word and its root appear as alphabetically adjacent headwords (so the reader can find the meaning nearby). Without introducing a circular definition, the root word (in italics) can be used to define the derived word. For example: • absence = when someone or something is absent. • absent = not here. Not in this place.

5.2.4 L ongman Dictionary: Definitions for More than 70,000 Words The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) is a separate dictionary for intermediate to advanced learners (Summers 1995). In this dictionary, more than 70,000 words are defined using only the 2000-­ word Longman Defining Vocabulary (intermediate-level words). The dictionary is available in print or online (https://www.ldoceonline.com). Beginning-level second-language learners can find a definition in the LDOCE, and then get help with any unknown words in the definition

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by looking them up in Learn These Words First, where they are explained with the 360-word core vocabulary.

5.2.5 Word Finding Tool The Learn These Words First website has a software tool to check the vocabulary in a text and help look up words in the LTWF and LDOCE dictionaries. The tool can be helpful for students while they are reading. Go to the ‘Word Finding Tool’ at the bottom of the LTWF home page (https://learnthesewordsfirst.com/WordFindingTool.html). • In the text box, type the words you want to find. You can also copy and paste text (such as a definition from the LDOCE) into the text box. • Click the ‘Find These Words’ button. Words from the LTWF lessons will be listed in black. Other words from the Longman Defining Vocabulary will be listed in blue. You can click any of these words to go to their definitions in LTWF. Words that are not found in LTWF will be listed in red. You can click any of these words to look them up in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English online.

5.2.6 Why a Monolingual Dictionary? Although some second-language learners might feel more comfortable using a bilingual dictionary (e.g., English-Spanish), there are a number of benefits for students using an English-English monolingual dictionary (like LTWF and LDOCE): • Monolingual dictionaries immerse the student in the target language. As students read definitions, they get practice with the English words in the defining vocabulary and see how these words are used in sentences to explain meanings.

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• Second-language English students working in a group can share the same monolingual dictionary and discuss word meanings, even if they do not speak the same first language. • Some language pairs lack good bilingual dictionaries. After looking up a word in a bilingual dictionary, students can double-check the word’s meaning and usage in a monolingual dictionary. • English monolingual learners’ dictionaries often have more extensive information for second-language students: Better explanations of multiple word senses, example sentences showing collocations, usage and grammar notes, photographs, audio examples of pronunciation.

5.3 Dictionary Development The non-circular dictionary project began while I was developing software to process computer-readable dictionaries. The research team was using a machine-readable version of the LDOCE as a corpus for the automatic extraction of semantic relations between words: For example, ‘hypernym’, ‘part of ’, ‘location’ and ‘purpose’ (Dolan et al. 1993). Since the LDOCE used a 2000-word controlled defining vocabulary, only these 2000 words had circular definitions, but the rest of the dictionary did not (Summers 1995). This made the definitions more consistent and helped with the extraction of semantic relationships. Decomposing the 2000-word defining vocabulary into a consistent set of simpler predicates had the potential of leading to better semantic extraction, representation and inference (Noy 2004). So, I experimented with ways to eliminate some circular definitions and find a smaller core defining vocabulary. At first, I tried graph-reduction algorithms, but had limited success because of the large tangle of circular definitions. The breakthrough came when I started using NSM and reductive paraphrase to untangle these definitions. I wanted to see how far I could take this approach.

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5.3.1 NSM-LDOCE Non-circular Dictionary As a proof of concept, the first non-circular dictionary I produced was the NSM-LDOCE (Bullock 2011). The goal was to test the expressive power of NSM and find a smaller core defining vocabulary. For the 2000 words in the Longman Defining Vocabulary, I paraphrased each definition, using mostly NSM primes. Sometimes, a few other words from the defining vocabulary were used as molecules, when necessary to keep definitions from becoming long and complicated. To be clear, these definitions and molecules were not required to conform to the high precision of scholarly NSM practice. Rather, the key criterion was practicality for ordinary users. (See Sect. 5.3.2.) As I worked, I used a software tool to check for circular references in the definitions I had written so far. When circular definitions were found, I attempted to fix these definitions, drawing inspiration from explications in NSM literature, definitions in other dictionaries, research on a word’s central meaning, and so on. Most of the circular definitions were eliminated by rewording one of the definitions in the cycle. There were three circular definitions that were difficult to eliminate, so these three words were left undefined as tentative new semantic atoms: ‘colour’, ‘number’ and ‘shape’. This decision was later revised. (More about this in Sect. 5.3.2.) Using Natural Semantic Metalanguage to write definitions turned out to be easier than expected, and the set of NSM2 semantic primes worked remarkably well. Definitions were checked for quality by having students perform headword-identification tasks. (See Sect. 5.4.1.) The resulting NSM-LDOCE non-circular dictionary consists of: • The 61 NSM2 primes (plus colour, number, shape), which are used to define: • About 700 molecules, which are used to define: • The 2000 words in the Longman Defining Vocabulary, which is used to define: • All 70,000 words in the LDOCE.

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Since the NSM-LDOCE dictionary has no circular definitions, we can count the number of definitions that are directly or indirectly dependent on each molecule. Sorting the list of molecules by this recursive-­ dependency count (highest to lowest) shows which words need to be defined first (after the NSM primes). As a practical application, if words are learned in this order, a second-language student could read definitions without encountering any unknown words. This led to the development of the Learn These Words First (LTWF) non-circular dictionary for beginning-level second-language learners (Bullock 2014).

5.3.2 LTWF Learners’ Dictionary To create the Learn These Words First dictionary, every definition from the NSM-LDOCE was reviewed, starting with the molecules sorted by recursive-dependency count. This order showed which molecules could be used in a definition without introducing a circularity. Using the available molecules, improvements were made to the fluency and precision of the definitions. In the NSM-LDOCE, half of the 700 molecules were used fewer than five times. Many of these less important molecules could be eliminated by paraphrasing the definitions in which they appeared. For the three tentative semantic atoms in NSM-LDOCE (colour, number, shape), additional work was done to define these three words as molecules (thanks to the help of several people on the nsm-l mailing list). After the definitions were reviewed and improved, the number of molecules needed by the LTWF dictionary had been reduced to less than 300. This is a better vocabulary size for beginning-level second-language learners. Note that the LTWF core defining vocabulary includes some words that are not recognised as standard cross-translatable molecules in Minimal English. (This will be discussed further in Sect. 5.5.) Throughout the development of both dictionaries, definitions were checked for quality by having students perform headword-identification tasks: Given definitions without headwords, they tried to identify the

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missing headwords. For LTWF definitions, the students successfully identified the headwords more accurately (on average) than for the original LDOCE definitions. (More details are given in Sect. 5.4.1.)

5.3.3 Tools for Checking Vocabulary and Circularity When writing in a constrained language like NSM or Minimal English, it is important to avoid using words outside the controlled vocabulary. During the development of the NSM-LDOCE and the LTWF dictionaries, software tools were used to flag out-of-vocabulary words and identify circular definitions by marking words that were used before they were defined. Some of these tools can be found online (https://learnthesewordsfirst. com/tools): • CheckNonCircular = This tool checks a dictionary source file for circular definitions. • CheckEnglishNsm = This tool marks words and phrases that are not in the English NSM vocabulary. • CheckMinimalEnglish = This tool marks words and phrases that are not in the Minimal English vocabulary.1 These tools check the text you paste into a textbox. Any word that is used before it is defined will be marked with a red * asterisk. If you define new words in your text, you can indicate this by enclosing the new words in { } curly braces. Each of the tools has a ‘Help’ button for more information. You will also find the computer-readable source files for the LTWF dictionary here. The CheckNonCircular tool will show that the dictionary has no circular dependencies (it is a directed acyclic graph).

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5.4 Dictionary Evaluation Several metrics were used for evaluating and comparing the dictionaries, definitions and defining vocabularies.

5.4.1 Definition Quality (Maximise) To what extent is the meaning of each headword successfully conveyed by its definition? This is obviously a critical question for any dictionary. One method for evaluating and comparing dictionary quality is to give test participants a set of definitions and ask them to supply the missing headwords (Fabiszewski-Jaworski and Grochocka 2010). To check the quality of definitions in NSM-LDOCE and LTWF, students were given sets of definitions from several dictionaries with the headwords replaced by blank lines (Bullock 2011, 2014). For example: • 1. __________ = [noun] kind of big animal that has four legs and four hard feet; this animal does not eat other animals; long hairs grow from the top part of its head and neck and from its tail; people ride these animals and use them to pull big things. • 2. __________ = [noun] (A) a day when many people do not work, because people want to use this day to remember and think about something important. (B) one or more days when many people work, but you do not work, because you want to use these days to do some things you enjoy; this is not something you do every week. • 3. __________ = [verb] when something solid becomes liquid. (The headwords that fill in the blanks above are ‘horse’, ‘holiday’ and ‘melt’.) The dictionaries used and sample details were as follows: • NSM-LDOCE: A sample consisting of 120 definitions was selected at random from the NSM-LDOCE. Only the first one or two senses of each word were used for the evaluation.

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• LDOCE: A comparison set was drawn from the LDOCE, consisting of the same 120 headwords and the corresponding sense definitions (without examples and synonym lists). • From NSM literature: In another comparison set, complete definitions for some of these words were also drawn from the NSM ­literature. These definitions were presented using their original formatting and length, which could cover as many as two pages. • LTWF dictionary: An evaluation set was also drawn from the LTWF dictionary, consisting of the same 120 headwords and the corresponding sense definitions. • LTWF all lesson definitions: Students also performed headword-­ identification tasks to evaluate all 360 definitions in the LTWF lessons. The student participants were asked to read the definitions and identify the missing headwords in three different tasks: In the first task, the participants were asked to fill in the blank with the missing headword for each definition. In the second task, they were given the first letter of each headword and asked to complete the word. In the third task, they picked each headword from a 10-word multiple-choice list. The results from the evaluation are given in Table 5.1. Headword-identification accuracy for NSM-LDOCE definitions was a little lower than for LDOCE definitions and full-length definitions from the NSM literature. Fluency and precision were improved in the development of the LTWF dictionary. As a result, headword-identification accuracy for LTWF definitions was slightly higher than for the original LDOCE definitions. Table 5.1  Accuracy of identifying missing headwords for definitions Definition source

FB (%)

CW (%)

MC (%)

NSM-LDOCE LDOCE From NSM literature LTWF dictionary LTWF all lesson definitions

59 68 67 74 94

84 92 92 94 100

100 100 100 100 100

By task: Fill in the Blank (FB), Complete the Word (CW), and Multiple Choice (MC)

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Students performed headword-identification tasks to evaluate the quality of all 360 definitions in the LTWF lessons. For fill-in-the-blank tasks, students correctly identified the missing headword 94% of the time. For complete-the-word tasks, students identified the headword 100% of the time. The high accuracy scores for these definitions may be because: • • • • •

The words in the lessons are the most basic words. These definitions are written using complete sentences. Predicate arguments are often clarified with variables (X, J, K). Extra attention was given to improving these definitions. Each of these definitions includes one or two example sentences.

Note that the headword-identification task was performed by students who were already fluent speakers of English. It would be interesting to modify the task for students who are less fluent in English. In that case, students could identify the missing headword by giving an equivalent word (or phrase) in a more familiar language.

5.4.2 Breadth of Coverage (Maximise) Is the vocabulary adequate for communicating about (or explaining) a broad range of topics? To measure breadth of coverage, we can look at a large representative corpus and measure the percentage of word tokens in the corpus that also appear in a given vocabulary. This approach does not address the issue of polysemy: Many words have several other meanings in addition to the meaning intended in a given controlled vocabulary. Nevertheless, token frequency is still useful as a rough measure of coverage. We used the British National Corpus (Leech et  al. 2001), a 100-­million-word corpus of written and spoken English from a wide variety of sources and genres. Table  5.2 shows the percentage of word tokens covered by several defining vocabularies and by the list of all LDOCE headwords. (Note that the British National Corpus includes

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Table 5.2   Coverage of word tokens in the British National Corpus (BNC) Vocabulary

Coverage of words in BNC (%)

NSM primes LTWF core vocabulary (360 words) Longman Defining Vocabulary (2000 words) All LDOCE headwords

22 56 77 89

word tokens such as proper names that might not be listed in a dictionary.) We can also consider the number of dictionary definitions that are covered by a defining vocabulary. Using NSM primes alone, you will recognise less than one quarter of the words in a typical text. But NSM can be used to explain the 300 molecules in the LTWF core vocabulary. If you know the LTWF core vocabulary, you will recognise more than half of the words in a typical text. With the core vocabulary you can also understand the LTWF definitions for all the words in the Longman Defining Vocabulary. And with the Longman Defining Vocabulary, you can read all of the definitions in the LDOCE.

5.4.3 Core Vocabulary Size and Definition Length Can a minimal core vocabulary be used to write concise quality definitions? Ideally, the core vocabulary should be as small as possible so it is easy to learn for beginning second-language students (and for people who have trouble remembering a larger second-language vocabulary). With a smaller core defining vocabulary, however, the average definition length may become longer: Fewer ideas can be expressed with a single word, so some concepts will need to be paraphrased with multiple words (or even multiple sentences). We can count the number of words used to define each headword sense in the LDOCE, NSM-LDOCE and LTWF dictionaries. See Table  5.3. (Note that none of the sense definitions is longer than 125 words.)

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Table 5.3  Number of words used to define each sense of each headword: Average (Avg) and interquartile range (IQR) Definitions from

Words per sense: Avg IQR

LDOCE (2000-word defining vocabulary) NSM-LDOCE (700-word core vocabulary) LTWF dictionary (360-word core vocabulary) LTWF lessons (up to 360-word core vocabulary)

12 14 17 35

(7–16) (6–18) (7–22) (17–50)

Interestingly, the average definition length is similar in the three dictionaries, even though they use defining vocabularies of different sizes (2000 words, 700 words, 360 words). In the LTWF lessons, however, the average definition length is more than double. The lessons build up the collection of semantic molecules in the core vocabulary, so in earlier lessons there are fewer defined molecules to work with, and more concepts need to be paraphrased with multiple words. A dictionary user may need definitions of different lengths for different purposes (Goddard 2017): • A shorter concise definition that identifies the meaning of the headword • A longer precise version of the definition that explains more details about the meaning and usage of the headword In an online dictionary, definitions of both lengths could be given: The shorter concise definition could be defined using the core defining vocabulary, and the longer precise definition could be defined using the full defining vocabulary (Barrios Rodríguez 2019). The shorter concise definitions are important because they demonstrate how a headword’s meaning can be paraphrased in a few words as part of a paragraph or conversation. This is a good test of the core defining vocabulary. We want to minimise the core vocabulary size, while maximising quality of concise definitions and breadth of coverage. A vocabulary consisting of NSM primes plus about 300 semantic molecules seems to reach a good balance.

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5.5 Universal Molecules and Cross-translation Minimal English vocabulary consists of NSM primes and about 300 cross-translatable molecules (see Chap. 1). The LTWF core vocabulary also uses NSM primes and about 300 molecules, which were determined mostly by recursive-dependency statistics from the NSM-LDOCE data (Bullock 2011). Even though these two vocabularies were developed independently, they are very similar: About two-thirds of the molecules are the same.

5.5.1 Allolexes and Portmanteaus (26 Headwords) Minimal English includes variant forms and combinations of semantic primes. An allolex is a variant form of a single semantic prime, and a portmanteau expression is a single word that stands for a combination of several semantic primes (Goddard 2018). Several of the headwords in the LTWF core vocabulary could be considered allolexes, quasi-allolexes or near synonyms: • • • • • • • • • • • •

a = one able = can cause = because each = all exist = there is into, contain = inside it, he, she, the, that = this its, my, your = have piece = part several = some similar = like tell = say

A few headwords in the LTWF core vocabulary could be considered portmanteau expressions:

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different = not the same less = not as much, not more often = at many times or = if not then, will = after this time use = do something with

5.5.2 Universal Semantic Molecules (57 Headwords) In addition to the NSM universal semantic primes, Goddard and Wierzbicka have identified around 70 universal semantic molecules for Minimal English (Goddard 2018). On current evidence, it seems likely that these molecules appear in all languages. Each is productive for defining many other words. The LTWF core vocabulary includes 44 headwords that are either identical to the Minimal English universal molecules or else very close in meaning: animal (creature), around, blood, bone, bottom, breathe, burn (fire), centre (middle), child, day, ear, egg, eye, flat, front, ground, grow, hand, hard, head, heavy, hold, laugh, leg, long, make, man, mouth, name (called), nose, on top, play, round, sharp, sit, sky, sleep, smooth, stone, sun, thin, water, woman, wood.

The LTWF core vocabulary includes 13 additional headwords that are ‘approximately universal’ molecules in Minimal English: back, bird, drink, eat, fish, hair (fur), light, married (husband and wife), parent (mother or father), quick (quickly), straight, sweet, tree.

A few of the Minimal English universal molecules are not in the LTWF core vocabulary (but are all defined in the LTWF alphabetical dictionary): born, breast, earth, face, feather, finger, kill, lie, moon, night, sing, skin, soft, stand, star, tail, tooth, wing.

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5.5.3 Common Semantic Molecules (87 Headwords) Minimal English also includes other useful molecules that are common and cross-translatable into many (but not all) other languages. A number of these molecules have been identified in Goddard (2018), Goddard and Wierzbicka (2015), Wierzbicka (2019) and Goddard (2010). The LTWF core vocabulary contains 87 of these common useful molecules: air, alcohol, and, arm, black, blue, boat, book, bread, brown, building, buy, carry, cat, clean, cloth, clothing, coal, cold, colour, country, cut, down, draw, electricity, end, fall, family, flower, fly, foot, from, game, give, god, government, green, healthy, high, hit, hole, hot, hour, learn, lift, look, loud, machine, mark, mean, metal, milk, money, month, music, number, out, paper, pull, push, put, radio, read, red, rub, salt, school, seed, sheep, soldier, sound, sour, story, string (thread), ten, three, through, towards, tube (pipe), turn, up, wheel, white, win, write, year, yellow.

5.5.4 Other LTWF Molecules (96 Headwords) Minimal English places an emphasis on cross-translatable molecules. Even though LTWF was developed without this as a design goal, about two-thirds of the headwords in the core vocabulary have already been identified (above) as cross-translatable molecules. Here are the other 96 headwords in the LTWF core vocabulary (grouped by part-of-speech and ordered from highest to lowest frequency): Nouns: surface, group, liquid, container, food, shape, plant, rule, amount, vehicle, business, circle, chemical, disease, distance, fruit, picture, gas, length, weight, adult, grain, atom, taste, metre, clay, fat, sentence, kilogram, square. Verbs: become, try, need, change, connect, control, expect, help, damage, hurt, work, allow, enjoy, decide, stop, prevent, cover, choose, show, start, measure, plan, fear, compare, mix, find, promise, count, lead, press, love, multiply, explode, twist.

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Other: but, narrow, most, solid, important, likely, careful, difficult, easy, between, angry, dry, happy, tall, four, sad, beautiful, wide, female, behind, young, low, six, male, thousand, five, hundred, seven, sexual, eight, zero, nine.

Some of these headwords might be considered useful common molecules, and additional research could determine if some of them are sufficiently cross-translatable.

5.6 Conclusion and Future Work Minimal English is a practical vocabulary to use for defining words in a learners’ dictionary. Learn These Words First successfully implements a useful learners’ dictionary in which non-circular definitions are written with NSM primes and 300 semantic molecules. It demonstrates a practical multi-layer approach for creating a non-circular Minimal English dictionary: • Core vocabulary (Minimal English): Use NSM primes to define 300 Minimal English semantic molecules. These are the most basic words and should be cross-translatable. • Defining vocabulary: Use the Minimal English core vocabulary to write (mostly paraphrase) definitions for all the words in the controlled defining vocabulary of an existing learners’ dictionary. Many learners’ dictionaries use a defining vocabulary of between 2000 and 3000 intermediate-level words. • Full dictionary: Definitions for advanced-level words are already written in the existing learners’ dictionary using only the controlled defining vocabulary. • Evaluation: Use headword-identification tasks to evaluate the quality of definitions. Use software tools to check for non-circular definitions and out-of-vocabulary words.

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This same approach could be applied to create other minimal-language dictionaries (Minimal Spanish, Minimal Chinese, etc.). Creating a non-circular dictionary with Minimal English requires that we analyse word meanings down to a small set of semantic atoms and molecules. This analysis produces better definitions for both language learners and researchers.

5.6.1 Organisational Improvements to Lessons We can investigate some potential areas for improving the organisation of lessons and the core vocabulary. Many molecules in the LTWF core vocabulary are defined using chains of semantic dependencies: The definition for molecule1 depends on molecule2, which depends on molecule3, and so on. Some of these chains are quite long (as many as 34 levels of dependency, if you include the words used in example sentences). Presumably, many of these chains could be simplified and shortened. For about one-third of the words in the LTWF core vocabulary, more research is needed to determine if some of them can be considered cross-­ translatable molecules. Ideally, words that are not cross-translatable could be removed from definitions where they are used, and those definitions could be paraphrased using better cross-translatable words. Statistics from the NSM-LDOCE were used to determine the order of headwords in the LTWF lessons. Unfortunately, this organisation does not show the headword type or how it fits into the hierarchy of semantic dependencies. How can we communicate this information more clearly? Perhaps we could mark each headword with a symbol consisting of: • A coloured shape indicating the headword type (prime, allolex, universal molecule, etc.). • A number indicating the length of the dependency chain needed to define the headword.

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Perhaps we could rearrange headwords to group them by type. This order would show the direction of dependencies (universals are used to define non-universals): • • • • •

NSM semantic primes Allolexes and portmanteaus Universal semantic molecules Common semantic molecules Other molecules

Currently, the LTWF lessons are not strictly grouped this way. If we reorder the lessons into these groups, a number of definitions would need to be reworked: We still want each headword to be defined using only primes and molecules that are introduced earlier in the lessons.

5.6.2 Other Improvements and Additional Features There are other potential areas for improvement. The dictionary could be expanded to include Minimal English definitions for more words, beyond just the 2000 words in the Longman Defining Vocabulary. Perhaps the highest frequency 3000 or 4000 words would be a good target. More of the definitions could be written in complete sentences (like the lessons) and include example sentences. Slightly longer definitions may improve quality. More example sentences would help learners identify the meaning and grammatical usage by seeing each headword in context. In the lessons, adding more quiz questions would help learners review and test their understanding of new vocabulary. The lessons could be accompanied by interesting articles or stories written in Minimal English and exercises for more skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking). Audio recordings could provide pronunciations for headwords and example sentences. Definitions could be illustrated with more drawings, photos and videos.

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5.6.3 Other Languages The LearnTheseWordsFirst.com website is used by more than 4000 visitors each month. Some visitors have commented: ‘I wish I had a dictionary like this in language X (Spanish, Chinese, French, Arabic, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.)’. There is a great potential for producing similar non-circular dictionaries in other languages using NSM and about 300 semantic molecules. Some work is already underway to produce a non-circular learners’ dictionary using Minimal Spanish (Barrios Rodríguez 2019). A Minimal English non-circular dictionary could also be translated into a semantic representation that computers could use for reasoning about word meanings and relationships. I have used the Minimal Recursion Semantics framework (Copestake et  al. 1999) with NSM primes to represent some of the definitions and example sentences from LTWF. It seems likely that the upper-level molecules and their definitions in a non-circular dictionary could be standardised across a wide variety of languages. Explications for universal molecules could be written using only semantic primes and other universal molecules. Then we could have definitions for universal molecules that are parallel across multiple languages (and even parallel and cross-translatable sentence by sentence). Many of the definitions for common semantic molecules might be parallel as well. Creating this set of upper-level parallel definitions would provide insight to researchers about the nature of semantic molecules and universals. It would also create a useful resource for second-language learners. I hope the LTWF dictionary inspires the creation of other non-circular learners’ dictionaries in Minimal English, Minimal Spanish, Minimal Chinese, and so on.

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Note 1. CheckMinimalEnglish uses only the Minimal English molecules identified in Minimal English for a Global World and other Goddard and Wierzbicka examples. (Not the LTWF core vocabulary).

References Atkins, B.  T. Sue, and Michael Rundell. 2008. The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barrios Rodríguez, María Auxiliadora. 2019. Minimal and Inverse Definitions: A Semi-experimental Proposal for Compiling a Spanish Dictionary with Semantic Primes and Molecules. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication. Volume 3: Minimal English (and Beyond), ed. Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan, 191–212. Singapore: Springer. Bullock, David. 2011. NSM + LDOCE: A Non-Circular Dictionary of English. International Journal of Lexicography 24 (2): 226–240. ———. 2014. Learn These Words First: Multi-layer Dictionary for Second-­ Language Learners of English. https://LearnTheseWordsFirst.com. Copestake, Ann, Dan Flickinger, Carl Pollard, and Ivan Sag. 1999. Minimal Recursion Semantics: An Introduction. Stanford: CSLI. http://lingo.stanford. edu/sag/papers/copestake.pdf. Dolan, William, Stephen Richardson, and Lucy Vanderwende. 1993. Automatically Deriving Structured Knowledge Bases from On-line Dictionaries. In Proceedings of the First Conference of the Pacific Association for Computational Linguistics, ed. Paul McFetridge and Fred Popowich, 5–14. Vancouver: Pacific Association for Computational Linguistics. Fabiszewski-Jaworski, Mateusz, and Marta Grochocka. 2010. Folk Defining Strategies vs. Comprehension of Dictionary Definitions: An Empirical Study. In English Learners’ Dictionaries at the DSNA 2009, ed. Ilan Kernerman and Paul Bogaards, 89–105. K Dictionaries: Tel Aviv. Fontenelle, Thierry. 2009. Linguistic Research and Learners’ Dictionaries: The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. In The Oxford History of English Lexicography. Volume II: Specialized Dictionaries, ed. A.P.  Cowie, 412–135. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Goddard, Cliff. 2010. Semantic Molecules and Semantic Complexity (with Special Reference to “environmental” Molecules). Review of Cognitive Linguistics 8 (1): 123–155. https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.8.1.05god. ———. 2017. Natural Semantic Metalanguage and lexicography. In International Handbook of Modern Lexis and Lexicography, ed. Patrick Hanks and Gilles-Maurice de Schryver. Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.100 7/978-­3-­642-­45369-­4_14-­1. ———. 2018. Minimal English. The Science Behind It. In Minimal English for a Global World. Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, ed. Cliff Goddard, 29–70. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka, eds. 2002. Meaning and Universal Grammar  – Theory and Empirical Findings. Volumes I and II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ———. 2015. What Is Minimal English (and How to Use It). Briefing Paper for the ‘Global English, Minimal English’ Symposium (July 2015, ANU, Canberra). Leech, Geoffrey, Paul Rayson, and Andrew Wilson. 2001. Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: Based on the British National Corpus. London: Longman. ISBN: 0582-32007-0. Moon, Rosamund. 2015. Explaining Meaning in Learners’ Dictionaries. In The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography, ed. Philip Durkin, 123–143. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noy, Natalya. 2004. Semantic Integration: A Survey of Ontology-Based Approaches. In SIGMOD Record, Special Issue on Semantic Integration, Ling Liu, ed. New  York: Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., 33(4): 65–70. Summers, Della, ed. 1995. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. 3rd ed. Harlow: Longman Group Ltd. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2019. What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English. New York: Oxford University Press. Zhou, Songbo. 2010. Comparing Receptive and Productive Academic Vocabulary Knowledge of Chinese EFL Learners. Asian Social Science 6 (10). https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v6n10p14.

6 Standard Translatable English: A Minimal English for Teaching and Learning Invisible Culture in Language Classrooms Lauren Sadow

6.1 Introduction One of the greatest strengths of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, and its applied spin-off Minimal English, is versatility. NSM and Minimal English can be adapted to a multitude of different purposes, communicative needs, and contexts, many of which are discussed elsewhere in this book and in Minimal English for a Global World (Goddard 2018b). The NSM approach has long been used to describe cultural values, attitudes, and ways of thinking using “cultural scripts” (Wierzbicka 2003; Goddard 2006; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004) and, more recently, Minimal English has been turned to similar goals. At its broadest, this chapter is about how Minimal English can be adapted and applied in real-world language classrooms to help teach culture, cultural competence, and pragmalinguistic competence.

L. Sadow (*) Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_6

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Over the years, a number of researchers have proposed ways in which NSM and Minimal English can be used in language teaching classrooms. Some have focussed on more linguistic aspects of language learning: helping students acquire vocabulary, discourse markers, or aspects of grammar (see, e.g. Harkins 1986; Wong 2020); some have focussed on more conceptual aspects: teaching about the values and pragmatics inherent in language and for intercultural language learning (see, e.g. Goddard 2002,  2004, 2010; Fernández 2016, 2020; Fernández and Goddard 2020; Peeters 2013, 2016, 2017; Sadow 2018, 2020). But before NSMand/or Minimal English-based methods can be widely adopted and used by language teachers, there must be purpose-built tools and resources in place. Language teachers need to feel confident that they understand the methods themselves and that they are able to explain them to their students. Teachers and students alike need resources, such as a dictionary or other reference materials. This chapter will explore how these needs can be met for teachers and learners of English as a second language in Australia. Specifically, it reports on an adapted form of Minimal English targeted for the language classroom context, referred to as Standard Translatable English (STE), and on the development of a cultural dictionary of Australian English for English language teachers, referred to as AusDICT (Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers) (Sadow 2019, 2020, ausdict.translatableenglish.com).

6.1.1 W  hy Use Minimal Languages for Teaching Cultural and Pragmatic Competence? Although I have already mentioned a number of publications which put NSM and Minimal Languages forward as a tool in language teaching contexts, the question remains as to why Minimal Languages are best suited to teaching cultural and pragmalinguistic competence. By cultural competence, I am referring to the competence of “invisible culture”: the knowledge and awareness of values, attitudes, and norms of interaction in a particular languaculture (Agar 1994). Elsewhere, cultural competence has been referred to as a part of intercultural

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communicative competence (Byram 1997; Liddicoat and Scarino 2013), but my intention is to refocus this concept on more than just the savoirs of Byram’s model and to explicitly include invisible culture in my definition of this competence. Migrants to Australia, who are the main learners of English as a second language in Australia, have a great need for cultural competence—much more so than learners of English as a foreign language, for example. This is because they are living and working in their second language, and they need to understand local norms and practices. While second language acquisition research has abandoned the native-speaker ideal (Kramsch 2014), cultural awareness and competence remains an essential part of language learning, as it affords language learners more common ground between themselves and first language speakers. Pragmatic, sociopragmatic, and cultural competence are difficult for migrants to acquire through implicit means such as immersion (Pavlenko 2006). Consequently, explicit, effective instruction in these competences is needed (Koike and Pearson 2005; Nguyen et al. 2012; Rose 2005). Teachers are hindered in teaching about invisible culture, however, by the fact that teacher education programmes generally limit themselves to discussions of pedagogical principles (Byram 2014) and rarely bridge the divide between those principles and their actualisation in classrooms. Even where teacher education includes specific topics on developing intercultural communicative competence, teachers often do not or cannot incorporate those lessons into classroom practice (Sercu et al. 2005; Lázár 2011; Oranje and Smith 2018). This leaves a gap between what is taught (or focussed on) in teacher education contexts, and what should be taught with regard to what needs to be implemented in classroom practice. Teachers need both to learn the principles of teaching invisible culture and to be provided with the resources to implement these principles in classroom practice. A course on the methodology of intercultural communication training has to balance cultural awareness raising, theoretical knowledge about intercultural communicative competence and practical skills development in teaching methods with many opportunities for trainees to talk about their

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own experiences, and to verbalize their reflections and possible reservations. (Lázár 2011, p. 124)

The question of what content—or whose culture—to present is complex and depends on a multitude of factors, not least the learning context. Different opinions have emerged on culture-free textbooks (an impossibility within the definition of culture in this chapter), versus culture-­ inclusive textbooks, versus global culture textbooks—particularly in EFL contexts (Canale 2016). Many of these discussions, however, refer to textbooks that are published for foreign-language learners on a global scale and thus need to address the varied cultural backgrounds and cultural connections of learners (Gray 2010; Prodromou 1992). In these globalised contexts, determining which culture should be illustrated in a textbook is difficult, especially when attempting to avoid stereotyping, homogenising, and overgeneralisation. In contrast, several textbooks have been produced recently in a ‘local’ setting (cf. Weninger and Kiss 2013)—referring to country-level, city-level, or even school- or classroom-­ level cultures. These materials are able to address student questions about culture in their specific contexts, but not necessarily in a way that allows students to apply their learning to broader contexts. In the context of second language learning, whether or not to include culture is not open to question: it is a necessity. The ways in which the different elements of pragmatic and cultural competence (and awareness) are presented in textbooks do not currently accentuate the skills required, as opposed to the knowledge elements. In several surveys of available materials (e.g. Usó-Juan 2008; Weninger and Kiss 2013), the majority of texts and teaching materials were found not to include any systematic treatment of cultural and pragmatic awareness. While some texts did make attempts to treat these topics, they did not present the information in a systematic way. Some of the improvements recommended by experts are summarised in Table 6.1. It is presented as a list of key features for good materials for teaching culture. The good practice guidelines in Table 6.1 clearly indicate where the use of minimal languages can improve current resources. The way in which cultural scripts are formulated means that by their nature, they meet requirements 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8—or at least provide a platform for students

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Table 6.1  Key features of good materials for culture 1. Use real speech examples. 2. Give information on situational and contextual variation (including gender usage). 3. Explain cultural reasoning for norms. 4. Connect pragmatic/interactional information to vocabulary—both words and phrases. 5. Provide information for teachers on norms and pragmatics. 6. Encourage students to develop analytic skills so they can become ethnographic observers (and therefore have the skills to learn from and adapt to new situations). 7. Encourage students to make connections to their own experience and to actively reflect on their experience and learning. 8. Empower students to engage in social interaction, in and out of classroom contexts. Source: Adapted from Cohen and Ishihara (2012); Liddicoat and Scarino (2013); Pulverness and Tomlinson (2013)

to do these things. Feature 5 (‘Provide information for teachers’) is a core reason for the development of the Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers (AusDICT): see Sect. 6.5. Features 1 and 4 were incorporated into the design of AusDICT. Minimal Languages is one of the few approaches which deals with words, meaning, and culture within the same overarching framework, allowing connections to be made between values and language. In addition, the components of NSM explications and cultural scripts provide a step-by-step description which is both accessible to language learners and at the same time captures the insiders’ perspective. As a result, language learners can engage with these cultural perspectives without being obligated to adopt cultural perspectives and behaviours which potentially do not reflect their identity. Presenting material in a step-by-step way is important for language teachers, because articulating underlying cultural concepts in simple words can be difficult for highly competent language users, if there has never been an opportunity to engage with something like reductive paraphrase before. One of the strengths of using a minimal languages approach for this task is that it defamiliarises the familiar and allows for a consistent and balanced perspective on all languacultures. For language teachers, it can provide an insight into how their students see the languaculture of the classroom.

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The list of features in Table 6.1 also shows that the needs of L2 teachers and learners (and perhaps even broader educational contexts) differ in some significant ways from the needs of other minimal language users (such as in public health communication, storytelling, or communicating global messages). The point of using a Minimal Language approach in an educational context is not just to communicate the content of the message between people, but to be able to explain the concept so a student can engage with it in a productive—and independent—way.

6.1.2 T  he Plan for the Present Project: The Importance of Teacher Input The intended outcome of the research reported in this chapter was to create a dictionary of invisible culture for teachers of English in Australia, but in order to do this I needed to see how NSM and Minimal English could be adapted for teacher’s use in classrooms in their teaching practice. I also needed to discover how best to use NSM and Minimal English as a defining vocabulary in a practical dictionary for teachers and how best to format such a dictionary. To get the necessary input from teachers, I conducted user-needs research using surveys and focus groups. The user-needs research was based in Design-Based Research (Amiel and Reeves 2008), which contributed to both the user-needs analysis and the development process for the AusDICT. Design-Based Research (DBR) is an iterative design process used in educational contexts which engages with the users throughout the development of a product (Anderson and Shattuck 2012). As DBR is aimed at the development of an ‘artefact’ (Ørngreen 2015) through trialling and testing with intended users, this approach was ideal for the creation of a cultural dictionary aimed at teachers. While methods for conducting DBR are varied, focus groups were used as they provided feedback from a number of teachers at the same time, as well as allowing those teachers to problem-solve issues with the developing AusDICT themselves. The focus groups were run in the format of professional development workshops, as this was a familiar format for the teachers, and it also

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provided them with some return for their time in the form of new knowledge. In total, there were four workshops conducted in the first phase at the start of the design process, and one workshop late in the process with beta-readers of the AusDICT. Here I will summarise the overall needs of teachers as expressed through the survey and workshops. These teachers’ needs are for resources to improve their students’ outcomes and classroom engagement. Teachers emphasised their desire for their students to be able to get a job more easily, to be able to interact more effectively with their children’s school teachers, and to feel more comfortable engaging with government services. While these are also excellent content ideas, they demonstrate the teachers’ desire for resources that will make a difference to their students’ lives. This was also a recurring theme in discussing the usefulness of explications and cultural scripts: that resources must be relevant to student lives and experiences. Teachers reiterated this idea at every stage of the research. Owing to the time constraints on teachers for developing lessons, another expressed need is that any new materials must be intuitive and able to be easily integrated into a teacher’s current class plans and ways of teaching. As was illustrated through their reluctance to participate in an early classroom trial of preliminary materials, the teachers also need to feel that any materials have been well developed, and that they, as teachers, know it well enough to feel comfortable presenting it to students. Finally, teachers need resources that are reliable: they need to be confident that anything they bring into class is going to work for its intended purpose. In addition to these general big picture needs, participants and respondents also gave feedback on their requirements, reservations, and suggestions for the developing dictionary.

6.2 A Minimal English for Teachers In the very first round of the user-needs research, one of the teachers spoke up to articulate a problem with my proposal of using Minimal English in language classrooms. She stated: “But I don’t want to teach my students minimal English”. Instantly I understood. Her perspective on

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Minimal English was that it meant “as little English as possible”, rather than “the minimum English needed to explain something”. Looking around the room, it was obvious that this perspective was widely shared. Clearly then, there was an important issue of communication and terminology, a gap between what I was wanting to advocate, i.e., that Minimal English has much to offer language teachers, and how language teachers were responding to it. The terminological confusion was a potential roadblock that needed to be taken seriously. What is the thing that I am referring to, how does it work, and what should I be calling it? During that workshop, and the following workshops, the teachers and I worked on developing what a modified Minimal English for classroom contexts would look like—and what it should be called. We developed some patterns and structures for how this modified Minimal English would work for teachers. This resulted in some changes away from NSM, in the direction of ordinary Minimal English, but also resulted in some changes away from ordinary Minimal English towards NSM. These changes will be presented in Sect. 6.3. As for terminology, we eventually settled on ‘Standard Translatable English’ (abbreviated to STE). The phrase ‘Standard Translatable English’ was chosen to resonate with certain associations and ideas that are important to the teachers. The word Standard evokes a connection with a standard form of English. This association ensures that teachers are always advancing their students’ language use and not restricting anyone’s usage or production. Although some phrases in STE are slightly unidiomatic due to the requirements of translatability, they are nevertheless grammatical in Standard Australian English. The word translatable has been used to encourage teachers to realise that the aim of using this paraphrase is for maximum comprehension and translatability. STE is a tool with a specific purpose, that of trying to render a complex concept for someone who does not speak the language. For teachers, translatable also has connotations of intralingual translation—that is, translation within a single language. This is a technique that all teachers are familiar with: translating between complex English and simpler English for students. STE provides a structured way of doing this. I have of course kept the word English, for two main reasons. First, because the concepts which comprise the STE lexicon stretch from universal towards Anglo-Australian more than towards any other

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languaculture. And second, because it highlights the fact that STE is a tool for teaching English, even though the same framework could be applied to any other language. The three words—standard, translatable, English—together “mirror” the structure of the language name being taught (Standard Australian English), which reinforces the connection between STE and the communicative competence goals of language classrooms. I have also used the term ‘composition’ to refer to all texts and dictionary entries written in STE, rather than dividing them according to the theoretical distinction between NSM semantic explications and cultural scripts.

6.3 F rom Minimal English to Standard Translatable English Several key justifications behind developing STE and guidelines for using it in classroom contexts were reflected in the feedback from teachers, illustrating the alignment between the thinking behind the Minimal English approach and teachers’ pedagogical aims. Most apparent was the need to ensure that the resulting information was accessible to non-expert users, and that it encouraged the development of good English skills by using idiomatic structures. In support of these and teacher concerns, several changes were discussed and agreed on during the workshops.

