Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication: Minimal English (and Beyond) [1st ed. 2020] 978-981-32-9978-8, 978-981-32-9979-5

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Lauren Sadow · Bert Peeters · Kerry Mullan Editors

Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication Minimal English (and Beyond)

Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication

Lauren Sadow Bert Peeters Kerry Mullan •

•

Editors

Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication Minimal English (and Beyond)

123

Editors Lauren Sadow Australian National University Canberra, ACT, Australia

Bert Peeters Australian National University Canberra, ACT, Australia

Kerry Mullan RMIT University Melbourne, VIC, Australia

ISBN 978-981-32-9978-8 ISBN 978-981-32-9979-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5

(eBook)

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved 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. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Dedicated to our good friend and colleague Cliff Goddard

Contents

1

Minimal English: Taking NSM ‘Out of the Lab’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lauren Sadow

Part I

1

Minimal English (and Beyond)

Using NSM and “Minimal” Language for Intercultural Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Susana S. Fernández

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3

From Expensive English to Minimal English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deborah Hill

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4

“There is no Sex in the Soviet Union”: From Sex to Seks . . . . . . . Anna Wierzbicka and Anna Gladkova

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When Value Words Cross Cultural Borders: English Tolerant Versus Russian Tolerantnyj . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anna Gladkova

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The Confounding Mandarin Colour Term ‘Qīng’: Green, Blue, Black or All of the Above and More? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jiashu Tao and Jock Wong

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Semantic Challenges in Understanding Global English: Hypothesis, Theory, and Proof in Singapore English . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Jock Wong

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Using Minimal English to Model a Parental Understanding of Autism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Alexander Forbes

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Principles and Prototypes of a Cultural Dictionary of Australian English for Learners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Lauren Sadow

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Contents

10 Minimal and Inverse Definitions: A Semi-experimental Proposal for Compiling a Spanish Dictionary with Semantic Primes and Molecules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 María Auxiliadora Barrios Rodríguez 11 Prevalence of NSM Primes in Easy-to-Read and Standard Finnish: Findings from Newspaper Text Corpora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Ulla Vanhatalo and Camilla Lindholm Part II

Cliff Goddard: List of Publications

Cliff Goddard: List of Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Compiled by Bert Peeters

Chapter 1

Minimal English: Taking NSM ‘Out of the Lab’ Lauren Sadow

Abstract This introductory chapter to the third of three volumes celebrating the career of Griffith University academic Cliff Goddard recaps the fundamentals of the Minimal English offshoot of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, compares the two approaches (Sect. 1.2), then contextualizes and introduces the individual papers (Sect. 1.3).










Keywords Meaning Culture Natural Semantic Metalanguage Minimal English Cross-cultural communication Language teaching Lexicography Education




1.1










Introduction

The current volume is the third of three celebrating Cliff Goddard’s career and achievements in linguistics over a period of forty years. It was Goddard who, in 1986, seven years after publishing his first ringing endorsement of it (Goddard 1979), gave the so-called Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) its name. ‘Ringing endorsement’ is the phrase used in the opening lines of the introductory chapter of the first volume in this set. The ‘NSM approach’, as it has come to be known since that time, would not be what it is today if it was not for Goddard’s contribution to Anna Wierzbicka’s efforts to turn Leibniz’s seventeenth-century dream of an ‘alphabetum cogitationum humanarum’ (an ‘alphabet of human thoughts’) into a linguistic reality. For a continually updated database of bibliographical notices, which also allows to trace explications, scripts, and tables of primes and molecules in the NSM literature, see https://www.nsm-approach.net. The key ideas of the NSM approach are outlined in the introduction to the first volume. Suffice it to say here that, as a method of semantic analysis, NSM is unique in that it aims to define concepts through what its advocates believe to be the shared L. Sadow (&) The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_1

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semantic and grammatical core of all languages. The NSM approach achieves its goal through a lexicon of 65 semantic primes and their combinatorial grammar. The primes are semantically simple (i.e. irreducible) concepts that decades of painstaking empirical research involving dozens of typologically and genetically unrelated languages have proven to be traceable (i.e. lexicalized) in all of them. The approach’s working hypothesis is that they are true lexical universals that are readily cross-translatable, and therefore, allow descriptions of language- and culture-specific material that rely on them to be translated back and forth without semantic distortion, and without falling prey to circularity and ethnocentricity. This is indeed one of the primary goals of the NSM approach: to debunk the myth that English, as we know it today, is a culture-neutral language whose words and phrases are devoid of cultural bias and can be used without the slightest proviso as infallible metalinguistic tools. NSM allows us to provide definitions (‘explications’ in NSM parlance) that capture the semantics of concepts in any language from a truly emic perspective, i.e. from the perspective of the speakers of that language rather than that of cultural outsiders who put their own cultural spin on concepts that are not their own, thereby disfiguring them, sometimes unrecognizably so. After the first volume, with its focus on ethnopragmatics and semantic analysis using NSM, and the second, with its equally NSM-driven focus on meaning and culture, the third draws together researchers working with and on a recent offshoot of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage—Minimal English. The current chapter will give a broad introduction to Minimal English, building on the introduction to volume 1, and will contextualize the many different ways in which Minimal English (and, more generally, Minimal Language) can be applied and will be used throughout the chapters of this volume.