6.3.1 T  he Inclusion of Semantic Molecules (and Other Useful Words) As discussed in Chap. 1  of this volume, semantic molecules are nonprimitive but relatively basic concepts which are essential building blocks of other important concepts. STE uses both the semantic primes and a flexible set of semantic molecules. Many semantic molecules appear to be universal or near-universal (e.g. ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘child’, ‘play’, ‘sleep’) so can be safely assured a place in STE. Others, such as ‘write’, ‘read’, ‘book’, ‘draw’, and ‘colour’, are widely shared across modern languages, are extremely useful in teaching situations, and are easily acquired by

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students. Beyond these molecules, additional words can be used for explaining terms or concepts in STE, providing that they are simpler than the term or concept being deconstructed. The primes and molecules used in the AusDICT are shown in Table 6.2 (molecules are highlighted), a total of 127 words in the defining vocabulary. Following Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018), there are also another 180 suggestions for molecules and near-universal molecules (shown in Table 6.3) which can also be used in STE if required (bringing the total to 307 words). The choice of which molecules can be included in STE is not rigid but flexible, and dependent on the teacher’s choice for their class. Ideally, of course, teachers would introduce words in order of semantic complexity (see Chap. 5; cf. Bullock 2011, 2014). Bullock’s Learn These Words First website (www.learnthesewordsfirst.com) provides reductive paraphrases in increasing complexity, a resource which can assist teachers to determine which concepts were most appropriate for their class. This is in addition to teachers’ awareness of their classes, and the knowledge and abilities already acquired by their students. For example, for a beginner class, a teacher may say (of classroom rules) something like: “when we are in this place, it is good if only one person says something at one time”; but for a more advanced class (or the same class later in the year), they might say: “when we are in a classroom, it is good if only one person says something at one time”. Or perhaps with regard to greeting people by kissing or mock kissing on the cheek, for a beginner class: “It can be bad if I touch the part of someone’s face on the side with the same part of my face if I don’t know this person well” (possibly with pointing included); and for a more advanced class: “It can be bad if I touch someone’s cheek with my cheek if I don’t know this person well”.

6.3.2 Grammatical Changes The teachers suggested a number of grammatical changes from what is usually found in NSM explications (Goddard 2018b; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002). The suggestions primarily came from concern over the readability and usability of “raw” NSM texts for ESL students. They

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Table 6.2  Defining vocabulary used in the AusDICT—comprising primes (italics) and molecules a drink

day

a long time a short time above after alcohol all arm as Australia bad be (someone/ something) be (somewhere) because before behind below big body both bring buy can cars cheek

die do drink during eat else eyes face far feel few

child cities class classrooms close (to something) clothes country

like (something is like something else) little live living things look (good) many maybe me moment more move much

some someone something student talk teacher the same themselves there is thing think this

food for some time good government hair hand happen have head hear here house how (to do something) I if inside kill kind

name near night not nothing now one or other part people place quickly

time touch trees true two university very want way wear week when where

say see shoes sick side

why words work write year

know laugh

small smile

you

The molecules on this list are those that are essential for the entries in the AusDICT Sadow (2019)

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Table 6.3   Other Minimal English words which could potentially be used in STE, if needed air around at night at the bottom at the top be born be called be on something bicycle bird blood boat bomb bones book border brain breasts breathe burn buy/pay camel capital cat city clean clock cloth coal corn country cow creature desert doctor dog drought during the day ears earthquake east education egg engine

family father feathers film fingers fire fish flag flat flies flood flour forest glass go/went gold grass ground grow gun hard health heart heavy hold horse hospital hour hungry husband ice in front of in the middle iron island key knife know (someone) learn leather legs lie long make

After Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018)

meat medicines men metal money month moon mosquitoes mother mountain mouth music newspaper north nose nurse oil paper passport petrol phone photo pig pipe plane plastic play poison radio rain read rice river road round rubber salt school science sea second seeds sharp sing

sit skin sky sleep smooth snake snow soft soldier south sport stand stars stone storm sugar sun sweet tail take (someone somewhere) teeth telephone television the earth the law thin thread train tree village vote war water week west wheat wheel wife wind wings wire women wood wool

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also focussed on creating a stronger connection between the theory or grammar learned in classrooms and the less tangible elements of language targeted in the STE compositions. The first of these changes was introducing names and  third-person pronouns (‘he/she/they’ in particular) into STE texts, to help students keep track of which ‘someone’ is being referred to. For example: NSM: ‘when this someone says these things, this someone doesn’t say it because he/she thinks something bad about this someone else’ STE: ‘When John says these things, he doesn’t say it because he thinks something bad about her’ Use of tenses should be flexible, helping students to acquire different tense forms with simple sentence structures. NSM explications can provide model sentences for learning tenses but are usually written in the present tense (or, more rarely, in other simple tenses). However, there is no reason in a classroom context why STE compositions cannot exemplify tenses being learned about elsewhere in the lessons. In STE, teachers  decided that subordinate clauses would be useful (and therefore ought to be permitted) in limited contexts, such as to introduce “indirect” speech or thought, that is, in constructions like ‘John said that …’, ‘Sarah thinks that …’. As subordinate clauses are often less translatable, or complicate translation, they are not used in NSM for reporting speech or thoughts (Goddard 2018a); in the context of classroom use, however, they often provide an accessible way for teachers and students to report speech and thoughts and should not be rejected.

6.3.3 Stylistic Changes With regard to the overall “feel” of the STE compositions, a number of changes were made based on suggestions from the language teachers. The use of names and third-person pronouns has already been mentioned. Another important change was to write the STE compositions in a more conversational register than found in structurally rigid NSM

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explications. Using a more conversational register helps students and teachers to understand the composition without the dangers of them being ­distracted by an unidiomatic style or an unfamiliar presentation. This could be in terms of less formal grammar, but also through using line breaks and indenting as little as possible (more on this below, in Sect. 6.3.5). An aspect of this is also reflected in the need for teachers to be trained in STE so that they feel comfortable with the compositions, and with STE more broadly, so that they can read or speak in STE naturally. Third, using in-line examples in the body of the compositions. In-line examples are examples which occur in the body of the composition, rather than separated as a complete example somewhere else. An example from the AusDICT is in the entry for using sarcasm (in bold): When I feel something bad because I think someone (e.g. Henry) thinks something good about something (e.g. the football score), I can say something to Henry because of this.

These examples can give context to the type and scale of topic being discussed (e.g. work, or society) and thus help students and teachers to contextualise the information in terms of their own lives and where the compositions might be relevant. In terms of grammar, teachers wanted STE compositions to be stylistically as close as possible to Standard English. This meant dispensing with some NSM constructions, which although readily cross-translatable, are difficult to parse in English, such as the ‘can’t not’ combination, for example, ‘she can’t not do something’ in place of ‘she has to/must do something’. Other examples were the reliance on qualifying phrases such as ‘at many times’ and the overuse of logical justifiers, such as ‘because of this’. It was recognised, however, that in some cases, use of these terms was essential to the meaning of the composition. NSM itself allows for the use of portmanteau expressions, whereby two or more primes are expressed by being bundled together in single word. Portmanteaus, such as ‘often’ for ‘at many times’, help the text to sound more natural in language teaching contexts.

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6.3.4 Changes Made to Presentation Finally, the teachers requested a number of superficial changes to the presentation of the compositions so that they would appear as comprehensible as possible to non-expert users of STE.  These presentation changes were related to the above points of ‘conversational tone’ and ‘as close to Standard Australian English as possible’. Some of these changes relate to the way that compositions are displayed in the developing dictionary. At varying stages in the development process, teachers had different perspectives about presentation, but eventually two points emerged as the most important, and most agreed-upon (unanimously). The first, and most visible, change was introducing capital letters and full stops, as is commonly done in Minimal English texts but not in NSM explications and cultural scripts. Adding capital letters at the beginning of sentences and full stops at the end gave teachers a better understanding of the structure of the composition. The teachers also requested this change for the sake of their students who are trying to learn good writing practices. The second presentation change concerned line breaks and indenting. In NSM explications and cultural scripts, line breaks and indenting are used to section off discrete ideas, but it was found that this presentation created difficulties for non-experts and interfered with their reading of the composition. Removing the line breaks and indentations essentially meant presenting a single idea as a paragraph, rather than in a list-like structure. During the consultation process with teachers, several different styles of enumeration and separating of ideas were trialled, but none of the options helped teachers to better understand the compositions. In fact, numbering the key sections in the dictionary entries (as is sometimes done in NSM explications) was considered the least effective option, as teachers often interpreted this to mean that each number was a separate definition.

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6.3.5 Applying STE to Existing Cultural Scripts These improvements were trialled in the focus groups to confirm that they resulted in improved comprehension and usability. An example of this process can be seen in the development of the cultural script for jocular abuse. The original NSM cultural script (below) contains many of the issues mentioned by teachers as ones which impeded their comprehension and ability to relate to the content of the composition. NSM cultural script (Goddard 2017, p. 63): [A] An Australian cultural script for jocular abuse and similar speech practices, for example, rubbishing your mates, giving your friends a hard time [in Australia] many people know that sometimes it can be like this: a. someone says some bad things about someone else (to this someone else) for some time he/she says it like people sometimes say such things when they think something bad about someone else when this someone says these things, he/she doesn’t say it because he/she thinks something bad about this someone else b.  when this someone says it, he/she thinks like this: “this is someone like me I feel something good towards this someone this someone can know this because of this, I can say bad things like this about this someone” c. when people hear something like this, they can feel something good because of it like people often feel when they laugh [m]

In its modified STE form, the equivalent composition was simpler, more streamlined, and easier for the teachers to grasp the most important segments quickly. Standard Translatable English composition: [A1] The attitudes behind “jocular abuse” in Australia. People (Australian English speakers) know that at some times it is like this in Australia: Someone (e.g. John) says some bad things about someone else (e.g. Mark) to this person (i.e. to Mark).

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John says these bad things like people say things when they think something bad about the other person. When John says these things, he doesn’t say it because he thinks something bad about Mark. John thinks like this at this time: “Mark is someone like me, I feel something good towards him, he knows this. Because of this, I can say bad things like this about Mark”. When people (Mark and others) hear things like this, they can feel good (like people feel when they want to laugh).

A second example illustrates the same effect, using a much shorter, interactional level, cultural script. NSM cultural script (Wierzbicka 2006, p. 94): [B] Softening disagreement with partial agreement [People think like this:] when I want to say to another person about something: “I don’t think about it like you” it is good to say something like this at the same time: “I think about some of these things like you, I don’t think about all these things like you”

Standard Translatable English composition: [B1]  An interactional strategy for softening disagreement with partial agreement. Many people in Australia think like this: When I want to say to another person about something: “I don’t think about it like you”. It is good to say something like this at the same time: “I think about some of these things like you, I don’t think about all these things like you”.

Some concerns from teachers are still not addressed by the kind of changes discussed above. In particular, a common discussion point was that the STE compositions were too “emotionally neutral” and did not reflect the depth of feeling implied within the terms. I have intentionally

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not addressed this concern, as the neutrality of expression is one of the benefits of using NSM principles in teaching language and culture. By using neutral language in this way, students can have a ‘level playing field’ to examine their home values and assumptions in contrast to the values and assumptions of the new culture (Welsh 2011), thereby eliminating or mitigating some of the risks of judgement that come with discussing such complex issues.

6.4 Using STE in Classroom Practice In classroom contexts, STE can be used in a number of different ways.

6.4.1 In Classroom Activities STE compositions can be used as a focal point or initiation point for classroom discussions. This requires students to be introduced to some of the fundamentals of STE: in particular, that these compositions represent a breakdown of the hidden values and attitudes that go into native speakers’ ways of thinking, and that they should be translatable into the first languages of the class, so the students can understand them clearly. Using the ideas in the composition, the class could then discuss individual components, the overall concept, compare to similar concepts in their first languages, compare to related terms or synonyms, discuss what else might be related, and so on. This leaves the composition as the focus of the class, or the class segment, and sparks conversation and critical reflection on the ideas within it. Even without a general introduction to STE, students could use the compositions as templates for writing interactions or phrases to express certain ideas. For example, students could use the compositions as inspiration for writing short sketches or role-plays. This would allow STE to be integrated into a larger curriculum, where within any topic (such as ‘going to the shops’) students could learn about norms of interaction in a number of ways.

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6.4.2 Developing Skills in Students Turning the focus from STE as a way of transmitting or demonstrating knowledge to using STE to develop skills—a class learning about interactional norms could use the principles of STE to analyse and draw their own conclusions about interactions outside of the classroom, in everyday situations. For this, students would need the introduction mentioned above. They could then collect examples of real interactions (their own conversations, conversations at home, in public, with friends, and so on) and use them as data to analyse and develop their own STE compositions. By focussing on different types of conversations, students would be able to compare different speech groups, see variation amongst speakers of a single language, and so on. Effectively, students could complete their own ethnographic research, expressed in terms of STE (Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan 2006; Mrowa-Hopkins 2013).

6.4.3 As Teacher-Talk Using STE challenges a person to “think more clearly” (as one teacher wrote after the workshops) and more carefully about what they really want to express, and about why, rather than just relying on the culture-­ specific concepts of everyday language. Metacognition is an important skill for language speakers to acquire (Byram 1997; Sercu 2004), especially for those who are to teach. This type of cognition does not just apply to native-speaker teachers, but to all teachers. While the benefit of learning about implicit concepts in your first language cannot be understated, learning about the deconstruction of ideas and disentangling concepts has benefits for students regardless of the teacher’s first language. In fact, metacognition is likely to be easier for non-native teachers to achieve, as they have the experience of learning and immersing themselves in a second language environment. Ideally, teachers become familiar enough with the concepts and principles of STE that they are able to improvise compositions, or partial compositions, as needed to explain concepts to students. Instead of needing to know or memorise full compositions, through familiarity with

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STE and the compositions already in the AusDICT, they will be able to select the parts of the concept which a student is missing. To do this, they need to be comfortable thinking in the way that STE encourages—that is, deconstructing complex concepts into smaller components and articulating them in simple words. In other words, teachers will develop a fluency in STE, which they can use in everyday teaching contexts. Most teaching and explanations in a classroom are done by speaking and not through writing; a teacher fluent in STE could use STE orally in their explanations and not only as written texts. Teachers already know how to explain using simpler ideas; STE merely refines their knowledge and grounds the approach in linguistic research. But beyond  just providing a vocabulary for explaining ideas simply, STE shows what the different ‘steps’ are down a simplification staircase. By using STE, in the usual question-and-answer discussions with students, teachers know exactly how they can simplify their explanations to make sure that students understand. In a complete lesson, fluency in STE also empowers teachers to work through compositions line-by-line explaining them verbally and eliminating confusion. Importantly, using STE as a tool for verbal instruction fits seamlessly into established classroom practice and as such any teacher can wield it, no matter their preferred teaching style.

6.4.4 As a Dictionary Resource Dictionaries are frequently used in language teaching contexts, but for the teaching of culture, pragmatics, and values, resources are few and far between. To some extent, this is because of the difficulty of expressing complex concepts in a way which is both intelligible and at the same time nuanced enough that the ideas do not come across as fixed ‘rules’ for how people should think, interact, and behave. However, the principles and findings of many decades of study in the NSM approach, now adapted into Minimal English and STE, provide a framework for such resources to be created, perhaps for the first time. Using STE as a defining vocabulary, it is possible to create a dictionary of cultural values using clear, explicit, and cross-translatable language.

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Such a dictionary can be used both by teachers, to support their own knowledge and explanations, and also as a classroom resource for students.

6.5 A Teacher’s Resource Once STE had been developed, I used it to create the Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers (AusDICT—available at ausdict.translatableenglish.com). In its first version, this takes the form of an ebook containing 333 entries, divided into 16 modules. The modules relate to conceptual groupings, such as those used in onomasiological dictionaries, but also align with the kinds of topics taught in classrooms (hence the term ‘module’).

6.5.1 The Modules The topics of the modules are varied and range from broad, language-­ wide concepts, like ‘key values and attitudes’, through to situation-­specific topics such as ‘work’ and ‘education’, and communication-specific topics such as ‘expressing opinions’. Figure 6.1 shows the table of contents of the AusDICT, at the highest level (the Short Contents, on the left), illustrating the titles of the modules (after ‘How to use this Dictionary’). The modules contain entries which range from broad, high-level cultural scripts, through interaction-level scripts and specific phrases, down to semantic explications of cultural keywords. The right-hand side of Fig. 6.1 expands on the first two module headings of the short contents to show the breakdown of sections within the modules and some of the different levels of specificity. Because of the interrelated nature of cultural scripts, by necessity some scripts could potentially be positioned in several modules. The final placement of an entry in a module depended on where a teacher would be likely to need it in response to a question from their students, and also on how well it fitted with the other entries in that module. Decisions on this aspect were informed by the initial survey of teachers and how they categorised their suggestions for entries. Remaining challenges were

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Fig. 6.1  Screenshot of the table of contents from the AusDICT ebook, showing the titles of the different modules on the left in ‘Short Contents’. The ‘Section Contents’ on the right shows the expansion of the modules to their sub-headings. The full ‘Section Contents’ are four pages

addressed using the cross-references on each entry (discussed in Sect. 6.5.2, and visible in Fig. 6.2).

6.5.2 The Entries The main body of the entries was written in STE, but surrounding those compositions were a number of other elements, many of them commonly found in other dictionaries, such as headwords, parts-of-speech information, examples of use, and, on occasion, notes.

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“she’ll be right” Phrase: someone says these words

I say “Nothing bad can happen now.” I say this because a short time ago it was like this: Something happened. Other people can think like this: Something bad can happen now. I don’t think like this. I want other people to know nothing bad will happen now. Because of this, I say these words.

While ‘she’ll be right’ can seem like a cliche to some, it is still in frequent use by many, and also in the media. It is a phrase which is generally refelctive of the related values, such as ‘tough attitude’.

“’ Do you think it will rain this weekend? I think we will have to cancel our walk.’ ‘She’ll be right. We will just go for coffee instead if it does.’”

“’ Do you need a hand?’ ‘ She’ll be right. Just got to get to the next bus stop. Thanks though.’”

“Now, I admit that I’ve been guilty of the ”she’ll be right” attitude, too. I recently had some chest pain and acted like it was no big deal.” (Feren, 2016)

“Galaxy poll finds Australians have a ”she’ll be right” attitude to life. Easy-going Aussies value time over money - and most see their future as bright, a Galaxy poll for News Limited reveals.” (Bita, 2013)

no worries! easy going

doing something when something bad happens

tough attitude

laid back

Fig. 6.2  Screenshot of the entry for ‘she’ll be right’ from the AusDICT ebook, illustrating the parts-of-speech, comments, examples, and cross-referencing applied to each entry

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Cross-referencing was also an important inclusion. As mentioned, the modules were not exclusive in design and so some entries could reasonably be positioned in more than one module. Extensive cross-referencing on each entry helped resolve this potential problem. Cross-referencing was done not only for positive, similarity-based, relationships, but also for negative relationships, such as when two scripts opposed or contradicted one another. This cross-referencing can be seen at the bottom of Fig. 6.2. In the AusDICT, phrases (‘no worries’) are in yellow, values and attitudes (‘doing something when something bad happens’, ‘tough attitude’) are in blue, and other related terms (‘easy going’, ‘laid back’) are in purple.

6.5.3 The Indexes From the beginning, teachers insisted that the dictionary resource be as useable as possible for their classroom practice. This meant that the information had to be not only relatable to their current teaching, but discoverable as quickly as possible. In some ways, this proved to be a challenge—in no small part because the titles of the cultural scripts did not necessarily fit with the expected content of a dictionary. How should one place a cultural script like ‘doing something when something bad happens’ alongside the lexical entry for ‘whingeing’? I placed similar entries near one another and cross-referenced them to each other, but that still left the problem: how would a teacher find either, considering that the entries were not in alphabetical order? This problem I solved using indexes and tables of contents in the ebook, as well as the in-built Search function of the ebook reader. On the web version, there are also index pages, as well as a custom search function and module pages. The indexes present all available entries in two ways. The first is by alphabetical order. While this may be difficult for a first-time user, for a seasoned user who already knows the title of the entry they are looking for, it is the most direct lookup strategy. The second type of index is the ‘part of speech’ index, using this term in a loose or expanded sense. In the AusDICT, in addition to the usual parts of speech that one would expect in a dictionary, I categorised entries as

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‘attitudes’, ‘norms’, ‘values’, and ‘phrases’, also using STE to provide a more specific sub-categorisation of what was included under each (example on an entry in Fig.  6.2). For example: ‘attitude: some people can think like this’, ‘attitude: some people can think like this about some other people’, ‘adjective: a kind of something’, or ‘adjective: a kind of person’. Under each of the ‘part of speech’ headings, the entry titles are organised alphabetically.

6.5.4 Worksheets Teachers wanted the AusDICT entries, and STE in general, to be relatable to their use in classrooms, in the most literal and practical sense. To that end, I developed a number of example worksheets and lesson plans, using the dictionary entries as starting points for class activities and using STE as the foundation for the description of pragmatics and culture. The worksheets were based on the 6R approach to teaching culture (Martínez-­ Flor and Usó-Juan 2006), where students are encouraged to make their own observations and to think and reflect on what they are learning, rather than just accepting what they are told as fact. The STE entries in AusDICT, particularly those for interactional norms, mesh well with this approach because they are easily adapted to observational tasks (notice examples of where these scripts play out), reflection (how are they different to your scripts), explicit instruction (this is what the script is), reasoning (why do people use this script), practising (how could you respond using this script), and revising (what scripts could be at play here).

6.6 Conclusion The teacher who clearly stated near the start of the workshop “But I don’t want to teach my students minimal English!” sent me an email a week after the workshop was over. In it she said:

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having registered for this workshop as a “doubting Thomasina”, I subsequently came to the conclusion that I would like to try this approach with my students; I like the idea of disciplining myself to ‘think more clearly’.

It is clear from this research with and for L2 English teachers in Australia that Minimal English can be adapted for specific scenarios if we pay close attention to what those specific people want. The main point is that users (in this case study, language teachers) need support that goes far beyond simply the Minimal English framework as such. They need to be taught how to analyse and unpack ideas using Minimal English and how to use reductive paraphrase as a  tool for conceptual analysis and expression. In the case of these language teachers, they specifically asked for teaching resources, professional development resources, communities of practice, and online and face-to-face opportunities. My experience indicates that language teachers are enthusiastic in principle, yet the implementation cannot be instant. Standard Translatable English (STE) is a tool developed with and for teachers, with the aim of meeting some of their basic needs for a pedagogical tool. It is tailored for use in classrooms and is adaptable depending on the topics, the classes, and the teachers using it. In one usage, it can be very structured (as it is used in the AusDICT), which works best if a contained example of a definition is needed, such as for a classroom exercise. At the same time, it is also a general approach for teachers to use when explaining concepts, rather than a strict set of compositions that should be memorised. While Minimal English has elsewhere been used to tell stories or other narratives (e.g. Wierzbicka 2018), STE is used in a way that is closer to the applications of NSM; that is, it is used to explain discrete cultural values and the meanings of cultural keywords. In the written form, these explanations will usually be in compositions which resemble explications and cultural scripts in their format rather than in descriptive narratives which use a more standard paragraph format and punctuation.

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Welsh, Alistair. 2011. Avoiding Stereotyping and Enhancing Intercultural Understanding. TEFLIN Journal 22 (1): 34–44. http://www.journal.teflin. org/index.php/journal/article/view/17/13. Weninger, Csilla, and Tamas Kiss. 2013. Culture in EFL Textbooks: A Semiotic Approach. TESOL Quarterly 47 (4): 694–716. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2003. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. 2nd ed. Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110220964. ———. 2006. Anglo Scripts against ‘Putting Pressure’ on Other People and Their Linguistic Manifestations. In Ethnopragmatics, ed. Cliff Goddard, 31–64. De Gruyter. ———. 2018. Talking About the Universe in Minimal English: Teaching Science through Words That Children Can Understand. In Minimal English for a Global World, ed. Cliff Goddard, 169–200. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Wong, Jock O. 2020. Semantic Challenges in Understanding Global English: Hypothesis, Theory and Proof in Singapore English. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication Vol. III: Minimal English (and Beyond), ed. Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan, 117–142. Singapore: Springer.

7 From Cultural to Pedagogical Scripts: Speaking Out in English, French, and Russian Bert Peeters

7.1 Introduction Foreign language teachers typically rely on textbooks and resources that pay a lot of attention to Culture, with an upper case initial, that is, customs and traditions, gastronomy, literature, art, festivals, architecture, and the like. Part of their motivation in doing so is to combat what is known as “culture shock”, that is, the disorientation and confusion felt by those who settle for some time in a different country, where a different language is spoken, and life in general can be very different from what it is “back home”. But culture shock is about much more than Culture with an upper case initial. It is also about culture with a lower case initial, that is ways of communicating, expectations placed on speech partners, conversational rules, etc. So-called communicative approaches draw attention to particular ways of speaking: how to enquire about other people’s

B. Peeters (*) Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia Universiteit Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_7

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wellbeing, how to make requests, how to express thanks, how to apologise, how to be sincere, how to take a stand. Unfortunately, they usually do not go far enough: they do not look beyond these particular ways of speaking and are generally oblivious to the cultural rules or values underlying them. These cultural norms and values need to be taught as well. They must be conveyed in a culturally sensitive way, one that is not ethnocentric and does not impose the learner’s own perspective onto that of the foreign culture. This is where Minimal English—and Minimal Languages in general—can make a huge difference. As understood by the contributors to this and other similarly inspired volumes (Goddard 2018a; Sadow et al. 2020), Minimal English is a by-­ product of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, briefly introduced in the opening chapter of this book (for a more detailed introduction, see Sadow and Mullan 2020). It is a new development that “aims to be more accessible for researchers across a variety of disciplines as well as for non-researchers in the broader community” (Sadow 2020: 3). Minimal English is NSM taken “‘out of the lab’, so to speak, and into the wider world” (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018: 6). Other Minimal Languages are currently being trialled, on the assumption that English is not always the most appropriate lingua franca for the dissemination of ideas across linguistic and cultural boundaries. This is particularly true in the context of foreign language teaching, where the use of NSM-inspired language written in the foreign language provides additional learning stimuli. In recent times, significant progress has been made in our understanding of what appears to be the best way to articulate the unfamiliar cultural knowledge (including cultural norms and values) that language learners should ideally internalise if they wish to successfully interact with native speakers of their new language. Instead of relying on ‘cultural scripts’, “a technique for articulating cultural norms, values, and practices using the NSM metalanguage of semantic primes as the medium of description” and “one of the main modes of description of ‘ethnopragmatics’ […], i.e., the quest to understand speech practices from the perspective of cultural insiders” (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2007: 111), several authors have pointed to the advantages of re-writing and “re-­ packaging” cultural scripts in the form of so-called pedagogical scripts. The latter add an outsider perspective and, importantly, use Minimal

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Language as a more user-friendly alternative to NSM. The greater user-­ friendliness of Minimal Language is related to the fact that—unlike NSM, which is a heavily constrained tool for linguistic description that exists in multiple fully isomorphic versions reflecting the common semantic core of all natural languages—it is not a tool, but a way of thinking in and about the language(s) we use when we actually use them. Minimal Languages adapt in subtle ways to the use that is made of them in practical areas of research: whereas, strictly speaking, there is only one NSM for every natural language, there may be more than one Minimal Language. Government officials and health workers, for instance, have different needs; these are reflected in the ways Minimal Languages are moulded for use in contexts that are relevant to them. The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows. Section 7.2 sets the scene for a widespread cultural script (the unhindered expression of opinions) and explains in what sense it reflects the insider perspective of native speakers of three mainstream languages (English, French, and Russian). Section 7.3 provides more information on what cultural scripts intend to achieve and shows how, for pedagogical reasons, they gain from being modified so they can be more easily blended into foreign language education materials without standing out because of arguably excessive formal idiosyncrasies. The difference between the two types of scripts will be illustrated with reference to the Western cultural premise verbalised in the previous section. Sections 7.4 and 7.5 link that cultural premise with Anglo epistemic reserve and openness and with the French propensity to take a stand. Section 7.6 shows the dangers of Anglocentric jargon by delving into what is often referred to as ‘Russian expressiveness’. The use of a similar root (expression of opinions versus expressiveness) may blind us to cultural differences that should not go unheeded by anyone who wishes to interact with native speakers of Russian in a setting where Russian culture prevails. It goes without saying that, in a setting where an Anglo culture prevails, Russians will have to adapt to the appropriate Anglo cultural rules. In Sect. 7.7, Russian expressiveness will be linked up with the Russian cultural value embedded in the word iskrennost’ (roughly ‘sincerity’). Section 7.8 offers a brief conclusion. NSM and Minimal English will be used throughout the chapter; Sects. 7.3 and 7.5 also contain scripts in Minimal French.

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7.2 T  he Unhindered Expression of Personal Opinions On 1 June 2006, the French current affairs weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, better known as Le Nouvel Obs and recently officially renamed L’Obs, published an article titled “Comment peut-on être français?”, that is ‘How to be French?’ In it, François Armanet and Gilles Anquetil asked a number of foreigners how they perceived their French counterparts. The respondents included British novelist William Boyd, who divides his time between England and France, owning properties in both countries. Boyd made the following statement, which contains an important clue (printed in bold) on the unhindered expression of opinions among the French: Je me contenterai d’une généralisation hâtive: j’ai l’impression que les Français méditent, savourent, analysent et décortiquent leur vécu plus qu’aucun autre peuple de ma connaissance. Qu’il s’agisse d’une tasse de café, d’une histoire d’amour, de l’endroit idéal pour planter un arbre, de la mondialisation, du vin, des étrangers, du temps qu’il fait, de l’adolescence ou d’un scandale politique, tout le monde, tout le monde, je crois, a une opinion, et qui plus est une opinion argumentée (qu’elle soit vraie ou fausse). Nulle part ailleurs je n’ai rencontré cela. I will limit myself to a quick generalisation: I have the impression that the French meditate, savour, analyse and dissect their real-life experience more than any other people that I know of. Whether it is about a cup of coffee, a love story, the ideal spot to plant a tree, globalisation, wine, foreigners, the weather, youth or a political scandal, everyone, everyone, I think, has an opinion, what’s more, a supported opinion (either right or wrong). Nowhere else have I seen anything like it.

Very few French will find Boyd’s ‘quick generalisation’ controversial. It shows they are able to read between the lines. Indeed, as it is used by Boyd, the French phrase avoir une opinion ‘to have an opinion’ is not about having opinions, but about sharing them. According to the Slovenian-Swiss actor and humourist Gaspard Proust (quoted in the La

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Montagne newspaper of 28 November 2013), we all have opinions, but that does not mean we are expected to make others aware of them— except if you are French: Des opinions, tout le monde en a, c’est très ordinaire, voilà. Je ne vois pas pourquoi je parlerais des miennes!? Ce n’est pas plus intéressant que de savoir qui est ma copine ou si j’ai un chien. Mais ça, c’est bien français! Il faudrait forcément avoir des opinions sur tout et les donner à tout le monde. Opinions, everybody has opinions, there’s nothing unusual about it, there you go. I don’t see why I would talk about mine!? It’s not any more interesting than knowing who my girlfriend is or whether I have got a dog. But that is very French! You are expected to have opinions about anything and to share them with everyone.

In other words, what leads Boyd (and others; cf. Peeters 2017: 48–49) to say that in France everyone has an opinion, is the impression that opinions are shared, not kept private. This is not an intrinsically French habit; it exists in other languacultures as well. What makes the French languaculture stand out is not that opinions are freely shared, but how often they are, and how well developed they can be. I will have more to say about this later. The (broadly speaking) unhindered expression of personal opinions is a widely adopted cultural premise and a fundamental right enshrined in numerous constitutions and other legal documents. It can be linguistically deconstructed (or explicated) by means of the cultural script in [A]. [A] A cultural script connected with the unhindered expression of opinions if someone wants to say about something: “when I think about it, I think like this: […]”, it is good if this someone can say it, it is bad if this someone can’t say it.

Apart from two fairly inconsequential corrections,1 [A] is identical to a cultural script that, according to Goddard and Ye (2015: 77), articulates one important aspect of a key theme in Anglo English ethnopragmatics. It spells out the cultural premise known as freedom of expression, unlike a

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second cultural script that deals with “epistemic reserve and openness” (ibid.) and will be the main topic of Sect. 7.4. There is an important difference between the two scripts: whereas the first extends well beyond the boundaries of the Anglo English languaculture, the second does not. In addition, the term freedom of expression, used by Goddard and Ye with direct reference to their version of script [A], is perhaps not entirely felicitous; it illustrates one of the dangers of using Anglocentric terminology as it tends to focus on ideological stance-taking alone, rather than on the unhindered expression of personal opinions in a variety of settings, which is what the two authors had in mind. If anything, the phrase freedom of speech has a more political ring to it; nonetheless, the two expressions are often synonymous and used interchangeably. No such ideologically charged words are used in cultural scripts (except possibly in the captions that introduce them). The use of simple words avoids unwanted connotations and guarantees intelligibility to all cultural insiders. If these simple words are chosen carefully, cultural outsiders stand to gain as well. Indeed, cultural scripts—which became a part of the NSM toolkit in the 1990s (see, e.g. in chronological order, Wierzbicka 1994a, b, 2002; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004, 2007; Goddard 2004, 2009; Wierzbicka 2010a, b, 2015)—are written in terms that are “clear, precise, and accessible to cultural insiders and to cultural outsiders alike” (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004: 153), making them easier to test and refine than generalisations relying on technical jargon. As a general rule, the “clear, precise and accessible” terms used in cultural scripts are those of a metalanguage (NSM) painstakingly elaborated over the last few decades by the most formidable tandem in contemporary linguistics, Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard, with constant reference to a wide range of typologically and genetically unrelated languages studied by their associates in an attempt to preserve cross-translatability. In a nutshell, NSM is a powerful descriptive tool consisting primarily of 65 semantically simple and at the same time universal building blocks known as semantic primes, as well as an equally universal grammar that ties the primes together, either in cultural scripts or in semantic explications. Importantly, both are hypothetical in nature; there is always room for improvement.

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7.3 From Cultural to Pedagogical Scripts The difference between a cultural script and a semantic explication resides in what is being deconstructed. Semantic explications relate to words, phrases, syntactic structures, and other meaningful linguistic material. Cultural scripts are hypotheses about norms, values, beliefs, and ways of behaving and speaking that are widely shared, and thus culturally salient. They describe what is generally perceived as good and bad in the languaculture they relate to, to fitting and less fitting ways of speaking, thinking, feeling, or acting. They are intuitions relating to culturally specific values and norms that are usually tacitly adopted but could also be actively appropriated. The total set of cultural scripts that can be linked to a languaculture provides a kind of common ground consisting of either highly general or more specific beliefs that members of that languaculture are likely to adopt. Those whose ways of speaking, thinking, feeling or acting differ face the risk of standing out, of being noticed because they do not comply. As mentioned before, some cultural scripts are not confined to a single culture or language. The cultural script in [A] is a good example. A French version of it is included in Peeters (2017: 56), where it is described as a “cultural script explicating the freedom of speech in the French languaculture” (un scénario culturel explicitant la liberté de parole dans la langue-­ culture française). It runs as follows: [B] A cultural script connected with the unhindered expression of opinions in the French languaculture si quelqu’un veut dire de quelque chose: “quand j’y pense, je pense comme ça: […]”, c’est bien si ce quelqu’un peut le dire, c’est mal si ce quelqu’un ne peut pas le dire.

The caption used here is not the same as the original one, which was changed to avoid the reference to freedom of speech/liberté de parole, a term that, like its synonym liberté d’expression, is as ideologically tainted as its English counterpart freedom of expression. Remarkably, freedom and liberté are not semantically equivalent (for discussion, see Wierzbicka 1997: Chap. 3). Nevertheless, the idea defended by advocates of freedom of

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expression (or speech), liberté d’expression (or de parole), and, in more general terms, the unhindered expression of opinions is arguably the same. It can be expressed in any language, provided we restrict ourselves to (semantically) simple, directly cross-translatable words combined in accordance with (syntactically) simple, directly cross-translatable grammatical rules. This is what NSM practitioners have been doing for decades. Goddard and Ye (2015: 77) intended [A] to be an Anglo cultural script; likewise, Peeters (2017: 56) intended [B] to be a French cultural script. Cultural scripts are hierarchical in nature; they are not all equally important. [A] and [B] both reflect a relatively high-ranking cultural value that is defining of specific languacultures and they can therefore be described as high-level scripts.2 At the same time, though, [A] and [B] are semantically identical but linguistically different versions of a unique areal script (Ameka and Breedveld 2004), that is, a script that applies across linguistic and cultural boundaries and is gradually gaining in importance. How do we make the difference clear? The language used is not by itself a sufficient indicator, since [A] could be either an Anglo script or the English rendering of an areal script. Similarly, [B] could be either a French script or the French rendering of that same areal script. Clearly, we need to add more information when referring to specific languacultures. Some may want to argue that it does not matter: a different caption may be all that is required. Different captions are not enough, though. If we want to make cultural scripts in general useful for learners who are expected to familiarise themselves with a new languaculture, adjustments are unavoidable. This is where the switch occurs from NSM to Minimal Language. The idea is to make cultural scripts more user-friendly, more pedagogical—hence the term pedagogical script, first used by Goddard (2010). The pedagogical interest of cultural scripts had been recognised earlier (see, e.g. Goddard 2004; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2007; Karimnia and Afghari 2010); however, the idea did not really bear fruit until it was realised that some ‘tinkering’ would be required. In line with suggestions made by Goddard (2010: 114–115):

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First, one can add an explicit reference to the L2 country, that is, the introductory framing component can become: “in America/Britain/Australia”. Though seemingly a small change, this represents a big shift in the nature of the script: from an insider perspective to an “external” perspective. Second, to make it easier for learners to focus on the pedagogical message, the mode of the script can [be] switched to directive, with a concomitant change in pronouns from “I” to “you”. Third, adjustments can be made to simplify and naturalise the metalanguage, for example, using “he/she” instead of “this someone”. Fourthly, one can add contrastive information to draw attention to differences from the home culture. (Ibid.: 114–115)

Goddard’s list of adaptations is neither binding nor exhaustive. The first and the third show that Minimal English as we know it today was already on the cards, even though the term had not been introduced yet. Names of countries are obviously not part of the natural semantic metalanguage on which Minimal English is based, nor are pronouns such as he and she. On the other hand, among the manipulations listed by Goddard, some may be more indispensable—or, a contrario, more difficult to implement than others, whereas some others, which are not included in the list, may turn out to be desirable. The fourth of Goddard’s adaptations is potentially the most controversial since, especially in multicultural classrooms, “adapting the scripts to one particular culture would potentially exclude other students” (Sadow 2018: 99). Implementing adaptions one to three to the cultural scripts in [A] and [B] results in the pedagogical scripts [C] and [D] below. They are based on an earlier attempt made in Peeters (2017: 56–57). [C] A pedagogical script connected with the unhindered expression of opinions in Britain, if you want to say about something: “when I think about it, I think like this: […]”, it is good if you can say it, it is bad if you can’t. [D] A pedagogical script connected with the unhindered expression of opinions en France, si on veut dire de quelque chose: “quand j’y pense, je pense comme ça: […]”, c’est bien qu’on puisse le dire, c’est mal qu’on ne puisse pas le dire.

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Cultural scripts have been perceived by some as hard to read: as being “odd and unnatural” (Fernández 2016: 200). Pedagogical scripts address that oddness and unnaturalness head-on. In addition, [C] could also be expressed in French, for the benefit of French learners of English. Likewise, [D] could be rendered in English, for the benefit of English learners of French. The choice of which Minimal Language to use depends on prior knowledge. However, in most cases it will be Minimal French for those who need to learn French, Minimal English for those who need to learn English, etc., since most of the words that are being used are simple words that are known to the learner.