1.2

Minimal English and NSM Compared

NSM practitioners use semantic primes and universal grammar to create deep semantic analyses of words. Such analyses are referred to as semantic explications. In addition, they use the same primes and the same grammar to articulate cultural norms and values in often highly culture-specific cultural scripts. Minimal English pursues very similar aims, but on a broader scale and through slightly different means. Over the years, there has been a developing interest in the manner of paraphrase used in semantic explications and cultural scripts, but also a reluctance to engage with it, due to the complexity of using the metalanguage. In spite of being a tool ‘created by linguists for linguists, but also for the world’, to quote a phrase used in the introduction to the second volume, NSM is often perceived as ‘just for linguists’—and not even any linguists. It is often thought of as too hard to handle for

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anyone who has not been appropriately trained to use it (by one of its leading advocates) or has not been exposed to it through years of sustained reading of relevant scholarly literature. Minimal English, on the other hand, is primarily designed for broader dissemination and use. It is a new development within the NSM approach, which aims to be more accessible for researchers across a variety of disciplines as well as for non-researchers in the broader community. It aims to get NSM ‘out of the lab’ (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018: 6) and into the real world, where it can help solve real-world problems. Anna Wierzbicka first proposed the idea of a broader version of NSM for use in the real world in her book Imprisoned in English (Wierzbicka 2014). In that book, she emphasized the relevance and the potential of reductive paraphrase (which paraphrases cultural complexity, reducing it to semantic transparency without the loss of essential information) for anyone seeking to either convey pre-existing complex information in the clearest possible way (a secondary consideration) or write new material in cross-translatable language (a deliberate intention). In today’s world, English is commonly used as a lingua franca by global agencies, governments, businesses, and other organizations. In some cases, it is necessary for these organizations to create materials aimed at a global market (such as the World Health Organization’s health information pamphlets, to give but one example). Established practice is for these materials to be written in English and then translated into the many different languages in which they are needed. This process is long, time-consuming, and costly. But if materials were written in cross-translatable language to begin with, this process would become more efficient and more accurate (Goddard 2019). After the initial proposals in Wierzbicka (2014), which had obviously circulated to some extent in NSM circles, Minimal English soon developed into a fully-fledged and separate area of study. It was elaborated on in a symposium held at the Australian National University in 2014. This is where the seeds were sown for the first major publication on Minimal English, which adopted the name of the symposium as its main title. Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (Goddard 2018a) is a collection of mostly exploratory papers by linguists as well as specialists working across a number of disciplines and addressing the potential of Minimal English in science communication and the applied sciences, in the defence of human rights, and in the media. The second project called Minimal English in Action, also spearheaded by Goddard, is currently underway. The principles of Minimal English are, in effect, the same as those of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage; the difference is in the details of how they are implemented. Where, at least in the first instance, the NSM approach to semantic description relies solely on semantic primes—calling upon semantic molecules only in the absence of a workable alternative—Minimal English draws on primes, molecules, and other productive terms from the very start. According to Goddard

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(2018b), the core vocabulary of Minimal English consists of approximately 300 words, including the semantic primes (Table 1.1), a set of universal and near-universal concepts (Table 1.2), and some non-universal words that may be useful concepts in Minimal English (Table 1.3). In addition, there are also other areal molecules that are becoming widely recognized globally (Goddard 2019). In the area of possession (see Table 1.1), Minimal English is more likely to rely on HAVE than on (BE) MINE. The latter is among the latest innovations in the NSM lexicon, and while it is linguistically more accurate as the universally lexicalized building block linguists commonly refer to as (alienable) possession, it is arguably less appropriate for direct use in Minimal English. In addition, Minimal English uses the molecule ‘is called’ (the variant used in Table 1.2 is its infinitival form ‘be called’) to introduce new words into a text. This technique allows culture- and topic-specific molecules to be included where they contribute to the message, or when their introduction is the intention of the message. An example of this can be found in Wierzbicka’s (2018: 186) Minimal English rendition of Galileo’s invention of the telescope, reproduced in [A].

Table 1.1 Semantic primes grouped into related categories (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014) I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING

*

THING, PEOPLE, BODY

KIND, PART THIS, THE SAME, OTHER

*

ELSE

ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MUCH

*

MANY, LITTLE

*

FEW

GOOD, BAD BIG, SMALL KNOW, THINK, WANT, DON’T WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR SAY, WORDS, TRUE DO, HAPPEN, MOVE BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING)

(IS)

MINE

LIVE, DIE WHEN

*

TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME,

Substantives Relational substantives Determiners Quantifiers Evaluators Descriptors Mental predicates Speech Actions, events, movement Location, existence, specification Possession Life and death Time

A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT WHERE

*

PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE,

Place

TOUCH NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF VERY, MORE LIKE

*

AS

Logical concepts Augmentor, intensifier Similarity

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Table 1.2 Selection of proposed universal semantic molecules (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018: 16) Hands, mouth, eyes, head, ears, nose, face, legs, teeth, fingers, breasts, skin, bones, blood Long, round, flat, thin, hard, soft, sharp, smooth, heavy Be on something, at the top, at the bottom, in the middle, in front of, around Sky, the Earth, sun, moon, stars, ground, during the day, at night Day Water, fire Creature, grow, egg, tail, wings, feathers Children, men, women, be born, mother, father, wife, husband Wood, stone Know (someone), be called Hold, make, kill, breathe, sleep, sit, lie, stand, play, laugh, sing

Body parts Physical Spatial/physical Environmental Times Fire and water Biological Biosocial Materials ‘Knowing’ and naming ‘Doing’

Table 1.3 Other non-universal but useful words in Minimal English (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018: 17) Hungry, brain, heart River, mountain, desert, sea, island, jungle/forest Rain, wind, snow, ice, air Flood, storm, drought, earthquake East, west, north, south Bird, fish, tree, seeds, grass, mosquitoes, flies, snake Dog, cat, horse, cow, pig (camel, buffalo, moose, etc.) Family Month, week, clock, hour, second House, village, city, school, hospital Teacher, doctor, nurse, soldier Country, government, capital, border, flag, passport, vote Science, the law, health, education, sport ‘Fields’ Meat, rice, wheat, corn (yams, etc.), flour, salt, sugar, sweet Knife, key, gun, bomb, medicines Paper, iron, metal, glass, leather, wool, cloth, Thread, gold, rubber, plastic, oil, coal, petrol Car, bicycle, plane, boat, train, road, wheel, wire, engine, Pipe, telephone, television, radio, phone Read, write, book, photo, newspaper, film Money, God, war, poison, music Go/went, eat, drink, take (someone somewhere), burn, Buy/pay, learn Clean

Body Environmental

Biological Biosocial Times Places Professions ‘Country’ ‘Fields’ Food ‘Tools’ ‘Materials’ Technology and transport Literacy and media Other: nouns Other: verbs Other: adjectives

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[A] [WHAT GALILEO DID] Galileo looked at the stars not like other people looked at them before. Because of this, he could see them well, not like people could see them before. When he was looking at them, he was holding something of one kind near his eyes. When someone holds something of this kind near the eyes, this someone can look at some places very far from the place where this someone is. This someone can see these places well. (Things of this kind are called ‘a telescope’.) When Galileo looked at the sky at night like this, he could see some places very far from the Earth well.

In terms of layout, pieces of writing in Minimal English can take a range of formats. The rendition in [A] is obviously not of a format that has been traditionally used in NSM research, where explications and cultural scripts have specific formats using line breaks and indents to segment and group different components (i.e. lines written in NSM). These formats give NSM texts a specific look. Minimal English texts can certainly use the time-honoured formats of explications and cultural scripts, but on the other hand it is perfectly possible and absolutely fine to write texts in Minimal English that, as far as format goes, appear closer to standard English paragraphs, using sentences and punctuation that English speakers might expect to find in their readings (such as in the example from Wierzbicka in [A] above). Because there are so many different formats that can be used in Minimal English, it might be helpful to think of such pieces of writing as compositions rather than explications or cultural scripts. Importantly, the intention behind Minimal English is not that it is a completely limited list of words that is unchanging. In that sense, it is not a ‘tool’, in the way NSM has been described as a ‘tool’ for deep semantic analysis. In fact, as Goddard (2019) puts it, ‘Minimal English is not a thing as such, it is a way of thinking about things’. In other words, the main goal of Minimal English is to encourage its users to think carefully about what they are saying and how they will convey that idea. It is a different form of ‘reductive paraphrase’, one that enables those who use it to think carefully about the different implications of what they are trying to convey and how they can separate the different elements of that message into clear and cross-translatable elements. This kind of approach augurs well for cross-translatability—it allows us to clarify culturally shaped intentions as well as the usage of culture-specific terms—and is beneficial for end-users who may not have a full command of English, e.g. language learners, people with disabilities (cf. Vanhatalo and Lindholm, this volume), the non-English majority in developing countries that rely on English in their dealings with international aid and development agencies (cf. Hill, this volume), etc. Some may want to compare Minimal English to other ‘simpler English programs’ such as Basic English, Plain English, and so on. The key difference between the Minimal English paradigm and these other approaches is that Minimal English is empirically driven and rests on a foundation of NSM research spanning more than 30 years (Goddard 2018c). Many other lists of ‘basic’ words in English (e.g.

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the Longman 2000-word set) are based on the frequency of use in English, with little or no regard to semantic simplicity and cross-cultural transparency. Instead, Minimal English focuses on words that are known to be widely translatable, matching them to syntax that has likewise been proven to be easily transposable and then expanding the list by using the same criteria in an informed and scientifically responsible manner. Throughout this introduction, I have discussed Minimal English and its use in English as a Lingua Franca contexts. It goes without saying that English is not the only language that could benefit from having a cross-translatable version (or set of versions, since—as pointed out above—we are dealing with a way of thinking, rather than with a list or a tool). Because Minimal English is built on a foundation of cross-translatability, one can expect that other languages would have a corresponding minimal language, just like every language has its own exponents of the semantic primes of NSM. Versions of Minimal French, Minimal Mandarin, or Minimal Finnish would, therefore, be able to be created, albeit with some adaptation as some terms are more salient in particular languages than others.

1.3

Minimal English (and Beyond)

The 11 chapters in this volume focus on the many ways in which Minimal English can be applied across a range of different areas. These different areas of application also illustrate different styles of Minimal English. The first two chapters in this volume explore the use of Minimal English in education contexts, Fernández (Chap. 2) in higher education contexts for teaching intercultural competence to university students and Hill (Chap. 3) in farming training programs in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The next four chapters (Wierzbicka and Gladkova, Chap. 4; Gladkova, Chap. 5; Tao and Wong, Chap. 6; Wong, Chap. 7) use Minimal English to produce broadly accessible semantic analyses of concepts that reflect cultural and ideological differences between different languages. In Chap. 8, Forbes extends the use of Minimal English to explore cognitive processes and ways of talking. Following Wierzbicka (1985) and Goddard (2017), Chaps. 9 (Sadow) and 10 (Barrios Rodriguez) both explore how Minimal English can be used in lexicography. Finally, Chap. 11 (Vanhatalo and Lindholm) presents a future-oriented study that explores the further applications of Minimal English for creating easy-to-read texts—a potentially global application of Minimal English with relevance across an enormous range of domains. Susana S. Fernández (Chap. 2) discusses the gaps in majority language teaching textbooks in Denmark and explores how the NSM approach and Minimal Languages—including but not limited to Minimal English—can be used to bridge those gaps. She also reports on her experience teaching NSM to intercultural communication students. She found that while students were at times critical of the approach, it nevertheless raised their interest in it and helped them to think critically about cultural keywords and communication ideas.