7.4 Anglo Epistemic Reserve and Openness The fact that two languacultures share one or more high-level cultural scripts is by no means a guarantee that lower-level scripts are shared as well. The unhindered expression of personal opinions is highly valued in the Anglo English and French languacultures, but it does not translate into identical or even comparable cultural scripts for day-to-day interaction. One such cultural script counsels ‘epistemic reserve and openness’; it is part of a set of lower-level scripts that, together with (high-level) script [A], defines the Anglo English ‘opinion complex’, which is one of three important themes in Anglo English ethnopragmatics, together with the ‘personal autonomy complex’ and the ‘social consensus complex’ (Goddard and Ye 2015: 76–80). Another lower-level script (one of several) that is part of the ‘opinion complex’ seeks to capture the Anglo English trend to understate personal opinions (Farese 2020). The historical roots of the ‘opinion complex’ go back to the British Enlightenment, and especially to John Locke, whose published work has in several ways moulded the speech ways of contemporary Anglo English culture. Goddard & Ye (2015: 76) provide a brief synopsis of Wierzbicka’s extensive research in this area: One key aspect is the emphasis on distinguishing between ‘expressing opinions’, on the one hand, and ‘stating facts’, on the other. Both the key categories, that is, opinion and fact, are cultural key words of English. Opinions

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are personal (another Anglo key word) and (ideally, at least) grounded in rational thinking. The cultural orthodoxy insists that ‘everyone has a right to express their opinion’ but that opinions should not be held out as knowledge or as fact. One shouldn’t try to ‘impose’ one’s opinions on others (ram them down other people’s throats, as the saying goes). One should acknowledge and leave room for other people’s differing opinions.

Linguistic evidence for the ‘opinion complex’ comes from several quarters, including: (1) the common use of the conversational formula in my opinion; (2) the elevated frequency of the parenthetical formula I think (without the complementiser that); and (3) the widespread reliance and high degree of grammatical elaboration of tag questions (ibid.: 76–77). All of the above bear testimony to the following cultural script (ibid.: 77): [E] An Anglo cultural script connected with epistemic reserve and openness when someone says about something “I think about it like this”, it is good if this someone says at the same time: “I don’t say: I know this I know that someone else can think not like this”.

The terms epistemic reserve and openness, used in the caption, are unhelpful to the language learner, who is likely not to know what they mean. The cultural script itself is a huge step in the right direction, but even more can be done by changing the cultural script into a pedagogical one, as follows: [F] An Anglo pedagogical script connected with epistemic reserve and openness in Britain, when you say about something: “I think about it like this”, it is good to say at the same time: “I don’t say that I know this I know that someone else can think can think differently (from me).”

The last line in [E], ‘someone else can think not like this’, sounds stilted. The last line in [F] addresses that stiltedness. Other amendments absent from Goddard’s list include: (1) the use of a personal or a generic you instead of an indefinite someone; (2) the use of it is good to + infinitive, instead of it is good if + finite clause; and (3) the use of a subordinate

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clause rather than direct discourse in the penultimate line. The impact on semantic transparency is close to negligible.

7.5 The French Propensity to Take a Stand The high-level cultural script [A], connected with the unhindered expression of personal opinions, is as valid in France as it is in the United Kingdom. In contrast, from a French perspective, epistemic reserve and openness—as defined in the cultural and pedagogical scripts in Sect. 7.4—are less important than the propensity to take a stand, no matter what. There is extensive linguistic evidence for this propensity. Apart from numerous adverbial phrases introducing personal opinions (à mon avis, à mon idée, à mon sens, à mon sentiment, à mes yeux, à mon gout, selon moi, d’après moi, pour moi…), there are several verbal framing constructions (je trouve que, je crois que, je pense que, j’estime que, je considère que, je juge que, m’est avis que, j’ai une théorie, j’ai ma petite idée…), as well as common sequences (cela n’engage que moi, c’est juste mon avis perso, c’est vrai que P mais bon, c’est mon opinion et je la partage, à chacun son opinion, chacun a sa petite idée, autant de têtes autant d’avis, du choc des idées jaillit la lumière…) and idioms (défendre son bifteck, avoir son mot à dire, inspecter les travaux finis, refaire le monde, donner une réponse de Normand, rester au milieu du gué…). Native speakers of English are often struck by the eagerness the French display when they articulate and defend their views. As shown in Sect. 7.2, the general perception they have is that, in France, “everybody has an opinion” (tout le monde a une opinion). Not only do the French always have an opinion; the reality is they typically “have an opinion on everything” (ils ont une opinion sur tout). Agnès Poirier, a London-based French journalist, puts it this way: “In France, everybody likes to think they are a specialist on all subjects” (Poirier 2007: 142; for more like-minded quotes, see Peeters 2017: 50–51). What is even more striking, from an outsider point of view, is that prior knowledge does not seem to be an important factor. One quote (Kodmani 2001: 28) will suffice (for additional accounts, see Peeters 2017: 51–53).

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On peut évoquer tout sujet lié à l’économie, aux crises internationales, aux religions, aux catastrophes naturelles, à la science ou la médecine; rares sont ceux qui diront qu’ils ne connaissent pas ou qu’ils ne savent pas. Ils ont tout réfléchi et peuvent exprimer leur vue sur nombre de problèmes, y compris et surtout quand les données leur manquent. It does not matter which topic linked to the economy, international crises, religion, natural catastrophes, science or medicine is broached; rare are those who will admit lack of familiarity or claim they do not know. They have thought about it all and are able to put their views on numerous issues, including and above all when they have no basis to go on.

Indifference is frowned upon. Having an opinion and sharing it is a must (Il faut avoir une opinion). The cultural script in [G] (Peeters 2017: 57) summarises the French propensity to take a stand; it is based on extensive data from a variety of sources. A French version is provided in [H]. [G] A French cultural script connected with the propensity to take a stand it is good if people say about many things: “when I think about it, I think like this: […]” they can say it when they know many things about these things they can say it when they know few things about these things they can say it before they know anything about these things. [H] A French cultural script connected with the propensity to take a stand (French version) c’est bien si les gens disent de beaucoup de choses: “quand j’y pense, je pense comme ça: […]” ils peuvent le dire quand ils savent beaucoup de choses de ces choses ils peuvent le dire quand ils savent peu de choses de ces choses ils peuvent le dire avant qu’ils ne sachent quelque chose de ces choses.

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Corresponding pedagogical scripts (based on Peeters 2017: 57) are given in [I] and [J]: [I] A French pedagogical script connected with the propensity to take a stand in France, it is good to say about many things: “when I think about it, I think like this: […]” you can say it when you know a lot about these things you can say it when you know little about these things you can say it before you know anything about these things. [J]  A French pedagogical script connected with the propensity to take a stand (French version) en France, c’est bien de dire de beaucoup de choses: “quand j’y pense, je pense comme ça: […]” on peut le dire quand on sait beaucoup de choses de ces choses on peut le dire quand on sait peu de choses de ces choses on peut le dire avant qu’on sache quelque chose de ces choses.

In [I], as in [F], it is good to + infinitive replaces it is good if + finite clause. You has been used to replace people. Many things and few things have been rephrased as a lot and little, respectively. In [J], on the other hand, c’est bien de dire is preferred over c’est bien si les gens disent; the very common French generic pronoun on is used in the last three components. In both cases, the impact of the various amendments on overall semantic transparency is once again close to negligible.

7.6 Expressiveness The unhindered expression of personal opinions ranks very high in the hierarchy of Anglo English and French cultural values, as do their ideological counterparts freedom of expression/speech and liberté d’expression/de parole. The corresponding Russian term, свобода выражения [svoboda vyrazheniya], is commonly used; it literally means ‘freedom of expression’, but probably ranks less high than another Russian cultural premise, known as выразительность [vyrazitel’nost’], which is often translated in

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English as ‘(Russian) expressiveness’. Expression (of personal opinions) and expressiveness do not refer to the same thing: compared to the Anglo English and French speech cultures, the Russian speech culture is in a league of its own. Goddard (2018b: 291–292) offers the following Anglocentric reflections, which he condemns for their lack of transparency: Normally, Anglo people experience Russians as very firm, quite loud, and insistent. They can be very sweeping in what they say. From an Anglo point of view, they can be intense. These judgements all depend on an implicit Anglo baseline, and the meanings of terms like ‘firm’, ‘insistent’ and ‘intense’ all stand in need of explication themselves. Leaving that aside, however, one can say that Russians are generally “expressive” compared to English people. But what do we mean by ‘expressive’?

The adjective Russian helps distinguish vyrazitel’nost’ from other kinds of ‘expressiveness’, such as Spanish expresividad—the example chosen by Goddard (2018b: 292–293) to illustrate the lack of clarity of pragmatic labels whose meaning is often, but always unjustifiably, taken for granted. However, it does not contribute to explicating what vyrazitel’nost’ is all about. Appropriately formulated cultural scripts, on the other hand, do. [K] and [L] are only minimally different from the scripts proposed by Goddard (2018b); [K] has a number of historical precedents, which are briefly discussed in Peeters (Forthcoming). [K] A Russian cultural script connected with vyrazitel’nost’ ‘expressiveness’ people think like this: “when someone is with other people, it is often good if this someone thinks like this: I want these people to know what I think, I want them to know what I feel.” [L] A Spanish cultural script connected with expresividad ‘showing one’s feelings when speaking’; see also Fernández and Goddard (2019) people think like this: often when someone says something to someone else, it is good if he/ she thinks like this: “I want this someone else to know how I feel when I say this”.

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[K] and [L] are high-level scripts of Russian and Spanish culture, respectively. [K] is “a cultural endorsement of, roughly speaking, an ‘expressive’ stance in speech and action” (Goddard 2009: 69). [L] appears to be shared across most if not all languacultures where Spanish is spoken: “if you are speaking with Spanish-speaking people from whatever country, normally there are ‘feelings’ coming through all the time” (Goddard 2018b: 292). Matching pedagogical scripts are shown in [M] and [N]: [M] A Russian pedagogical script connected with vyrazitel’nost’ ‘expressiveness’ in Russia, when you are with other people, it is often good if you think like this: “I want these people to know what I think, I want them to know what I feel”. [N] A Spanish pedagogical script connected with expresividad ‘showing one’s feelings when speaking’ in many countries where people speak Spanish, when you say something to someone else, it is often good if you think like this: “I want this someone to know how I feel when I say this”.

7.7 Russian ‘sincerity’: iskrennost’ High-level scripts such as [K] are often associated with one or more cultural keywords, that is “culture-rich and translation-resistant words that occupy focal points in cultural ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and speaking” (Goddard and Ye 2015: 71). One such ‘culture-rich and translation-­resistant’ word, искренность (iskrennost’), refers to a value that is paramount in the Russian languaculture (Rutten 2017) and linked with Russian expressiveness or vyrazitel’nost’. To call a word ‘translationresistant’ does not mean there is no translation; however, any translations offered are at best approximate. Iskrennost’ is usually translated as ‘sincerity’, but it has “a much wider range of use, and much greater cultural significance” (Wierzbicka 2002: 422). It is often spoken of as “an

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important and highly valued personal characteristic, the way ‘kindness’ is spoken of in English” (ibid.). It conveys “that one says what one thinks and feels, that it is something good, and that one says it because one wants to say what one thinks and feels, at that moment, not because of anything else” (Wierzbicka 2010a: 66). Sincere and its derivatives, on the other hand, “implicitly acknowledge[s] the existence of social conventions and affirm[s] the truth of what was said on a particular occasion against the common knowledge that things of this kind are often said without being true” (Wierzbicka 2002: 423). Wierzbicka (2002: 424) has a cultural script that she specifically links up with the Russian keyword iskrennost’. [O] A cultural script connected with the Russian keyword iskrennost’ it is good if a person says something to someone else because this person wants to say what this person thinks (feels) not because of anything else.

This script provides more information than the high-level script in [K] (it provides a motive) and can therefore be considered a lower-level script. An improved version appears in print in Wierzbicka (2010a: 66; for details, see Peeters Forthcoming): [P] A cultural script connected with the Russian keyword iskrennost’ [revised] [many people think like this:] at many times someone says something to someone else because this someone wants this other someone to know what this someone is thinking at that time, not because of anything else it is good if it is like this at many times someone says something to someone else because this someone wants this other someone to know what this someone feels at that time, not because of anything else it is good if it is like this.

The problem with [P] is its arguably excessive reliance on the prime someone, which may sound unsettling to some. To make this cultural

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script useful in the outside world, we need to turn it into something more user-friendly. We need to rephrase it in Minimal English, using a pedagogical script involving a “generic you”, which may however sound equally unsettling to the many who do not have such a generic pronoun in their language: [Q] A pedagogical script connected with the Russian keyword iskrennost’ in Russia, you often say something to someone else because you want this someone to know what you are thinking at that time not for any other reason it is good if it is like this in Russia, you often say something to someone else because you want this someone to know what you feel at that time not for any other reason it is good if it is like this.

Other possible amendments include more detail regarding the “someone else”: iskrennost’ is not something that can be displayed in any company. In addition, instead of repeating the evaluative component at the end of each of the two parts of the script, it may be better to opt for a single occurrence at the end of the script, followed by an invitation to do likewise: [R] A pedagogical script connected with the Russian keyword iskrennost’ [revised] in Russia, if you know someone very well, you often say something to this someone because you want this someone to know what you are thinking at that time not for any other reason in Russia, if you know someone very well, you often say something to this someone because you want this someone to know what you feel at that time, not for any other reason Russians think it is good to do something like this they want you to do the same.

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7.8 Conclusion All languacultures have cultural and pragmatic rules that matter to them: most speakers of French feel very strongly about the need to take a stand, most Russians are attached to a form of sincerity when interacting with people whom they know well, etc. Cultural outsiders must be aware of the rules that apply in other languacultures; they may not apply in their own, but they are just as important as the rules they are used to and have grown up with. This chapter exemplifies how cultural rules can be conveyed in a culturally sensitive manner, that is, without a foreign bias and without distortion, by means of so-called pedagogical scripts written in Minimal Language. Its aim is to demonstrate the potential interest of the latter for improving intercultural awareness and enhancing the chances of language learners to communicate in an appropriate manner. In both cases, existing NSM-inspired work provided the starting point; the idea was to stress the importance, in intercultural communication, of a combined insider and outsider perspective and the need to overcome ethnocentrism. The pedagogical scripts proposed in this chapter are not final. In a recent paper, Sadow (2018) has suggested to generalise the use of upper case initials at the start of every new component and to add full stops at the end. She also recommends a lot may be gained by switching from a standard script format to a so-called composition. Adding a shorter caption could be beneficial, too. Just taking one example, it would thus be possible to rewrite [R] as [S]: [S] The importance of iskrennost’ In Russia, if you know someone very well, you often say something to this someone, because you want this someone to know what you are thinking at that time, not for any other reason. If you know someone very well, you often say something to this someone, because you want this someone to know what you feel at that time, not for any other reason. Russians think it is good to do something like this. They want you to do the same.

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Acknowledgements  The author thanks Cliff Goddard and the anonymous referees for feedback that has led to further improvements.

Notes 1. A colon and an unspecified bracketed statement […] were added at the end of the first line to provide the immediately preceding ‘this’ with a more clearly cataphoric function. In the second part of the second line, a demonstrative ‘this’ was added to bring the two subordinate subjects in line. 2. There is as yet no agreement on either the exact nature of the hierarchy or the specific hierarchical level of individual scripts. The most detailed categorisation of cultural scripts is that of Sadow (2018), who distinguishes five levels. Unlike other authors, whose usage we adopt and who treat the terms master script and high-level script as synonyms, Sadow (2018) uses the term master-level script and establishes a distinction, placing the latter at the very top.

References Ameka, Felix K., and Anneke Breedveld. 2004. Areal Cultural Scripts for Social Interaction in West African Communities. Intercultural Pragmatics 1 (2): 167–187. Farese, Gian Marco. 2020. The ethnopragmatics of English Understatement and Italian Exaggeration: Clashing Cultural Scripts for the Expression of Personal Opinions. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication. Vol. 1: Ethnopragmatics and Semantic Analysis, ed. Kerry Mullan, Bert Peeters, and Lauren Sadow, 59–73. Singapore: Springer. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-­981-­32-­9983-­2_4. Fernández, Susana S. 2016. Possible Contributions of Ethnopragmatics to Second Language Learning and Teaching. In Let us Have Articles Betwixt us: Papers in Historical and Comparative Linguistics in Honour of Johanna L. Wood, ed. Sten Vikner, Henrik Jørgensen, and Elly van Gelderen, 185–206. Aarhus: Aarhus University. Fernández, Susana S., and Cliff Goddard. 2019. Una aproximación al estilo comunicativo de cercanía interpersonal del español a partir de la teoría de la

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Metalengua Semántica Natural [An Approach to the Spanish Communicative Style of Interpersonal Closeness from the Theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage]. Sociocultural Pragmatics 7 (3): 469–493. https://doi. org/10.1515/soprag-­2019-­0022. Goddard, Cliff. 2004. “Cultural Scripts”: A New Medium for Ethnopragmatic Instruction. In Cognitive Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and Foreign Language Teaching, ed. Michel Achard and Susanne Niemeier, 143–163. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199857.143. ———. 2009. Cultural Scripts. In Culture and Language Use, ed. Gunter Senft, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jef Verschueren, 68–80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hoph.2.07god. ———. 2010. Cultural Scripts: Applications to Language Teaching and Intercultural Communication. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association) 3: 105–119. ———, ed. 2018a. Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­62512-­6. ———. 2018b. Ten Lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring Language, Thought and Culture Using Simple, Translatable Words. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004357723. Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2004. Cultural Scripts: What Are They and What Are They Good for? Intercultural Pragmatics 1 (2): 153–166. https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.153. ———. 2007. Semantic Primes and Cultural Scripts in Language Learning and Intercultural Communication. In Applied Cultural Linguistics: Implications for Second Language Learning and Intercultural Communication, ed. Farzad Sharifian and Gary B.  Palmer, 105–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.7.08god. ———. 2018. Minimal English and How It Can Add to Global English. In Minimal English for a Global World, ed. Cliff Goddard, 5–27. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Goddard, Cliff, and Zhengdao Ye. 2015. Ethnopragmatics. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, ed. Farzad Sharifian, 66–83. London: Routledge. Karimnia, Amin, and Akbar Afghari. 2010. On the Applicability of Cultural Scripts in Teaching L2 Compliments. English Language Teaching 3 (3) https:// doi.org/10.5539/elt.v3n3p71. Kodmani, Hala. 2001. Les Français sans peine. Editions Le Manuscrit.

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Peeters, Bert. 2017. Du bon usage des stéréotypes en cours de FLE: le cas de l’ethnolinguistique appliquée. Dire 9: 43–60. http://epublications.unilim.fr/ revues/dire/816. ———. Forthcoming. From Cultural Scripts (in NSM) to Pedagogical Scripts (in Minimal Language). Vestnik NSU.  Series: Linguistics and Intercultural Communication. Poirier, Agnès Catherine. 2007. Touché. London: Phoenix. Rutten, Ellen. 2017. Sincerity After Communism: A Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sadow, Lauren. 2018. Can Cultural Scripts be Used for Teaching Interactional Norms? Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 41 (1): 91–116. https://doi. org/10.1075/aral.17030.sad. ———. 2020. Minimal English: Taking NSM ‘Out of the Lab’. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication. Vol. 3: Minimal English (and Beyond), ed. Lauren Sadow, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan, 1–10. Singapore: Springer. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­981-­32-­9979-­5_1. Sadow, Lauren, and Kerry Mullan. 2020. A Brief Introduction to the Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication. Vol. 1: Ethnopragmatics and Semantic Analysis, ed. Kerry Mullan, Bert Peeters, and Lauren Sadow, 13–32. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­981-­32-­9983-­2_2. Sadow, Lauren, Bert Peeters, and Kerry Mullan, eds. 2020. Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication. Vol. 3: Minimal English (and Beyond). Singapore: Springer. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­981-­32-­9979-­5. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1994a. “Cultural Scripts”: A Semantic Approach to Cultural Analysis and Cross-Cultural Communication. Pragmatics and Language Learning [Monograph Series] 5: 1–24. ———. 1994b. ‘Cultural Scripts’: A New Approach to the Study of Cross-­ Cultural Communication. In Language Contact and Language Conflict, ed. Martin Pütz, 69–87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi. org/10.1075/z.71.04wei. ———. 1997. Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2002. Russian Cultural Scripts: The Theory of Cultural Scripts and Its Applications. Ethos 30 (4): 401–432. https://doi.org/10.1525/ eth.2002.30.4.401.

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———. 2010a. Cultural Scripts and Intercultural Communication. In Pragmatics Across Languages and Cultures, ed. Anna Trosborg, 43–78. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214444.1.43. ———. 2010b. Cultural Scripts. In The Pragmatics Encyclopedia, ed. Louise Cummings, 92–95. London: Routledge. ———. 2015. Language and Cultural Scripts. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, ed. Farzad Sharifian, 339–356. New York: Routledge.

8 Using Minimal Language to Help Foreign Learners Understand Korean Honorifics Jeong-Ae Lee

8.1 Introduction The background of this study is intertwined with the gradual change of South Korean society. Since the 1990s, many foreigners have settled in South Korea and have made it their home. As a result, Korea has expanded its cultural diversity and has become an evolving multicultural society. In particular, as the number of multicultural families arising from intercultural marriages has increased, migrant women married to Korean men are acting as builders of diversity in South Korean society. The rate of Korean language learning among foreigners (Korean as a Second Language, KSL) in Korea has skyrocketed, along with the Korean Wave and the K-Pop era. As the demand for Korean as a Second Language education has increased, the need for a helpful methodology for explaining the use of Korean honorifics to KSL learners has become apparent. J.-A. Lee (*) Department of Korean Education, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, South Korea e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_8

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The Korean honorific system, which is a result of formalisation of the Korean tradition of hierarchical culture into language, is an important grammatical characteristic of the Korean language. At the same time, it provides a KSL speaker with the ability to use language to adapt well into South Korean society. However, the principles behind honorific use cannot be approached only from a grammatical point of view. Honorific use in present-day South Korea reflects a system of cultural ideas about life, which cannot be explained solely in terms of grammar or by reference to the hierarchical Confucian tradition. The aim of this chapter is to explain the cultural insider’s understanding of honorifics, using minimal language, and thus to reduce the difficulties and embarrassment experienced by KSL learners when they misuse honorifics in various situations. To meet this aim requires not just mastering the vocabulary and grammar of honorifics but gaining a deeper understanding of the where, when, why, and how of using honorifics; for example, when speaking with in-law family members. To that end, it is imperative that foreigners somehow acquire the inherent mindset of native Korean speakers in the use of honorifics. Because it uses only the simplest and most cross-translatable vocabulary, the minimal language approach (paired with ethnopragmatics; see Sect. 8.2.4), provides a practical tool for working through communication problems in multilingual and multicultural contexts (Goddard 2018; this volume Chap. 1).

8.2 Background to This Study The Korean honorific system is a division of grammar that is deeply connected with social attitudes and values. Recently, honorifics have emerged as an important topic in Korean language education for foreigners, since honorifics are recognised by foreigners to be very complicated and difficult (Sohn 1989; Yeon 1996). In the author’s opinion, these difficulties largely arise because of differing viewpoints from which honorifics can be described. As with cultural studies (cf. Headland et al. 1990), honorifics can be analysed differently depending on whether the subject who looks at them is a researcher (adopting etic or outside observer’s view) or an experiencing subject belonging to the culture of honorifics (adopting an

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emic or insider’s view). There is a vast difference between the system as described by most linguistic theories and how honorifics are actually used and recognised by Koreans in daily life (Hong and Kim 2016). The contents of most linguistic studies mainly represent the viewpoint of a researcher, but they are frequently presented as language knowledge that foreign learners of Korean should master. Recently some Korean education studies have begun to recognise this also.

8.2.1 C  omplexity of the Honorific System and Difficulties in Explanation The honorific system is governed by various intertwined factors: (1) the speaker’s relationship with the addressee, (2) the speaker’s attitude towards the subject and object referents, and (3) the relationship between the subject and the object referents. It has long been described by researchers as a trichotomy system consisting of hearer honorifics, subject honorifics, and object honorifics (Hur 1954). Equally, however, it has frequently been pointed out that this theoretical model is difficult even for native Korean speakers to grasp (Yang 2010: 256) and is not very helpful in understanding honorific speech in actual communication (Lee 2008: 23; Piao 2012: 32)—not to mention the hardships faced by KSL learners as they attempt to learn the honorifics. Subject honorification in Korean is expressed by adding the pre-final ending -si- to the predicate. In addition, the honorific subject case marker -kkeyse is used instead of -i/-ka (plain), and the honorific suffix -nim is sometimes added to the subject noun. Object honorification is expressed by the special adverbial case marker -kkey, and by using special vocabulary items, for example tuli- (‘give’, instead of cwu-), yeccwup- (‘ask’, instead of mwut-), and poyp- (‘see’, instead of po-) (Yoon 2004; Brown 2011; Brown and Yeon 2019). What are the difficulties with this syntax-oriented classification and explanation? The greatest difficulty faced by foreign learners is understanding the concepts of subject and object and keeping track of which honorifics are appropriate to each while speaking. Even Korean speakers do not distinguish subjects and objects when they select

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grammatical elements (Yang 2010; Lim 2015). The terms ‘subject’ honorific and ‘object’ honorific are too abstract and technical to reflect the cognitive reality of language users (Piao 2012: 32).

8.2.2 C  lassification of Speech Levels: Difficulties and Problems Korean hearer honorifics, which are expressed  by sentence-closing elements,  are more complicated still because they vary depending on the context of the conversation. Beginning with Choi 1971 [1937] through to Yoo et al.’s (2018) Korean Standard Grammar, they have been classified dualistically along two dimensions: horizontal (i.e. formal and informal styles) and vertical (i.e. respect and non-respect). In addition, according to the degree of respecting, the sentence-closing endings were divided into six speech styles (Korean chey). These are conventionally named using the verb stem ha- ‘do’, as follows: hasipsio-chey (하십시오체 ‘deferential style’), hao-chey (하오체 ‘semiformal style’), hakey-chey (하게체 ‘familiar style’), hayyo-chey (해요체 ‘polite style’), hay- chey (해체 ‘intimate style’) and hayla-­chey (해라체 ‘plain style’) (cf. Brown 2011 on the English names for speech styles). Among them, hasipsio-chey, hayyo-chey, hayla-chey, and hay-chey are widely used in daily life. Hakey-chey and haochey are not used very often except in writing, but they are still known and used by native speakers. The characteristics of these styles can be summarised as in Table 8.1 (Yoo et al. 2018: 514–515). Table 8.1    Korean speech styles Respectful

Non-respectful, comfortable

Target of use

Formal styles

Informal styles

± superior

hasipsio-chey (하십시오체) hakey-chey (하게체) hao-chey (하오체)

hayyo-chey (해요체)

 - superior  - superior  - superior ± superior

hayla-chey (해라체) hay- chey (해체)

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Meanwhile, many other ideas have also been put forth. For instance, unlike the above argument that regarded hearer honorifics as a dualistic system, there are rival systems that regard Korean hearer honorifics as a unitary system (Hur 1999; Wang and Min 1993; Lim 2006); those that treat all six styles separately (Nam and Ko 1985; Ko and Koo 2008); those that work with only four styles, excluding the ‘hao style’ and ‘hakey style’ (Wang and Min 1993); and those that classify the honorifics into five speech levels (Hong and Kim 2016: 59–60). Amid the arguments regarding the classification of speech levels and names of each speech level, the problem is that whoever the researcher is, the system should be a grammatical system that can be judged best by Koreans because the users of the honorific expressions are Korean language speakers and should fit the intuition of native speakers (Hong and Kim 2016: 52). Therefore, it is important to start the argument from the viewpoint of Korean language users.

8.2.3 Difficulties with Terms for Social Factors Thus far, the major social factors involved in Korean honorific use have been presented using terms such as ‘formal’, ‘distance’, ‘solidarity’, ‘power’, in addition to ‘respect’ and ‘intimacy’ (Yoo 1994; Lee 2002; Hong and Kim 2016: 52–53). These social factor concepts and labels originated in Brown and Gilman’s (1960) seminal study, which were subsequently translated into Korean and used in numerous studies (Sohn 1989; Yoo 1994; Lee 1999, 2001, 2002). It is questionable, however, whether the relevant Korean concepts are sufficiently identical to the concepts used in English (Hur 2012: 92).

8.2.4 Direction of Discussion This study cannot hope to solve all the difficulties and problems presented above. However, a fresh approach to Korean honorifics is sorely needed in order to improve explanation and understanding of honorifics (see Yoon 2004, 2007, 2011). The approach adopted in this study is the ethnopragmatic framework developed by Natural Semantic Metalanguage

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researchers (Wierzbicka 2003, 2010; Goddard 2006, 2017; Goddard and Ye 2015; Vo 2016). How can the methodology of ethnopragmatics help explain honorifics and their usage? Above all, this study believes that honorifics can be best grasped by approaching it from the point of view of human relations, that is, from the ‘naïve’ point of view of ordinary people and their linguistic attitudes, both towards third parties, and, especially, between the speaker and listener in a conversation. What does this mean in practice? First, instead of teaching the honorific system by dividing according to whether the honorific target is subject, object, or hearer (the usual ‘grammatical’ approach), this study takes notice of the fact that when Koreans actually speak in everyday life, they use a concise system, employing honorifics for those whom they should respect and not employing them for those whom they are not required to respect (Lee 2008: 23; Kim 2016). Teaching foreigners according to researcher-created categories, such as subject target, object target, and hearer target, is not effective; even Korean speakers do not select grammatical elements on this basis. For example, when a speaker inquires of his/her teacher, after meeting on the street, Annyenghasipnikka? Sensayng-nim ‘How are you, teacher?’, the speaker would not use the normative hearer-honorific sentence form, and indeed, it is difficult to distinguish between hearer and subject in this spoken utterance, because both are identically ‘teacher’ (Yang 2010: 248). In order to be both authentic and comprehensible to KSL learners, explanations of the Korean honorific system should start by considering how ordinary native speakers of Korean talk and think about it.  This study explains the honorific system based on the forms of speech, ‘respectful’ (contaymal) and ‘comfortable, non-respectful’ (panmal). According to speech forms, KSL learners can understand that honorific elements are needed. More specifically, honorific sentence-final endings can be classified into the hasipsio (하십시오) style and hayyo (해요) style, and nonhonorific sentence-final endings can be classified into the hay (해) style and hayla (해라) style.1 In fact, hay (해) style has sometimes been used as the name of the same speech level as panmal, but this study will regard both hay (해) and hayla (해라) styles as forms of panmal. The foregoing can be summarised in Table 8.2.

Honorific elements (across) Speech forms (down) Contaymal [‘respectful speech’] Panmal [‘comfortable, non-respectful speech’]

na/wuli

First-­person pronoun ce/cehuy

Terms of address suffix -nim -ssi -ssi -a/ya

Post-­ positional particle -kkeyse -kkey -ka -eyke Honorific verbs tuli-ta po-ta cwu-ta poyp-ta

Honorific nouns cinci yensey pap nai

–

Pre-­final ending -si-

Style based on final ending hasipsio hayyo hay hayla

Table 8.2   Korean speech forms and honorific expression elements (after Yoon 2004: 191–200; Brown 2011: 23–45; Kim 2016: 29)

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From here, we will proceed as follows. In Sect. 8.3 cultural scripts will be used to explain relevant aspects of human relations as experienced and perceived by Koreans. In Sects. 8.4.1 and 8.4.2, semantic explications will be used to explain the meanings of the two main speech categories recognised by Koreans: contaymal (respectful speech) and panmal (comfortable, non-respectful speech, lit. ‘half speech’). One of the main themes to emerge is that although honorification is restricted by objective factors such as age and status, it can be (and frequently is) used diversely depending on the degree of intimacy between the people concerned and the intentions of the speaker and hearer. Choice between contaymal and panmal is often the result of negotiations carried out along expected lines. This will be described in Sect. 8.4.3.

8.3 C  ultural Scripts for Understanding Korean Honorific Usage Korean honorifics reflect a pluralism of Korean living standards or moral values. That is, Korean honorifics embody the principle of speaking differently to hearers depending on who they are and what the circumstances are. The main guiding principles can be explained with reference to three cultural scripts: (1) chomyen (초면, lit. ‘first face’) consciousness, (2) vertical rank consciousness, and (3) intimacy and non-­intimacy distinguishing consciousness. This pluralism is the reason why the cultural scripts of honorifics cannot be explained as one, and the reason why social principles work in different dimensions, as it were. The chomyen consciousness is to recognise whether someone is a person whom one is meeting for the first time. After the chomyen consciousness has disappeared and the vertical ranks of the two speakers have been established, the form of speaking varies according to vertical rank consciousness. Simultaneously, however, emotional intimacy and non-­intimacy consciousness also plays a part in the selection of words and honorifics.

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8.3.1 Cultural Script for ‘chomyen’ Consciousness The word chomyen describes literally ‘a person who is faced for the first time’. Koreans call such cases ‘first face.’ When Koreans meet someone, they must recognise whether he/she is a person whom they are meeting for the first time. If so, speaking with honorifics is the normative usage. Consciousness of ‘first face’ is reflected in many linguistic expressions. For instance, their first greeting is Cheum poyp-keyss-supnita (처음 뵙겠 습니다 ‘I see you for the first time’), and when people ask the way or ask a favour of persons they see for the first time, the first thing they say is Chomyen-ey sillyeyhapnita-man (초면에 실례합니다만 ‘Excuse me at the first meeting’). In Korean society, when people talk to each other, how they should exchange words is established only when they have understood who the other person is. Because at first meeting the parties do not yet know each other well, they cannot use panmal (comfortable, non-respectful speech). Therefore, if someone hears panmal used by the other person, he/she has good justification to object even if the other person is older, as in the following example (Lee 1999: 112). The expression ‘In what capacity do you keep using panmal?’ means, ‘Since you and I see each other for the first time, you have no authority to use panmal to me.’ (1) [Speaker A (taxi driver, in his late 50s), Speaker B (car driver, in his early 30s). At the moment of a sudden stop of A’s car on the highway, B’s car hit the back of A’s car.] A: (Khun soli-lo) Ya! wuncen ttokpalo moshay! ((큰 소리로) 운전 똑 바로 못 해!) B: Acessi cha-ka nemwu kupha-key se-nke ani-pnikka? (아저씨 차가 너무 급하게 선 거 아닙니까?) A:  I salam, cikum mwusun mal-ul ha-nun ke-iya? Ancenkeli-lul hwakpoha-­ess-­umyen ilen il eps-ci-anh-a! (이 사람, 지금 무슨 말 을 하는 거야? 안전거리를 확보했으면 이런 일 없잖아!) B: Kuken nay-ka calmocha-ess-ta chi-ko, tangsin-i mwe-i-ntey cakkwu panmalhayyo? (그건 내가 잘못했다 치고, 당신이 뭔데 자 꾸 반말해요?) A: Mwelako? ne-nun cip-ey pwumo-to eps-e? (뭐라고? 너는 집에 부모도 없어?)

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B:  Tangsin-i nay pwumo-i-ya? (당신이 내 부모야?) A:  (Loudly) Hey! Can’t you drive properly! B:  Didn’t you stop too quickly? A: What are you saying, man? If you had secured a safe distance, this should not have occurred! B:  Although that is my mistake, in what capacity do you keep using panmal? A:  What? Don’t you have your parents at home? B:  Are you my parent?

In general, if A is the older party, he can be expected to speak casually to B; but that is not so when they meet for the first time. Regardless of the collision incident, another quarrel between the two began when A ‘used panmal at the first meeting’. Unlike the normative usage in which the speaker properly uses honorifics in the social relationship with the hearer, this example shows that in Korea, the speaker B uses a strategy in which he uses the hasipsio-chey (하십시오체 ‘deferential style’) in the first sentence and the hayyo-chey (해요체 ‘polite style’) in the second sentence, and then hay-chey (해체 ‘intimate style’) thereafter. Hence, the third expression of B, which means ‘You may not speak panmal to me since you are not my parent.’ In Korean society, when a person uses panmal to someone at the first meeting, bad relations are inevitable (Brown 2011). ‘Chomyen’ consciousness is considered very important in the establishment of personal relations and language etiquette. It decreases when the persons have understood each other. When they have become intimate, their relationships become kwumyen (구면 ‘old face’ that means acquaintance relationship) (Lee 2002; Park 2015; Lee 2017; Jiang 2019). Aside from the expressions used in the example above, other ways to object to someone who speaks casually at first meeting are: Ce-lul encey po-ess-ta-ko panmali-seyyo? (저를 언제 봤다고 반말이세요? ‘Did you see me before to the extent that you can speak panmal to me?’) and Ce-eyke panmal-ul ha-si-nuntey, ce-lul a-seyyo? (저에게 반말을 하시는데, 저를 아세요? ‘You speak panmal to me, is that because you know me?’). A cultural script for ‘chomyen consciousness’ in Korean can be presented as follows.

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[A]  A Korean cultural script for “chomyen consciousness” [people think like this:] when I want to say something to someone, if I do not speak to this person before, I have to think like this all the time:     “I see this person’s face [m] now, I did not see it before     I don’t know this person    I can’t say things to this person like I can say things to people at other times    I have to think well about what I want to say, I have to think well about how to say it,     when I say some words, I have to say them in some ways, not in other ways”

The above script indicates that when a Korean person meets someone for the first time, he/she should keep in mind at all times that he/she ‘sees this person’s face for the first time’. This constitutes a special speech situation that requires a careful and highly selective way of speaking, as captured in the final lines of the script.

8.3.2 C  ultural Script for Consciousness of Vertical Rank Chomyen consciousness decreases or disappears after a certain amount of face-to-face interaction, and as each person comes to know the other, vertical rank consciousness comes into play. This depends on a cultural script that recognises divisions between upper and lower positions in human relations. This is a deeply rooted traditional attitude that is integral to the mindset underlying Korean language etiquette and honorifics (Yoon 2004). The below cultural script for a ‘vertical rank’ model of society was proposed by Yoon (2004), and it was compressed a little and shown as follows by Goddard (2006: 14). That is, in Korean society, ways of speaking are divided largely between two groups of people: one group ‘superior to the speaker’ and the other group ‘not superior to the speaker’, that is, those who are equal or inferior to the speaker.

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[B]  A Korean cultural script for a “vertical rank” model of society [people think like this:]    some people are people above me, they are not people like me    other people are people not above me    some of these other people are people like me    some of these other people are people below me

When examined further, it can be seen that rank consciousness depends upon several criteria: age, degrees of kinship (in the family), and social status. The first important factor is age. Due to Confucian tradition, older people are classified into the elderly based on a certain age. Kyunglo Sasang (경로 사상 ‘the ideal of respecting old people’) reflects the cultural assumption that a person becomes mature and acquires virtues with greater age and life experience (Yoon 2004). In addition, kin are classified into two kinds according to the degree of kindred: son-wis-salam (손윗사람 ‘superior’) for those in the higher degrees of kinship in the family, son-alays-salam (손아랫사람 ‘one’s junior’) for those in the lower degrees of kinship in the family. Accordingly, honorific usage can be divided into two: honorifics used in addressing one’s ‘superiors’ and casual polite speech used with persons other than superiors (Lee and Ramsey 2000). Social position is also an important criterion for honorific usage. People are divided into upper and lower positions: wis-salam (윗사람 ‘superior’, lit. ‘above person’) and alays-salam (아랫사람 ‘subordinate’, lit. ‘below person’). The relationship between vertical ranks and ways of speaking can be explained by the following cultural script. The key idea is that by speaking to ‘higher’ persons in a special way, one shows that one thinks of the other person not as ‘someone like me’, but rather as ‘someone above me’. [C] A Korean cultural script linking “vertical rank consciousness” with ways of speaking [people think like this:] often when I want to say something to someone above me, I can’t say it like I can say things to other people

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I have to think well about what I want to say, I have to think well about how to say it wh  en I say some words, I have to say them in some ways, not in other ways when I say something to someone in this way, this person can know that I think like this: “this is not someone like me, this is someone above me”.

Because honorific speech is often based on awareness of rank, it is sometimes viewed purely as a legacy of the strict status order and power relationships of times past. In modern society, however, honorifics are also used as a speech courtesy by superiors and subordinates alike in order to speak with each other with respect (see Sect. 8.4.1); for instance, in public places such as workplaces, even superiors are generally expected speak to subordinates in a respectful fashion.