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Deborah Hill (Chap. 3) argues that in contexts like farming programs in PNG, Minimal English can help to reduce the social distance between trainers and participants by avoiding so-called expensive English. Her chapter illustrates two key ways in which this can be done. First, through elaborating the differences between various ways of using the same English words, and second, by highlighting and explaining the connections between ‘expensive English’ terms and locally significant terms. Her work aims to increase the transferability of information between the first- and second-generation trainers and local communities. Anna Wierzbicka and Anna Gladkova (Chap. 4) conduct an in-depth analysis of the English word sex and the Russian borrowing seks to show that there are some key differences between the two concepts, despite the fact that they appear to have similar usages. The authors build on the quote ‘there is no sex in the Soviet Union’, which (though contested) is evocative and illustrative of some underlying difference in the concepts. In this chapter, Wierzbicka and Gladkova clarify the two different meanings of both the English word sex and its Russian counterpart seks, concluding that Russian seks in its intercourse meaning is more detached than English sex, and considered a ‘task’ to be completed in the interest of procreation. The approach they adopt differs from traditional NSM analyses in the sense that the authors have a broader audience in mind, not just one of the linguists. Continuing the illustration of how Minimal English can be used for broadly accessible semantic description, Anna Gladkova (Chap. 5) uses its principles to demonstrate how semantic shifts can occur when words are borrowed across languages. While English words are being borrowed into Russian more often since the break-up of the Soviet Union, they do not usually reflect the values and reality of Russian speakers. In this chapter, the English word tolerant and the Russian borrowing of it (tolerantnyj) are compared to the Russian terpimyj in order to illustrate the drift of the English loanword towards the Russian heritage word. Jiashu Tao and Jock Wong (Chap. 6) demonstrate how Minimal English can be used to untangle complex and unclear concepts across their evolution over thousands of years by using contemporary texts. They focus on the Mandarin colour term qīng and the meanings that can be glossed to the English blue, black, and green. They explore how the meaning of qīng has evolved and been layered with other meanings (corresponding to the English glosses) over time, using the Chinese dynasties as significant reference points for linguistic developments. Jock Wong (Chap. 7) found that his students in Singapore had a lack of understanding about what certain English terms (hypothesis, theory, and proof) mean in university contexts. He reports on his use of the principles of Minimal English to teach them how to think about and break down the concepts, before writing Minimal English explications to clarify their exact meaning. His most interesting discovery is that the perceived meanings of these words in Singapore English do not match the actual meanings in academic contexts. Alex Forbes (Chap. 8) uses Minimal English to describe how people think about neurodiversity. He relies on Minimal English to illustrate how parents think about their autistic children and how they reflect on their experiences as parents. Forbes’ chapter also demonstrates one of the significant strengths of Minimal English: it

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does not have to be used in full components, scripts, or explications for it to be useful. Forbes argues that Minimal English is a powerful framework to describe group cognition, allowing us to understand more about perspectives on neurodiversity from those closest to one representation of it. Lauren Sadow (Chap. 9) and María Auxiliadora Barrios Rodriguez (Chap. 10) both explore the idea of using Minimal English in lexicographical projects. Sadow uses Minimal English to capture ethnopragmatic norms and cultural values for learners of English as a second language and applies Goddard’s (2004) suggestions for cultural scripts in language learning contexts to discuss the issues and considerations of creating a practical resource aimed at language learners. In particular, she discusses the challenges of structuring a dictionary that cannot use the alphabetical ordering of entries and the elements of definitions that can be borrowed from lexicography for each entry. Barrios Rodriguez discusses how Minimal English can contribute to writing effective definitions. She demonstrates that dictionary users do not necessarily require the same amount of information as is contained in explications to be able to recognize a concept reliably. Her technique of creating ‘minimal and inverse definitions’ illustrates how explications can be tested in lexicographical contexts to best reflect the cognitive processes of dictionary users. In other words, her explications present dictionary users with the information they need most. Ulla Vanhatalo and Camilla Lindholm (Chap. 11) take a different approach to Minimal English, proposing its usefulness in creating new guidelines for texts as part of the easy-to-read movement. The two authors illustrate the prevalence of NSM primes in current easy-to-read texts, arguing that this prevalence indicates that, somehow, NSM primes contribute to the status of the texts as being easy to read. While only a pilot study for a growing project, this chapter demonstrates how Minimal English can contribute to providing accessibility of information to migrants, and to those with learning disabilities or cognitive decline. It identifies real possibilities for the applications of Minimal English into the future. An exhaustive list of Cliff Goddard’s publications to date, categorized by the year in which they were published, caps off this volume.

1.4

One Last Thing …

While Minimal English may be the most recent development in the NSM approach, it is undoubtedly not the last. As more researchers are drawn to the ever-growing body of work in NSM, and more areas are identified in which NSM and/or Minimal English (or other Minimal Languages) could play a role, the approach will continue to grow and develop, building on the foundational work of Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka. This volume, hopefully one of many to come, illustrates the many different ways in which the NSM approach has started to affect ways of thinking across numerous areas and disciplines.

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In more general terms, there can be no doubt that the contributors to all three volumes have benefitted from Cliff Goddard’s mentorship, friendship, inspirational work, and unfailing academic generosity. So, here’s to you, Cliff. Well done and thank you.

References Goddard, C. (1979). Particles and illocutionary semantics. Paper in Linguistics, 12(1/2), 185–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351817909370468. Goddard, C. (1986). The natural semantics of too. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(5), 635–643. https:// doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(86)90018-4. Goddard, C. (2004). “Cultural scripts”: A new medium for ethnopragmatic instruction. In M. Achard & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Cognitive Linguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language teaching (pp. 143–163). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10. 1515/9783110199857.143. Goddard, C. (2017). Natural semantic metalanguage and lexicography. In P. Hanks & G.-M. de Schryver (Eds.), International handbook of modern lexis and lexicography (online). Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45369-4_14-1. Goddard, C. (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. Goddard, C. (2018b). Minimal English: The science behind it. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 29–70). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_3. Goddard, C. (2018c). Ten lectures on natural semantic metalanguage: Exploring language, thought and culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/ 9789004357723. Goddard, C. (June, 2019). Minimal English in Action. In 16th International Pragmatics Conference (IPrA), Hong Kong, June 9–14, 2019. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Words and Meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/ 6269780199668434.001.0001. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2018). Minimal English and how it can add to Global English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 5–27). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-625126_2. Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Lexicography and conceptual analysis. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199321490.001.0001. Wierzbicka, A. (2018). Talking about the universe in Minimal English: Teaching science through words that children can understand. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 169–200). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_8.

Lauren Sadow is a sessional academic at the Australian National University, Canberra. Her main research interests are teaching culture, interactional norms, cultural lexicography, and cross-cultural communication. Her Ph.D. thesis created an NSM-based dictionary titled The Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers.

Part I

Minimal English (and Beyond)

Chapter 2

Using NSM and “Minimal” Language for Intercultural Learning Susana S. Fernández

Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how the learning and teaching of intercultural competence can be substantially enhanced by the use of NSM and/or some form of “minimal” language (inspired by Goddard 2018a) Minimal English. The affordances of the NSM theory of intercultural semantics and pragmatics (e.g., Goddard 2006; Wierzbicka 1997) for intercultural learning are, at least, twofold. On the one hand, the theory brings into focus cultural keywords and cultural scripts, which are crucial to the understanding of how a particular group thinks about and performs communication and social relations. On the other hand, NSM offers a set of few, simple, and cross-translatable concepts that can prove useful in the context of the classroom, to talk about keywords and cultural scripts and to explain complex language-specific grammatical features. The acquisition of intercultural competence, also called intercultural communicative competence (Byram 1997), is the main goal of foreign and second language courses today, where the focus is on helping the learner to become a competent intercultural speaker and user of the language. Intercultural competence is also the target of courses on intercultural communication (for instance, university courses for humanities or business students), which normally provide an introduction to culture and communication theories. Both foreign/second language courses and intercultural communication courses would profit from a systematic approach to grammar, to the semantics of cultural keywords, and to pragmatics, which does not rely on heavily culturally loaded (and potentially Anglocentric) complex concepts. In this chapter, I propose different ways in which NSM can be used in these contexts, both at a theoretical level and based on my own experiences with the implementation of NSM in the classroom.










Keywords NSM Pragmatics Language teaching Intercultural communication Intercultural communicative competence Minimal language







S. S. Fernández (&) Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_2

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2.1

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Introduction

As a linguist working within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics, I have always had a particular interest in the role of culture within language and in the inextricable, though complex and evasive, relationship between the two. Ever since I came into contact with the work of Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka, I have been fascinated by their insightful take on the issue and by their colossal endeavor in developing a tool that would allow us to explore language and culture without falling into the pitfalls of Anglo or ethnocentric bias and a misunderstood aspiration of universalism. As an applied linguist working with second and foreign language learning from a socio-cognitive perspective, I find that the theory of NSM and the newcomer “Minimal English” has the potential to solve some of the problems language teachers face when they need to address the question of how culture and language interrelate, in a way that can be understood and exploited also by learners with limited language resources. Not only because of the simplicity of the reduced metalanguage of NSM, but also because this theory has succeeded in focusing on the relationship between semantics and pragmatics, between words—particularly, certain words, keywords—and specific ways of doing things with language. Therefore, I feel honored to contribute to this publication for Cliff Goddard. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how the learning and teaching of intercultural competence can be substantially enhanced by the use of NSM and/or some form of “minimal” language (inspired by Goddard (2018a) Minimal English) and by the insights provided by the NSM theory of intercultural semantics and pragmatics (e.g., Goddard 2006; Wierzbicka 1985, 1997, 1999; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004). The acquisition of intercultural competence or, more specifically, intercultural communicative competence (Byram 1997) is the main goal of foreign and second language courses today, where the focus is on helping the learner to become a competent intercultural speaker and user of the language. Intercultural competence is also the target of courses on intercultural communication (for instance, university courses for humanities or business students), which typically introduce culture and communication theories and center on international communication via a lingua franca, usually English. Both foreign/second language courses and intercultural communication courses can benefit from a systematic approach to grammar, to the semantics of cultural keywords, and to pragmatics, which does not rely on heavily culturally loaded (and potentially Anglocentric) complex concepts. I will start my discussion by presenting the areas of learning where NSM has the potential to make an important contribution and I will revise the literature that shows the state of the art regarding NSM learning applications. Thereafter, I will introduce to the notions of intercultural competence and intercultural communicative competence and I will relate them to two areas of teaching:

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the foreign/second language classroom and intercultural communication courses. As I intend to provide empirical examples from my personal experiences with the application of NSM in the Danish educational system, both in Spanish classrooms and in intercultural communication courses, I will briefly present the necessary background for understanding the local context and its influence on how NSM has been applied.

2.2

Applications of NSM in Learning Contexts

The NSM theory did not originate with a pedagogical intention in mind, but Goddard and Wierzbicka have, in several articles, pointed to the theory’s possible pedagogical applications (Goddard 2004, 2010, 2018b: Chap. 10; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2007). From a more practical point of view, several NSM scholars (Arnawa 2017; Fernández 2016a, b; Karimnia and Afghari 2010; Peeters 2009, 2013; Sadow 2014, 2018; Tully 2016;) have taken up the challenge and applied the theory for different learning/teaching purposes. Goddard (2004) proposed that cultural scripts can be useful pedagogical tools for ethnopragmatic instruction in the context of intercultural language teaching, as cultural scripts are more intelligible and less ethnocentric than other pragmatic concepts (e.g., “politeness”, “directness”) used for teaching speech acts in different languages. Furthermore, cultural scripts focus on the underlying system of cultural values and thereby provide a more holistic representation of discourse practices (p. 147). In a 2010 paper, Goddard introduces the notion of “pedagogical script” (Goddard, 2010: 115), a modified version of cultural scripts suitable for teaching purposes, featuring modifications such as references to the target country in question and a simplification of NSM formulations for added readability. Taking up Goddard and Wiezbicka’s suggestions about the usefulness of NSM for teaching culture and pragmatics, Peeters (2009) posed five pathways of NSM “ethnolinguistics” that can help advance cultural learning in foreign/second language (L2)1 classrooms, each of them focusing on different linguacultural aspects: ethnolexicology, ethnophraseology, ethnosyntax, ethnopragmatics, and ethnoaxiology. Sadow (2014) argued for language teachers to use NSM to make their own explanations about cultural aspects and presented the results of a small-scale trial of cultural scripts in L2 English classrooms in Australia. Her findings point to the importance of including real-life examples and the possibility of actual practice. In further trials, she obtained feedback from participating students that led her to propose three adaptations to NSM scripts to include versions focusing “intention,” “interaction,” and “interpretation,” respectively [for further details, see Sadow (2018 and this volume)].