8.3.3 Cultural Script for ‘Intimacy’ in Korean In addition to vertical rank, conversations can be influenced by how ‘intimate’ the relationship is between the speaker and the hearer. When Koreans meet someone for the first time, they ask the first and last names of the person, consider whether the person is one of their relatives, and check the hometown and the school from which the person graduated. These questions and checking procedures are never considered rude, because they are a necessary stage in moving from ‘first meeting relationship’ to ‘acquaintance relationship’ or ‘intimate relationship’. Although checking intimacy or non-intimacy may well be a universal phenomenon of humans, Koreans place special importance on family membership or ‘blood relation consciousness’ on account of ‘familism’ (Choi 2002: 135). A similar consciousness can be extended to regional ties (hometown) and school ties, so that diverse friendly relations can be formed. ‘Intimacy’ is partly determined by measuring the degrees of kinship based on blood relationships. Persons with higher degrees of kinship are naturally identified as ‘closer’. When this familial closeness is combined

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with close  psychological and emotional distance between two persons, the relationship becomes an ‘intimate relationship.’ Close family connection alone  is not necessarily enough for an intimate relationship. For example, one’s oy-samchon (외삼촌 ‘mother’s brother’) is a close relative given his degree of kinship, but he is not necessarily considered intimate. Conversely, relatives with low degrees of kinship can be in very intimate relationships. Furthermore, both ‘closeness’ and ‘intimacy’ can be based not only on blood ties but can also be developed through spatial affiliations, such as being co-alumni, hometown folk, peers, and relationships such as being juniors and seniors at the workplace (Lee 2012). The following cultural script captures Korean understandings of ‘intimacy’ in relationships. [D] A Korean cultural script for “intimacy” relationships [people think like this:] I can think about some people (not many people) like this: “I know this someone very well, this someone knows me very well I feel something good towards this someone, this someone feels something good towards me” many people like this are in my family [m] some are not in my family [m], at the same time I can think about them like I can think about someone in my family [m] I can think about them like this: “this is someone near me”.

This script recognises that some people are very much closer than others, depending on their mutual knowledge and good feelings developed through previous interactions. As said already, after first meeting, if someone is the same age as oneself, there is the possibility to form an ‘intimate’ relationship with this person, if you come to know them very well and develop confidence in mutual good feelings. Such a relationship is implicitly compared with a ‘family’ relationship. At the end of script [D], the component ‘I can think about them like this: ‘this is someone near me’, describes psychological distance (or, rather, closeness) by analogy with physical distance. It may therefore lead to a more ‘comfortable’ way of speaking. The feeling aspect is important.

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Fig. 8.1  Expressions for Korean relationships, according to the degree of intimacy

Even if it is confirmed that the other person’s age is the same as one’s own, and even if there are other affiliations, if one does not have an emotion to become intimate with the other person, one will still use contaymal (respectful speech) and maintain a certain distance. Different degrees of intimacy and non-intimacy can be described using the expressions kakkawuun sai (가까운 사이, ‘close relationship’), chinha-un sai (친한 사이, ‘intimate relationship’), cal a-nun sai (잘 아는 사이, ‘relationship between persons who know well each other’), a-nun sai (아는 사이, ‘just knowing each other’) or ‘elkwul-man a-nun sai (얼 굴만 아는 사이, ‘relationship between persons who merely know each other’s face’) and ‘chomyen’; cf. Lee (2017: 448). See Fig. 8.1 below.2 Sometimes, because ‘close’ tends to indicate short psychological or emotional distance, kakkawu-un sai and chinha-un sai overlap. In short, whether or not people are ‘intimate’ is another social characteristic that is used by Koreans to check vertical relations as well as checking whether the hearer is close to or distant from them when they speak to someone. As mentioned earlier, when two persons meet for the first time, each person checks each other’s ‘age’, ‘whether the other person is in a family (relative) close to the person’, and the hometown and academic background of the other person. In these cases, both ranks and intimacy/non-intimacy are simultaneously identified so that the standards of behaviour and speech of the two persons are determined, and in the process of checking, the two persons may become intimate. If there is no step to check the ranks and intimacy between the two persons, their relationship will remain as cal a-nun sai, roughly, ‘close acquaintances’, or elkwul-man a-nun sai, which means a relationship between persons who merely know each other’s faces.

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8.4 F orms of Folk Speech: Contaymal and Panmal This section returns to the fact that Korean honorifics are realised in two emically-labelled  forms of folk speech, that is, contaymal and panmal. Contaymal is essentially respectful speech, which is deferential towards the person being spoken to and towards things related to that person. Panmal is all forms of speech other than contaymal. Panmal is moderately comfortable speech, which is neither treating respectfully nor talking down.

8.4.1 Explicating Contaymal It is widely known that Korean speakers are forced to make choices for every single sentence depending on the relationship with their interlocutors and/or with their referents, and, furthermore, on the relationship between the subject and object referents (Yoon 2004: 194). If the person to whom the speaker is talking is someone superior, he/ she will treat the person respectfully by using honorific expressions or by using modest expressions to humble himself. In contrast, if the hearer is a person equal or inferior to him/her, he/she will just select the form of speech without feeling the necessity to treat the hearer respectfully. The insider’s perception of utilising honorifics effectively separates interlocutors into two groups, namely, those who should be ‘raised’ (or respected) by speaking to them with contaymal, and others with whom one selects panmal. When someone uses contaymal to treat the hearer respectfully, she/he needs to know how to use honorific expressions correctly and appropriately (Yoon 2004: 191–200; Brown 2011: 23–45; Kim 2016: 29). Explication [E] below explains the meaning of contaymal. [E] Semantic explication of contaymal (Korean ‘respectful speech’) a)  when people want to say something to someone, they can say it in many ways    this is one way

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b) people often say something to someone in this way when they think like this:   “this is not someone like me, this is someone above me    because of this, I can’t say things to this person like I can say things to other people    I have to think well about what I want to say, I have to think well about how to say it,   wh en I say some words, I have to say them in some ways, not in other ways c)  if I don’t say it in this way, this other person will feel something bad because of it” d)  people think like this about it:   “at such times it is good if people say things in this way   people feel something good when they think like this”

Section (a) of the explication above indicates that when Koreans speak with someone, contaymal is one of many possible ways of speaking available to them. Section (b) links this way of speaking with a prototypical (‘often’) situation in which the speaker recognises the other person as ‘not someone like me’ and as ‘someone above me’, and hence perceives a need to speak carefully and to pay attention to word use and word choice, or else (c) risk incurring bad feeling in the other ‘higher’ person. Section (d) expresses Korean people’s societal approval of and satisfaction with the use of contaymal. It should be noted at this point what although the concept of contaymal is linked, prototypically, with speaking to someone perceived as different from and higher than oneself, this does not mean that contaymal only used in such situation or that it is always used asymmetrically. Actually, there are two kinds of usage contexts: asymmetrical and symmetrical. In asymmetrical usage, the speaker treats a higher person respectfully by using honorific expressions (or by using modest expressions to humble himself ), that is, by using contaymal, and the person in the superior position uses panmal. In symmetrical contaymal, one uses contaymal despite knowing that the hearer is equal to or inferior to oneself. We have already seen one such situation, namely, the chomyen ‘first face’ situation described in Sect. 8.3.1. In today’s Korea, however, there is also various

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other situations in contaymal is used symmetrically or mutually: situations in which speakers wish to treat each other respectfully, regardless of relative rank. This cultural understanding can be explained with the following cultural script. [F] A cultural script for general use of contaymal in special situations [people think like this:] a)  in places of some kinds, it is good if people speak contaymal all the time b)  at times of some kinds, it is good if people speak contaymal all the time c)  in such places, at such times, people don’t want to think like this about other people:     “this is someone like me, this is someone not like me      this is someone above me, this is someone below me” d)  in such places, at such times, people want to think like this:     “everyone here thinks something good about everyone else”

The above script indicates that there are situations, that is, in certain special places, at certain special times (‘occasions’) in which careful, honorific speech is expected in general. In such situations, use of honorific speech is not an interpersonal choice, but is required as a matter of speech courtesy. The script itself does not say what such situations are, but they would include the workplace, church, and other ‘formal’ occasions like public meetings, academic symposiums, and school classes. It must be admitted, however, there are situations where honorific speech is not expected, but in which speakers nevertheless use contaymal. Likewise, there are situations in which honorific speech is expected, but in which  speakers nevertheless  use panmal. It means that speakers in Korean may change their speech style intentionally and strategically, to go against the normative usage (see, Lee 2001 [‘Normative Usage’ and ‘Strategic Usage’]: Sung 1985, 2007). Additional research is needed.

8.4.2 Explicating Panmal Panmal is “used among very intimate persons, such as people who have been friends since a very young age, and siblings” (Brown and Yeon 2019), and between people in ‘intimate’ relationships. That is, panmal is

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actually used when the speaker has no intention to raise or lower the hearer. It is the form of speech used in a person’s most comfortable and familiar relationships. In order to form intimate/close relationships in Korean society, it is necessary to understand the meaning of panmal and know the process of it. The following is an explication of the word panmal, which has similar formula to contaymal. [G] Semantic explication of panmal (Korean ‘comfortable speech’) a) when people want to say something to someone, they can say it in many ways     this is one way b)  when someone says things in this way, they don’t think like this:     “I have to think well about what I want to say, I have to think well about how to say it     wh en I say some words, I have to say them in some ways, not in other ways” c)  everyone knows: a person can’t say things in this way to someone else    if this other person doesn’t want it

The above script indicates, in section (a), that panmal is a way of speaking which Koreans can select when they speak with someone. Section (b) says that (unlike as with contaymal), panmal is how one can speak to someone when one doesn’t have to pay attention all the time to what one says and to how one says it, that is, it is a ‘relaxed’ way of speaking, and (c) says that one cannot speak in this way if one’s interlocutor doesn’t want it. Symmetrical panmal is mainly used in comfortable relationships in which a sense of intimacy exists. This is not only in relationships between close friends. At home, a daughter and her mother sometimes use panmal together, which can likewise be used between a grandson and the grandfather because the relationship between them is comfortable and intimate. In addition, seniors and juniors can use panmal when addressing each other in cases where a sense of intimacy has been established between them. As such, relationships in which panmal is used may be formed depending on the degree of familiarity, and panmal in Korean language can be a sign of comfortable relationships. But it should be noted that

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between teacher and student panmal is not permitted, even if they have formed an intimacy, because Koreans regard one’s teacher as an absolute superior (Kim 2016: 50).3 In sum, from an insider’s perception the use or non-use of honorifics effectively separates interlocutors into two groups, namely, those who should be ‘raised’ (or respected) by speaking to them with contaymal, and others with whom one selects panmal. As described earlier, panmal can be used asymmetrically to persons inferior to the speaker, as well as symmetrically when the speaker and hearer are at equal positions or are very familiar with each other. However, the use of panmal requires negotiation. This will be described in the next section.

8.4.3 Negotiations About Speech When a comfortable relationship has been formed and a person wants to speak without formality, certain processes or negotiations (Ren 2018: 43) for use of panmal are undertaken. There are three types. The first type is a proposal to use mutual panmal, when the two interlocutors are of equal rank. The second type is an agreement to use panmal in cases where the speaker is a superior: prior to the use of casual speech, he or she asks for the understanding of his/her inferior and the inferior party agrees to it. The third is seeking permission to use panmal. When a superior speaks to an inferior using honorifics, the superior may suggest or allow panmal. This is the reason why Koreans shift their speech forms in actual situations. The transition from contaymal to panmal, when the relationship has become closer, is also common. As we have observed in previous sections, Koreans place emphasis on a rank position of a relationship when they begin speaking to another person, during which time an appropriate form of speech is selected, and a kind of familiarity has formed between the two people which may subsequently lead to the process of using panmal upon agreement of both. If such an agreement is not reached, many misunderstandings could arise. The mutual agreement is a very important in determining the use of panmal and is a highly specific cultural phenomenon. Although Korean society requires strict language etiquette, there are often attempts among Koreans to form a comfortable relationship between the speaker

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and hearer outside the normativity. These efforts may be observed in the following processes. Consider first a proposal for mutual use of panmal. If A and B are of the same age, such proposal to lower the speech level can be made naturally by either A or B. The expressions used are mal-ul noh-ca (말을 놓자 ‘let us put down the speech’/‘talk in a casual way’), mal-ul thu-ca (말을 트자 ‘Let us break open the speech’/‘speak informally’) and mal-ul phyenha-key ha-ca (말을 편하게 하자 ‘let us make the speech easy’/‘speak comfortably’).’ It is important to note that Koreans cannot use panmal straightaway, even to an interlocutor of the same age and position. When an intimate relationship has been formed or is desired, a proposal for the use of panmal must first be offered and accepted before symmetrical panmal is used. For example: [A and B come to know that they are at the same age while they are talking in contaymal] A: Wuli mal-ul noh-ca. B: Kulay. nai-to ttokkat-untey, wuli panmal-lo hal-kka? A: Let us speak casually. B: Sure. Since we are the same age, shall we use panmal? [H] A Korean cultural script for proposing mutual use of panmal often two people speak panmal when it is like this:   they are in one place for some time, they want to say some things to the other    they both think like this about the other:     “this is not someone above me, this is not someone below me     this is someone like me”    they both want to speak panmal to the other    it is good if two persons can speak panmal when it is like this    they can both feel something good because of it

The second type is an agreement to use panmal. After two people meet and talk for the first time, even after it is confirmed that one person is older than the other, rather than using panmal immediately, the superior seeks the understanding of the subordinate.

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[A and B are meeting for the first time. C introduces them to each other] C: Selo insaha-ci. iccok-un Ai-untey, wuli hakkyo 32hoy colepi-ko, iccok-un B-i-untey 35hoy-i-ya. A: Cheum poyp-kess-supnita. kulentey, nay-ka senpayi-unikka, icey panmalhayto toy-ci? B: Kulem-yo. senpay-nim! ce-pota senpayi-untey-yo. mal-ul nacchwu-syeyo. C: Say hello to each other. A, this is B, a 32th year graduate of our school, and this is A, a 35th year graduate. A: Nice to meet you. But since I’m a senior of the school, from now can I speak panmal? B: Of course, yes. Senior! As you are a senior to me. Please lower the speech level.

A’s question icey panmalhayto toy-ci? (이제 반말해도 되지? ‘From now can I speak panmal?’) gives an advance notice that the speaker will use panmal after receiving approval and understanding from the hearer, who is a junior. B agrees, saying mal-ul nacchwu-syeyo (말을 낮추셔요 ‘please, lower speech level’)’. This can lead to the forming of an intimacy and a successful relationship. If, however, A the senior, continues to speak using honorifics, he can be regarded as observing language etiquette to display respect for his junior, but symmetrical contaymal in such a situation cannot lead to a comfortable relationship. Since contaymal creates a sense of distance, B the junior may feel very uncomfortable. On the other hand, for A the senior to use panmal unilaterally is rude and cannot open the way to intimacy or a comfortable relationship. [I] A Korean cultural script for asymmetrical use of panmal by a senior sometimes one person speaks panmal to another when it is like this: two persons are in one place for some time, they want to say some things to the other one of them is someone above the other this person wants to speak panmal to the other this person knows that the other wants the same it is good if this person can speak panmal when it is like this they can both feel something good because of it

The third type is a permission for panmal. The superior may allow panmal and this is possible between very close persons. Such a permission

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can be made by the superior to the subordinate. That is, a sort of procedure to allow panmal, by indicating ‘Although you are younger than me, you can speak panmal to me’, is necessary. Since the use of panmal can be implicitly acknowledged even when the proposal as such has not been verbally expressed, panmal can be used between grandchildren and grandparents. [J] A Korean cultural script for symmetrical use of panmal between senior and junior sometimes two people speak panmal when it is like this: they are in one place for some time, they want to say some things to the other one of them is someone above the other at the same time they both feel something very good towards the other they both want to speak panmal to the other they both know this it is good if two persons can speak panmal when it is like this they can both feel something good because of it

When Korean language instructors present honorifics to KSL learners, explaining the three processes whereby contaymal can be altered to panmal, as described in scripts [H], [I], and [J] may aid the learner. Without this knowledge, KSL learners will be hindered in developing comfortable relationships.

8.5 Conclusion By applying the ethnopragmatic framework, this study has proposed cultural scripts of honorifics as used by native Koreans, presented explications of the two main forms of folk speech, and described the negotiations about speech for comfortable relationships. In so doing, this study has explained the rules of speech from the viewpoint of insiders in a way quite different from previous studies of honorifics. Three final points can be made. First, explaining honorifics using minimal language (without technical terms, such as linguistic jargon) is a good mechanism for showing migrant women and other foreigners living

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in Korea what the cultural rules are in Korean society, as well as why they should follow them. As they learn the Korean language, they should be learning at the same time about the cultural rules of speech in relation to honorifics. An additional advantage is that the minimal language scripts can also be accessible to native Koreans, that is, they can assist Koreans to better understand and reflect on their culture and on the intricate rules of using honorifics, especially as they meet foreigners who are learning the Korean language. This kind of self-reflection and awareness can be an important contribution to building multiculturalism. Finally, the results of this study should be adapted to provide multicultural education materials in Korea. This is one of the important tasks ahead for Minimal Korean.

Notes 1. We will exclude the infrequently used hakey (하게) and hao (하오) styles. 2. Interestingly, degrees of kinship distance are indicated using numbers: larger numbers, such as ochon (오촌lit. 5 degree of kinship), indicate more distant relations and lower numbers, such as samchon (삼촌 lit. 3 degree of kinship), indicate closer relations. 3. In Korean linguistics, the relationship between superior and subordinates can be determined purely by statuses, irrespective of age and is termed ‘absolute superior’ (Kim, 2016: 50). For instance, students at universities should use honorific speech to professors as absolute superiors, plain staff members should use it with ‘directors’ at the highest position at companies, and in the service industry salespersons must treat customers as absolute superiors, regardless of age. In the home, honorification should always be used for grandfather, the highest seniors.

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Kim, Ryeo-Yeon. 2016. A Study on the Educational Method of Honorific for Chinese Intermediate Students. PhD dissertation, Chung-Ang University, Seoul. Ko, Yong-Kun, and Bon-Kwan Koo  2008. Urimal Mwunpeplon [The Korean Grammatical Theory]. Seoul: Cipmwundang. Lee, Jung-Bok. 1999. Kwukekyengepep-uy cellyakcek yongpep-ey tayhaye [On the Strategic Usage of Korean Honorific]. Ehakyenkwu [Language Research] 35 (1): 91–122. ———. 2001. Kwuke kyengepep sayong-uy cellyakcek thukseng [The Characteristics of the Strategic Use of Korean Honorifics]. Seoul: Thaehaksa. ———. 2002. Hankwke kyengepep, Him-kwa keri-uy mihak [The Korean Honorifics, The Aesthetics of Power and Distance]. Seoul: Sotong. ———. 2012. Hankwke kyengepep-uy kinung kwa sayoung wenli [The Function and Usage Principle of Korean Honorifics]. Seoul: Sotong. Lee, Tae-Hwan. 2008. A Study on the Historical Change of the Korean Honorific Expression. PhD dissertation, Kyungwon University, Seoul. Lee, Yeon-Jeong. 2017. A Study on Korean Expressions and Intimacy. Emunyenkwu [The Study of Korean Language and Literature] 72: 443–474. Lee, Ik-Sop, and S.  Robert Ramsey. 2000. The Korean Language. Albany, NY: SUNY. Lim, Dong-Hoon. 2006. Honorific Systems in Modern Korean. Kwukehak [The Journal of Korean Linguistics] 47: 287–320. Lim, Ji-Ryong. 2015. A Speech Level of the Hearer-Oriented Honorific System and Its Construal. Ene Kwahak yenkwu [The Journal of Linguistic Science] 72: 347–376. Nam, Ki-Sim, and Yong-Kun Ko. 1985. Phyocwunkwukemwunpep [Standard Korean Grammar]. Seoul: Thapchwulphansa. Park, Ji-Soon. 2015. A Contextual Analysis on the Relative Honorification of Modern Korean: Based on Routine Semi-Spoken Data. PhD dissertation, Yonsei University, Seoul. Piao, Chengri. 2012. A Study on Teaching Korean Honorific System Based on Personal Deixis. PhD dissertation, Seoul National University, Seoul. Ren, Hongyu. 2018. The Study on Non-honorific Expressions of Korean Language Education Plan by Using Webtoons-Focused on Social Factors and Expression Forms. PhD dissertation, Chung-Ang University, Seoul. Sohn, John. 1989. Why Korean is Difficult for English Speakers to Learn. Hankwukmal kyoyuk [Korean Language Education] 1: 75–113. Sung, Ky-Chul. 1985. Hyentay taywupep yenkwu [The Study of Modern Honorifics]. Seoul: Kaymwunsa.

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———. 2007. Hankwuke taywupep-kwa Hankwukekyoyuk [Korean Honorifics and Korean Education]. Seoul: Geulnurim. Vo, Thi Lien Huong. 2016. The Ethnopragmatics of Vietnamese: An Investigation into the Cultural Logic of Interactions Focusing on the Speech Act Complex of Disagreement. PhD dissertation, Griffith University. Wang, Mun-Yong, and Hyun-Shik Min. 1993. Kwukemwunpeplon-uy ihay [The Understanding of Korean Grammatical Theory]. Seoul: Kaymwunsa. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2003. The Theory of Cultural Scripts as a Tool of Cross-­ cultural Communication. Hankwukehak [Korean Linguistics] 18: 191–218. ———. 2010. Cultural Scripts and Intercultural Communication. In Pragmatics Across Languages and Cultures, ed. A.  Trosborg, 43–78. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Yang, Young-Hee. 2010. Proposals for the Right Education of Korean Honorific Forms. Haksupca cungsim kyokwa kyoyuk enkwu [The Journal of Learner-­ Centered Curriculum and Institution] 10 (1): 239–259. Yeon, Jae-Hoon. 1996. Some Problems in Teaching Korean Speech Levels. Hankwukmal kyoyuk [Korean Language Education] 7: 281–294. Yoo, Song-Young. 1994. Kwuke chengca taywupep-eyseuy him-kwa yutay (1)-Pulthukceng chengca taywu-lul cwungsim-ulo [Power and Solidarity in the Speech Levels of Korean Language 1, Particularly About the Speech Levels to an Unspecified Hearer]. Kwukehak [Journal of Korean Linguistics] 24: 291–317. Yoo, Hyun-Kyung,  Jae-Young Han,  Hong-Byum Kim, Jung-Tayk Lee,  Sung-­ Kyu Kim,  Hyun-Hwa Kang,  Bon-Kwan Koo, Pyung-Kyu Lee,  Hwa-Sang Hwang, and Jin-Ho Lee. 2018. Hankwuke phyocwunmwunpep [Korean Standard Grammar]. Seoul: Cypmwundang. Yoon, Kyung-Joo. 2004. Not Just Words: Korean Social Models and the Use of Honorifics. Intercultural Pragmatics 1 (2): 189–210. ———. 2007. Korean Ethnopsychology Reflected in the Concept of Ceng ‘Affection’: Semantic and Cultural Interpretation. Damhwa-wa Inci [Discourse and Cognition] 14 (3): 81–103. ———. 2011. Understanding Cultural Values to Improve Cross-Cultural Communication: An Ethnopragmatic Perspective to Korean Child Rearing Practices. Eneyenkwu [The Journal of Studies in Language] 26 (4): 878–899.

Part III Health

9 Adapting the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) into Minimal English and Seven Other Minimal Languages Cliff Goddard, Ulla Vanhatalo, Amie A. Hane, and Martha G. Welch

9.1 Introduction A chance encounter between a lexical semanticist and a child psychiatrist, early in 2018, was the starting point for the research reported in this chapter. When the psychiatrist (Martha Welch) heard about Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) research from the semanticist (Ulla Vanhatalo), she said at once: ‘Just 65 simple words?! I need them for my work with babies and mothers!’ NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) is a linguistic research programme which uses simple cross-translatable words as its analytical vocabulary for comparing meanings within and C. Goddard (*) Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] U. Vanhatalo University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_9

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across languages (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002, 2014; Goddard 2018: Chap. 3), and other works; see Chap. 1). Led by Welch and Hane, researchers at the Columbia Medical Center in New  York had for some years been using the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) for measuring the emotional connection between mother and child (Hane et al. 2018). Before finalising the original WECS, there were continuing semantic debates among their very diverse team, not all of whom had English as their first language, about the optimal choice of words to capture the core concepts behind the screen and about the exact meanings of the central vocabulary. Further, Welch knew they needed to streamline the training processes with nurses, doctors, home visitors and other parent-facing professionals, given that they would not have the time to study a manual such as was used for research in the case of the original WECS form. Because emotional connection as a construct is not culture-specific, but instead represents the most fundamental building block of human relationships, global access through a universally accessible language seemed imperative. WECS specialists were concerned that there would be further misunderstandings or variable interpretation of word meanings when the form was translated into other languages. At Welch’s initiative, a collaboration with NSM linguists began which culminated, nearly two years later, in WECS-CETL, a minimal language version of the WECS screen in Clear Explicit Translatable Language. This chapter tells the story of that collaboration. The emotional connection between a mother and her child is crucial for the child’s wellbeing and development. Normally, the connection is strong. In some cases, however, the emotional connection is disrupted, and this can have serious effects on the lives of both the child and mother. A. A. Hane Williams College, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. G. Welch Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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The reasons for a disruption in emotional connection may vary. Infants born prematurely are at particular risk as the environment of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), with all its equipment, can easily break the natural connection between a mother and her newborn (see Fig.  9.1). Fortunately, as the Family Nurture Intervention (FNI) programme at the Columbia Medical Center has shown, it is possible to remediate a disrupted emotional connection by intervention and to establish or re-­ establish emotional connection. The core of the FNI intervention is mother–child emotional exchange during calming cycles. The intervention results were impressive: improved brain connectivity (Myers et al. 2015), improved autonomic regulation at term (Porges et al. 2019) and in both mother and child at four to five years of age (Ludwig and Welch 2020), improved early brain development (Welch et al. 2017), improved developmental outcomes (Welch et al. 2015), and improved parental mental health (Welch et al. 2016). All these improvements help to optimise the development of otherwise at-risk infants. It is therefore

Fig. 9.1  A baby in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. (Photo by Meghan Wyvill, used with permission)

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extremely important that disruptions in emotional connection are detected early and reliably. The Family Nurture Intervention programme at Colombia Medical Center had first  developed the Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) for research (Hane et al. 2018). This was followed by a clinical version—both quick to administer and actionable for parent-­facing professionals of all descriptions—for use in training, studies, and clinical settings in multiple hospitals and clinics. The screen works as follows. A trained observer monitors mother–infant interaction for a brief period (2–3 minutes) and gives a numerical rating (from 1.0 to 3.0 on a Likert scale) with respect to four parameters: Attraction, Vocal Communication, Facial Communication, and Sensitivity/Reciprocity. The scores are summed to give a final assessment. Figure 9.2 shows the first section of the original research rating form. Figure  9.3 shows the corresponding section of the shorter clinical version. In this version the rating is mutual only, not mother and child separately. In order to administer the clinical WECS, the clinical staff, such as nurses, were trained and certified as having attained a sufficient level of reliability. In 2018, the training materials being used included brief descriptions for the ‘anchor points’ on each of the four parameters.

Fig. 9.2  Section of the original WECS research rating form (Hane et al. 2018). The full form had five sections. © 2017, 2020 The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York

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Fig. 9.3  Section of Clinical WECS rating form. The anchors at the low, middle, and high ranges guide scoring. © 2017, 2020 The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York

Table  9.1 shows a sample of these descriptors. Both the names of the parameters and the brief descriptions in Table 9.1 are very complex in meaning, and for the most part highly  language-specific, that is, non-­ translatable across languages. Welch and the Colombia team were aware of this and wanted a form with language that was itself the guide to rating the four domains and one that would be accessible at all literacy and educational levels. A simple language version of the WECS could both accelerate the training of clinical staff, and open the way for the screen to be used in much wider range of settings and countries. Welch wanted the “prime language version” (as it was being called at that time) to be suitable for use in a wide range of countries (e.g. Ghana, Philippines, and PNG), and by a wide range of medical and paramedical personnel, such as community nurses. In her vision, it was not to be just for paediatricians and other highly trained clinical staff. As she put it: “I want it to be beneath education”. From a linguistic perspective, the language problems being faced by Welch and her team are not surprising. The complexity, ambiguity, and

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Table 9.1  Sample descriptors from WECS training materials (Expanded WECS v1.2) in use in February 2018, for Positive anchor points 1. Mutual attraction The pair maintained close physical proximity The pair had mutual eye contact The pair appeared drawn to each other The pair used touch to stay close to each other 2. Vocal communication They responded to each other’s vocalisations Their responses to each other were warm and positive 3. Facial expressiveness The mother succeeded in engaging the child with positive facial communication When one smiled, the other returned the smile Successful in eliciting reciprocal positive facial communication from each other The pair’s facial gestures reflected deep care, joy, and warmth 4. Sensitivity/reciprocity The mother and child accurately perceived and responded to each other’s emotional state Interactions between the two were largely seamless (well-timed, attuned, in-synch) Disagreements or disruptions in the interaction were repaired

language-specificity of abstract nouns are well known (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014: chap. 9), and the cultural variability of emotion words has been a focus of NSM research of decades (cf. Wierzbicka 1999; Ye 2013; Goddard  Forthcoming). More recently, NSM and Minimal English have been applied to clarify meaning and improve communication in health-related topics, such as pain concepts and pain assessment (Wierzbicka 2012;  Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014: chap. 6; Goddard and Ye 2016), depression and anxiety (Wierzbicka 2018), and taking patient records (Marini 2019; Peeters and Marini 2018). Welch and Vanhatalo resolved to collaborate with the goal of producing a minimal language version of WECS. Cliff Goddard joined the project as an online participant shortly afterwards. As things played out, it took nearly 18 months before a satisfactory outcome was reached.

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Before moving on to tell the story of that collaboration, some explanation is in order for the designation ‘Clear Explicit Translatable Language’ and its acronym CETL (pronounced ‘settle’). Over the development period, we had intermittently used various terms for the product that was under development. Mostly they involved combinations of WECS with ‘NSM’ and/or ‘Minimal English’, but it was recognised that they were not fully satisfactory for use by medical professionals. For a while it seemed like the best option was WECS-Minimal English (WECS-­ Minimal Spanish, WECS-Minimal Chinese, etc.), but the unfamiliar term ‘minimal language’ seemed to lack immediate appeal. The idea of a custom-built designation and acronym emerged in the wake of Klaara 2019, the first international conference on accessible language, held in Helsinki. Participants had debated the merits of competing descriptors such as ‘accessible’, ‘easy’, ‘easy-to-read’, ‘simple’, and ‘clear’.1 It became apparent that it would be advantageous to coin a distinctive term that captured the main positive points, yielded a user-friendly acronym, and was not based on any particular language name: Clear Explicit Translatable Language (CETL) was the result. It can be easily tagged onto existing acronyms (following the model of WECS-CETL), and as necessary, a specific language name can be added, for example: WECS-CETL (English), WECS-CETL (Spanish), WECS-CETL (Finnish). We would like to recommend the acronym CETL (Clear Explicit Translatable Language) for minimal language applications in professional and technical domains. The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. Section 9.2 describes the WECS-CETL development process in general terms, highlighting some interesting conceptual and linguistic aspects (cf. also Vanhatalo et al. Forthcoming). Section 9.3 reviews the Positive WECS-­ CETL texts in some detail, taking each parameter in turn. Section 9.4 looks more briefly at the Negative texts, at the final evaluation of whether mother and child are emotionally connected, and the recommendation for intervention if they are not. Section 9.5 discusses further research and development directions, and the implications for other psychometric tests.

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9.2 The WECS-CETL Development Process Over the nearly two-year period, the WECS-CETL texts passed through eight successive versions, often with several sub-versions. The early versions focused on conceptual and linguistic aspects, that is getting the core content right by making explicit the implicit understandings of Welch and her team. We will call this process ‘explicitation’, by analogy with a term used in translation studies.2 This was done in tandem with identifying and avoiding known translation traps. In the first month (English v5 was circulated in late February 2018), it became apparent that to characterise each WECS parameter fully would require six to eight sentences. Halfway through development we began translatability testing, often of interim versions or sections of special interest (‘spot testing’), first with Finnish and then with Polish. This testing led to many adjustments in the wording by helping to detect and eliminate ambiguities. Often a phrasing which seemed acceptable, albeit slightly odd, in English, was outright unacceptable in one or more of the other languages. We took to using a parallel texts format (see Fig. 9.4), in which translators added notes for follow-up on particular points. Towards the end of the development period, translations of the full WECS-CETL into Spanish, Korean, Akan (Ghana), Russian and Chinese were added,3 leading to further minor adjustments in the wording. Although the ‘explicitation’ analogy from translation studies is useful, a critical point about our task is that we were trying to articulate the concepts underlying the WECS, without getting “hung up” on any particular English-specific words that had previously been used for this purpose. It is important to remember that the NSM linguists (Goddard and Vanhatalo) were collaborating with the original creator of the WECS (Martha Welch), and that she had full background knowledge in regard to all its aspects. For this reason, the WECS-CETL text did not need to match exactly the original form or training text: rather, it had to fit the original functional purpose for which it was intended. In practice, we quickly left the original wording aside and focused on observing, discussing and describing actual mother–child interactions. The clinical experts explained in ordinary English, sometimes with technical jargon, what the

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Fig. 9.4  Example of an interim English/Finnish parallel text used in translatability testing. The numbers in the right column flag issues for follow-up

important behavioural indicators and emotional states associated with those behaviours were, and the linguists tried to re-formulate these insights in Minimal English. The clinicians had the ability to see what was important, and the linguists had the skills to say it using simple, translatable words. In the course of the study, all parties learnt from each other. The clinical experts became good at suggesting Minimal English wordings, sometimes noticing aspects of the mother–child interactions which had not been highlighted (explicitly) in earlier training materials. The linguists sometimes proposed content suggestions for discussion. Whether or not the final minimal language texts correspond to the supposed meanings of the original English words, such as attraction and sensitivity, was not a critical issue. One frequently debated issue was how to strike the right balance between the observer’s attributions of mental and emotional states (e.g. the mother or child wanted, thought or felt something) and objective behavioural clues (e.g. the mother or child did or said something). Each

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of the four WECS-CETL sections includes components of both kinds. The balance was determined by the team as a matter of clinical judgement. The vocabulary used during the WECS-CETL development was Minimal English, that is, NSM semantic primes combined with a small selection of semantic molecules relevant to the topic under research (see Chap. 1). About 35 of the primes were used.4 The main semantic molecules used are ‘child’ and ‘mother’ (represented in the English text as Mom), ‘hands’, ‘face’, and ‘eyes’. Others are ‘look at’, ‘turn away’, and ‘doctor’. In addition, various portmanteau expressions are used: ‘often’ (‘at many times’), ‘sometimes’ (‘at some times’), ‘next’ (‘after this’), ‘no!’ (‘I don’t want’), ‘never’ (‘not at any time’), ‘again’ (‘like before’), and ‘speak’ (‘say something to someone’). The number of ‘content words’ used in the WECS-CETL texts, therefore, comes to about 50. The English version also uses a range of English grammatical function words, mostly prepositions such as of, to, about.

9.3 The Positive Anchors in WECS-CETL In this section we run through the Positive side of the final (v8e) WECS-­ CETL texts, remarking on points of interest. The Negative side is dealt with in less detail in Sect. 9.4. While some of our remarks are relevant to many parts of the WECS-CETL, they are only discussed when they occur for the first time. We have two aims here: to discuss some key textual/ conceptual aspects of WECS-CETL, and to give a sense of how the development processes played out over time.

9.3.1 The Headings (Parameter Labels) It was clear early in the development process that it would be impossible to ensure that the WECS-CETL section headings corresponded fully to standard WECS headings, that is, Attraction, Vocal Communication, Facial Communication, and Sensitivity/Reciprocity. The latter were simply too semantically complex for that. The four WECS-CETL headings appear as follows.5

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Mom and child both want to be very close || Mom and child both want to say something to the other. They both want to know what the other wants to say. || Mom and child look at the other’s face. They want to know what the other feels. || Mom and child both know what the other feels all the time.

Also for reasons of space, the section headings were allowed to use certain English expressions (such as both and the other) and certain constructions (such as the coordinate construction Mom and child) which are known not to be item-for-item cross-translatable into every language and which are not permitted in the main body of the WECS-CETL texts.6

9.3.2 M  om and Child Both Want to Be Very Close (‘Attraction’) Clarifying the intended concept behind ‘mutual attraction’ was not as simple as might be expected, if only because the seemingly plain English words attraction and mutual do not have reliable equivalents across languages.7 Surprising as it might seem to many people, neither does the reciprocal (each other) construction (cf. Wierzbicka 2009). From a behavioural point of view, physical closeness, touching and eye contact are important, but equally important are wanting to be close and wanting to touch, as well as experiencing pleasure because of it. The whole package is hypothesised to be associated with mutual mother–child autonomic state (Hane et al. 2018; Welch et al. 2020). Because, as just mentioned, the reciprocal construction is not cross-­ translatable, the WECS-CETL texts uses paired, parallel components: one about mother, one about child. This makes the text longer, but it affords two great advantages from a conceptual point of view.8 First, it allows equal attention to mother and child. Second, it brings into immediate focus the NSM expression ‘feels the same’ (composed purely of primes), which turns out to be fundamental to the intended concept of ‘emotional connection’ and which recurs and resonates as a key component throughout the entire WECS-CETL.

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–– Child feels something very good because Mom’s body is touching

his/her body. Mom feels the same. Child very much wants to be close to Mom. Mom very much wants to be close to child. –– Mom often wants to see child’s face. Mom feels something very good when she sees child’s face. Child often wants to see Mom’s face. Child feels something very good when he/she sees Mom’s face. –– Often it is like this: Mom looks at child’s eyes for some time. At the same time child looks at Mom’s eyes. Mom feels something very good because of it. Child feels something very good because of it. –– Mom often touches child with her hands, Mom often touches child’s face with her face. When Mom does this, child feels something very good. At the same time, Mom feels something very good. –– Child often touches Mom with his/her hands, the child often touches Mom’s face with his/her face. When child does this, Mom feels something very good. At the same time, the child feels something very good. In the middle of the above text, note the introductory component ‘Often it is like this: …’. This phrasing is a way of framing a recurrent episode in time. This framing appears only once in this section, but it is used more frequently in several of the subsequent sections.9 Though face-to-face touching is posited as an important sign of emotional connection, there seems to be some cultural variation in how it is done (e.g. with the cheek, with the lips). For English speakers, kissing (with lips) is important and salient, but it seems that mothers do not literally kiss their babies in every culture. The WECS-CETL text solved this problem by generalising: ‘touch with the face’.

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9.3.3 M  om and Child Both Want to Say Something to the Other. They Both Want to Know What the Other Wants to Say (‘Communication’) Although the original WECS parameter was titled ‘Vocal Communication’, it became apparent in team discussions that the voice is not the only communicative channel involved. The face and eyes also play a part. In this connection, it is highly relevant that the semantic prime SAY is not confined to verbal communication alone, that is, to saying something with words. ‘Saying with words’ is, of course, the most salient way in which people say things, but the NSM metalanguage also allows expressions such as ‘say something with the face’ and ‘say something with the eyes’, and these expressions play an important part in the WECS-CETL texts. It is also important that both mother and child want to say something to the other, that the saying goes in both directions with closely synchronised ‘turn-taking’, and that Mom is attentive to what the child wants to say and wants to say more about the ‘same topic’.10 Though seemingly complex at first blush, the intended notion of ‘same topic’ can rendered easily in semantic primes: ‘When child says something about something, Mom wants to say more about the same thing’.

–– Mom often says something to child. Mom can say it with words,

she can say it with her face, she can say it with the eyes. At the same time, Mom wants child to say something to her. When Mom thinks ‘Child wants to say something to me now,’ Mom feels something very good. –– Child often says something to Mom. Child can say it with the face, he/she can say it with the eyes, he/she can say it with words. At the same time, child wants Mom to say something to him/her. Child wants it very much. –– Often it is like this: Mom says something good to child. Child feels something good because of it. After this, child says something good to Mom. Mom feels something good because of it.

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–– Often it is like this:

Mom says something to child. The next moment child says something more to Mom. After this, Mom says something more to child. When it is like this, the child feels something very good, at the same time Mom feels something very good. –– Often it is like this: When child says something about something, Mom wants to say more about the same thing. –– Sometimes child says with the face: ‘I see you now, I feel something good.’ When child says something like this to Mom, child feels something very good. At the same time Mom feels something very good. During the development of the text above, two interesting issues came to light from translation testing. The first concerns SAY, which, as mentioned, is used in NSM for both verbal and non-verbal communication. In Chinese, however, the main verb for SAY (说 shuō; variant 说话 shuōhuà) can only be used about saying something with words. For saying something with the eyes or face, one uses a different verb 交流 jiāloiú. This is usually glossed as ‘communicate’, but it not as “high” in tone in Chinese as ‘communicate’ is in English. In NSM terms jiāloiú can be regarded as an allolex of shuō SAY, or possibly as a portmanteau expression.11 Chinese NSM expert and translator Zhengdao Ye commented: “In Chinese, shuō (‘say’) is largely confined to thoughts and ideas. When it comes to emotions and feelings, Chinese people often rely on non-­ verbal communication. However, it should be added that Chinese communicative style is generally more “indirect” than that of English. This means ‘communication’ is done more via non-verbal means than verbal means in general”.12 The second issue concerns the translation of the final component, which describes that delightful look of recognition and joy that babies sometimes direct to their mother. The WECS-CETL text describes this as the child saying with the face ‘I see you now, I feel something good.’ This poses a translation issue for Korean, however, because in the Korean cultural context it is impossible to imagine a child addressing mother as ‘you’. Plain pronouns, especially ‘you’, are avoided in most Korean interactions, especially where there any asymmetry in age or status. The Korean rendition of this component therefore reads: ‘I see Mom now’.13

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This kind of substitution is likely to be relevant in other languages and should be taken into account when adjusting the final wording of the WECS-CETL texts for languages other than English.

9.3.4 M  om and Child Both Look at the Other’s Face. They Want to Know What the Other Feels (‘Facial Communication’) As with the previous parameter, some aspects of this parameter involve features that can be observed, such as sustained attention to the other’s face and extended eye contact, while others are a matter of subjective interpretation, such as the intention behind the eye contact (i.e. wanting to know what the other feels) and the fact that mutual eye contact is a source of pleasure for both Mom and child. Note that in the WECS-CETL below, the second component says that both Mom’s and child’s faces express the message ‘I feel something good towards you’. This corresponds to what would be described in ordinary English as warm or loving expressions.14

–– Mom wants to know what child feels. Because of this, Mom often

looks at child’s face, she often looks at child’s eyes. Child wants to know what Mom feels. Because of this, child often looks at Mom’s face, child often looks at Mom’s eyes. –– Often it is like this: Mom says with the face: ‘I feel something good towards you’. Child says with the face: ‘I feel something good towards you’. –– Often it is like this: Mom looks at child’s eyes for a long time. At the same time child looks at Mom’s eyes. When it is like this, Mom knows what child feels, at the same time child knows what Mom feels. Mom feels something very good because of it. Child feels something very good because of it. An interesting point of linguistic detail arises in connection with the English expression look at (someone’s) face. The Russian equivalent for ‘look’ (smotret’) allows two prepositions, one (na) like English ‘at’, the

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other (v) like English ‘into’. Actually, English also allows a choice of prepositions (at versus into), but only in relation to eyes, that is, in English, one can look into someone’s eyes, but not *into someone’s face. The ‘in/into’ versions imply something emotional, an interest in the other’s feelings, a desire to make emotional contact (e.g. one could not use Russian smotret’ + v ‘into’ about looking at the face of someone who is sleeping). In the Russian version of WECS-CETL text above, it was deemed acceptable to use smotret’ + v ‘into’, because it is spelled out explicitly elsewhere in the relevant components that the person is looking at the other’s face or eyes with emotional interest, so to speak. To use Russian smotret’ + na ‘at’ in this context would sound odd, as if the viewer were examining or inspecting the face or eyes.

9.3.5 M  om and Child Both Know What the Other Feels All the Time (‘Sensitivity/Reciprocity’) The fourth parameter of the WECS focuses on sensitivity to the other’s emotional state and to the reciprocity of interactions. While these aspects were already represented under the two previous parameters, here the focus is on immediate and continuous reactions to the other’s actions and feelings—in the language of the old training texts: ‘seamless (well-timed, attuned, in-synch)’. To portray this using simple words, the WECS-­ CETL text draws on the semantically primitive expressions ‘in one moment’ and ‘at the same moment’. The first pair of components capture the idea that mother and child are “locked on” to each other’s feelings and responsive to each other’s wants, and that this is expressed in the face. The second pair of components are both framed as ‘It is like this all the time’, depicting what follows as an ongoing state. The texts describe child and mother as exquisitely sensitive to any bad feeling in the other and as wanting to take immediate action (by vocalisation or by touch) to overcome that bad feeling. This subsumes what was described in the February 2018 WECS training text as: ‘disagreements or disruptions in the interaction were repaired’.

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–– When child feels something at one moment, Mom often knows at the

same moment what the child is feeling. Mom’s face often says: ‘I know what you feel now, I know what you want me to do, I want to do it.’ –– When Mom feels something at one moment, child often knows at the same moment what Mom feels. Child’s face often says: ‘I know what you feel now, I know what you want me to do, I want to do it.’ –– It is like this all the time: If child feels something bad at one moment, Mom knows it. Mom doesn’t want child to feel anything bad. Because of this, she says something good to child, she touches child. After this, child doesn’t feel something bad anymore. –– It is like this all the time: If Mom feels something bad at one moment, child knows it. Child doesn’t want Mom to feel anything bad. Because of this, child says something good to Mom, he/she touches Mom. After this, Mom doesn’t feel something bad anymore.

9.4 T  he Negative Anchor Texts and Overall Assessment (‘Emotionally Connected or Not Connected’) This section must be briefer for reasons of space. For reference, the full WECS-CETL Negative text is given in the Appendix. Characterising the negative side of WECS scale essentially means describing signs of disruption in the emotional connection between a mother and child. Formulating the Negative texts was a challenging task. They were not completed till September 2019. The challenges were twofold. On the one hand, Welch and her team that had found there are certain behavioural clues for emotional disconnection, such as ‘vocal defiance’, ‘non-­ responsiveness’, and ‘aversive reaction’. These need to be described clearly in WECS-CETL to guide the observer administering the screen. On the other hand, it is known that paediatric staff can be reluctant to award low ratings if these can be seen as harsh or blaming, or as risking negative consequences for mother and child. The observer is also asked if the pair is able to repair any disruptions occurring during the observation. If so,

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the final determination results in a higher emotional connection rating. With these considerations in mind, the four headings for the negative anchors were as shown below. Mom and child don’t want to be close || Mom and child don’t say much to the other || Mom and child don’t look at the other’s face || Mom and child don’t know that the other feels

Notice that the headings are phrased as brief negated statements, with little attribution of intention or feeling. The tone was intended to be neutral and objective-sounding. Even so, when describing certain specific behavioural clues, it was not possible to avoid attribution of intentions and feelings. For example, the behavioural indicators mentioned earlier are described in WECS-CETL as follows:15 ‘vocal defiance’:

–– If Mom touches child, the child doesn’t want it. Child says ‘No’ to

Mom. Child can say it with words, child can say it with the face. If child touches Mom, Mom doesn’t want it. Mom says ‘No’ to child. Mom can say it with words, she can say it with the face.

‘non-responsiveness’:

–– When Mom doesn’t say anything to child for a long time, child

doesn’t do anything because of it When child doesn’t say anything to Mom for a long time, Mom doesn’t do anything because of it.

‘aversive reaction’:

–– Child doesn’t want Mom to look at his/her face. When Mom looks

at child’s face, sometimes child turns away. Sometimes child says with the face ‘I feel something bad towards you’. Mom doesn’t want child to look at her face. When child looks at Mom’s face, sometimes Mom turns away. Sometimes Mom says with the face: ‘I feel something bad towards you’.

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For many people, reading these explicit negative WECS-CETL components is likely to be an unpleasant, or at least, unsettling, experience— just as it is to watch such interactions. But this only underscores the importance of early and reliable detection of emotional disruption between mother and child, which is of course the precise purpose of the WECS. As the Family Nurture Intervention literature has shown, emotional connection can usually be quickly restored with supportive, evidence-­based intervention. This takes us to the final section of the WECS. On the original WECS form, this was a question ‘Are the two emotionally connected?’ with options for a Yes or No answer. In the pre-final version of WECS-CETL (v8e), different text was provided for each outcome. For the ‘Yes’ outcome, that is, when mother and child are found to be emotionally connected, this text is shown below. Two components are used to describe an emotionally connected mother and child, both in the familiar parallel structure. They emphasise both ‘feeling something good’ and ‘feeling the same’. The final line gives an assessment: ‘This is very good’, and specifically, ‘It is very good for Mom. It is very good for child’. Mom and child both feel something good because they are with the other.

–– Mom feels something very good because she is with child. When

Mom feels something good, child knows it. Child feels something good because of it. Child feels something very good because he/she is with Mom. When child feels something good, Mom knows it. Mom feels something good because of it. –– It is like this: When Mom feels something, child feels the same. When child feels something, Mom feels the same. THIS IS VERY GOOD. It is very good for Mom. It is very good for child. For the ‘No’ outcome, that is, when mother and child are found to have a disruption in emotional connection, the corresponding text is shown below, using negated versions of those for emotional connection. The assessment is given as ‘This is not good’ (specifically, ‘it is not good

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for Mom … not good for child’) and at the end, the recommendation is: ‘It will be good if someone speaks to Mom about it, someone like a doctor’. The expression ‘someone like a doctor’ was chosen to allow the person to be a nurse, or some other kind of medical staff. Mom and child don’t feel something good because they are with the other.

–– It is not like this:

Mom feels something good because she is with child. Child feels something good because he/she is with Mom. –– It is not like this: When Mom feels something, child feels the same. When child feels something, Mom feels the same. THIS IS NOT GOOD. It is not good for Mom. It is not good for child. It will be good if someone speaks to Mom about it, someone like a doctor. From a conceptual point of view, the development team was satisfied with the CETL texts above, but it has since emerged that they are not suitable for use as training texts. After the completion of the development process, in early 2020 the Colombia team conducted a randomised trial of two improved training methods for WECS, one of which used the WECS-CETL texts. Reporting those trials, Vanhatalo et al. (Forthcoming) write as follows: One significant point of detail about WECS-CETL is that we replaced the final summative WECS assessment “Are they emotionally connected? Yes/ No” with the final question: “Would it be good if someone speaks to Mom about it, someone like a doctor?” “Yes/No.” This change was made because of rater feedback. Clinical raters reported they felt reluctant to make a ­judgment that could be perceived as negative without knowing the way it might be used in the casefile of the dyad. Despite our efforts to write the negative WECSCETL scales in such a way as to avoid blaming or harsh language, raters were still reluctant to give low global assessment ratings when appropriate. Piloting the WECS in pediatric practices informed us that clinicians aim to protect the families they care for, by avoiding observations that may be interpreted as negative in an institutional record. (Vanhatalo et al. Forthcoming)

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An excerpt from the current WECS-CETL rating form is shown in Fig. 9.5. Notice it uses a simple heading for the domain, as described in Sect. 9.3.1. The brief rating form and the use of WECS-­CETL for training the observer’s eye to discern the state of a mother–child pair’s relational health allows a parent-facing professional to assess  the state of emotional connection in 5 or 6 minutes total. Using the shorter rating form and clear, easily translatable language means that anyone from any culture can be provided with the lens to understand the state of any mother–child pair’s relational health. Once they do, they will also have an idea of what actions between a mother and child could increase or repair emotional connection. For example, the professional could help a pair to connect by putting them face to face and engaging them in activities to enhance sustained eye-to-eye contact, touch, child-­directed vocalisations and mutual vocal exchanges, as well as mother–child reciprocity.

Fig. 9.5  The WECS-CETL form uses the CETL language for the four domains. Shown here is the section of the form for rating the domain corresponding to ‘Attraction’. © 2020 The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York

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9.5 Discussion Probably the most intriguing aspect in the WECS-CETL development process was the interplay between the conceptual and linguistic levels, on the one hand, and between clinicians and linguists, on the other. Most research in the NSM framework is “by linguists, for linguists” (and for others in adjacent humanities and social science disciplines). The development of WECS-CETL, in contrast, was initiated by people outside linguistics, carried out in close interdisciplinary collaboration, and the results were intended to improve psychiatric procedures in clinical settings. The different starting point and purpose had an influence over the entire development process. Although the primary WECS-CETL development process can be regarded as completed, there are several open questions for future research. We briefly mention three of them here. First, would it be useful to have a condensed version of the WECS-CETL texts? At the very beginning, it had been hoped that the minimal language WECS could be kept rather brief, preferably not more than one page in length, so that the WECS form itself could be presented entirely in minimal language. Once it became apparent that a fully explicit text would greatly exceed this,16 it was clear that the best use of the full WECS-CETL text would be as a training text. Nonetheless, the possibility remains that a condensed version could work well if used in conjunction with other training materials, such as video-clips showing sample interactions between mother and child. Perhaps in some contexts the WECS-CETL headings alone could provide enough textual support for a successful training package; perhaps the summary text below could provide a concise summary of the notion behind ‘emotional connection’: Mother and child both feel something good because they are with the other. When Mom feels something, child feels the same. When child feels something, Mom feels the same.

The value of full versus condensed WECS-CETL texts remains to be tested. We would expect that different solutions would turn out to be optimal in different contexts and with different users. A ‘one size fits all’

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solution is unlikely to work equally well for medical students in the USA and community nurses in Ghana or the Philippines. A second question to be explored concerns the extent to which WECS-­ CETL texts can or should be “localised” to fit particular individual languages. The need for some adjustment has already been noted at several points in Sect. 9.3, as for example, restrictions on the use of the ‘you’ pronoun in WECS-CETL (Korean). To add another example: in WECS-­ CETL (Polish) the ordinary word for ‘face’ (twarz) can be used about the mother, but for a child’s face a special diminutive-like word (buzia, roughly ‘dear little face’) is needed.17 A question to be considered—and researched—is how much adjustment is advisable in order to sound more natural and user-friendly in specific languages. The challenge is to balance between explicitness and cross-translatability, on the one hand, and sounding natural and familiar, on the other. Third, it seems likely that components of the WECS-CETL texts, insofar as they identify building blocks of a good mother–child connection in non-technical language, may be useful for intervention purposes, that is, to help overcome disruptions in emotional connection. For example, an attending doctor or nurse could encourage a mother ‘to touch the child’s body with her body’, ‘to touch the child’s face with her face’, ‘to say something to her child more often’, or ‘to look into the child’s eyes more often’. (This kind of advice cannot be given on the basis of the original WECS wording, as a mother could hardly be advised ‘to be more attractive’ or ‘to be more sensitive’.) Finally, what are the implications for other psychometric screens? To quote from Vanhatalo et al. (Forthcoming): In most psychometric instruments, language is used for measuring various features. Standard language is unfortunately a fairly variable measuring tape. The present study could be seen as a proof of concept indicating the value of studies that explore the adaptation of psychometric screening tools into CETL versions. Lexical semanticists are well aware of the resistance towards simple language among many specialists, including medical researchers and practitioners. Rethinking complex issues in simple vocabulary may be challenging in the beginning, but as our experience and studies predict, such rethinking may result in unprecedented improvements.

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The project reported in this chapter was an adventure the like of which none of us had experienced before. The process was not always easy or straightforward, but the novelty, the challenge, and the experience of working collegially with researchers from other fields was highly rewarding. We would like to encourage other linguists working with minimal languages to get involved in interdisciplinary collaboration.

Appendix: WECS-CETL Negative 1. Mom and Child Don’t Want to Be Close

–– Mom doesn’t want to be very close to child. Mom doesn’t feel

something good when child’s body is touching her body. Child doesn’t want to be very close to Mom. Child doesn’t feel something good when Mum’s body is touching his/her body. –– Mom doesn’t often touch child with her hands. She doesn’t touch child’s face with her face. –– If Mom touches child, the child doesn’t want it. Child says ‘No’ to Mom. Child can say it with words, child can say it with the face. If child touches Mom, Mom doesn’t want it. Mom says ‘No’ to child. Mom say it with words, she can say it with the face. –– Mom doesn’t often look at child’s face. Mom doesn’t often look at child’s eyes. Child doesn’t often look at Mom’s face. Child doesn’t often look at Mom’s eyes. –– When Mom doesn’t look at child’s face for a long time, child doesn’t do anything. When child doesn’t look at Mom’s face for a long time, Mom doesn’t do anything.

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 . Mom and Child Don’t Often Say Something 2 to the Other

–– Mom doesn’t often say something to child. Mom doesn’t say anything

to child with the face; she doesn’t say anything to child with the eyes. Child doesn’t often say something to Mom. Child doesn’t say anything to Mom with the face; child doesn’t say anything to Mom with the eyes. –– When Mom says something to child, child doesn’t want it. Child says ‘No’ to Mom. Child can say it with words; child can say it with the face. When it is like this, child feels something bad. At the same time, Mom feels something bad. –– When Mom doesn’t say anything to child for a long time, child doesn’t do anything because of it. When child doesn’t say anything to Mom for a long time, Mom doesn’t do anything because of it.

 . Mom and Child Don’t Often Look 3 at the Other’s Face

–– Mom doesn’t often look at child’s face. Child doesn’t often look at Mom’s face. –– It is not like this:

Mom wants to see child’s face, Mom wants to see child’s eyes. Child wants to see Mom’s face, child wants to see Mom’s eyes. –– Child doesn’t want Mom to look at his/her face. When Mom looks at child’s face, sometimes child turns away. Sometimes child says to Mom with the face ‘I feel something bad towards you’. Mom doesn’t want child to look at her face. When child looks at Mom’s face, sometimes Mom turns away. Sometimes Mom says to child with the face: ‘I feel something bad towards you’. –– It is never like this: Child looks at Mom’s face for some time, at the same time Mom looks at child’s face.

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 . Mom and Child Don’t Know What 4 the Other Feels

–– When child feels something, Mom doesn’t know it. Mom’s face

doesn’t say: ‘I know what you feel now.’ When Mom feels something, child doesn’t know it. Child’s face doesn’t say: ‘I know what you feel now.’ –– It is like this all the time: If child feels something bad at one moment, Mom doesn’t know it. When child feels something bad, Mom doesn’t say something good to child. Mom doesn’t touch child, Mom doesn’t do anything else. –– It is like this all the time: If Mom feels something bad at one moment, child doesn’t know it. When Mom feels something bad, child doesn’t say something good to Mom. Child doesn’t touch Mom, child doesn’t do anything else. –– Sometimes it is like this: Child wants to know what Mom feels. Because of this, child looks at Mom’s face for a very short time. Child doesn’t know what Mom feels. After some time, child looks at Mom’s face again for a very short time. It happens like this many times.

Notes 1. The chief organisers of Klaara 2019 were Ulla Vanhatalo and Camilla Lindholm. As noted in Chap. 1, terms like ‘Easy Language’ and German Leichte Sprache (‘Easy Language’) are well suited for materials designed for people with cognitive disabilities or for language learners, but may have inappropriate connotations for other users. 2. In translation studies, explicitation refers to a process whereby implicit information in a source text is rendered explicit in the translated text, cf. Munday (2016: 93). Explicitation in translation includes articulating assumed background (presuppositions) of culture-embedded words or references, unpacking language-specific grammar and discourse-cohesive mechanisms. It is one reason why translated texts are almost always longer than source texts.

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3. The translators of the final WECS-CETL were as follows: Finnish: Ulla Vanhatalo; Spanish: Jan Hein; Polish: Zuzanna Bułat-Silva, with Anna Wierzbicka; Korean: Kyungjoo Yoon; Russian: Alena Kazmaly; Mandarin Chinese: Wendi Xue and Zhengdao Ye; Akan: Rachel Thompson and Comfort Ahenkorah. All of them are NSM linguists with native speaker knowledge of the languages concerned. All of them made valuable contributions to the project. 4. In a departure from normal NSM practice, the English word close was used as a near-equivalent to the semantic prime NEAR. 5. A minor point: it was decided in WECS-CETL (English) not to use the definite article ‘the’ with ‘child’, that is, to write ‘child’ rather than ‘the child’. Interestingly, some languages, such as Russian and Chinese, lack articles altogether; in others, such as Akan, an article is obligatory in such contexts. English is somewhat unusual in that while using the definite article sounds more normal, it is not grammatically unacceptable to do without it and as a reader one adapts fairly quickly. 6. In Polish, for example, an additional reflexive pronoun siebie (a bit like English ‘self ’) will be needed in the headings. 7. Even when used about adults, ‘attraction’ is a metaphor; but when used about mother and child, it can only be seen as medical jargon. In ordinary English it would sound odd to speak about a mother and child being ‘attracted’ to each other. 8. From a linguistic point of view, another advantage is circumventing the need to use a coordination construction (e.g. ‘Mom and child’) or a plural pronoun (i.e. ‘they’). Surprising as it may be, such expressions are not necessarily simple and translatable into some languages. For example, in Polish a mixed-gender pair calls for a different ‘they’ form to a same-­gender pair, so it is hard to find a phrasing that is neutral to whether the child is male or female. 9. A point of linguistic detail: in WECS-CETL (Chinese), framing components like ‘Often it like this …’ sound somewhat odd unless they are introduced using a topic-like phrase such as: Māmā gēn hái zî zhī jiān ‘between Mom and child’. Chinese is often described as a ‘topic prominent’ language. 10. The latter aspect had not been explicitly highlighted in the February 2018 training materials, nor the fact that Mom and child each ‘get a kick’ out of communicating, but both aspects were strongly affirmed as important by Welch.

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11. It is unclear at this time whether 交流 jiāloiú is best understood as an allolex or as a portmanteau. The issue turns on whether in the expression ‘say something with the eyes/face’ the word ‘say’ is the semantic prime SAY ‘pure and simple’, as it were, or whether it is better analysed as an extended polysemic sense of ‘say’, as in ‘indicate’ or ‘show’, with additional semantic content. The matter requires further research. 12. Interestingly, for some months the linguists on the team had debated whether it was preferable in the first component to use three full sentences with repetition and parallelism, or to use a ‘compressed syntax’, that is ‘she can say it with words, with the face, with the eyes’? We were already leaning towards the full version, in the interests of clarity, but eventually the Chinese rendition decided the matter. 13. From the viewpoint of NSM theory, it appears that in mother–infant talk, the meanings ‘you’ and ‘I’ are often expressed by words like ‘Mom’ (or variants), depending on who is ‘speaking’; cf. ‘I see Mommy’ (expressed non-verbally), ‘Look at Mommy!’ (said by Mom). 14. We acknowledge that expressions like ‘I feel something good towards you’ are not, apparently, directly cross-translatable into some languages. They may well be composites (portmanteaus) involving ‘feel something good’ and ‘want to do something good for you’, and other elements. The matter requires more research. 15. The full Negative anchor text in the Appendix includes several other behavioural clues, such as absence of mutual gaze, lack of mutual touching, and ‘anxious glances’ from the child. 16. The WECS-CETL (English) texts are about 870 words and 620 words in length, respectively, for the Positive and Negative versions, that is about 1500 words in total. 17. Similarly, for a mother’s hands the normal word ręce is used, but for the child’s hands a diminutive rączki (roughly, ‘dear little hands’) is needed. Similar variants are needed in WECS-CETL (Russian).

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10 Ways of Thinking and Talking about Cancer Magdalena Juda

10.1 Introduction We could write a whole book about each cancer patient; and each would be interesting and unique. At the same time, we are all surrounded by our own cultural concepts of illness and they have influence on our way of thinking, even if we are not aware of it. In every culture, in every country, cancer is perceived differently. How it is perceived depends on many factors, including the economy, the health care system and, most importantly for us, the way in which people think about terms and concepts like ‘illness’, ‘patient’ and ‘cancer’ itself. Despite some possible lexical-­ semantic differences, there is something that most European countries and languages share: namely, that when we think about cancer, we automatically associate it with the words like ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’. Goddard and Ye (2014: 10) in their paper ‘Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures’ mention that the word pain, at least in English, is always presented as a negative one. However, cancer need not—and M. Juda (*) University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_10

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should not—be considered only as a painful or a shameful disease. Not all illnesses are treated in this way, as Susan Sontag (1978: 17) confirms in her well-known book: “The dying tubercular is pictured as made more beautiful and more soulful; the person dying of cancer is portrayed as robbed of all capacities of self-transcendence, humiliated by fear and agony”. Talking about cancer is something which has accompanied me through my whole life. I’ve grown up surrounded by cancer patients—my father is an oncologist, so it was a common topic in my family—and I also worked with them in an oncological center as a secretary. That was the moment when I realised that their way of perceiving their disease was completely different from the way that the society in general was seeing it (mostly as a terrifying fatal illness). I felt that in some way we take away from the cancer patients their right to share their experience. There are many different ways of talking about cancer and sadly, it must be admitted, they are often harmful to cancer patients and to society more broadly. That is why we should try to discover more about ‘cancer talk’ and improve the situation for cancer patients in society. There is a great necessity to talk more about such a complex illness. Health personnel should dedicate more time to talking with patients to reduce their stress and anxiety, since they are the main source from which to gain information, but, as all of us know well, there is never enough time. There is a necessity to synthesise information in an effective way so that the patient can understand the medical terms and the treatment method, and either agree or disagree with it. There are some places where the way of talking cancer is very well thought through and organised in detail, but in others thinking about cancer defaults immediately to thinking about pain, suffering and death. In this chapter I will discuss ways of speaking and thinking about cancer in three different countries: Poland, France and Spain. We will compare them in Minimal English and try to observe how various factors (cultural, economic, medical) may have influenced the situation. The main focus is a contrastive analysis of four prominent cancer websites in each of the three countries, supplemented by observations from corpora and from the author’s experiences working and mixing with cancer patients in Poland and Spain (cf. also Juda 2019).

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Minimal English is a particularly helpful tool for our purposes, because it is a method which tries to go ‘under’ the language barrier (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018: 6) and that can help us to understand different the ways of speaking in various cultures and the ways of thinking that underlie them. Using Minimal English, the differences can be more easily seen and shown.

10.2 T  he Importance of Using Minimal Language for Talking About Cancer There are different ways of talking about cancer in every country because of its culture and language. Sometimes we do not even notice how deeply we are submerged in ours and that we use a certain pattern to talk about cancer. To see how the websites in these three countries (Poland, France and Spain) work, we can summarise their content with the help of Minimal English to identify and focus on the main differences. The main reason to use Minimal English is because of its translatability. Since we are talking about three languages (Polish, French, Spanish), we need a tool which allows us to translate all the contents to make the comparison. Its advantage over the more austere NSM is that we can add specific vocabulary items such as cancer, illness, doctor, and family. As well, it is essential to remember that there in today’s world are many people who are not fluent in the dominant languages used where they live. Migrants, refugees, people with low level of education, or people with disabilities, for example, are not able to understand complicated medical terms and therefore need some help from linguists. Minimal language can reduce the problem of misunderstanding, and it could improve communication because of its amenability to immediate translation.

10.2.1 Minimal Languages in Health Communication Health Communication is a relatively new, and rapidly growing, field of communication studies exploring strategies to improve treatment outcomes through the exchange of information about them (Schiavo 2014).

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The research generally focuses on the description of the state of affairs: on discovering doctors’ communicative mistakes or analysing conflicts between patients and doctors. However, all too often, health communication is not used to prevent problems; researchers do not examine the cause of problems, but seek to ‘alleviate’ them (see Nowina Konopka 2016: 69). Instead of focussing on individual cases, they study the general situation. The oncologist’s communication with a patient is mainly the responsibility of doctors (see Ciałkowska-Rysz and Dzierżanowski 2019; Walden-Gałuszko 2015), but linguistic studies are rare. Not focussing on the details can lead to serious consequences. As Pyszkowska (2015: 2) admits, the patient remains entitled to make decisions for the rest of his life. That is why it is crucial to improve the communication between the doctor and the patient. By using minimal language, the patient will be able to understand the message and respond according to their will, even if their condition is bad. This will give the patient a voice and allow them to decide for themselves. It can give them a feeling of having control of the situation, which is one of the most important elements during the fight with cancer (Walden-Gałuszko 2015: 31). The problem of doctor-to-patient interaction is an increasingly common topic for linguists around the world, with studies done in the United States (see Charon 2006), Europe (see Lascaratou 2007; Marini 2019; Zabielska 2014) and Asia (see Li 2019; Zhang 2019). What interferes with patients’ freedom of expression is the doctor’s attitude, interruption, lack of empathy or their own inhibitions (Dzierżanowski and Łuczak 2019: 44). Sometimes the doctor tries to escape responsibility of making decisions about treatment (Ng et al. 2019). The particular need to focus on oncology results from the great need to help oncologists, who experience professional burnout (Kozaka 2015: 425) more often than doctors of other specialties due to inadequate structure and organization of work.

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10.3 A  First View of Cancer in Polish, French and Spanish Discourse The essential point of this research is to observe how societies in different countries deal with the issue of cancer. In Sect. 10.3.1, we start with some brief observations from linguistic corpora (see Appendix 1) to discern the first differences in how people think about cancer. Then Sect. 10.3.2 presents some short cultural scripts intended to capture the culturally influenced orientation of patients towards their cancer experience.

10.3.1 Brief Observations from Corpora The corpora consulted are listed in Appendix 1. It must be noted that they are not strictly comparable across languages either in size or in composition. For example, the French material contains relatively few books, whereas books were the main source for the Polish corpus (Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego). With the French and Spanish corpora, it was important to refer only to material from France and Spain, as opposed to other countries where the language is the official one. I admit that my use of these corpora is somewhat impressionistic, but it must be remembered that they are not the main evidence source for the chapter. Poland In the Polish corpora, we can find a lot of references to cancer as something tragic, fatal (śmiertelnej choroby ‘fatal illness’) and incredibly scary. There are many examples, such as (1) below, which use the metaphor of cancer devouring (zżerać) the patient from within. (1) Matka po kolejnym zawale leżała obok starej kobiety, którą rak zżerał od środka i która ostatkiem sił, na morfinie, relacjonowała matce spotkania z przybyszami wychodzącymi spod szpitalnego karnisza (NKJP, Kobierski 2005) After another heart attack my mother was lying next to an old woman, who was being eaten from the inside by cancer and who, with her last strength, was, on morphine, reporting to her mother the meeting with the newcomers who were leaving the hospital.

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There are also examples like (2), which present cancer as something that is not possible to control and that is why it produces anxiety: (2) choroba nowotworowa, jest poetycką metaforą i filozoficzną syntezą, kluczem do rozumienia duchowych katastrof ludzkości. Rak nie zżera, nie poraża, nie zatruwa, on tylko rośnie, zawsze ponad miarę, zawsze bez rozsądku i granic, nieprzewidywalnie, z wściekłą, spontaniczną żywiołowością […] (NKJP, Kowalewski 2000) cancer is a poetic metaphor and philosophical synthesis, the key to understanding the spiritual catastrophes of humanity. Cancer does not eat [zżera], it does not shock, it does not poison, it only grows, it is always beyond measure, always without reason and borders, unpredictable, with furious, spontaneous spontaneity.

It is possible to assume that in Poland people feel anxious and scared because of cancer. They consider this illness as something entirely bad and, most of the time, fatal. It also can be considered as a punishment. This phenomenon doesn’t happen exclusively in Poland, but also in other Slavic countries. The famous book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1968) titled Cancer Ward uses the metaphor of cancer and the hospital ward to depict a soulless totalitarian system. It is not very easy to find scientific documents about cancer which could be adapted for patients and for people who are not professionals. The collocations we can find show that cancer is very negative phenomenon, something we don’t talk in any other way than this one. Looking to the examples above, we can observe it to be a very sad, helpless situation. Rarely or never do we see a scenario in which a person with cancer tries to accept the illness and live with it. There is no ‘bridge’ between healthy life and death; it is one or the other and living with cancer seems impossible. Other interesting thing is that the  Polish word for  ‘cancer’  (rak) also means ‘crayfish’ (the crustacean), and that is why we can find a lot of comparisons between the animal and the disease. Sometimes even the patients, making jokes of their condition, refer to the cancer as an animal, or even as a pet.

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France French discourse about cancer is extraordinary because of its scientific shade. In the corpus consulted, it is actually not so common to see examples of cancer as a metaphor for some kind of bad thing. More common are examples referring to cancer treatment methods, the sources being healthcare websites. The word ‘cancer’ is used as something normal, with no traces of allusions to the fault, for example: (3) Quelle logique, au fond, qui va de la volonté de supprimer un jour férié à cette perfide démagogie dénonçant les loisirs et leurs risques, faisant le tri entre les malades irresponsables et les bons. Dénonçant les mauvais conducteurs mais pas les constructeurs automobiles, les fumeurs responsables de leur cancer mais pas les fabricants de tabac, ou, aussi, “les arrêts de travail”. (L’Humanité, Le Corpus Chambers-­ Rostand du français journalistique, Projet ORFEO 2015 CNRS) What a logic, basically, which goes from the will to abolish a public holiday to this perfidious demagogy denouncing leisure activities and their risks, sorting out between the irresponsible sick and the good. Denouncing bad drivers but not car manufacturers, smokers responsible for their cancer but not tobacco companies, or, also, “work stoppages”.

That example seems to me very interesting as even here, only in one sentence, we are not looking at the smokers as the ones who are guilty for being sick. I find it extremely different as in Poland we always assume that a smoker ‘grows his own cancer’. Here is a second example of using the word ‘cancer’ as a part of a larger story, but without putting the main focus on cancer as such: (4) Des courses à pied contre le cancer du sein Une ancienne athlète organise dix épreuves en France pour collecter des fonds DIMANCHE 20 octobre, au moins six cents femmes partiront de l’ Ecole militaire, dans le 7e arrondissement de Paris, pour marcher ou courir cinq kilomètres dans le cadre de la lutte contre le cancer du sein. (Le Monde, Le Corpus Chambers-Rostand du français journalistique, Projet ORFEO 2015 CNRS) Running against breast cancer A former athlete organizes ten events in France to raise funds SUNDAY, October 20, at least six hundred women

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will leave the Military School in the 7th district of Paris to walk or run five kilometres in the fight against breast cancer.

It is very curious that we don’t see more metaphorical ways of using the word cancer; the collocations we find are more scientific, precise and direct. In other words, French society says cancer when needs it in its exact meaning. There is no need to compare cancer with something different because the only use of the word cancer is related to the illness. In my opinion, if the only collocation of cancer is with the disease, it’s easier to stay calm thinking about it. If we compare cancer to society’s dysfunction or to an enemy, we automatically feel fear thinking about the illness. Spain In Spain the situation is similar to that in France, except that in the Spanish corpus there are many examples from both literature and medicine. For instance: (5) Te acuerdas, la hermana de mi madre, que nos cuidó tanto cuando ella murió, ahora está muriéndose de un cáncer no le queda ni una semana. (Real Academia Española: Banco de datos (CORDE), Muñoz Molina 2001) Do you remember, my mother’s sister, who took such a care of us when she died, now she is dying of cancer, she doesn’t even have a week. (6) La frecuencia en el sexo masculino es de 11.56% y en el femenino de 6.40%. Hay poblaciones en las que ninguna mujer muere por esta causa y otras en que se alcanza al 22.22%. Debemos tener en cuenta que en esta causa está incluido el cáncer de pulmón. The frequency is 11.56% for males and 6.40% for females. There are populations in which no woman dies from this cause and others in which it reaches 22.22%. We must bear in mind that lung cancer is included in this cause.

In the Spanish corpus collocations related to ‘cancer’ are rather neutral. We cannot discern any main tendency as to how people treat cancer in Spain. I would say it is not the disease itself  that is considered  most

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important, but rather the people who are involved. In the corpus we can observe that cancer never has the priority. More typical is what we can see in example (5), which is about a member of family who took care of a cancer patient; only  then there is information about the course of the disease. In my opinion, this case is the most curious one because the cancer seems to be in the background. The person with cancer still has his life going on, still has his friends and family, and cancer isn’t placed at the top of his life. When we observe the Spanish way of talking about cancer, we notice that those people seem  brave; they don’t seem scared when someone mentions cancer. Spanish people are known for their good way of living life, and for enjoying it. I would say it is applicable here as well. They don’t lose the will to live, even if the most dangerous disease comes to them.

10.3.2 D  ifferent Cultural Orientations Towards Cancer in Poland, France and Spain In this section, three cultural scripts will be presented and briefly discussed. They are intended to show culturally influenced ways in which a cancer sufferer is likely to think about ‘what is happening to me’. In each case I present some brief framing commentary, followed by the script. Poland As a Polish person, I obviously got to know the Polish way of thinking and talking about cancer from many perspectives. For obvious reasons, this is the one I would like to change the most. As a healthy person, I realised I should try to make the patient’s life easier. Patients already have to worry about how to cover the cost of treatment, often with no salary as they are not able to work. It would benefit them greatly if they did not have to feel different from the healthy people every time they go out. Wierzbicka (1999) observed that Polish people tend to express their emotions freely and that they do so without thinking greatly about the addressee. A lot of foreign people say that Poles complain a lot; but the truth is, they just express themselves in this way. However, there is

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actually a risk of falling into constant grief because of every little detail and a sensation of helplessness. That is, something we can say is that Polish people struggle a lot during their treatment. The cancer is considered as a punishment or a sentence. It is, in large part, due to a poor public health system, but this is not the only reason. It is possible to observe a lack of communication between the patient and the doctor, but, what is worse, between the patient and society. They actually cannot understand each other. In effect, the patient feels in some way excluded from society and that does not help him in his fight. We can summarise these patterns, and the attitudes evident from the corpora above, in a cultural script like the following, where the first half expresses the negative thoughts and feelings, and the second half expresses the need to communicate them to other people: [A] A Polish cultural script: a common attitude of someone with cancer I know that something very bad is happening to me, I don’t know why I know that I can die because of it I can’t do anything, I feel something very bad because of it I want people to know what I feel I want to say what I truly think, I want to say what I truly feel I know that some people don’t want to think about things like this

France Bert Peeters (2013) in his article ‘Ah méfiance, quand tu tiens la France…’ affirms that méfiance (wariness) is an important cultural value of the French people. Méfiance follows the French through history but accompanies them all  through life as well—they are born with méfiance and they die with it (Peeters 2013: 2). Méfiance is a wariness and a mistrust of stated facts, which inspires a search for further truth. It is possible they feel the same way when dealing with cancer. That means that they seldom panic or feel lost; they just see an issue which should be resolved. I was impressed seeing such a large number of manuals, instructions and even books for children dedicated to the topic of cancer. I was very impressed when I realised that the French healthcare system is so organised and based on management by the doctors. I also was surprised seeing how much they care for children whose families could have cancer, so much so that  they prepare books and videos to

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explain that illness. Due to the awareness in France, French speakers know they have to think well about the problem and agree on some strategy to finish it successfully. That is what we actually are able to observe on cancer websites in France. They are full of useful information and the contents are  well organised. There is little use  of metaphors and no trace of pompous vocabulary. There is another very common expression in French prendre du recul, which roughly means ‘to take a step back’; it is normally used in a difficult moment, when someone finds himself in a complicated position. It means someone should pause and think about the whole situation. It relates to the concept of méfiance and it fits into the French way of speaking about cancer, which is reserved and distanced. We could estimate that the distance is reflected also in the way of using the word cancer as a metaphor for something bad and dangerous (a phenomenon which happens a lot especially in Polish). It actually could be a good strategy for all patients. In psychology, it is recommended to fight the fear by concretising it and feeling in control of the situation (Walden-Gałuszko 2011: 51). In other words, if a patient defines the cancer as an enemy against which he has to win, it could be more achievable. A cultural script which captures these ideas could be as follows: [B] A French cultural script: a common attitude of someone with cancer I know that something very bad is happening to my body I want to know a lot about it, I want to think about it well I know that I can die because of it I want to think about it like this: If I do some things, I can live I want to do these things as I want, not as someone else wants

Spain While spending time in Spain, I noticed how willingly Spanish people talked about cancer and even about  the people they know who suffer from it. I was extremely surprised because the way of talking about cancer was already more cheerful than in Poland. It also surprised me that the families stay so together. In other countries sometimes I felt that the elder generations were a bit of a problem for the younger members of the family, something I never noticed in Spain. I also knew that Spanish people

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tend to be very social; even after they have retired, they still have quite an active social life, which is very rare in Poland where older people are often very lonely. However, it can be a problem. The family has an enormous impact on the patient and sometimes tries to convince him to change the decision, which can disturb a treatment process established previously with the doctor. On the Spanish websites one can find a lot of information about the family  and friends, about the people who are around the patient (before the illness as well). For comparison, on Polish websites we can see more words like opiekun, which means someone who takes care of a patient, not necessarily someone involved emotionally in that person’s life (it is more used for the people who took care of someone when he started to be ill, but without  necessarily having  had any relationship before hand). It is noticeable that the Spanish way of talking about cancer is very open. People normally do not hesitate to talk about that illness and they have confidence in the healthcare system. Maybe this happens thanks to this being in a group phenomenon. It is common that if we share a difficulty, it seems less scary. The huge importance of the family in Spain means that the patient is never alone. As we all know, it’s easier to face a disease having our beloved partners or children by our side. And it is not limited to the family. Friends who participate in the treatment are very much appreciated by the ill people and, obviously, a tight relation with the doctor can be very helpful. In addition, there is Spanish spontaneity. Spanish people typically  want to share their feelings with their loved ones, no  matter if they are positive or negative (Goddard 2018: 292–293; Fernández and Goddard 2020). This particular attitude to the involvement of family in treatment can be expressed in Minimal English in the following cultural script: [C] A Spanish cultural script: a common attitude of someone with cancer I know that something very bad is happening to my body I know that I can die because of it Because of this I want some other people to be with me now These people know me very well, these people love me, they are like part of me

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When these things happen to me, I want these people to be with me I know that they want the same I can feel something good when these people are near me

10.4 A  nalysis of the Ways of Thinking and Speaking About Cancer in the Three Countries In the following section, I would like to propose some explanatory Minimal English texts about common ways of thinking and talking about cancer in Poland, France and Spain. The texts are mainly based on my analysis of four prominent websites in each country (see Appendix 2). The format for each subsection is to first give my observations about the websites, then a summary text in Minimal English.