1

For the sake abbreviation, I will refer to both second and foreign languages as L2.

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Focusing on a different aspect of language learning, Goddard and Wierzbicka (2007) suggested that semantic primes should have implications for the lexical syllabus in beginner L2 classrooms, as this mini vocabulary can be a means to understanding and explaining other words. Besides, these words should already be present in the learner’s mental lexicon from their first language (L1), which would also make them easy to learn. In one of his lectures about NSM, Goddard (2018b: 284) mentioned that Minimal English might also help inform what language to teach early. Arnawa (2017) tested this for Balinese vocabulary learning in young schoolchildren with positive results. Tully (2016) centered on the concept of “paraphrasing” as a crucial aspect of strategic competence in foreign/second language (L2) learning and explored how NSM and Minimal English can contribute with the necessary vocabulary for both learners and teachers to apply paraphrasing in the L2 classroom. In my work, I focus on NSM’s potential contribution to the language classroom through its attention to the cross-section between semantics and pragmatics in the form of cultural keywords and their related cultural scripts. I am also interested in exploiting the fact that the method uses relatively simple linguistic resources (the semantic primes, lately expanded with molecules into “minimal language”), which is an advantage in L2 classrooms, where linguistic resources can be scarce. The importance of pragmatic training for a non-native speaker’s participation in the language community in question should be obvious, particularly because speakers are easily biased by their own native cultural keywords and norms, which they may deem universal, with the risk of intercultural misunderstanding and even conflict. Nevertheless, there has been little systematic attention to such matters in language pedagogy and teaching practice so far (see an analysis of L2 teaching materials in Sect. 3.1). Another important learning potential of NSM is the technique of constructing precise definitions/explications using few and simple words, with attention to both verbal, cognitive and emotional aspects of a word or phrase. This technique, when applied by learners, can have a strong impact as an instrument of thought and cultural self-evaluation. In this sense, it is not important whether the definitions are well formed and precise as products. Rather, the process of identifying and explaining key concepts and norms can have a learning effect, in the sense of promoting cultural self-awareness. In Sect. 3.4.1, I will present some results obtained by applying this work method at university level.

2.3

Intercultural Communicative Competence in Language Learning and Teaching

In the area of L2 learning and teaching, the concept of intercultural communicative competence is widely held nowadays as a main learning objective. This concept builds on two interrelated concepts, communicative competence and intercultural

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competence. There is by now a long tradition in the conceptualization of language learning as the acquisition of communicative competence, that is, the ability to use the language appropriately in different communicative situations. This is based on a view of language as a means of communication (rather than, for instance, a sign system) and the learner as a user of the language. The concept expands thereby the notion of linguistic competence as presented by Chomsky (1965) by adding pragmatic, discourse, and strategic sub-competences as a prerequisite for effective language use (Hymes 1971; Canale and Swain 1980). This view of language learning as the acquisition of communicative competence is represented in communicative language teaching (Savignon 1987), which, since the 1980s and in different versions, is probably the most widespread L2 teaching approach around the world. Even though the concept of communicative competence and the wave of communicative language teaching represent an improvement when compared to earlier more purely grammatical and analytical approaches to L2 learning (e.g., as in the grammar–translation method), criticism has been posed as to the mere instrumental focus of this approach, which can fall short of paying enough attention to relevant cultural aspects of the language in question (Porto 2013). This criticism paved the way to a “cultural turn” in L2 teaching (Dasli and Díaz 2017; Kramsch 1993; Liddicoat and Scarino 2013; Lo Bianco et al. 1999) and to the development of the concept of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) (Byram 1997), disseminated throughout the world a few years later by the influential Council of Europe’s 2001 CEFR document.2 In his model of ICC, Byram (2000) points to the importance of focusing on sociocultural aspects of language use in the communicative classroom besides the more linguistic-oriented pragmatic and discourse competences, and House (2008: 17) exemplifies these aspects with cultural objects, nonverbal phenomena, routines, and values. Byram’s five-pronged model of ICC includes different types of knowledge (savoirs, in his own words), which in fact include knowledge, skills, and attitudes, all amounting to a “political education”: – – – – –

Knowledge: about oneself, others and interaction Skills I: Interpreting and relating Skills II: Discovering and interacting Attitudes: Relativizing self, valuing others Political education: critical cultural awareness (Byram 1997: 34).

Byram’s ICC model is one of the many attempts to conceptualize the competences needed for intercultural communication. Spitzberg and Changnon (2009) provide an overview of models and concepts, and Risager (2012) sketches the development of culture pedagogy in foreign language teaching. Byram’s model has, in fact, been criticized for its narrow national orientation and for its static view of “CEFR” stands for Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Electronic version available at: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/ framework_en.pdf.