10.4.1 Cancer on Websites in Poland In Poland there are few official medical or government websites that are focused on cancer. More numerous are those created by cancer survivors who wish to share their experience, or by their family (mostly parents of young patients). The most visible thing is that those websites are filled with metaphors related to the fight to defeat cancer, to win life, and so on. In a sense, the focus is on the illness rather than on the patient. When there are stories about patients, it is common for them to start with the patient’s feelings at the beginning of the illness; for example, asking how they felt when they first learnt that they were ill, instead of concentrating on the next steps in the treatment. On all four websites there is an attempt to talk about cancer in an open way, but equally there is always something shocking: a woman with no hair but with very prominent make up (Szczepińska 2019), or a picture of a cancer in extreme close-up (as on the site zwrotnikRAKA 2016, for example).

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Another element from Polish culture is also visible here. Polish people often tend to feel that they are a sort of victim and they demonstrate it with the illnesses as well. Thinking about someone who is ill normally means feeling sorry for this unjust tragedy. There seem to be few patients who consider themselves heroes because they are fighting for their lives. The victim sentiment is a lot more common. The problematic issue is that not a lot of Poles think about the consequences of such  atitudes. Often relatives or friends of the patient also consider him a victim and they just accept this way of thinking. They do not try to change this stereotype, but limit their participation in the treatment to some general consolations; for example, saying  głowa do góry ‘cheer up’ or wszystko będzie dobrze ‘it will be fine’. Dzierżanowski and Łuczak (2019: 45) admit that this kind of consolation is never useful; on the contrary, it can be seriously harmful. On the other side, doctors confirm that many times their patients feel guilty because of their illness. De Walden-Gałuszko (2015: 37) declares that patients often think that cancer may be a punishment for their sins, for having an inappropriate style of life. Sometimes it is related to the feeling of being an unnecessary burden for the family. What Dr. Walden-­ Gałuszko (2015: 33) says, and it is very firm in Polish medicine, is that few patients in the incurable phase of the illness go through this process in a conscious state. One of the biggest problems lies in the interaction between doctor and patient. A lot of health professionals know that the communication is imperfect and it could be improved. More than a half of the patients cannot share their doubts and problems with their physician, so they have to deal with them by themselves (Janiszewska 2015: 49). One could say that in Poland we can observe a lack of proper information about cancer. People are terrified at hearing the name of the disease, because they remember some relative or a friend who died of it and suffered a lot. But their behaviour toward cancer is rather passive. Rather than facing the realities of cancer they try to escape from it, making it a taboo. If someone is ill, he is on the other side of the society and it is common to treat him differently. To summarise in Minimal English:

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[D] In Poland it is like this: Some doctors can help people who have cancer, some doctors can’t help people who have cancer. Many people know this. People who have cancer often feel something bad when they think about it. Sometimes people who are not doctors want to help someone who has cancer. Often they don’t know how to do it. Often someone who has cancer wants many other people to know what is happening to them. They want to say everything they feel. When they say it, often other people don’t want to hear it, they don’t want to think about it. Often they think like this: “this person is not someone like me”. People who are very sick (or: ill) often think like this: “Other people don’t want to see me like this”. When they think like this, they feel something bad because of it.

The first segment refers to the specific role of doctors and the second segment to the other people who help. The third segment captures the idea that people do not really want to hear others talk about cancer. Finally, the fourth segment refers to the feeling of ‘guilt’ experienced by patients. It is worth noting that this segment would also apply to other serious illnesses, such as stroke and heart disease; where people feel awkward, helpless, and would prefer that such an illness doesn’t exist. It would be appropriate to analyse why Polish society seems to be so ashamed of treating fragile topics, while at the same time Poles present in a very direct or even provocative way in this field. In any case, we can note two extreme emotions and that neither of them leads to any solution. That is why we should try to reflect about what happens in other countries that may help their societies to deal with cancer better than in Poland.

10.4.2 Cancer on Websites in France On the French websites, the dominant style of cancer discourse is a very precise one. People try not to panic when they talk about cancer. Rather they think about some strategy or plan and direct their efforts to solving

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the problem. There is a lot of military vocabulary, a lot of talk about dépistage (‘tracking’) and pilotage (‘piloting’). The focus of attention is the present, not the past or what can happen after death. Cancer is considered a problem, but one among many, which should be resolved as soon as possible. There is an obstacle, but it is just one more thing to be managed. All this happens thanks to the public health system, which is very authoritarian and centralised. There is also another factor which impacts the way of thinking about cancer in France. French society tends to be very distrustful—of the government, of what they are told, of other patients—but at the same time respectful of expertise. It is not very common for social events to be organised to gather patients together. There is little talk about solidarity between patients. Women with breast cancer do not get together, as they do in Poland and the United States. Peeters (2013) connects this isolation to méfiance, as discussed earlier. That native distrust can be crucial considering the issue of focusing on the healthcare system and not being distracted by additional associations. Due to the méfiance which doctors feel towards the government, they have created a health system based on management by doctors. This is something quite distinctive in an international perspective. The difference extends to how the cancer experience is presented. On Polish websites this problem is presented from the patient perspective, in most cases as if the patients themselves were telling it. In French sources, on the contrary, we can notice more professional voices. A descriptive text in Minimal English which captures this situation could be as follows: [E] In France it is like this: There are many very good doctors. They know a lot about cancer. They can help people who have cancer. Many people know this. The doctors think like this: it is very good when people who have cancer want to do many things as before. Often someone who has cancer wants to know a lot about what is happening to them, they want to think about it well. They don’t want to think all the time: “Something very bad is happening to my body”. They want to

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think like this: “I can know what is good for my body at this time. I want to do some things because of it. It is good if I do these things as I want, not as someone else wants.” When other people think about people who have cancer, they often think like this: “This person is someone like me”.

In comparison with other countries, it is noticeable that the healthcare system does not encourage cancer patients to create circles of solidarity and support, and that the cancer patients do not tend to express all their feelings. They try to organise the treatment with great help from doctors. They are always aware of the situation and they are conscious of consequences, so they try to decide wisely (Juda 2019).

10.4.3 Cancer on Websites in Spain On Spanish websites we can find plenty of information about the illness, how to live with it, and advice for patients and their families. There are websites of associations like Asociación Española Contra El Cáncer (Spanish Association Against Cancer), which offer psychological and practical support (AECC 2018), and CRIS, which is a foundation that explains problematic subjects by illustrations. In general, cancer treatment in Spain shows a lot of focus on the family, not only on the patient. Words like familia (family), amigos (friends) or compañía (company) are used with high frequency. The goal is to not allow the patient to be alone, but to put him into a circle to have some company. Apart from that, we can see that cancer is not a taboo topic. On the contrary, the patient is motivated to share his feelings, to meet some people he can talk to, or realise some kind of activities. It is all about supporting a patient, offering him proper help. All focus is on the patient (and the family), with the illness a secondary issue. On the AECC website it is stressed that cancer is a social change. From the beginning, all the changes the patient is going to experience are communicated so as he can get prepared and not be taken by surprise. On the CRIS website, but on the other ones as well, some strong colours were used, and likewise there are images of smiling people, but

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what really makes an impression is the way the patient is addressed. It is very casual, with no indication about the difficult situation he has been put in. There is a lot about medical research, but at the same time there is a search to find some spiritual balance and how to force it. Spain is different from the two other countries because of that optimism and push to continue living. [F] In Spain it is like this: When someone has cancer, their family can help very much. It is very good when family think like this about someone who has cancer: “We want to be with him/her during this time”. It is very good if someone from the family can often be with someone who has cancer. When the family is near, people who have cancer can feel something very good. They can think: “I can live because my family is with me during this time.” Many people think like this about someone with cancer: “I can help them if I am with them, they can feel something good because I do something, because I say something” People know that many people have cancer. They want to know what happens to someone when they have cancer. They want to talk about it.

It is worth noting that in this descriptive text there is no mention of ‘doctors’, as there is in the Polish and French versions. As discussed in Sect. 10.3.2, this is because in Spain, the role of the family is prioritised over that of the doctor.

10.5 Final Remarks To sum up, it is possible to see the differences between the three countries in their way of speaking about cancer. We can observe that each country possesses its own cultural scripts referring to the concept of that illness and the way to deal with it. Knowing that and having analysed certain

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websites, we can show those differences using Minimal English to compare them. The conclusions we come up with are that in each country people see and speak differently about the problem of cancer. In Poland, people express all the emotions and they need to throw them away. In France, the patients want to assure themselves they are making the right decision and they need time to think their illness through. In Spain, the crucial thing is relying on other people and being in a group, so the families can fight with cancer together with the patients. As we can see, comparing the Polish way of thinking about cancer with the French and Spanish ones would be very useful, especially for the Poles. It seems like in Poland changing the way of considering this illness would also transform the well-being of the cancer patients. It could be a symbol of their heroic fight, instead of the slow (or sometimes very quick) decay. There is a thin line between sick and healthy people, but many times we don’t think about ourselves as someone who could cross this line very easily and we judge the patients as if it were their fault for getting cancer. Instead, we should think more about us in such a complicated situation; that would help a lot in improving the patient’s position in society. Obviously, we cannot forget that the communication is not the only problem for Polish medicine. The healthcare system too is in need of fundamental changes.   This study has shown that  minimal language is a useful tool  for describing and comparing different ways of talking and thinking about cancer. Doing it using minimal language  is also  extremely practical because it permits the easy exchange of ideas and perspectives between countries and cultures. Finally, I would like express my conviction that using a minimal language approach in cancer information resources could improve communication and reduce anxiety about the illness.

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Appendix 1: Corpora Consulted Poland Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego, Kobierski, Radosław (2005) Harar. Warszawa: W.A.B. Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego, Kowalewski, Włodzimierz (2000) Bóg zapłacz!. Warszawa: W.A.B. Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego, Passent, Daniel (2002) Choroba dyplomatyczna. Warszawa: Iskry.

France Christophe Benzitoun, Jeanne-Marie Debaisieux et Henri-José Deulofeu, « Le projet ORFÉO : un corpus d’étude pour le français contemporain » Corpus [En ligne], 15 | 2016, mis en ligne le 15 janvier 2017, consulté le 14 septembre 2020. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/corpus/2936; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/corpus.2936

Spain Real Academia Española: Banco de datos (CORDE). Corpus diacrónico del español. Available on: http://www.rae.es [Consultation date: November 20, 2019].

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 ppendix 2: The Websites Consulted A (November 2019) Poland • Femina-Fenix. [http://amazonki.wroclaw.pl] On the main page, a woman appears after a mastectomy. She is bare chested, but smiling and wearing a clown wig. This seems to be an ineffective attempt to show joy. • Rak n Roll. [https://www.raknroll.pl/] The use of colours is subtle and delicate. The name of the foundation is joyful (rak means cancer, that why it is ‘rak n roll’, not ‘rock n roll’), but it also represents the strength that comes from that kind of music, it sounds like something rebellious, young and dynamic. The personal experiences shared there are invaluable for patients. • Stowarzyszenie Pomocy Chorym na Mięsaki Sarcoma. [http://www.sarcoma.pl/] The Association for the Support of Sarcoma Patients offers publications on sarcoma, as this cancer is not very common on Polish websites. They deal with cancer using a simpler and more accessible language for patients. They show balance, calm, emotional balance, and a sense of security. • zwrotnikRAKA.pl. [https://www.zwrotnikraka.pl] The association zwrotnikRAKA.pl PORTAL ONKOLOGICZNY. The main focus of this association is collaboration. They encourage all entities to collaborate with them, offer publications dealing with cancer and also different ways to support patients. What is crucial is their affirmation of physical activity and its relationship to cancer.

France • La Ligue contre le Cancer. [https://www.ligue-­cancer.net] A very well organised and almost monopolistic association in terms of helping cancer patients. Apart from a good choice of colours, the structure of the page is very clear. Several points stand out, among them financial

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help for those who need it, the economic independence of the League, and the year when it was created (1918). • Fondation Arc. [https://www.fondation-­arc.org] It supports young researchers and offers paid jobs. There are not that many offers of volunteer work. That can lead to the conclusion that paid work looks more formal and professional. • Gustave Roussy. [https://www.gustaveroussy.fr/] The help offered and all the useful details presented to the patient make him feel more secure. They also have at their disposal the entire school that is part of the Faculté de Médecine Paris-Sud (Paris-South Faculty of Medicine). It is the only centre in France that offers courses for doctors, nurses, researchers, pharmacists and so on. • Artac. [http://www.artac.info/fr/] This ARTAC foundation seeks the causes of cancer in the surrounding pollution (ARTAC 2018). Although the page is not designed with much detail, the main idea is captured. The association has 25 years of experience and thus deserves attention.

Spain • La Asociación Española Contra Cáncer. [https://www.aecc.es/es] The Spanish Association Against Cancer is a non-profit association that tries to support those who suffer from cancer and their families. The colour of their page is dark green, very quiet. On the main page there are pictures of smiling and happy people, who are successfully facing their disease. • CRIS. [https://criscancer.org/es/] CRIS is another Madrid-based non-­ profit association. It is dedicated to promoting cancer awareness and eliminating cancer. They emphasise the issue of financing treatment. • SEOM. https://seom.org/ An association of a scientific nature. It is noted that they are professionals. There is little focus on graphics and presentation; it is more or less professional, without attaching colours, photos and so on. • Fundación MD Anderson España. [https://fundacionmdanderson.es/] Fundación MD Anderson España is an associate center of a large med-

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ical center in Houston. Their approach is very scientific, focusing on research. The page is well organised and very clear. It is interesting the way it shows the hope of eliminating cancer from life by crossing out the word in the name of the foundation: MD Anderson Cancer Center (Fundación MD Anderson España 2019).

References Charon, Rita. 2006. Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ciałkowska-Rysz, Aleksandra, and Tomasz Dzierżanowski, eds. 2019. Medycyna paliatywna [Pallative Medicine]. Poznań: Termedia. Dzierżanowski, Tomasz, and Jacek Łuczak. 2019. Komunikacja z pacjentem i jego rodziną [Communication with the Patient and Their Family]. In Medycyna paliatywna [Pallative Medicine], ed. Aleksandra Ciałkowska-Rysz and Tomasz Dzierżanowski, 44–47. Poznań: Termedia. Fernández, Susana S., and Goddard, Cliff. 2020. Una aproximación al estilo comunicativo de cercanía interpersonal del español a partir de la teoría de la Metalengua Semántica Natural [An Approach to the Spanish Communicative Style of Interpersonal Closeness from the Theory of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage]. SOPRAG Journal of Socio Cultural Pragmatics. Published Online: 2020-02-21. https://doi.org/10.1515/soprag-­2019-­0022 Goddard, Cliff. 2018. Ten Lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Goddard, Cliff, and Zhengdao Ye. 2014. Exploring “Happiness” and “Pain” across Languages and Cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture 1 (2): 1–18. Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2018. Minimal English and How It Can Add to Global English. In Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words, ed. Cliff Goddard, 5–19. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Janiszewska, Justyna. 2015. Umiejętności komunikowania się z chorym i rodziną [Communication Skills with the Patient and Family]. In Medycyna paliatywna [Pallative Medicine], ed. Krystyna de Walden-Gałuszko and Aleksandra Ciałkowska-Rysz, 45–57. Warszawa: PZWL.

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Juda, Magdalena. 2019. Maneras de hablar sobre el cáncer en Polonia, Francia y España [Ways of Talking about Cancer in Poland, France, and Spain]. Masters thesis, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Wrocław. Kozaka, Joanna. 2015. Wypalenie zawodowe [Professional Burnout]. In Medycyna paliatywna, ed. Krystyna de Walden-Gałuszko and Aleksandra Ciałkowska-Rysz, 423–433. Warszawa: PZWL. Lascaratou, Chryssoula. 2007. The Language of Pain: Expression or Description? Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Li, Fang. 2019. “Why not IVF”: Patient Resistance to Physicians’ Treatment Recommendations. Paper presented at 16th International Pragmatics Conference, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 11 June 2019. Marini, Maria Giulia. 2019. Languages of Care in Narrative Medicine. Cham: Springer. Ng, Gim, Lim Thia, Luke Ni-Eng, and Kwong Kang. 2019. Resisting Responsibility for Decision-Making during Medical Consultation: A Conversation Analytic Study in Singapore. Paper presented on 16th International Pragmatics Conference, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 11 June 2019. Nowina Konopka, Maria. 2016. Komunikacja lekarz-pacjent [Doctor-Patient Communication]. Kraków: Instytut Dziennikarstwa, Mediów i Komunikacji Społecznej Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Peeters, Bert. 2013. Ah méfiance, quand tu tiens la France… [Wariness (“Méfiance”) is Gripping France]. Cahiers de praxématique 60: 2–16. https:// journals.openedition.org/praxematique/3872. Pyszkowska, Jadwiga. 2015. Podstawowe pojęcia medycyny paliatywnej. Filozofia postępowania w opiece paliatywnej. Podmiotowość chorego [Basic Concepts of Palliative Medicine: The Philosophy of Action in Palliative Care—The Subjectivity of the Patient]. In Medycyna paliatywna, ed. Krystyna de Walden-Gałuszko and Aleksandra Ciałkowska-Rysz, 1–8. Warszawa: PZWL. Schiavo, Renata. 2014. Health Communication. From Theory to Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. 1968. Cancer Ward. Translation in 2003. London: Vintage. Sontag, Susan. 1978. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. New York: Picador. Szczepińska, Anetta. 2019. Nowotwór-czo [Brain Cancer]. https://pl-­pl.facebook.com/nowotworczo/ [Consultation date: 17 November 2019].

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de Walden-Gałuszko, Krystyna. 2011. Psychoonkologia w praktyce klinicznej [Psycho-oncology in Clinical Practice]. Warszawa: PZWL. ———. 2015. Reakcje i potrzeby psychiczne chorych. Przystosowanie do choroby [Reactions and Mental Needs of Patients. Adaptation to the Disease]. In Medycyna paliatywna, ed. Krystyna de Walden-Gałuszko and Aleksandra Ciałkowska-Rysz, 31–44. Warszawa: PZWL. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1999. Język, umysł, kultura [Language, Mind, Culture]. Warszawa: PWN. Zabielska, Magdalena. 2014. Searching for the Patients Presence in Medical Case Reports. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Zhang, Yu. 2019. How Doctors do Things with Empathy in Online Medical Consultation: A Case Study of Mainland China. Paper presented at 16th International Pragmatics Conference, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 11 June 2019.

11 Minimal English for Health: Reader Accessibility in Public Health Communication About COVID-19 in Australia (with Contrastive Reference to Denmark) Ida Stevia Diget

11.1 Introduction At the time of writing, the world is struggling to contain a pandemic1 outbreak of COVID-19 (World Health Organization 2020b). Because of its infectious nature and the fact that there is currently no known cure or vaccine, communicating to the public about symptoms and how to prevent spread of the disease is a key task for public health institutions. At the heart of this task is ensuring public health materials are easy to read and navigate. Studies show that health materials are written in language inappropriate for the target audience (Albright et al. 1996; Gargoum and O’Keeffe 2014; Rudd et al. 2004; Schubbe et al. 2018). They often use technical words and medical jargon (Burns and Kim 2011) which can be

I. S. Diget (*) Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_11

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unfamiliar to people with low literacy or limited proficiency in the target language. It is estimated that 59% of Australian adults have difficulty understanding health communication outputs, such as public health posters (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2018). Further, while the majority of health communication outputs in Australia are written in English, not everyone has the level of English required to understand them. 3.5% of the Australian population self-report that they speak English not well or not at all, while 27.3%2 of the Australian population speaks a language other than English at home (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2017). While many health materials are translated into community languages (New South Wales Multicultural Health Service 2020), many Australians who self-assess as being less proficient in English access their primary healthcare information in English (Burns and Kim 2011). Language alone is not the most effective semiotic system for communicating health information. All members of the public benefit from the use of pictures in health information (Del Re et al. 2016) and pictures are particularly beneficial for individuals with communicative challenges

Fig. 11.1  Public health communication concerning COVID-19 at a restaurant and at a public toilet in Brisbane, Australia (photos taken by the author)

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(Park and Zuniga 2016; Patton et  al. 2015). Using pictures in health communication helps to capture and retain people’s attention (Houts et al. 2006). However, pictures have varying degrees of effectiveness in health communication (Haragi et al. 2019), with simple pictures being most effective (Houts et al. 2006). Language and pictures in combination are more effective than either on their own (Del Re et al., 2016). While there is an awareness that public health materials are written in language too complex for the intended audience, few studies have tackled the issue with a systematic linguistic approach. This chapter explores whether the challenge of accessible language in public health communication can be addressed using insights from Minimal English (Goddard 2018), an applied method grounded in research in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014). It has been suggested that Minimal English can benefit health communication (Wierzbicka 2018), but this has not yet been explored in detail. While the Minimal English approach is a linguistic tool, this chapter suggests that ideas of accessibility and cross-translatability used in the Minimal English approach can be applied to pictures as well. Since the effectiveness of public health posters relies on using language and pictures in combination, it is suggested that Minimal English can help inform the authoring of accessible and cross-translatable health materials both linguistically and pictorially. Using COVID-19 communication as a case study, Section 11.2 explores the pictorial and linguistic characteristics of two Australian public health posters about COVID-19 and, for contrastive reference, a comparable public health poster in Danish, with regards to their reader accessibility and cross-translatability. It is found that the three posters share the following characteristics, which may be a barrier for widespread accessibility and translatability: • Use of words and constructions that are language or culture-specific, which would be alien to someone less proficient in the target language and could cause troubles if translations were needed. • Use of misleading or ambiguous pictures. • Difficult to navigate organisation of ideas, that is, multiple in the same panel or many distinct headings.

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Based on these observations, Section 11.3 argues that Minimal English can help address the linguistic aspects of these challenges and perhaps the pictorial challenges. Sections 11.4 and 11.5 illustrate the use of this approach in practice, examining eight Australian COVID-19 messages from a Minimal English perspective. Section 11.6 summarises, before Sect. 11.7 concludes with a call for further research into how Minimal English can help inform public health communication.

11.2 C  ase Study: COVID-19 Public Health Posters in Australia and Denmark The subsections below examine two public health posters about COVID-19 from the Australian Government Department of Health (2020b, 2020c), and a Danish poster from Sundhedsstyrelsen (2020) (Danish Health Authority). The linguistic and pictorial characteristics of each material are analysed, focusing on reader accessibility and potential cross-translatability. In Sect. 11.2.3, the Australian and Danish materials are compared. The linguistic elements of the posters are evaluated in two ways: Are the words and constructions used understandable for someone with limited proficiency in the target language or with lower literacy? How easy are they to translate? For the pictorial aspects, how successful are the pictures at communicating the intended message, that is, how much do they resemble that which they stand for? This is evaluated both in conjunction with their corresponding text and without. Finally, the readability of the layout of the posters is briefly considered. The analysis is approached through the lens of Minimal English and semiotic theory of iconicity (Sonesson 2010), dictating that for a sign to fulfil the criteria of primary iconicity, there needs to be a high resemblance between expression and content. Public health posters were chosen as the object of study because posters are put up in public and quasi-public spaces—hospitals, airports, schools, public toilets, transportation stations, and so on—and are therefore designed to be read by a wide range of people, that is, the general public, not only those who seek information from health

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authorities3. Additionally, such posters frequently use language and pictures in combination. The materials chosen were centred around two key topics: • How to prevent getting COVID-19 • Symptoms of COVID-19 Each Australian poster corresponds to one of these topics, the Danish poster has elements of both. At the time of writing (March 2020), health communication materials about COVID-19 are being updated constantly4. Because there are few static “truths” about COVID-19 at this time, and with the virus moving fast through a community, there is immense pressure on public health authorities to publish correct information and communicate effectively with the public. This has been dubbed “emergency linguistics” (Li 2020). It should be acknowledged that creating emergency linguistic materials is a mammoth task for health authorities. For this chapter, it is worth noting that at the time of writing, Australian Government COVID-19 messages had been translated into at least 71 different languages (Australian Government Department of Health 2020d). Thus, translatability of health materials is a priority in Australia. The posters examined in Sects. 11.2.1 and 11.2.2 reflect what was on the health authorities’ websites on March 1st, 2020 and as such, the analysis only examines this version of the posters.

11.2.1 Australian Materials As of March 1, 2020, the Australian Government Department of Health had multiple posters about COVID-19 displayed on their website, two of which are examined in the following. The first poster (see Fig. 11.2) is constructed with multiple headings of different sizes. There are five pictures with corresponding text. Several ideas are represented in this poster, which can make the poster difficult to navigate, with multiple messages shifting focus from one intended key message. Considering the pictures, the key aim appears to be the prevention of the spread of COVID-19, here referred to as “novel coronavirus”. The heading “Stop the spread” is presented in capitals, bold and large

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Fig. 11.2  Poster informing about  Coronavirus, retrieved on March 1, 2020. © Australian Government Department of Health (2020c)

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font, and thus appears important. However, it is at the bottom of the poster, which means that it could be read last, if reading top to bottom, left to right. In general, the number of headings makes it difficult to identify the key idea of the poster. The heading “Been in mainland China and feeling sick?” reflects that this poster is targeted at travellers coming from China to Australia. The first picture, reading left to right, shows a person surrounded by lines or walls, and four other persons outside these. The text reads “Isolate yourself ” (see Fig. 11.3). This idea has been a key part of the attempts to contain COVID-19, with people being instructed to self-isolate or quarantine, limiting interactions with other people (Queensland Health 2020). This is a complex message to express with limited space. The picture communicates that a person is separate from others, but not under what circumstances. We cannot infer from the text or the picture how long this isolation is required for, and we cannot infer how this isolation is to take place, i.e. is it in sterile hospital conditions, or in your house, or something else entirely? From the picture, the person appears to be in a small box of some sort, which is not how such isolation would take place.

Fig. 11.3  Excerpt of Figure 11.2

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Fig. 11.4  Excerpt of Figure 11.2

Linguistically, the word “isolate” is complex and may be alien to some because of language or literacy barriers. The second picture depicts a uniform cross and reads “Call your doctor” (see Fig. 11.4). This type of cross is a symbol often used in medical contexts such as hospital, doctor, pharmacy, first aid5. Different people may attribute different meanings to the picture. For example, in some countries (e.g. Denmark) this cross is used in conjunction with pharmacies. The meaning of this cross is thus highly variable, and could mean different things to different people depending on cultural background. The picture at the bottom left has the text “Cover your cough” (see Fig. 11.5). A literal translation of this phrase may be nonsensical in some languages, and thus, cause some problems in translation. The picture without text does not resemble a cough; it just shows an arm covering part of a face. This is a common thing to do when coughing (or sneezing) so to many people, there would be a strong association between this act of covering part of the face with the arm and the act of coughing. However, this can vary depending on culture and, to some extent, the individual. Some may cough without covering their face, and some may

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Fig. 11.5  Excerpt of Figure 11.2

cough into their hands or a tissue. Despite this ambiguity, in conjunction with the text this image is unlikely to be misinterpreted in a problematic way. The picture conveys the additional info that the recommended way to cover your cough is by using your arm (rather than, e.g. a tissue), which was not expressed linguistically. The picture at the bottom right shows a person holding their hands underneath a dripping tap (see Fig. 11.6). The text reads “Wash hands often”. Considering Sonesson’s theory of iconicity (Sonesson 2010), this picture highly resembles the act of handwashing using a tap. Here, there is clear similarity between the expression, the picture, and the content of handwashing. However, the iterative action as expressed by “often” is not communicated through the image. Thus, this image is successful in communicating the idea of handwashing but lacking the aspect of iteration. The second poster (see Fig. 11.7) shares many characteristics with the first poster, the main difference being that this poster is centred around symptoms (“Know the signs”). The first picture, reading left to right, depicts a person touching their forehead and three squiggly lines overhead (see Fig. 11.8). The text reads “Fever”. The picture and text in combination communicate that fever is

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Fig. 11.6  Excerpt of Figure 11.2

related to the forehead, which is true in the sense that within the context of Australia, the forehead is often felt for warmth to test if there is a fever present. However, not everyone may have this fever and forehead association. The three squiggly lines above the person’s head can be interpreted to denote warmth; a tricky thing to depict visually as it is most often a by-product, such as steam, that gives the visual cue that something is hot. Fever is not visible in this way, which is one reason why this illustration could be misleading. However, as a fever is not a visual phenomenon, it is difficult to choose an accurate visual to represent it. The next picture shows a person covering part of their face with their bent arm and reads “Cough” (see Fig. 11.9). The picture is almost identical to the “Cover your cough”-picture from the other poster, but this one has three lines of different length underneath the arm. The three lines appear to denote some product of the cough, perhaps droplets or phlegm. The choice to include these lines is possibly to centre the focus on the cough rather than the covering act. However,  if the mouth was sufficiently covered, nothing should “come out” as it appears here. As was the case with the corresponding idea in the first poster, it is a little difficult to

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Fig. 11.7  Poster about the symptoms of Coronavirus, retrieved on March 1, 2020. © Australian Government Department of Health (2020b)

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Fig. 11.8  Excerpt of Figure 11.7

Fig. 11.9  Excerpt of Figure 11.7

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Fig. 11.10  Excerpt of Figure 11.7

pinpoint the exact meaning of this picture without the text. It could also depict, for example, a sneeze. On the bottom row of pictures, the left-most picture shows a person surrounded by zig-zag lines (see Fig. 11.10). The text reads “sore throat”. However, the pictographic person depicted does not appear to have a throat. Instead, the picture draws attention to the area where the throat would be on a real person. The idea of a “sore” throat is something that could be ambiguous to readers. For people with high proficiency in English, this is unproblematic, as this is a common way to talk about throat hurt concerning illness. However, sometimes the word “sore” is used to talk about something muscle or skin related; e.g., a bruise can be sore, muscles can be sore, which could be confusing to people with limited English proficiency. If directly translated to, for example, Danish, en øm hals, ‘a sore throat’, could mean that the skin on the outside of a throat is sore or tender6. If the desired message is pain inside the throat, ondt i halsen, ‘pain in the throat’ is most common. This could cause misinterpretation for some members of the audience not fully proficient in English. The last photo, at the bottom-right corner, shows a person touching the area around the assumed throat. It reads “shortness of breath” (see

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Fig. 11.11  Excerpt of Figure 11.7

Fig.  11.11). Without text, this picture could also be communicating something like “sore throat”. The conceptualisation of breathing as “short” is something that is idiomatic and might cause difficulty for someone with limited English proficiency. Additionally, it poses translation challenges, as a literal translation could be nonsensical in many languages. Summing up, the Australian material has the following characteristics which aid accessibility and readability: • Use of pictures and text in combination, which is better for reader accessibility than either in isolation. • Use of simple pictures, pictograms, which are more effective in health communication than complex pictures. The Australian material has the following characteristics which could impede accessibility and cross-translatability: • Multiple headings in one poster, which could be obscuring the clarity of the intended message.

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• Use of words and constructions that work well for native or highly proficient English speakers but not for people with limited English proficiency and can cause problems in translation, for example “shortness of breath”, “sore throat”. • Use of symbols that do not have the same meaning for everyone (i.e. the cross).

11.2.2 Danish Material At March 1, 2020, Danish Health Authority had three available posters centred around COVID-19, one of which is examined in the following. This poster is presented as a horizontal “banner” (see Fig. 11.12). It is divided into two sections: Hvis du bliver syg, ‘if you become sick’, and Forebyg smitte, ‘prevent spread/infection’. These sections represent two distinct topics, one related to symptoms and one related to the prevention of spread of the disease. The two are presented in the same panel with no visible barrier between them, which could give the impression that they are not separate. The pictorial elements of this poster are simple; only a few lines are used to construct images. This could have to do with Scandinavian and Danish design traditions that emphasise minimalism (Spaabæk 1993). The Danish public are likely to look favourably on this sort of simplistic design. However, although simple pictures are effective for health

Fig. 11.12 Poster about COVID-19, retrieved on Sundhedsstyrelsen (2020). Reprinted with permission

March

1,

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©

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Fig. 11.13  Excerpt of Figure 11.12

communication, overly simplistic pictures can raise barriers for accessibility. On the left side, Hvis du bliver syg has three pictures with corresponding text. The heading, which translates to ‘If you become sick’, is an incomplete statement or implication. It is a subclause without a main clause and the clause on its own is not an acceptable full sentence in Danish. The pictures are all related to symptoms. The intended message as a whole for this part of the poster therefore  appears to be “If you become sick [look out for these symptoms]”, but it is not clear. Thus, some information is left implicit. If the poster had to be translated, this phrase could cause problems. Underneath the Hvis du bliver syg-heading, the first picture (left to right) has the text hoste, ‘cough’ (see Fig. 11.13). The picture depicts the face of a person with something coming out of their mouth. From the text, we can infer that the intention is to show a person coughing. Without the text, this picture resembles a person exhaling; particularly in winter in Denmark where breath is often visible in the cold air much like this depiction. For a sign to be an instance of primary iconicity, there needs to be a perceived similarity between expression and content

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(Sonesson 2010). In this case, there seems to be greater similarity between this picture and “the act of breathing” than “the act of coughing”, which could give the false impression that the act of breathing has to do with COVID-19 symptoms. As we have seen different depictions of “cough”, we can consider why it is hard to construct an appropriate stationary visual for it. A cough is for the most part invisible. We recognise coughs by the sound they make and by what people do with their bodies when they do it, as the Australian poster representing cough by a person covering part of their face with their arm. However, this is influenced by culture and individual preference. A picture being difficult to interpret without its corresponding text is not in itself problematic. The problem arises when a picture in isolation from its text communicates something different from what was intended, such as the Danish picture resembling the act of breathing. This is problematic because some people, who may not have the text accessible to them because of language or literacy barriers, rely entirely on the picture for information and could possibly misinterpret the message. In the middle of the leftmost section, there is a picture of a thermometer (see Fig. 11.14). The text reads feber, ‘fever’. Here, fever is depicted

Fig. 11.14  Excerpt of Figure 11.12

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Fig. 11.15  Excerpt of Figure 11.12

with a thermometer, unlike in the Australian poster, where it was illustrated with a person touching their forehead. This part of the poster thus relies on the audience having an association between a thermometer and a fever. Finally, the picture on the right shows a pair of lungs, accompanied by the text Vejrtrækningsproblemer, ‘breathing problems’  (see Fig.  11.15). Some people would be able to make the connection between the picture and lungs. However, some people may not know what lungs look like. As lungs exist inside people’s bodies, what they look like is not necessarily widespread knowledge. Thus, the picture could be difficult to interpret for some people. Additionally, the drawing is quite simplified. This drawing appears to be on the border of primary and secondary iconicity (Sonesson 2010), being (almost) entirely reliant on context to reveal the intended similarity  between expression and content. For people who know what lungs look like, there are enough contextual clues to identify the drawing as lungs, but outside of this context, it would perhaps be less obvious. For the rightmost panel, the heading is Forebyg smitte, ‘prevent spread/ infection’. The full intended message appears to be “Prevent infection [by adhering to the following advice]”, but again it is not expressed

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linguistically. The Danish noun smitte is different from English noun infection. It means “the spread of infection with infectious matter”, but it can also mean “infectious matter” as such. You use the verb smitte when someone is infected with something or is capable of infecting others with something. In the case of, for example, a chest infection, Danish word infektion would be used. The noun and verb smitte are two key words of Danish when it comes to infectious diseases. Based on the current syntactic context, we can gather that smitte is here used as a noun in the sense “spread of infection with infectious matter”. Because of the semantic complexity of this word, it might cause problems in translation. To illustrate, the present author, a native speaker of Danish, cannot decide whether the most appropriate way to translate this word into English is spread or infection. It is worth noting that this is a translation difficulty between Danish and English, two languages of similar structure. Semantically complex words such as smitte could cause greater problems when translating into a language of different structure to Danish. The first picture under Forebyg smitte depicts part of a hand and a cluster of circles representing bubbles generated from soap and water  (see Fig. 11.16). The text reads Vask dine hænder ofte, “‘wash your hands often’.

Fig. 11.16  Excerpt of Figure 11.12

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Fig. 11.17  Excerpt of Figure 11.12

Without the text, it might not be clear to everyone what the picture is depicting. It has low resemblance with the real-world act of washing hands. The depicted “bubbles” may be ambiguous in that they could be perceived as something related to the disease, such as germs or something that is undesirable to have on your hands. The last picture depicts a person holding up their arm and covering part of their face (see Fig. 11.17). The text reads Host eller nys i ærmet, ‘cough or sneeze into the sleeve’. Because of Danish climate, it is reasonable to assume that people will have long sleeves to cough into. This is possibly why the word ‘sleeve’ was chosen over the words ‘arm’ or ‘elbow crease’. Just as the Australian pictures denoting “cough”, we cannot see that the person is coughing or sneezing. The picture does not in itself communicate this information. Additionally, it is so simplified that it may be difficult to interpret the picture without the text. Summing up, this poster has the following characteristics which aid accessibility and readability: • Simple design with few ideas, entailing that the reader has limited information to process and is not overwhelmed by the amount of text or busyness of the material.

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• Use of pictures and text in combination. The poster has the following characteristics that could impede accessibility and cross-translatability: • Use of incomplete sentences/constructions that could confuse the audience about the intended message. • Use of constructions and words that could cause difficulty if a translation is needed, such as linguistically incomplete headings and smitte. • Use of ambiguous pictures, which could result in uncertainty about what symptom to look out for, such as the picture intended to represent a cough. • Depiction of an internal organ, lungs, the appearance of which might not be known to everyone. • Multiple distinct ideas presented in the same panel with no clear, visible separation.

11.2.3 Comparison of the Australian and Danish Material From the examined posters, it is evident that it is a difficult task to communicate complex health messages with limited space. The two countries’ health materials shared three characteristics that could be a barrier to widespread accessibility and cross-translatability: • Use of words and constructions that are language-specific which would be alien to someone less proficient in the target language and could cause troubles if translations were needed. • Pictures that can be misleading or ambiguous without the text (e.g. the Danish picture for “cough”, which looks like a breath; the Australian picture of a cross). • Difficult to navigate organisation of ideas, that is, multiple in the same panel or many distinct headings. These can thus be viewed as the central challenges identified across this sample of posters. The first challenge has to do with reader accessibility

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and translatability of pictures, the second with the accessibility and translatability of languages, and the final has to do with accessibility of design.

11.3 M  inimal English for Health: A Proposed Solution Minimal English offers an attractive approach to these challenges at a linguistic level because it can address inherent linguistic biases, translatability and accessibility. The posters also highlighted pictorial challenges. All posters reflected a “one idea corresponds to one picture” approach, which aids readability. However, some messages are difficult to depict with a single, stationary picture. The best example is the picture for “isolate yourself ” on the first Australian poster. There are many details of self-isolation that could not sufficiently be conveyed in this format. In some cases, a picture had multiple possible interpretations without the text, such as the medical cross used in the first Australian poster. Mostly, this did not reflect a problematic misinterpretation. However, the picture corresponding for hoste, ‘cough’ in the Danish poster (see Fig.  11.12) could be misinterpreted in a problematic way, as it resembled a breath, giving a false impression that the message had to do with the act of breathing. The pictorial challenges are multi-faceted and going into further detail is beyond the scope of this chapter. The same goes for the challenge of the confusing organisation of ideas. However, it can be concluded that by approaching the analysis of public health posters within the framework of Minimal English, it becomes evident which pictures work for widespread accessibility and cross-translatability, and which do not. For this chapter, the following sections will illustrate how to apply the Minimal English approach to the linguistic aspects of public health communication. Section 11.4 examines prevention messages of COVID-19, Section 11.5 examines symptoms.

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11.4 R  e-writing COVID-19 Prevention Messages in Minimal English From a sample of 30 English language7 public health posters by Australian federal and state governments retrieved in June 2020, common messages relating to the prevention of COVID-19 can be identified. Four examples are examined and rephrased into Minimal English in the following. These are: • • • •

Staying at home Keeping a distance from others when out Covering mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing Washing hands

Semantic primes and NSM grammar are preferred when possible to aid cross-translatability. The following messages written in Minimal English are grounded in the health advice given in the data. That is, in no cases has the core meaning of the message been changed, only the linguistic expression has been reworked. Minimal English for health does not inform about what health advice is best for positive health outcomes, it informs about how advice is best delivered linguistically from a cross-­ cultural semantic standpoint. A common characteristic for these messages is that they were written in imperative mood, that is, phrased like orders. For example, “wash your hands” (Queensland Government 2020), “stay home” (Northern Territory Government 2020). In a public health context where an authority (in this case the government) is informing the public about what is good to do and what is not, it is complex to decide whether using imperative is cross-translatable. Different languages and cultures may prefer different ways of addressing the public and use different moods to do so. Additionally, there are local preferences for public address, such as including a politeness adverb, for example German bitte8, “please”. In the context of the Australian public, using the imperative is the norm, and thus, it will be preserved in the following rephrasings, keeping in mind that it may not be the appropriate choice in all linguistic settings and cultures9.

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11.4.1 Staying at Home The “stay at home” message can be phrased in different ways; for example, stay home (Northern Territory Government 2020), stay home if you can (New South Wales Government 2020b), stay home as much as possible (New South Wales Government 2020a). The key factors are: stay at home, and, do not leave unless essential. The verb ‘be’ might be better than the verb ‘stay’ for translatability, as it is a semantic prime, believed to exist in some form in most languages (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2016). ‘Be’ can serve as an umbrella term, accessible to most target audience members, which can be substituted in translation if needed. In Danish, ‘stay’, bliv, is the most natural in this context, but ‘be’, vær, is acceptable. In many Australian languages, the appropriate verb for this message would be equivalent to English sit or stand  (Newman 2002). A time quantifier ‘all the time’, can be added, since replacing ‘stay’ with ‘be’ loses some aspect of continuity in English. This addition ensures that continuity is preserved in translation, regardless of whether the appropriate target language verb has continuity as an inherent aspect. There is no adequate synonym for “home” that is more desirable from an accessibility standpoint. “If you can” can be added, as in the New South Wales Government poster. There is a big difference between staying at home all the time and only doing it as much as possible; the two options are different health advice. At the time of authorship of these posters in Australia, the advice was to stay home as much as possible, but shopping for groceries and going out for exercise was allowed (Hanrahan 2020). If the intention is for people to stay home with no exceptions, ‘if you can’ can be left off. For now, this message can be rephrased in Minimal English as: Be at home all the time, if you can.

11.4.2 Keeping a Distance from Others When Out The sources reflected different ways of communicating this, for example, “Keep a distance from other people” (New South Wales Government

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2020d), “Keep 1.5 metres away from others” (Queensland Government 2020), “Stay two big steps away from other people” (Australian Government Department of Health 2020a). There are two key elements: Keep a distance from other people and the size of this distance. Using the metric two big steps represents a variable distance, depending on what people consider ‘big’ and how long their legs are. However, it may be easier for people to understand and practice than 1.5 metres. Usingtwo big steps is not without controversy from a cross-linguistic perspective, however. The word ‘step’ is unlikely to have equivalents or near-equivalents in all languages. It is a polysemous word in English and it can be both a noun and a verb. In this context, it means the distance between one leg and the other when walking, but it can also mean the series of flat surfaces that make up a staircase. Using this measure could cause some barriers to translation. Concepts like ‘near’ and ‘far’ are recognised semantic primes (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2016) and may therefore be a more accessible way of wording this message. The question is how to quantify these concepts adequately; 1.5 metres, two big steps and a distance are all different; that is, there is no one quantified distance that is recommended. Perhaps we can say “don’t to be so near other people that you can touch them”10 and “don’t be so near other people that they can touch you”. This ensures neither party can stretch out their arm and touch the other (cf. advice about COVID-19 to avoid handshakes and touching (Sundhedsstyrelsen 2020)). In the present context, we can phrase this message in Minimal English as: Don’t be so near other people that you can touch them. Don’t be so near other people that they can touch you.

11.4.3 C  overing Mouth and Nose When Coughing or Sneezing This message was expressed as cover your cough by multiple sources (New South Wales Government 2020d; Queensland Government 2020; Tasmanian Government 2020). Here, it is not made explicit with what a

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cough should be covered. Additionally, if we think about this action literally, it is not the cough itself that is covered, but the mouth. This way of expressing the message could be nonsensical when translated into, for example, Mandarin, and would require paraphrasing to make a viable translation. The reason for expressing this message in this way could be space restrictions. However, some posters favoured including more information at the cost of a longer message. The Victorian government phrased this message as: Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you sneeze or cough. If you don’t have a tissue cough or sneeze into your upper sleeve or elbow (Victoria State Government Health and Human Services 2020), which states that it is the mouth and nose that needs covering and includes both sneezing and coughing. It also includes the information to use a tissue if available. However, when recommending the use of a tissue, additional information about how to dispose of the tissue can be necessary, which will make the message longer. The New South Wales government expressed the message like this: Cover a cough with the inside of your elbow instead of your hand (New South Wales Government 2020d). For brevity, we can, like the New South Wales government, favour the use of the arm here. Thus, we can identify the key factors of this message as: cover nose and mouth, include both coughing and sneezing and advice to use your arm. However, the word ‘arm’ can be problematic in translation. This is because some languages do not have a lexical distinction between ‘hand’ and ‘arm’, such as Russian, where there is just one semantic unit for “hand/arm”. The distinction between arm and hand must be clear, as the core health message is to cover nose and mouth with something that is not your hand. One way to work around this problem is to be more specific, using terms like ‘palm’ and ‘elbow’. However, words for ‘arm’ and ‘hand’ are perhaps more common than for ‘elbow’ and ‘palm’. For example, in Danish ‘palm’, håndflade, is uncommon compared to ‘hand’, hånd. Thus, ‘hand’ and ‘arm’ may be more accessible word choices, as they are more commonly used. Another way to highlight the distinction between arm and hand is to do as the New South Wales government does, and clarify: use your arm; not your hand. In this case, there is less risk of a problematic translation, because translators can be sure that the distinction between arm and hand is crucial, and a generic term for both will

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not suffice without elaboration. Further, for ease of grammar, the messages for “cough” and “sneeze” can be separated. With these considerations, this message can be rendered into Minimal English in the following way: When you cough, cover your mouth and nose with your arm, not with your hand. When you sneeze, cover your mouth and nose with your arm, not with your hand.

11.4.4 Washing Hands This message typically included information about what to use for handwashing, how long to wash for, and that handwashing should be performed often, for example: wash your hands often with soap and running water, for at least 20 seconds. Dry with paper towel or hand dryer (Victoria State Government Health and Human Services 2020). Instead of often, we could say many times every day, which is less vague. Sources varied with regards to whether they used the verb wash or clean; these verbs are synonymous in this context and neither is likely to compromise the message11. We could say ‘do it with soap’ or ‘use soap’. In Danish ‘do it with soap’, gør det med sæbe, sounds strange while ‘use soap’, brug sæbe, works fine. Different languages are bound to have different ways of expressing “do it with/use”, and there is no one solution that will work equally well in all languages. In this context, do it with is language that is accessible to non-native English speakers with limited proficiency and that can easily be translated, as appropriate for the language. The biggest challenge for translation could be the “20-second” quantifier for how long hands should be washed. Although many languages may use this measure, some languages may not. This quantifier is sometimes replaced with, for example, “sing happy birthday to yourself twice” (New South Wales Government 2020c). Thus, the exact quantification may be less important to the integrity of the health message; what’s important is making sure people wash their hands for longer than a short time. Perhaps one

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way to convey this is to tell people to be thorough and wash all parts of the hands. Based on this, the message can be phrased in Minimal English as: Wash your hands many times every day. Do it with soap. Wash every part of your hands, every finger and both sides.

11.5 R  e-writing COVID-19 Symptoms in Minimal English In the following, symptoms of COVID-19 are examined and, where possible, rephrased into Minimal English. The four symptoms are: • • • •

Fever Cough Sore throat Shortness of breath

11.5.1 Fever Fever is difficult to rephrase, because it is a single lexical entity, not a multiword construction that can be reworked. There are few real synonyms in English to substitute for it. Running a temperature or (having a) high temperature seem the closest candidates. Fever has exact equivalents in many European languages, but some languages may instead use a word like ‘hot/fire’, thus describing this symptom in a way similar to ‘[the] body is very hot’. Russian favours a construction like “high temperature” in a medical context. However, this is not necessarily more cross-translatable or easier to understand than fever. One COVID-19 pamphlet by the New South Wales government was designed to convey information to kids. In this, the symptom fever was described as “[COVID-19 can make you] feel hot and cold” (New South Wales Government 2020c: 4), perhaps assuming that the bodily grounded feeling hot and cold would be more useful

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information for children than the abstract fever. However, this description could be too vague for a poster aimed at the adult population, because feeling hot and cold this could give the impression that this is the symptom, regardless of whether there is a fever present. Thus, replacing the word fever can compromise the integrity of the health message. In one Northern Territory government poster, this symptom was described as fever (sweats) (Northern Territory Government 2020). Thus, one option is to add information to the description, even if the word fever cannot be replaced. However, having a fever does not necessarily mean sweating; it can also mean feeling cold and shivering. While adding sweats can add some value to the fever statement, it might give the impression that sweating is necessary to fulfil the criteria for this symptom. If we consider the possibility that some languages may favour a “body is hot”-construction, we could add ‘(your body is very hot’). To indicate that this is different from normal, we could say ‘your body is very hot, not like at other times’. The downside is that this may sound unnatural to some native speakers. Further, what counts as ‘very hot’ is relative; 38 °C constitutes a fever, but if you stick your hand in 38 °C water, you might not describe that as ‘very hot’. We might say a dish that comes out of the oven at 200° C is ‘very hot’, but such extreme temperatures have no relation to a fever. Thus, this in itself might be too variable to be consistent with medical symptoms. For now, we can say that fever cannot be successfully rephrased in English according to Minimal English principles, but potentially, something can be added to elaborate on the symptom.

11.5.2 Cough Some considerations made for fever apply here as well. Cough is a single lexical entity, difficult to replace. In English, it is difficult to think of a true synonym. In the materials examined, it was consistently expressed as simply cough. Many languages have exact equivalents for this, e.g., Danish hoste, Spanish tos, Polish kaszel, Vietnamese ho. In the vast majority of cases, it is unlikely to cause issues in translation. This message cannot be expressed in English without using the word cough12. Thus, it cannot be rephrased here.

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11.5.3 Sore Throat As demonstrated earlier, sore throat literally translated can take on different meanings depending on the language; for example, to mean that the skin or muscle around the throat is sore. Some languages do express this symptom in this way, for example, Swedish öm hals, ‘sore throat’. However, in many languages, this symptom directly translated would not have the intended meaning. Such languages describe this symptom similar to ‘throat pain’. This is the case in, for example, Spanish, Polish, and Russian. Describing this symptom as “sore throat” could be alien to some non-native speakers of English. Even so, in English sore throat cannot easily be replaced without compromising the message. This is because alternatives such as throat pain or “throat ache are not common ways of talking about throat-related pain in English13. These alternatives could be great for non-native English speakers with limited proficiency, but they would sound strange to native and proficient speakers, even though they would understand the meaning. The expression cannot be replaced without disrupting the reader experience for native speakers. Thus, there can be tension in choosing between idiomatic, language-specific expressions, which can sometimes be necessary, and expressions optimal for translatability, which are favoured when possible. If authoring English language materials targeted at non-native English speakers, we might opt for throat pain or similar. However, within the present context of Australia, where the largest part of the population speaks English as their mother tongue, sore throat remains the best option14.

11.5.4 Shortness of Breath As discussed, shortness of breath is highly idiomatic. Languages of similar structure to English, such as Danish, Dutch and German, can conceptualise breath as “short”. For example, in Danish, kortåndet, “short-­ breathed”, is acceptable, even if it is unusual15. However, in many languages, breath cannot be described as “short”, for example, in Russian or Polish. In Russian, the medical term odyshka (одышка) can be used, which translates to the medical term dyspnoea, but it can also be used in

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the sense ‘out of breath’. We can consider English out of breath as an alternative. This is not typically used in a medical context in English—out of breath is reserved for situations such as after exercise. It is not usually cause for concern. Thus, it can be argued that replacing shortness of breath with one of these could compromise the quality of the intended message. However, it is possible to replace shortness of breath with a synonymous phrase without compromising the quality of the intended message. For example, the World Health Organization refers to this as: difficulty breathing (2020a). This is less idiomatic and more likely to have near-equivalents in other languages, making it easier to translate and understand for groups with limited proficiency in English. Another option is hard to breathe, which may have to be expressed as “feeling like it is hard to breathe” to be acceptable as a symptom. Both options include nominalisation (“breathe” → “breathing”, “feel” → “feeling”), which could cause some problems for translation. This is the case in Danish, where neither option can be directly translated. To make a viable translation, we must say vejrtrækningsbesvær/besværet vejrtrækning ‘breathing difficulty/laboured breathing’ or Det føles som om det er svært at trække vejret ‘it feels like it is hard to catch a breath’. The latter does not make sense as an objective medical symptom; it is more fitting as a subjective experience of a symptom. None of the two options are ideal for translation, but for translation into Danish, difficulty breathing is the preferable option, as it makes the most sense as a symptom. Moreover, it is favourable in a scenario where space is limited. One possible option for a Minimal English take on this symptom is therefore: Difficulty breathing

11.6 Summing Up The previous  two sections have demonstated the  application of the Minimal English approach to public health messages. In some cases, it was possible to substitute and rework the messages into more understandable and translatable language. In other cases, it was not possible to make substitutions without compromising the quality of the message; for

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example, with fever, cough and sore throat. These can form the beginnings of a Minimal English for health vocabulary. As well as semantic primes and molecules, such a vocabulary could include medical keywords such as fever, cough, sneeze and sore throat. It has been demonstrated how to author English public health messages using Minimal English principles in the context of the Australian public. This particular target audience dictated that some English specific phrases were favoured over more cross-translatable options. For example, this meant choosing sore throat rather than more translatable options. Thus, because of the present target audience, there were limitations to how extensively Minimal English principles could be applied without alienating large portions of the target audience. Different considerations would apply if communicating on a global scale, such as in the context of an organisation like the WHO.  WHO health messages are written mostly  in English, but unlike in the present case, there would be less incentive to favour English-specific phraseology. This is because such global health messages would have to be translated for all non-English speaking audiences. Thus, it might be beneficial to author the English messages in a way that makes translation as seamless as possible. This could be done by referring to a set of guidelines based on the principles of Minimal English16 when authoring the messages. Public health posters are limited in their informational scope—they are just one component of broader public health messaging campaigns. The prevention messages are behavioural instructions without explanations of why such behaviours are needed. It is unlikely that anyone would understand the complexities about how to practice these behaviours and the reason for them from these posters only. Similarly, the symptoms are not elaborated, such as what temperature is considered a fever. Because posters are limited as to the level of detail they can convey, information, advice and elaboration from health professionals and other public health campaigns are usually needed to supplement their messaging.

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11.7 Concluding Remarks This chapter illustrated how the Minimal English approach can be used to investigate linguistic accessibility and cross-translatability in public health communication. It was suggested that the insights of Minimal English can help address accessibility and cross-translatability in pictures. Public health posters about COVID-19 were examined: two from Australia and one from Denmark. It was found that the posters shared characteristics which can pose a barrier for accessibility and cross-­ translatability. First, pictures that can be misinterpreted were used. This is problematic because not all audience members have the corresponding text available to them, because of literacy or language barriers, and rely on pictures for information. Second, the posters used words or constructions that were language or culture specific. It was illustrated how these would cause problems in translation and be inaccessible to someone less proficient in the target language. Finally, the posters displayed some confusing organisation of ideas; for example, having  many distinct headings and multiple ideas in the same panel. Further research will have to determine whether the accessibility challenges of public health posters, as identified here, are part of a larger trend. To illustrate the Minimal English for health approach, eight examples of Australian prevention messages and symptoms of COVID-19 were analysed and, where possible, reworded according to principles of Minimal English. This chapter can only serve as a pilot study of this approach. There is still much to learn about the effects of employing the insights of the Minimal English approach to health communication. Of particular importance is the question of how intended audiences perceive public health messages written in Minimal English. How do they compare with traditionally written ones? Additionally, how do health professionals perceive them? What field-­ specific keywords are essential for a Minimal English for health vocabulary? These are just some of the questions that remain open for further research.

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Notes 1. As characterised by the World Health Organization (2020c). 2. Includes households where English is spoken as well as another language. 3. Note that putting something up in a public or quasi-public space does not guarantee that everyone who can benefit from the information necessarily gets to see it. Not everyone inhabits the spaces where this information is available, i.e. the health care system, pharmacies, schools, airports, etc. Thus, there are limits to what this sort of public health communication can do and who it can reach; the best that can be done is to make sure that those who do see it have a good chance of understanding it. 4. I first accessed the Danish COVID-19 material on Wednesday, February 26th, 2020. By Friday the 28th of February 2020, it had been revised and the previous version had been taken down. Denmark’s first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on the 27th of February 2020. 5. It is worth mentioning that this kind of cross in a medical context is often presented in a red/white colour scheme, unlike here, where it is presented in green and black. 6. It is also possible to use this in the sense of throat pain, as in English; however, it is less common. 7. This chapter works within the framework of the English language, and I am exploring Minimal English for health, but it could have been explored for any other language, e.g. Danish and Minimal Danish for health. 8. This word can also mean ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘pardon’, for example. 9. There is more to be said about this than the scope of this chapter allows. Cross-linguistic research on public health messages is needed to dissect this issue. 10. This takes inspiration from Wierzbicka’s ‘-Seven Essential Messages For The Time Of The Coronavirus’ written in Minimal English, cf. chapter 12 of this book. 11. However, wash seems to imply the use of water, unlike clean. 12. This is why cough was included in the rephrasing of cover your cough (11.4.3) as well. 13. At least in Australian English. When first conducting this research, a speaker of Singaporean English informed me that he deemed “throat pain” acceptable. 14. I return to this issue in Sect. 11.6.

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15. More common are åndenød, “need of breath”, stakåndet, “brief/sting breathed” or, as in the Danish poster examined above, vejrtrækningsproblemer, “breathing problems”.) 16. Such guidelines are being developed as part of the present author’s PhD project on Minimal English for public health communication.

References Albright, Judith, Carol de Guzman, Patrick Acebo, Dorothy Paiva, Mary Faulkner, and Janice Swanson. 1996. Readability of Patient Education Materials: Implications for Clinical Practice. Applied Nursing Research 9 (3): 139–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0897-­1897(96)80254-­0. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2017. Media Release: Census Reveals a Fast Changing, Culturally Diverse Nation. https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/ abs%40.nsf/lookup/Media%20Release3. Accessed 11 Mar 2020. Australian Government Department of Health. 2020a. Keep Communities Safe, with a Little Extra Space. https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/ documents/2020/04/coronavirus-covid-19-print-resource-keepcommunities-safe-with-a-little-extra-space-a3-print-resource-keep-communities-safe-with-a-little-extra-space.pdf. Accessed 6 Jun 2020. ———. 2020b. Know the signs. https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/coronavirus-­covid-­19-­know-­the-­signs. Accessed 1 Mar 2020. ———. 2020c. Stop the spread. https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/coronavirus-­covid-­19-­stop-­the-­spread. Accessed 1 Mar 2020. ———. 2020d, July 8. Translated Resources. https://www.health.gov. au/resources/translated?f%5B0%5D=field_audience%3A451&f% 5B1%5D=field_related_health_topics%3A4586&f%5B2%5D=field_ related_conditions_disease%3A9669. Accessed 11 Mar 2020. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 2018. Australia’s Health 2018. https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/3e23af2f-­e71f-­443f-­ad9b-­8eac957aa1e3/ aihw-­aus-­221-­chapter-­4-­3.pdf.aspx. Accessed 11 Mar 2020. Burns, Anne, and Mira Kim. 2011. Community Accessibility of Health Information and the Consequent Impact for Translation into Community Languages. Translation & Interpreting 3 (1): 58–75. https://search.informit. com.au/documentSummary;dn=409752966362962;res=IELHSS.

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Del Re, Louis, Régis Vaillancourt, Gilda Villarreal, and Annie Pouliot. 2016. Pictograms: Can They Help Patients Recall Medication Safety Instructions? Visible Language 50 (1): 127. Gargoum, Fatma S., and Shaun T. O’Keeffe. 2014. Readability and Content of Patient Information Leaflets for Endoscopic Procedures. It J Med Sci 183 (3): 429–432. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-­013-­1033-­8. Goddard, Cliff. 2018. Minimal English For a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2014. Words and Meanings: Lexical Semantics Across Domains, Languages, and Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. ‘It’s Mine!’. Re-thinking the Conceptual Semantics of “Possession” Through NSM. Language Sciences 56: 93–104. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.langsci.2016.03.002. Hanrahan, C. 2020, March 25. Data Shows Coronavirus Can Only Be Controlled If 8 Out of 10 Australians Stay Home. https://www.abc.net.au/ news/2020-­0 3-­2 5/coronavirus-­c ovid-­1 9-­m odelling-­s tay-­h ome-­ chart/12084144. Accessed 23 Jul 2020. Haragi, Makiko, Hirono Ishikawa, and Takahiro Kiuchi. 2019. Investigation of Suitable Illustrations in Medical Care. J Vis Commun Med 42 (4): 158–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/17453054.2019.1633237. Houts, Peter S., Cecilia C. Doak, Leonard G. Doak, and Matthew J. Loscalzo. 2006. The Role of Pictures in Improving Health Communication: A Review of Research on Attention, Comprehension, Recall, and Adherence. Patient Educ Couns 61 (2): 173–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2005.05.004. Li, Yuming. 2020. Language lessons of COVID-19 and linguistic disaster preparedness. https://www.languageonthemove.com/language-lessons-of-covid19-and-linguistic-disaster-preparedness/. Accessed 14 Apr 2020. New South Wales Government. 2020a. Coronavirus Spreads Very Easily. Stay at Home as Much as Possible. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/diseases/PublishingImages/community-­spread-­social.png. Accessed 6 Jun 2020. ———. 2020b. COVID-19 (Coronavirus): Who to Call. https://www.health.nsw. gov.au/Infectious/covid-­19/Documents/who-­to-­call.pdf. Accessed 6 Jun 2020. ———. 2020c. Hi. This Is Coronavirus. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/ Infectious/diseases/Documents/covid-­19-­childrens-­book.pdf. Accessed 6 Jun 2020. ———. 2020d. Keep Our Communities Healthy: Good Health and Hygiene Stop the Spread of COVID-19. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/ diseases/Documents/communities-­healthy-­hygiene.pdf. Accessed 6 Jun 2020.

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New South Wales Multicultural Health Service. 2020. Resource Search. https:// www.mhcs.health.nsw.gov.au/publications. Accessed 11 Mar 2020. Newman, John. (ed.) 2002. The  Linguistics of Sitting, Standing and Lying. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Northern Territory Government. 2020. Coronavirus (COVID-19). https:// coronavirus.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/804771/a4-­covid19B-­ poster.pdf. Retrieved 6 Jun 2020. Park, Jungmin, and Julie Zuniga. 2016. Effectiveness of Using Picture-based Health Education for People with Low Health Literacy: An Integrative Review. Cogent Medicine 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2331205x.2016. 1264679. Patton, Amina, Morgan Griffin, Ana Tellez, Mary Ann Petti, and Xanthi Scrimgeour. 2015. Using Icons to Overcome Communication Barriers During Emergencies: A Case Study of the Show Me Interactive Tools. Visible Language 49 (1/2): 80–95. Queensland Government. 2020. Protect Yourself and Those Around You. https://www.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0016/120472/prevention.png. Accessed 6 Jun 2020. Queensland Health. 2020. Self-quarantine: Advice for travellers—novel coronavirus. https://www.health.qld.gov.au/clinical-­practice/guidelines-­procedures/ diseases-­infection/diseases/coronavirus/public-­info-­novel-­coronavirus/self-­ quarantine. Accessed 9 Mar 2020. Rudd, Rima E., Kimberly Kaphingst, Tayla Colton, John Gregoire, and James Hyde. 2004. Rewriting Public Health Information in Plain Language. J Health Commun 9 (3): 195–206. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10810730490447039. Schubbe, Danielle, Sarah Cohen, Renata W.  Yen, Maria V.D.  Muijsenbergh, Peter Scalia, Catherine H. Saunders, and Marie-Anne Durand. 2018. Does Pictorial Health Information Improve Health Behaviours and Other Outcomes? A Systematic Review Protocol. BMJ Open 8 (8): e023300. https:// doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-­2018-­023300. Sonesson, Göran. 2010. From Mimicry to Mime by Way of Mimesis: Reflections on a General Theory of Iconicity. Sign Systems Studies 38 (1-4): 18–66. https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2010.38.1-­4.02. Spaabæk, D. 1993. Scandinavian Simplicity: Danish Design. Graphis (Archive: 1944-2005) 49 (286): 30–53. Sundhedsstyrelsen. 2020. Spørgsmål og svar om ny coronavirus, COVID-19. https://www.sst.dk/da/Viden/Smitsomme-­s ygdomme/Smitsomme-­ sygdomme-­A-­AA/Coronavirus/Spoergsmaal-­og-­svar. Accessed 1 Mar 2020.

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Tasmanian Government. 2020. Stop the Spread of Germs. https://coronavirus. tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/87474/A3-­Poster_Stop-­the-­Spread-­ of-­Germs.pdfs. Accessed 6 Jun 2020. Victoria State Government Health and Human Services. 2020. Slowing the Spread of Coronavirus. https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/202006/Slowing%20the%20spread%20of%20coronavirus_Poster_ A4_0.pdf. Accessed 6 Jun 2020. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2018. Minimal English as a New and Transformative Tool for Effective Health Care Communication in English-speaking Countries. Paper presented at the International Symposium on Health Care Communication, Canberra, Australia. World Health Organization. 2020a. Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Advice for the Public. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-­ coronavirus-­2019/advice-­for-­public. Accessed 31 Mar 2020. ———. 2020b. Updated WHO Recommendations for International Traffic in Relation to COVID-19 Outbreak. https://www.who.int/news-­room/articles-­ detail/updated-­who-­recommendations-­for-­international-­traffic-­in-­relation-­ to-­covid-­19-­outbreak/. Accessed 9 Mar 2020. ———. 2020c. WHO Director-General’s Opening Remarks at the Media Briefing on COVID-19–11 March 2020. https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/ detail/who-­director-­general-­s-­opening-­remarks-­at-­the-­media-­briefing-­on-­ covid-­19–11-­march-­2020. Accessed 20 Mar 2020.

12 Seven Essential Messages for the Time of the Coronavirus Anna Wierzbicka

12.1 Introduction The time of the Coronavirus pandemic is for all of us a time to think; and not just to think about the pandemic, but to think about many other things as well. And who are ‘we’ in this case? Well, given the global extent of the pandemic, this ‘we’ must include if not all people on earth then at least people in all parts of the earth. This is why every single one of the ‘Seven Essential Messages’ starts with the line: ‘it is good for all of us if we think like this now: …’ . But in different parts of the earth, people speak different Editor’s Note: In April 2020 Anna Wierzbicka released a text, written in Minimal English, titled ‘Seven Essential Messages for the Time of Coronavirus’. It was published in the open-access Russian Journal of Linguistics [journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/article/view/24093], the online journal Narrative Medicine [https://www.medicinanarrativa.eu/seven-­essential-­messages-­for-­the-­time-­of-­ coronavirus], on NSM websites [NSM-­approach.net], Twitter accounts [@nsmlab], and the NSM Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/nsmminimalenglish], the Language on the Move website [www.languageonthemove.com, July 28 2020], and other places.

A. Wierzbicka (*) Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4_12

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languages; and different languages both  reflect and encourage  different ways of thinking (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014). Can any ways of thinking be shared globally? I have previously explored this question in the chapter ‘A charter of global ethics in Minimal English’ (Wierzbicka 2018) in the book Minimal English for a Global World (Goddard, ed. 2018). Here, I am going to address it again in relation to the coronavirus pandemic. At this time of global pandemic, it is clearer than ever before that at certain times, certain messages need to be shared globally: they need to be accessible to everyone, everywhere on earth. This is possible only if there is a shared ‘language of thought’ in which such messages can be formulated: to say the same things we need to think the same things. To some extent, and in some places, Minimal English can serve as such a shared language, but obviously not everyone in the world can understand English even in its minimal form (see Chap. 1). Arguably, genuine global communication can be achieved only if the same messages can be read, or heard, by everyone in their own native language—provided that they can all match in meaning and thus be truly global in what they say. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that—up to a point—minimal languages derived from the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) can enable us to achieve this goal. It does so by reflecting on the ‘Seven Essential Messages for the Time of the Coronavirus’. The remainder of the chapter will be divided into seven sections (Sects. 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 12.5, 12.6, 12.7, and 12.8), corresponding to the seven messages. Concluding remarks follow in Sect. 12.9. Throughout, I will be referring to the renderings of the ‘Seven Essential Messages’ in various other languages,1 and also, to adaptations of these messages for Australian Aboriginal communities (where they can be expected to be listened to rather than read) by linguist Steve Swartz (2020a, b). Before turning to the discussion of the linguistic aspects of these seven messages, however, I would like to say something about the reception that these messages have received so far from the readers, and about the light that this reception throws on the significance of minimal languages for our ability to communicate with other people (anywhere on earth), and also, with ourselves, especially at ‘a time of trial’ such as we face today. At this pandemic time, minimal languages give us a chance to think about our values and priorities in a way which can speak directly to

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the heart, without the distancing devices afforded by complex, abstract and intellectualised language. For example, to think: ‘all people are mortal’ is one thing, to think: ‘I can die soon’ is another. Abstract nouns such as mortality and even priority afford another distancing device. To speak about one’s priorities in life is one thing, to say to oneself: ‘I can die soon, what do I want to do before I die?’ is another. The greater impact of thoughts about living and dying formulated in very simple words and phrases was confirmed by the reactions which I have received (by email) from various colleagues and students, both religious believers and unbelievers, in response to the Seven Essential Messages. The most frequent word used in these responses was ‘moving’. (A Russian colleague wrote, in Russian, “Oni rastrogali menja do slez”, ‘I was moved to tears’ (T.L., 18/04/2020). Another wrote, independently, “my do slez byli rastrogany”, ‘we were moved to tears’, I.M., 24/05/2020.) There were also comments which linked the simplicity of the minimal language with a greater cognitive impact. For example, one student wrote: “I found your NSM messages on the Coronavirus to be so very heartening. I think, at the most crucial times it is this kind of simple language that touches the essence of what is important and what is not important” (N.H., 14/4/2020). Other responses spoke of ‘transparent words’, and of messages which were not only clear and understandable but could be ‘taken in instantaneously’. Some linked the emotional and cognitive impact of the messages expressed in such basic and ‘transparent’ words with a sense of human unity. For example, one reader wrote: “I think your seven essential messages are extraordinary, and I found that, although some of the sentence constructions were unfamiliar and seemed a bit awkward at times, the message was in fact both moving and very clear— one for all of us, which could be understood and taken in instantaneously, by anyone. That is the point?” (H.B., 16/4/2020). Such responses opened my own eyes to certain aspects of minimal languages which were not fully visible to me before. Certainly, minimal languages facilitate understanding and communication; but as those readers’ comments suggest, they can also have a power which goes beyond these two values. One reader wrote of the “direct appeal to our hearts and our minds” (M.T, 21/4/2020). The Seven Essential Messages don’t use the words heart or mind, but they do refer, repeatedly, to what we think

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and to what we feel. I think this is, at least in part, what this reader meant: the direct appeal to our hearts and minds lies not only in the references to our feelings and our thoughts, but also to the impact of the simplest and most baseline words: not hearts and minds, for example, but ‘feel’ and ‘think’. The same reader (not a native speaker of English) concluded, optimistically: “In my opinion, the essential messages must be spread because they’d surely change the minds of many people and, because of the universal nature of the primitives used to build them, they will allow us to materialise bonds of mutual cooperation”. It seems to me that this reader may be touching on something important: the capacity of simple and universal words to reach people at a deeper level and to help them feel more strongly at one with other people. In other words, when readers call these messages ‘helpful’, they may be responding not only to their content, but also to their wording—and not just to the fact that their wording is easy to understand, but also that it can help the reader or listener to feel more united with other people. In a recent interview with medical researcher Maria Giulia Marini (2020), I quoted theologian Timothy Radcliffe (2005), who in his book What Is the Point of Being Christian? said (speaking from a Christian point of view) that “As Christians we believe that the unity of the human community is rooted in shared language”, and that “Our human vocation is to go searching for new and deeper ways of belonging together, new ways of speaking, which realize our capacity for communication more profoundly”. Perhaps this is what the reader quoted above was alluding to: in a situation of profound global crisis, messages formulated in the most basic and most universal human words can make us feel that we have found one of these ‘deeper ways of belonging together’. Be that as it may, the fact is that many readers (of different faiths and beliefs) responded to the Seven Essential Messages in very positive ways and described them as ‘moving’ and ‘beautiful’, as well as ‘helpful’, ‘heartening’, ‘inspiring’ and ‘true’. Admittedly, one colleague (a philosopher) spoke of these messages somewhat patronisingly: “These statements may be very useful for those who can only handle Minimal English. As for myself—perhaps I am being selfish—I am more interested in maximal English, if you see what I mean.” (Then he mentions reading Shakespeare

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and some eminent philosophers.) But this reaction is at variance with those of many others, who find the stark simplicity of statements and questions like ‘I can die soon’ and ‘What do I want to do before I die?’ both appealing and compelling. When it comes to a desire to communicate, at a deeper level, with fellow human beings who are speakers of languages different from our own, it seems clear that minimal languages—which are close to the common core of all languages—afford us a better prospect of genuine global understanding than “maximal” ones. We need both types, of course, the minimal and the maximal. But at a time of crisis like that of the coronavirus, when there is a need for some shared, global messages minimal languages surely have a unique role to play. It may be instructive to quote here a reaction to ‘the notion of speaking to each other in ‘basic human’’ expressed in an email to me (of 5/8/2020) by the leading advocate of ‘cultural pluralism’ anthropologist Richard Shweder: I would wager that heart and mind of individuals respond to communications that are parochial and in a local idiom or mode of expression more powerfully than in a reductive discourse (borrowing from Wittgenstein an image he once used) that tries to get to the real or basic artichoke by divesting it of its leaves.

I totally agree with Shweder on the unique value of linguistic and cultural artichokes. Nothing illustrates this value better than translingual memoirs written by people who have lived with different languages themselves (for a recent documentation of such experiences, see Besemeres, (in press). But a one-sided focus on linguistic diversity, without accompanying attention to our conceptual unity, cannot reflect the full truth of human existence in the world; and certainly cannot help us to communicate, deeply, with our fellow human beings, in other parts of the globe that we all share.

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12.2 Message 1 Message 1 (Fig. 12.1) illustrates several problems which arise when one tries to say exactly the same thing in many different languages. I will discuss these problems one by one, in some detail.

12.2.1 Line 1 of Message 1 This line reads: ‘It is good for all of us if we think like this every day now: […]’. So far, evidence suggests that this line, formulated in Minimal English, can be translated—virtually word for word and phrase for phrase—into any other minimal language. To my mind, this is a highly significant and, indeed, inspiring finding: the phrase ‘is good for all of us’ highlights the fundamental unity of “the human race”, and the possibility of thinking in terms of “the common good”. The reference to ‘every day’ emphasises both the urgency and the concreteness of our shared task, and the link between ‘every day’ and ‘thinking’ affirms that it is at a level of goals and ideals, of thinking about what is good, that humanity can best give expression to its fundamental unity (cf. Dalai Lama 2010).

Fig. 12.1  Essential Message 1

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One question of substance which can be raised in relation to this line is this: Shouldn’t it be formulated in the future, rather than in the present tense: that is, as (b) rather than (a)? (a) It is good for all of us if we think like this every day now: … (b) It will be good for all of us if we think like this every day now: …

It is interesting to note that in her Russian version of the Seven Essential Messages, Tatiana Larina in fact used the Russian equivalent of option (b): Budet xorosho dlja na vsex esli my teper’ budem dumat’ kazhdyj den’ tak: […]. In the Polish version, Zuzanna Bułat-Silva used the Polish equivalent of option (a); but arguably in Polish, too, option (b) would sound more natural: Będzie dobrze dla nas wszystkich, jes´li będziemy teraz codziennie mys´lec´ tak: […]. The ‘tone’ of the two versions—(a) present and (b) future—is different. The version in the present tense sounds more like a reflection, whereas that in the future sounds more like a recommendation. It seems likely that in some languages or countries version (a) may be felt to be culturally more appropriate than (b), and in others, the other way around. Be that as it may, the most important thing to note in relation to line 1 of Message 1 is that it is, generally speaking, cross-translatable, whether it is version (a) or version (b) which sounds more natural in a given language.

12.2.2 Line 2 of Message 1 Line 2 of Message 1 reads: ‘This time is not like other times’. This is readily translatable into many languages (including Polish, Russian, Spanish and Italian)—but not into all languages. For example, in Australian languages such as Warlpiri and Pitjantjatjara the phrases ‘this time’ and ‘other times’ do not appear to have equivalents (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2015; Stanner 2003). Furthermore, even in languages in which these phrases do have exact equivalents, these equivalents may sound awkward or unnatural. For example, for Russian, Tatiana Larina chose the phrase obyc ̌noe vremja (‘ordinary time’), even though it would be possible to say drugie vremena (‘other times’); possible, but not natural.

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This highlights a general principle relevant to the formulation of important global messages: in every language, people should be able not only to understand them but also to like them. Being minimal in both vocabulary and grammar, these messages cannot always sound natural, but they should not sound jarring or awkward, and if possible, they should have a certain aesthetic appeal. The parallelisms, the reiterations, may contribute to such an aesthetic effect, even in languages like modern English, where repetition is generally avoided. But in some cases, this principle of being ‘soft on the ears’ may need to overrule the primary requirement of full semantic equivalence. Arguably, the Russian phrase obyčnoe vremja (‘ordinary time’) may be a case in point. On the other hand, it could be argued that the use of the phrase obycň oe vremya (‘ordinary time’) takes us too far away from the thought expressed in English in the sentence: ‘this time is not like other times’. In ‘normal’ English (not in Minimal English) the word special may fit the intended meaning better than ‘(not) ordinary’: it might be objected that there is no such thing as ‘ordinary time’. So while the choice of obyc ̌noe vremya (‘ordinary time’) in the Russian version may seem to be the best practical solution (most acceptable to the native speakers), from a semantic point of view, this solution is not entirely satisfactory. And so, the problem remains. I will note that in his culturally adapted version of the Seven Essential Messages, Steve Swartz chose to contrast, in this case, ‘now’ and ‘before’. This would be perfectly cross-translatable. But to best convey the idea of something like ‘a special time’, ‘a time apart’, we should probably be contrasting ‘how it is now’ not only with ‘how it was before’, but also with ‘how we think it will be after’. It also seems that words like ‘ordinary’ (and ‘extraordinary’) refer not only to ‘before’ and ‘after’, but also to people’s expectations. This applies in particular to the future, to the ‘after’. We can know how it was before (in specific cases) but not how it will be after, because we can only know how we think it will be after. So there is more to the idea of an obycň oe vremya (‘ordinary time’) than anything explicable simply in terms of ‘before’ and ‘after’. There is more to the idea that the coronavirus ‘is not a time like other times’. The matter requires further examination.

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12.2.3 Line 4 of Message 1 Line 4 reads: ‘Very bad things are happening to many people’s bodies because of the coronavirus, many people are dying because of this.’ From a purely semantic point of view, this line is not problematic, and it is readily cross-translatable. Nonetheless, in his linguistic and cultural adaptation for Aboriginal communities in Australia, Steve Swartz chose a different phrasing. Here is his version: ‘Coronavirus is making many people around the world very sick, and many people are dying.’ The most important difference in the wording is the use of the word ‘sick’, and of the phrase ‘very sick’. I did not use the word ‘sick’ in the Minimal English version because we know that this word doesn’t have exact equivalents in other languages (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014: 207–212, 2020). The English lexical distinctions between sick, ill and disease are not matched with similar distinctions in other European languages, let alone in those further afield. For this reason alone, the English word sick doesn’t mean the same as, for example, the French malade or the Russian bolen (cf. Valentina Apresjan 2014). At the same time, many languages of the world do have words broadly comparable to ‘sick’. Using these words in ‘Message 1’ is likely to sound more natural to many people than the reference to ‘very bad things happening to people’s bodies’, for all its precision and cross-­translatability. Both solutions, then, have their pros, as well as their cons.