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culture (e.g., Matsuo 2012). Language teaching reflects in many cases this narrow perspective with a tendency to perpetuate stereotypes, to focus excessively on national cultures, and to compare own and target culture in a superficial, often simplistic, way (Daryai-Hansen and Fernández in press; Fernández 2009, 2015). From a post-modern perspective, culture needs to be seen as fluid, dynamic, unstable, fragmented (Dervin 2015; Kramsch 2006; Risager 2006), and such a perspective poses pedagogical challenges, as teachers often feel unprepared for such a demanding task, where they cannot rely on proven, familiar models. Several studies on teacher cognition on intercultural competence show that teachers feel insecure about the implementation of intercultural teaching and tend to apply an information-oriented approach, where intercultural education mostly relies on transmitting facts about the target culture (Jedynak 2011; Koike and Lacorte 2014; Sercu et al. 2005). A more constructivist, interactive, and “experiential” (Dervin 2017; Kolb 1984) type of learning requires appropriate teacher training and apt resources, and this is unavailable for many teachers (Fernández 2015; Young and Sachdev 2011). The challenge in language teaching is not only finding the right model for intercultural competence and the right approach to implement it in class, but also combining the communicative and the intercultural aspects in an organic way in the classroom. There is ample evidence for language teaching that separates the two, driving two parallel sets of learning objectives: some related to learning language and some related to acquiring knowledge about cultures. Often, this second aspect is interesting and motivating for the learners, but the type of teaching that focuses on culture falls short of providing activities that also produce language learning (Daryai-Hansen 2016). One important reason for this is that this kind of culture-oriented teaching is to a large degree done in the L1 rather than the L2, or sometimes using English as a lingua franca, even in classrooms or learning situations (e.g., travels abroad) where English is not the target language (Tranekjær et al. 2015). There is also another undesirable possibility: to focus on language learning alone. One could argue that this latter option is, in fact, impossible, as language and culture cannot be separated, but choosing a narrow focus on language (grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation) may leave out essential sociocultural aspects of language use and opportunities for cultural consciousness-raising and personal development through contact with L2 and L2 speakers (Fernández 2009; Kumaravadivelu 2003). In the next subsection, I will explore teaching materials for Spanish as an L2 available today in Denmark, with the purpose of analyzing how intercultural and communicative aspects are represented, focusing particularly on sociopragmatic issues. Against this background, I intend to explore the question of whether the NSM approach can contribute to a more successful connection between intercultural and communicative content in the foreign language classroom and, particularly, in teaching materials.

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Intercultural Communicative Content in L2 Teaching Materials

In the current Danish educational system, Spanish can only be studied as an L2 at upper secondary school, where it is a beginner language. After this level, it is possible to study Spanish at university as a philological study or with a business orientation. Spanish is a very popular L2 subject at upper secondary school, but very few students study it at university.3 Therefore, the analysis in this section will focus on upper secondary school Spanish, where the bulk of learners are. The analyzed materials are the three most widely used Spanish beginner systems in Denmark today, according to several consulted Spanish teachers: – Caminando (Clausen et al. 2009) – Buena idea 1 and 2 (Pedersen and Petersen 2006, 2009) – Vidas (Jensen and Klitnæs 2008)4

The analysis, which does not intend to be exhaustive in connection with all cultural elements included in these textbooks (for an analysis of Caminando from a post-colonial studies perspective, see Risager (2018)), targets the intersection between intercultural and communicative aspects as represented by sociopragmatic issues. Sociopragmatics is defined as “one’s understanding of the sociocultural meaning potential of language in its contexts of use” (van Compernolle 2013: 74). It is normally set in contrast to pragmalinguistics, which refers to the actual wording of speech acts. Sociopragmatics is a subtle, often invisible and implicit, aspect of pragmatics, particularly difficult to acquire in an L2. Sociopragmatic rules are intuitive for native speakers, but they are less than obvious to L2 speakers, who are normally guided by their L1’s sociopragmatic rules, leading to possible intercultural misunderstandings or awkwardness. Several authors (e.g., Ishihara and Cohen 2010) have argued strongly for the inclusion of sociopragmatics in L2 classrooms, but there seem to be a number of challenges. One of them is the scarcity of sociopragmatic content in teaching materials, as pointed by a number of scholars (e.g., Ambjørn 2015; Miquel and Sans 1992, Peeters 2013; Pozzo and Fernández 2008). The question is whether this is still true for materials currently being used for Spanish teaching in Denmark. The short answer to the question is yes. A thematic analysis of the three Spanish textbooks shows a very scarce sociopragmatic focus in all three of them.

3

At university level in Denmark, only students enrolled in language studies (philology or business) receive training in foreign languages, with very few exceptions. 4 Common for these books is that they are translations, from either Norwegian or Swedish. The texts are cited with the Danish authors who have done the translation/adaptation and the year of the first edition, first print, in Denmark.

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In Vidas, sociopragmatic content is limited to one page, p. 37, which is actually packed with sociopragmatic information. Here, the learner gets an explanation in Danish of differences in social conventions between Spain/Latin America and Denmark: – – – – – –

There is generally a more polite tone than in Denmark Most people live more social lives People talk to both acquaintances and strangers It is normal to use usted (polite form of you), particularly when talking to older people Men shake hands and you greet a woman with two kisses on the cheek People do not ask about work to people they meet and one should be discreet with questions about money – People are careful in introducing each other to new people.

All these are surely useful pieces of information, but in order for learners to be able to apply them in their use of L2 Spanish, they would require a much more detailed level of description (e.g., what does a “polite tone” mean?, what contexts require usted?, how should one introduce people?) and the opportunity to experience and practice these social conventions. However, the exercises in the book do not provide such opportunity. There are a few instances of role-play, where the tú/ usted choice and “politeness” could be exploited [for example, a role-play at a store (p. 124 of the exercise book)], but the question of choice of address form is absent, unless a conscious teacher decides to take it up of own accord. This manual is a clear example of the parallel treatment of language and culture as two separate lines of work, with (socio)pragmatics being almost completely absent. Buena idea and Caminando show the same kind of division, clearly marked by the use of Danish to present cultural information (as well as instructions for exercises and grammar explanations) and texts and exercises in Spanish for language practice. Buena idea offers a couple of instances where the two aspects are brought together, though in a less than ideal way. On p. 22 of the exercise book in book 1, there is an exercise where learners have to answer what they would say in Spanish in different situations (e.g., when you want to say what your name is, when you want to introduce a friend to another, etc.). Two of these situations specify the choice of address pronoun: “when you want to ask somebody you would address as tú where they come from”; “when you want to ask somebody you would address as usted where they come from.” Here, we do find the tú/usted choice included in an exercise, but the focus is only on the language side: how to conjugate the verb according to the pronoun, not how to decide how to address people or the effect that one or the other pronoun choice would create. On p. 58 of the same exercise book, we find an exercise on how Spanish names are usually shortened, but the exercise focuses only on pronunciation (“Listen to the names and say in which shortened names there is a change of stress”). No information is provided as to what contexts call for the use of the nickname instead of the normal form of the name and no practice is offered in this sense. Likewise, in book 2, there is an exercise where learners have to write a conversation between two people who do not know each other. Instead of letting learners reflect and decide on what address form to use, they