12.2.4 Line 5 of Message 1 Line 5 says: ‘More people can die if I do some things now as I have always done’. This is impeccable NSM syntax, cross-translatable into any language that we have looked at. But in the Russian version Tatiana Larina (2020)  used a different construction, which sounds more natural in Russian: esli ja budu delat’ to, chto delal vsegda, literally, ‘if I will do what I have always done’. This is not universally cross-translatable, but in this case, this departure from strict cross-translatability (which could be easily repaired) seems a small price to pay for a more natural-sounding effect.

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One identifiable factor here is the greater versatility of the word ‘things’ in English than of the Russian word vešcǐ and the more common use of the English ‘some’ (as in ‘some things’) than of the word nekotorye (as in nekotorye vešči). It is a matter of usage, not of meaning in a strict sense. But the fact is that in order to keep the Russian version pleasant to the Russian ear it seems preferable to use a different grammatical option here (not fully cross-translatable), rather than stick with the one which is fully-cross-translatable but sounds less natural.

12.2.5 Lines 6 and 7 of Message 1 Line 6 of Message 1 reads: ‘Because of this, it will be good if I can be at home all the time.’ This line illustrates a more general point, raised at the NSM online workshop in April 20202 by Jock Onn Wong. Wong signalled the point with the word ‘pragmatics’. In some societies, he pointed out—such as in Singapore—the phrase ‘it will be good if ’ is likely to be perceived as ‘very weak’. According to Wong, an imperative clause like ‘Be at home all the time’ or ‘I have to (= can’t not) be at home all the time’ is needed here if the desired effect is to be achieved. It is worth noting that in the Russian version of this line, the translator has in fact departed slightly from the English version, by ignoring the word ‘can’ and saying jesli ja budu vse vremja doma (‘if I will be at home all the time’), rather than jesli ja mogu byt’ vse vremja doma (‘if I can be at home all the time’). The Polish translator has done the same (jes´li będę cały czas w domu, not jes´li będę mógł byc´ cały czas w domu). In Steve Swartz’s version for Aboriginal communities, the line reads: ‘We should all stay in our own homes, not travelling all around or to other communities’.3 The modal key of the sentence is culturally very important, and there are many options to choose from: ‘I will’, ‘I can’, ‘I should’, ‘I have to’, ‘we should’, ‘we have to’, and so on. Frames which are semantically fully equivalent can be found, but what is culturally appropriate may differ from language to language and from culture to culture. The same applies to the modals in line 7. Another noteworthy and culturally pregnant feature of Swartz’s adaptation is the use of the plural ‘we’ rather than the singular ‘I’ (to be

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translated into Aboriginal languages with the inclusive plural). Evidently, this is, again, a question of ‘cultural pragmatics’.

12.2.6 Lines 8 and 9 of Message 1 Lines 8 and 9 read: ‘I don’t want to be very near other people; I don’t want to be so near someone that I can touch them. I don’t want to be so near someone that I can breathe some of the same air.’ Obviously, these lines depend on solid semantic universals: ‘near’, ‘touch’, ‘breathe’, ‘air’. But here, too, there is a question of modal nuances, which are linked with cultural assumptions and values. Thus, in English, phrases which work best (from the point of view of readers’ and listeners’ reception) are often ‘I want’, ‘I don’t want’ and ‘I can’. In other languages, cultural attitudes may favour other linguistic choices. For example, in the Russian rendering of lines 8 and 9, the equivalent of the phrase ‘I can’ is not used, and instead an infinitive is chosen, literally, ‘I don’t want to be so close to others as to touch them’, ‘as to breathe the same air’. Steve Swartz’s cultural adaptation for Australian Aboriginal languages chooses simply an imperative: ‘Do not go near them, do not touch them.’

12.3 Message 2 The most noteworthy lines in this message (Fig. 12.2) are lines 3 and 4, both of which are very general in meaning. Line 3 can be taken, initially, as referring to people who are getting sick because of the coronavirus, and especially to those who die of it. In contrast, however, it should be clear that many ‘very bad things are happening to many people’ now not because they get sick themselves, but because of the fact that others are getting sick. Or even that we lose a family member, are affected by restrictions, have financial instability, and so on. Many possibilities could be spelled out in this message. I have chosen not to do so and have confined myself to the common denominator: ‘very bad things are happening to many people now.’

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Fig. 12.2  Essential Message 2

The range of bad feelings related to the pandemic is also very broad. Many of these feelings, too, could be spelled out—either in the form of words like ‘worry’, ‘fear’, ‘anxiety’, ‘grief ’, ‘panic’ and so on, or in the form of certain ‘dark’ thoughts, such as ‘something bad will happen to me (us)’, ‘something very bad is happening to me (us)’, ‘something very very bad happened to me (us)’. I decided not to spell out these different possibilities for two main reasons. First, words like ‘anxiety’, ‘grief ’ and ‘worry’ are not cross-translatable because they all embody language-­ specific conceptualisations; and second, even though some thoughts seen as likely triggers of ‘bad feelings’ may be cross-translatable, specifying such thoughts in the message would make it very bulky and unwieldy. Message 2 could be made more specific by adding the phrase ‘because of it’ to the end of line 4, as follows: ‘many people feel something very very bad because of it’. However, while there is little doubt that there is often a causal link between the ‘bad feelings’ that many people feel at the time of the coronavirus and the ‘bad things’ that happen to many people during this time, the nature of this link may not always be straightforward. Many people ‘feel something very bad’ because ‘very bad things are happening to them’; for example, if they cannot be with their parents who are in hospital and very sick. But many people feel something very bad because of their own thoughts; for example, because they think ‘something very bad will happen to me soon, I don’t want it’ or ‘I can’t do many things as I have always done, this is very bad, I don’t want it to be like this’. To allow for the full range of possibilities in a short yet easy to understand message, I thought it best to phrase both lines, 3 and 4, in a very general and unspecific message.

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12.4 Message 3 Essentially, message 3 (Fig.  12.3)  focusses on the need to think about other people during the coronavirus time—more than before. Using complex language, we could say that during this time there is a special need to think about other people imaginatively and empathetically. But what exactly could this mean in transparent, self-explanatory words? Message 3 identifies some specific situations where we can clearly do something good for other people by, first of all, thinking about them. Under the conditions imposed on the populations in many countries, many people can’t be with other people as before, can’t speak to other people like before, and often ‘feel something very bad’ because of this. In the media, these phenomena are usually identified by means of complex and semi-technical words, such as ‘isolation’, ‘self-isolation’ and ‘lock-down’. The value of using translatable words in such messages is particularly clear at times and in places when and where there is a need to address many people of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds as one community. The situation in Melbourne in July 2020 is a good case in point. More than 3000 people in nine public housing tower blocks were locked down in their apartments and needed to receive information about the restrictions and health regulations. In just 24  hours the residents

Fig. 12.3  Essential Message 3

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themselves translated the government information sheet into ten different languages and distributed it within the affected buildings via social media and text messages. This was a great achievement of the residents; but obviously, the resulting messages in different languages would have been more effective had the information sheet been formulated, in the first place, in clear, transparent, and translatable Minimal English.

12.5 Message 4 Message 4 (Fig. 12.4) raises a number of questions, both from the point of view of content and from that of choice of words. Apart from the question of the word ‘time’, which has already been discussed, the first four lines are essentially unproblematic from the point of view of cross-­ translatability. From the point of view of the content, one might wonder if line 3 should not be made more specific: what very bad things are being considered here? Things like getting sick, dying, losing a job? Watching any of these things happen to someone close to us? Losing hope, falling into despair, damaging relationships? All such things could be portrayed in simple and cross-translatable words. I have not, however, included any of them in Message 4, because they are not the point of this message.

Fig. 12.4  Essential Message 4

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Rather, the point is that despite all the ‘very bad things’ that can happen to us during this special time, the time of the coronavirus, we can also do some very good things—not like at other times. Examples of such ‘very good things’ are given in lines 6–8. Before that, however, the general notion of these very good things is described in the phrase ‘good for the soul’. But is the phrase ‘good for the soul’ cross-translatable? It must be admitted that it is not—at least, not exactly. In many languages, the word ‘soul’ does indeed have a semantic counterpart—with a similar meaning, if not exactly the same meaning. For example, the translators of this message had no problem using the word alma for Spanish, anima for Italian, and dus ̌a for Russian. Even though the words soul, alma, anima and duša don’t mean exactly the same, they are close in meaning, and the phrase ‘things good for the soul’ (cosas buenas para el alma, etc.) makes the intended meaning even closer (see Peeters (ed) 2019). In some languages, the phrase used may be closer in meaning to ‘things good for the spirit’, or there may be no lexical distinction between something like ‘soul’ and something like ‘spirit’. Still, evidence suggests all languages have not only a word for ‘body’ (as in ‘my body’) but also for something like ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’; and also, that this word can be used in a phrase similar in meaning to ‘to do some things good for the soul’. When it comes to examples of things ‘good for the soul’ that one can do, a great deal of cultural variation can be expected. The first two examples that I have chosen—‘to read books’, ‘to listen to music’—can be readily expressed in a wide range of languages and can be meaningful in many societies, but obviously not in all. The third example—‘writing something every day about this day’—can probably be meaningful in many cultures, but again, not in all (not even if a counterpart of the word ‘to write’ is available). The fourth and fifth examples, on the other hand, can be presumed to be relevant, and easy to express, everywhere on earth: looking at the stars at night, looking at the rising sun. Of course, it is not the case that all people can always do things like this; for example, in many places, prisoners may be deprived of such sights. But the point is not that all people everywhere can do it at all times, but that the conceptual prototype can make sense in all countries on earth.

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12.6 Message 5 Most lines of this message (Fig.  12.5)  are unproblematic from both a conceptual and a linguistic point of view. Conceptually, one point which seems debatable is the reference to the time of the coronavirus as a ‘bad time’. It could be asked: why doesn’t this notion of ‘a bad time’ come in right at the beginning? Why do we hear this time referred to repeatedly as a ‘special time’, that is, ‘a time not like other times’, and not a ‘bad time’? My main reason for not using this description from the outset (and throughout) was that it would seem at variance with the presentation of the coronavirus time as a time of opportunity, as well as a time of ‘trial’. At the same time, it seemed acceptable to refer to this time as a ‘bad time’ late in the piece, in message 5, when a possible positive outcome is explicitly envisaged, ‘after this bad time I can be not as I was before; I can know some people well, not as before, I can love some people more.’ Another aspect of message 5 which requires some comments concerns the verb ‘to love’. As I have discussed in a recent paper on ‘love’ in cross-­ linguistic perspective (Wierzbicka 2019), most languages of the world do not have a word which would mean exactly the same as this English verb. Yes, we do find matching words in most, if not all, European languages, and also in many non-European ones, but not in others. For example, the word fago in Ifaluk (Micronesia), much discussed by anthropologist Catherine Lutz (1988), does not mean the same as ‘love’ and is glossed by Lutz as ‘love/sadness/compassion’. It seems to me, however, that in the

Fig. 12.5  Essential Message 5

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context supplied in by messages 4 and 5, fago might work just as well as ‘love’. The key meaning components which are relevant to both love and fago are these: you don’t want very bad things to happen to them, when you think about them you often feel something, you want to do something good for them.

12.7 Message 6 From a linguistic point of view, this message (Fig. 12.6) is largely unproblematic, except for two relatively small points to which I will return shortly. First, however, we need to consider the conceptual core of this message. The key idea here is that this special time when we are limited in so many ways, offers also some valuable opportunities: especially, the opportunity to think, more than before, about the big existential questions which face us all. What are those big existential questions and how should they be formulated if they are to be maximally inclusive? I have chosen four questions which I believe face us all and which can be expressed, with the same meaning, in any language. The first question is ‘Why do I live on earth?’ A preliminary discussion of this question with colleagues indicates that for some people the phrase ‘on earth’ carries with

Fig. 12.6  Essential Message 6

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it some vaguely religious, or even Christian, connotations, but I do not think of this as a strong argument against using it. Without the phrase, the question ‘Why do I live?’ would be far less clear and far more likely to be interpreted differently by different people; for example, it could be read as referring to some biological processes, or to some successful medical intervention, which is not the point here. The point which is relevant to us all pertains to, so to speak, my presence on earth, as a living being. The second ‘existential’ question included in Message 6 is ‘What do I live for?’ For some people, this question, too, may sound vaguely religious, but this is not because of any particular words or phrases. Rather, what Message 6 suggests is that a special time like the time of the coronavirus may give many people an opportunity and an inducement to think about it more and thus helps them to use this time fruitfully. To some extent, the same applies to question 3, ‘How can I live if I want to live well?’ Unlike the first two, however, this question can be found discussed in psychology and pop-psychology. But whether it is restricted to a purely psychological interpretation or is given a spiritual dimension too, arguably, it can also be seen as one which can be fruitful and helpful for a time like that of the pandemic. The last of the four questions is ‘If I know that I will die soon, what do I want to do before I die?’ This question sounds, if anything, eminently practical. Arguably, it is one of the most sensible questions that anyone can ask themselves as a time of a pandemic. What can make it sound faintly religious, or not entirely secular, is the ‘memento mori’ aspect of it. In the secular modern Western world, many people usually don’t want to think: ‘I know that at some time I will die’ or ‘I can die soon’. Nonetheless, it would be hard to deny that even from a purely secular point of view, such thoughts can be helpful, beneficial and even therapeutic. There is one linguistic aspect of Message 6 which requires some discussion. As mentioned, the last of the four questions reads ‘If I know that I will die soon, what do I want to do before I die?’ In the Polish version of this message, Zuzanna Bułat-Silva (2020) has written: Jes´li wiedziałbym, że niedługo umrę, co chcę zrobic´, zanim umrę? Literally, this means, ‘If I knew that I would die soon, what do I want to do before I die?’ This raises the question: Should this line start in Minimal English as ‘If I know that

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I will die soon’ or rather, as ‘If I knew that I would die soon’, and if the second option, phrased hypothetically, is better, then why not finish the sentence with another hypothetical, that is, ‘What would I want to do before I die?’, rather than ‘What do I want to do before I die?’ (This is in fact what María Auxiliadora Barrios-Rodríguez says in her Spanish version (2020).) There are various conflicting priorities at play here. Logically speaking, the Spanish version is more coherent than either the English or the Polish one. It is not, however, as dramatic as the English one, and perhaps relatedly, it is not as cross-translatable. The Spanish version uses a construction which is often described by linguists as ‘counterfactual’. But although I once suggested that this construction, and the ‘counterfactual’ mode of thinking associated with it, was a linguistic universal (Wierzbicka 1997), I was later forced to withdraw this suggestion, partly because of the evidence from Japanese presented by Rie Hasada (1997). The ‘counterfactual’ meaning can indeed be expressed in all languages, but not always easily, not always by means of a simple dedicated construction as in English. In effect, the current English version (‘if I know…’) must be seen as more cross-translatable than the counterfactual one (‘if I knew…’) and at the same time, it is more vivid, more concrete, than the counterfactual hypothetical. The matter is of course open to discussion, but given the purpose of the Seven Essential Messages—that is, appealing to the readers’ hearts, and not only to their minds—I decided to leave the simple version (‘if I know…’) in the English version. Finally, the last component of Message 6 (before the final ‘I want this’) requires a comment too: ‘If I think about these things more now, after this bad time I can live not as I lived before. I can then live more, I can live better’. By itself, the phrase ‘I can live more’ may seem odd. One interpretation which might come to mind would be to read ‘live more’ as ‘live longer’. At the time Message 6 was composed in 2020, I believed that this reading would be precluded by the immediately preceding context, i.e., ‘I can live not as I lived before’. In non-Minimal English, the intended  sense could be made clearer by phrases such as ‘to live more fully’ (‘I can live more fully’), ‘to live more richly’ (Krishnamurti 2001), but this would not be cross-translatable.

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I considered leaving out ‘I can live more’ and retaining only ‘I can live better’ but  seemed to me that by itself, the phrase ‘to live better’ could  invite a moralistic reading along the lines of ‘to do more good things, to do fewer bad things’, which is not what this Message intends. Since 2020, new information has come to light. When the seven messages were translated into Korean (for Cliff Goddard’s keynote lecture to the Society of Korean Language and Literature conference, February 2021), the translator, Kyung-Joo Yoon, pointed out that it was impossible to find a matching Korean version for ‘I can live more, I can live better’. What she proposed instead was a component which could be rendered in English as ‘I can be more alive, I can be truly alive’. I recognise that the phrasing ‘more alive’ is both clearer and more cross-­ translatable than ‘live more’, and also that ‘truly alive’ is clearer and more cross-translatable than ‘live better’. If I were able to revise Message 6 now, I would opt for Kyung-Joo Yoon’s formulation instead of the original one.

12.8 Message 7 Message 7 (Fig. 12.7) encourages us to ‘think big’: the focus is not on ‘me’, but on ‘us’ and on the earth. The scope of ‘us’ can be understood in many ways but in a message which also focusses on the earth it is likely to be interpreted as referring to many, and perhaps even ‘many many’ people: all the people in the place where we live, perhaps all the people in our country (see Goddard 2020), and even all the people on earth. Further, the reference to the earth, and the thought that it is a good place for people to live, encourages a thought about future generations: all the people who will live on earth after us. In my comments on Message 7, I have chosen to confine myself to two words: ‘island’ and ‘earth’.

12.8.1 ‘Island’ One line of Message 7 which deserves discussion is line 6: ‘we all live with other people, none of us is like an island’. Leaving aside, for the moment, the question of the cross-translatability of the word ‘island’, is the phrase ‘like an island’ clear enough? In what respect can one be ‘like an island’ or

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Fig. 12.7  Essential Message 7

‘not like an island’, one might ask. Indeed, this question was raised, as an objection, in an email from a student from Spain, who wrote (R.Z.G., 21/4/2020): Message 7 says: “We all live with other people, none of us is like an island.” My interpretation is: “We are not alone”, but I’m pretty sure that there would be a vast number of different interpretations related to peculiarities of an island, like “savage” or “small”.

Is it true that the sentence ‘none of us is like an island’ is open to many different interpretations? Without context, perhaps it could be so. However in a line starting with the words ‘we all live with other people’, the intended interpretation seems to be quite clear: it is not about the island’s size, or its expected level of ‘civilisation’, it is about living with— or without—other people. The student who made this comment stated that his own interpretation is ‘we are not alone’, but this phrasing does not seem to be optimal, because ‘being alone’ suggests ‘being in a place where there are no other people’, and this could refer to a temporary state of affairs. The phrase ‘to

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live with’ suggests more permanence than ‘to be with’, and therefore it is, I think, preferable. So overall, the phrasing ‘we all live with other people, none of us is like an island’ seems preferable. But being—or not being—‘like an island’ may imply something else as well: Perhaps it implies that when very bad things happen to some people in a country, it is very bad for all the people in this country? Or that when very bad things happen to people in one part of the earth, it is bad for all people on earth? It could even imply that we are all like parts of one thing. I have not tried to spell out such implications in the text of Message 7. Perhaps there is a range of possible interpretations which are consistent with the simile ‘no one is like an island’ and which do not need to be pinpointed. Maybe such similes can have some emotional impact on the reader/listener, and some mobilising effect, without any possible literal interpretation being explicitly stated. The significance of this question goes far beyond this particular case and deserves to be explored in relation to many other comparable cases. Here, I will only note two points, one relating to lexical translatability, and the other, to the cross-linguistic intelligibility of images. To begin with lexical cross-translatability, it is clear that a statement like ‘none of us is like an island’ cannot work in a language which has no word for ‘island’. For example, it is hardly surprising that in Steve Swartz’s version of the Seven Messages, prepared for Central Australia, the word ‘island’ is not used, and that there is no such word in the Alyawarr and Warlpiri versions either. Still, words either identical or similar in meaning to ‘island’ are available in so many languages of the world that although messages including these words cannot be literally global, they can be seen at least as semi-global. If a word for ‘island’ is not available in a language, then of course the comparison has to be dropped. Nonetheless in languages which do have such a word, the comparison is, I think, worth keeping—if it is culturally meaningful. Does the fact that a Spanish student questioned the usefulness of such a comparison suggest that in Spanish (spoken in Spain) the word isla may not be as useful as island is to speakers of English? The matter deserves further investigation. It is interesting to note, though, that in her Spanish version of the Seven Messages, María Auxiliadora Barrios Rodríguez does include such a comparison (ninguno de nosotros es como una isla).

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As a general guideline, I would think that global messages should be formulated, first of all, in global terms, and stated explicitly rather than through images. The formula ‘we all live with other people’ meets both these requirements. At the same time, in many cases similes may be helpful, especially if they can be formulated in cross-translatable words and phrases. No doubt semantic molecules such as ‘mother’, ‘child’, ‘sun’, ‘moon’, ‘stars’, ‘sky’ and ‘blood’ have a special role to play here.

12.8.2 ‘Earth’ Arguably, ‘earth’ is a key word in all human languages and can be expected to have both an extensive phraseology and perhaps a rich array of grammatical options as well. I hypothesise that the universal options of ‘earth’ are likely to include: ‘the earth’, ‘on earth’, ‘in the earth’, ‘above the earth’ and ‘earth’. First, ‘earth’ can be used as, so to speak, a place name, as in the sentence which opens the Hebrew Bible: ‘In the beginning, God created heaven and earth’. In particular, conjoint phrases like ‘heaven and earth’, ‘the sky and the earth’ (depending on the language, with or without an article) are likely to be universally available. Second, ‘earth’ is likely to occur in all languages in a locative phrase, such as, in English, ‘on earth’—a phrase which refers to the ‘surface’ of the earth, and thus reflects a human perspective: people don’t live in the earth, or above the earth, they live on earth. Third, while people live on earth, after they die their bodies end up in the earth (whether they are buried or cremated), and fourth, become earth—a way of thinking reflected in the phrase ‘ashes to ashes’, which is part of the English burial service adapted from Genesis 3.19: ‘In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art and unto dust shall thou return’ (King James Version). Fifth, the phrase ‘above the earth’ is obviously needed to refer to the sky, the sun, the moon, and the stars.4

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12.9 Concluding Remarks It seems uncontroversial that there are times and situations where there is a need for global messages. If anyone doubted this before, the global crisis caused by the outbreak and spread of the coronavirus has made this need abundantly clear: nobody is an island, no country is an ‘island’, we are all in it together, ‘we’ being the people on earth. We need to communicate— but in order to communicate, we need a common language. Not a ‘common’ language like Esperanto, whose words, derived mostly from European languages, embodied meanings which are ‘local’ rather than global. And not a ‘common’ language like international English, which of course has its place in some areas of modern life but which cannot be the shared language of human understanding across the planet. To be able to share global messages, we need to share some meanings— meanings which can be expressed not in shared words (because there are no shared words in all languages), but in matching words. To put it differently, we need words capable of carrying shared meanings. As NSM-­ based publications over many years have shown, there are dozens of such words in all languages, dozens of shared word-meanings. Well-known examples include good and bad, know and think, before and after, people, someone, and body (see Ch 1). But the time of the present pandemic highlights the fact that while words with shared meanings are necessary for global communication, they are not always enough. Important messages need to be not only globally shared, but also locally accepted. To make global messages work, both on a global and on a local level, every proposed phrase needs to be examined, and re-examined, to make sure that an optimal balance between the global and the local has been reached. Ideally, of course, every line of a message intended as global should meet both requirements: it should be both perfectly cross-translatable into all languages, and perfectly “natural-sounding” in any given language. Experience shows that such perfect fit of meaning and wording is sometimes possible—but not always. A realistic goal, then, is not a perfect fit between intended meaning and locally available “natural” wording, but the best possible approximation of such a fit.

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This chapter presents an effort to search for such an approximation in the area of global messages needed at the time of the coronavirus; and at the same time, it is an exploration of the challenges and opportunities involved in searching for such approximations in general.

Notes 1. The translators and languages are as follows: Tatiana Larina (Russian); Zuzanna Bułat-Silva (Polish); María Auxiliadora Barrios-Rodríguez (Spanish); Gian Marco Farese (Italian); Wendi Xue (Mandarin Chinese). The translated versions are available at [nsm-­approach.net/archives/category/illustrations/coronavirus]. 2. NSM Seminar hosted online by Griffith University on 6th April 2020, convened by Cliff Goddard. 3. The reference to ‘travelling all around to other communities’ reflects cultural practices prevailing among indigenous people in Australia which are obviously not global. 4. We could suggest that the word ‘earth’ can be used in two different ways: it can refer either to the ‘big place where people live’ and to ‘stuff’ (‘something’) which can be found everywhere where people live. If this is polysemy, then it is ‘regular polysemy’ (in J. Apresjan’s (1974) sense. But if a particular ‘regular polysemy’ is universal, then it may be better not to think of it as polysemy but as two different grammatical options of the same word.

References Apresjan, Juri D. 1974. Regular polysemy. Linguistics 12 (142): 5–32. https:// doi.org/10.1515/ling.1974.12.142.5. Apresjan, Valentina. 2014. bolezn’, bolet’. In The Active Dictionary of Russian, ed. Juri Apresjan, vol. 1, 311–313. Moscow: Institute of Russian Language. Barrios-Rodríguez, María Auxiliadora (translator). 2020. SIETE MENSAJES FUNDAMENTALES PARA EL TIEMPO DEL CORONAVIRUS. Retrieved from: https://nsm-­approach.net/wp-­content/uploads/2020/06/Coronavirus-­ Minimal-­Spanish-­updated.pdf (18/8/2020).

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Besemeres, Mary, in press. Translingual Memoir: An Introduction. In Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism. Bułat-Silva, Zuzanna (translator). 2020. SIEDEM MYŚLI NA CZAS PANDEMII KORONAWIRUSA (21.04.20). https://nsm-­approach.net/ wp-­content/uploads/2020/04/Coronavirus-­Minimal-­Polish.pdf. Dalai Lama XIV, Bstan-dzin-rgya-mtsho. 2010. Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the New Millennium. London: Little Brown. Goddard, Cliff, ed. 2018. Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words. Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2020. Country’, ‘land’, ‘nation’: Key Anglo English Words for Talking and Thinking About People in Places. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 1 (2): 8–27. Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2014. Words and Meanings: Lexical Semantics Across Domains, Languages and Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2020. Semantics in the Time of Coronavirus: ‘Disease’, ‘virus’ and Related Concepts. NSM Seminar (6 April 2020). Hasada, Rie. 1997. Conditionals and Counterfactuals in Japanese. Language Sciences 19 (3): 277–288. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-­0001(96)00065-­4. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 2001. What Are You Doing with Your Life? Ojai, CA: Krishnamurti Publications of America. Larina, Tatiana (translator). 2020. Семь важных мыслей во время коронавирусной пандемии http://journals.rudn.ru/linguistics/announcement/view/212. Lutz, Catherine. 1988. Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marini, Maria Giulia. 2020. Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Its Future Perspectives: Interview with Anna Wierzbicka, Cliff Goddard and Bert Peeters. https://www.medicinanarrativa.eu/interview-­with-­wierzbicka-­ goddard-­and-­peeters-­on-­nsm-­part-­i / https://www.medicinanarrativa.eu/ interview-­with-­wierzbicka-­peeters-­and-­goddard-­on-­nsm-­part-­ii. Peeters, Bert (Ed.). 2019. Heart- and Soul-Like Constructs Across Languages, Cultures, and Epochs. New York: Routledge. Radcliffe, Timothy. 2005. What Is the Point of Being Christian. New York: Burns and Oates. Stanner, W.  E. H. 2003[1953]. The Dreaming and Other Essays. Melbourne: Black Inc. Agenda.

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Swartz, Steve (translator). 2020a. COVID-19 Messages in Language – Warlpiri. https://www.alicebaptist.org/covid-­19-­messages-­in-­warlpiri/. ———. 2020b. COVID-19 Messages in Language  – Alyawarr. https://www. alicebaptist.org/covid-­19-­messages-­in-­alyawarr/. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1997. Conditionals and Counterfactuals: Conceptual Primitives and Linguistic Universals. In On conditionals Again, ed. Angeliki Athanasiadou and René Dirven, 15–59. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.143.04wie. ———. 2018. Charter of Global Ethic in Minimal English. In Minimal English for a Global World, ed. Cliff Goddard, (pp 113–141). Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2019. The Biblical roots of English ‘love’. International Journal of Language and Culture, 6 (2): 225–254. Wierzbicka, Anna, and Cliff Goddard. 2015. What Does ‘Jukurrpa’ (‘dreamtime’, ‘the dreaming’) Mean?: A Semantic and Conceptual Journey of Discovery. Australian Aboriginal Studies June 2015/1: 43–65.

Index1

A

B

Abstract nouns, words, 13, 17, 61, 67–69, 73, 75, 92, 230, 321 Accessibility, 2, 10, 22, 40, 281–313 Accessible communication, 1, 86, 87 Adaptation, 22, 77, 179, 247, 320, 327–329 ‘Adjective,’ 68, 88–91, 185 Agricultural training, 12, 21, 29–48 Akan, 22, 232, 251n3, 251n5 Allolexes, 9, 10, 100, 129–130, 134 Anglocentrism, 2 Anglo culture, 173 Anglo English, 175, 176, 180, 184, 185 Attraction (mother-child), 235–236, 251n7

Basic English (BASIC), 4, 16, 18 Basic Human, 5, 6, 323 C

‘Called’ mechanism, 13, 97 Cancer, 22 Charter of global ethic, 320 Chinese, 22, 135, 232, 238, 251n5, 251n9, 252n12 Clear Explicit Translatable Language (CETL), 6, 226, 231, 244, 245, 247 ‘Comfortable speech’ (Korean panmal), 213

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes; Single quotation marks indicate that the item is associated with an explication or script. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 C. Goddard (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64077-4

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348 Index

Communication accessible, 1, 86, 87, 283 facial, 228, 234, 239–240 intercultural, 189 vocal, 228, 234, 237 Comparative construction, 16 Concept inventory, 87 Concrete nouns, words, 57, 66, 67, 92, 93 Confucian tradition, 196, 206 Core vocabulary, 2, 4, 5, 10, 14, 21, 53, 60, 74–77, 114–119, 127–133, 136n1 Coronavirus, 285, 286, 291, 319–343 COVID-19, 22, 281–313 Cross-translatability, 17, 87, 176, 247, 283, 284, 294, 301–303, 313, 327, 332, 338, 340 Cross-translatable, 4–6, 12, 20, 36, 112, 117, 122, 129, 131–133, 135, 178, 225, 235, 283, 303, 308, 312, 326–328, 330, 332, 333, 337, 341, 342 Cultural key words, 180 Cultural norms, 172 Cultural pluralism, 323 Cultural scripts, 22, 172, 173, 175–183, 185, 187, 188, 190n2, 202–209, 212, 215–217 Cultural values, 173, 178, 184 Cyclone, 19, 20 D

Definitions circular, 111–113, 118, 120–123 non-circular, 113, 115, 132

Development, 21, 29, 30, 32, 36–38, 46–48, 48n1, 84, 88, 102, 111, 120–123, 226, 231–234 Dictionaries definitions in, 111, 112, 114, 121, 122, 124, 128 learners, 111–135 Discourse discourse patterns, 22 public discourse, 4, 5 E

Easy Finnish (EF) Basic Easy Finnish, 62, 65, 66, 71 Easiest Easy Finnish (EEF), 53, 55, 57, 60, 62, 66, 72 Easy Finnish experts, 64, 65, 73–75 Easy Language (EL), 2, 5, 21, 54–57, 61, 69, 73, 75–78, 79n2, 79n5, 250n1 guidelines, 54, 55, 75, 79n2 Easy to Read (EtR), 5, 55–57, 72, 78, 281 Education intercultural, 2, 22 language, 21, 31, 84–88, 102, 173, 196 Emic, 197 Emotion(s), 13, 209, 230, 238 Emotional connection, 22, 226–228, 235, 236, 241–243, 245–247 Endangered languages, 84, 102 English-specific, 6, 7, 17, 19, 232, 312

 Index 

‘Epistemic reserve and openness’ (Anglo English), 173, 180–182 Ethics, 2, 5, 320 Ethnocentrism, 189 Ethnopragmatics, 172, 175, 180, 196, 199, 200, 217 Evaluation, 124–128, 132, 231 Explications, 22, 33–35, 39, 42–44, 48n4, 89, 91, 94, 95, 103n3, 114, 117, 121, 135, 176, 177, 185, 202, 210, 211, 213, 217 Explicitation, 232, 250n2 Exponents, 48n3 ‘Expression of opinions’ (French), 173, 174, 177, 179 ‘Expressiveness’ (Russian vyrazitel’nost’), 185, 186

349

G

Global English, 2, 3 Grammar, 1–4, 6, 7, 13–16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 83–103, 117, 120, 176, 196, 250n2, 307, 326 concepts, 102 Grammatical constructions, 15, 98 frames, 14 patterns, 15 terms, 87, 89, 91, 94 H

Health communication, 22, 281–313 Honorific, 22, 195–218, 218n3 I

F

Facial communication (mother-­ child), 239–240 Family Farms Team (FFT), 30–33, 38–44, 47, 48n2 Finland, 4, 21, 54, 55, 57, 60, 68 Finnish, 5, 21, 22, 54–64, 67, 68, 77, 79, 79n2, 79n6, 231–233, 251n3 Finnish as a Second Language, 64 ‘First face consciousness’ (Korean chomyen), 202 ‘Forms’ of a suffix, 97–101, 103n4 of a word, 97–101 French, 22, 135, 171–189, 327 Frequency (word frequency), 56, 68, 79n5, 126, 131, 134, 181 Function words, 9, 10, 15, 234

Immigrants, 3, 22 Indigenous languages, 31, 90 Insider perspective, 173, 179 Interaction mother-child, 232, 233 Intercultural communication, 189 Intercultural education, 2, 22 ‘Intimacy’ (Korean), 207–209, 214 Invisible culture, 21 J

Jargon, 6, 56, 97, 173, 176, 217, 232, 251n7, 281 K

Key words, 180, 181, 299, 341 Kinship, 12, 206–208, 218n2

350 Index

Korea (South Korea), 2, 195, 196 Korean as a Second Language, 195 L

Language documentation, 85, 102 Language endangerment, 83–85 Language learning, 195 Language revitalisation, 2, 21, 84, 102 Language teachers, 60, 171 Lexical polysemy, 8 Lexical prototype, 88–91, 93, 94 Lingua franca, 2, 31, 172 Localisation, 12, 46–48 Longgu, 34, 43, 44, 48n2 L2 learners, 3

N

Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), 2, 3, 6, 7, 14, 15, 22, 24n3, 24n4, 33–35, 57–60, 62, 75, 77, 89, 103n1, 103n3, 111, 112, 115–117, 120–125, 127–130, 132–135, 172, 173, 176, 178, 179, 189, 199, 225, 226, 230–232, 234, 235, 237, 238, 246, 251n4, 252n13, 283, 303, 320, 321, 327, 328, 342, 343n2 Norms cultural, 172 ‘Noun,’ 17, 20, 34, 42, 66–68, 88–93, 117, 124, 131, 197, 230, 299, 321 NSM, see Natural Semantic Metalanguage

M

Medical terms, 310 Messaging, 2, 312 Metalanguage, 172, 179 Metaphor, 251n7 Minimal Chinese, 2, 133, 135, 231 Minimal English, 1, 29–48, 57, 83–103, 111–135, 172, 225–250, 281–313 Minimal Finnish, 2, 5, 21, 53–79 Minimal Korean, 218 Minimal languages, 1–23, 39, 48, 57–60, 74–77, 133, 172, 173, 178, 180, 189, 195–218, 225–250, 320, 321, 323, 324 Minimal Polish, 57 Minimal Spanish, 2, 6, 8, 9, 111–135, 231 Mother-child relationship, 245

O

Outsider perspective, 172, 189 P

Papua New Guinea (PNG), 21, 30–35, 39–43, 46, 48 Parallelism, 16, 252n12, 326 Paraphrase, 72, 76, 113, 120, 132 Participatory action research, 33, 41, 46–47 Parts of speech, 13, 88–94 Pedagogical scripts, 22, 171–189 Pedagogy, 46, 47, 102 Pictograms, 294 Pictures, 41, 115, 131, 282–285, 287–290, 293–302, 313

 Index 

Pidgins, 41 Pitjantjatjara, 325 Plain English, 1–23, 79n1, 235 Plain language, 79n1 Polysemy, 24n5, 126, 343n4 Portmanteau expression, 24n5, 129, 234, 238 Posters, 282–304, 306, 309, 312, 313, 315n15 Pragmatics cultural, 329 Pronouns, 34, 68, 93, 94, 179, 184, 188, 238, 247, 251n6, 251n8 Prototype, 89, 333 lexical, 88–91, 93, 94 Psychology, 23, 336 Psychometric (testing, screen), 231, 247 Public discourse, 4, 5 Public health, 22, 281–313, 314n3, 314n9, 315n16 Public spaces, 284, 314n3 Q

Questionnaire, 60, 64 R

Relational health, 245 Religion, 183 Resources educational, 83, 229 online, 18, 21, 64, 111, 115, 118, 119, 123, 128, 230 ‘Respectful speech’ (Korean contaymal), 210 ‘Root and suffix,’ 94–97

351

Russian, 22, 171–189, 232, 239, 240, 251n3, 251n5, 252n17, 306, 308, 310, 321, 325–329, 333, 343n1 S

Science, 2, 23, 36, 183 Semantic molecules approximate, 39, 130 culture-specific, 6, 10, 30, 33, 40, 47, 313 universal, 9, 10, 13, 14, 30, 33, 90, 112, 129–135, 329 Semantic primes, 7–9, 14, 15, 24n4, 24n8, 30, 33–35, 40, 53, 57–59, 62, 72, 74, 88–90, 95, 96, 100, 111, 112, 115, 116, 121, 129, 130, 134, 135, 172, 176, 234, 237, 251n4, 252n11, 303–305, 312, 326, 327, 329, 333, 341 Semantics, 7–12, 14, 24n4, 30, 39, 40, 42–46, 48, 55, 57, 58, 65, 69, 90, 95, 96, 111, 115, 116, 120–122, 128–135, 172, 173, 176, 177, 182, 184, 202, 210, 213, 234, 237, 252n11, 303–305, 312 Sensitivity/reciprocity (mother-­ child), 228, 233, 234, 240–241, 245 ‘She’ll be right’ (Australian English), 161 Simple English, 4, 6, 18, 19 ‘Sincerity’ (Russian iskennost’), 173, 186–189 Software tools, 119, 121, 123, 132

352 Index

Solomon Islands, 21, 30–34, 38, 39, 41–43, 47, 48, 48n2 Solomons Pijin, 31, 41, 48, 48n2 Speech level, 198–200, 215, 216 Speech style, 198, 212 Standard Translatable English (STE), 5, 6, 21 Symptoms, 281, 285, 289, 291, 295–297, 301, 302, 308–313 Syntactic frames, 117 See also Grammatical, frames Syntax, 55, 197, 252n12, 327 T

Terminology linguistic, 21, 87 technical, 87 Text modification, 60–74 Training materials, texts, 228, 230, 233, 246, 251n10 Translatability, 2, 10, 22, 232, 233, 283, 285, 302, 304, 310, 340 testing, 22, 233 Translators, 5, 232, 238, 251n3, 306, 328, 333, 343n1

Universal words, 75, 92, 322 User community, 4, 5 V

Values, 6, 13, 44, 47, 172, 173, 177, 178, 184, 186, 196, 202, 246, 309, 320, 321, 323, 329 Verb, 9, 10, 15, 17, 40, 68, 75, 88–91, 98, 101, 103n4, 117, 124, 131, 198, 237, 238, 334 ‘Vertical rank consciousness’ (Korean), 202, 205, 206 Vocabulary core, 2, 4, 5, 10, 14, 21, 53, 60, 74–77, 114–119, 127–133, 136n1 culture-specific, 6, 10, 30, 33, 40, 47, 226, 283, 313 defining, 111, 113, 114, 116, 119–122, 124, 126–128, 132 domain-specific, 5, 6, 13 local, 12, 13, 21, 29–48, 303, 323, 342 productive, 113 receptive, 113 Vocal communication (mother-­ child), 228, 234, 237

U

Universals, 9, 10, 13, 14, 21, 29–48, 86, 87, 90, 92, 112, 129–135, 176, 207, 322, 329, 337, 341, 343n4 Universal semantic molecules, 112, 130, 134

W

Websites, 60, 78, 119, 135, 285 Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS), 22, 225–250 Wikipedia Simple English, 4, 16