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are told to use usted and they are told to “ask politely where the pharmacy is” and to “end the conversation politely,” although no information is given anywhere in the book as to what is considered polite (perhaps with the exception of the use of usted). This brief analysis seems to indicate that the explored manuals do contain information that can be cataloged as intercultural, in the sense of providing knowledge (cf. Byram’s five levels) about the culture and habits of the L2 group(s). Nevertheless, this kind of intercultural information is not openly linked to the promotion of communicative competence (including Byram’s skills and attitudes) that would help develop intercultural speakers. A search for sociopragmatic content and practice, as a suitable link between the intercultural and the communicative, has given poor results. This has been confirmed in an interview with an experienced Spanish teacher from Denmark, who acknowledges a gap in sociopragmatic focus. She admits that both her colleagues and herself are usually highly focused on teaching basic grammar and vocabulary and lack a systematic approach to pragmatics, only addressing it spontaneously if an occasion arises. She believes, though, that learners would find a pragmatic approach very motivational, as they often regret not learning enough about how to get by in a Spanish speaking country. In the next section, I try to relate NSM’s possible affordances in this respect.

2.3.2

NSM’s Possible Contribution

From this brief analysis of three widely used Spanish manuals for Danes, it has become clear that there is a very poor focus on pragmatic issues. To my knowledge, this also applies to textbooks in other foreign languages used in the country. A way of incorporating a pragmatic focus in these materials, even at beginner levels where language resources are scarce, is the inclusion of cultural scripts describing some of the main Spanish communicative norms and explications of cultural keywords with an impact on Spanish speakers’ social and verbal behavior. For this to be possible, there is need5 to develop and test pedagogical scripts, such as Goddard (2010) has proposed, for usage in L2 classes and for enriching language textbooks with much needed pragmatic focus. For this enterprise to succeed, there is a number of prerequisites that need to be fulfilled. For one, there is a need to expand basic research on the cultural keywords and cultural scripts of Spanish (and the other languages taught as L2 in the country). Based on this research (both existing and newly developed), pedagogical scripts need to be developed, ideally making use of

5

Probably a good place to start is with languages where we do have substantial research. In the Danish context, it could be Danish as L2, as we have extensive work by Levisen (2012, 2013, 2015) to lean on. A pedagogical development of Levisen’s research is an obvious pending task.

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“minimal language,” rather than strict NSM, in order to render scripts and explications more readable for the untrained learner and taking into account Sadow’s (2018) proposed modifications. Besides basic research, it will be paramount to include an NSM approach to pragmatics as a natural component in teacher training, as teacher cognition research has shown that teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about a given aspect of learning and teaching are crucial for their performance in the classroom (Borg 2015). At the same time, it is often teachers who become authors of textbooks and other teaching materials, so no progress can be achieved in material development unless teachers have adopted the theory and the methodology of NSM as a natural component of their professional identity so that they include NSM pragmatics in the materials they write. Even with inclusion of NSM in teacher training, we know from research in teacher cognition that pedagogical innovation takes time and that teachers are prone to repeating pedagogical practices they have experienced themselves as learners (Lortie 1975; Richards et al. 2001). As most teachers have not experienced a strong pragmatic component in their learner years, systematic inclusion of pragmatics, sociopragmatics and, more specifically, NSM-based pragmatics in L2 teaching will necessarily be a long and slow process—but still a process, which is essential to set off.6 In Sect. 2.2, I introduced the work of Sadow (2014, 2018), who is developing teaching materials entirely devoted to the acquisition of Australian cultural keywords and related scripts, a so-called cultural dictionary. This is one interesting and radical way to go about it: designing materials with this sole ethnopragmatic focus to complement other materials used in class or to be used in courses with this specific learning target. Another more modest—but nevertheless worth exploring— option is to include NSM-based pragmatic information in mainstream manuals, which have a more general approach to the L2 in question. Many such general textbooks, as the ones shortly reviewed above, contain information boxes or other layout strategies to present focus points in the way of brief explanations, often in the L1. For example, Vidas has small boxes called Además (“Furthermore”) with short additional cultural information in Danish and boxes called ¡Ojo! (“Beware!”), with grammatical information; Buena Idea exploits such small boxes, called Consejo (“Advice”) to give suggestions on learning strategies; Caminando has a series of different colored boxes to present all kinds of information, from grammar and pronunciation to cultural topics (though not pragmatics). Such information boxes can be suitable for providing pragmatic information in the form of short pedagogical scripts (for example, related to the use of different address pronouns, using short forms of names and other endearment terms, performing certain speech acts such as giving compliments or making an excuse) or explications of cultural 6

For several years, I have included both traditional pragmatics and NSM ethnopragmatic issues in my university courses for Spanish philology students, many of them current Spanish teachers in Denmark, with the hope that it will enhance these students’ pragmatic awareness. I have also consistently introduced NSM at professional development courses for language teachers. It is difficult to establish, though, how big the impact of these efforts has been.

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keywords (such as Spanish calor humano (Travis 2006), viveza criolla (Hein in this volume), sobremesa, siesta). The use of “Minimal Spanish” (NSM + molecules) for this pragmatic information can contribute to its accessibility for the L2 learner, and the explications and cultural scripts could even be written in the L1, Danish. The non-technicality and directness of the explanation would still be an advantage, even if textbook writers prefer the use of the L1 for instructions and explanations.

2.4

Intercultural Competence in Intercultural Communication Courses

Intercultural competence is, as we have seen in Sect. 2.3, a natural and necessary objective in L2 learning and teaching, but L2 classrooms are definitely not the only instances within educational systems where this competence can and should be trained. In our globalized and highly interconnected world of today, professionals in all branches need to be capable intercultural speakers and “global citizens” (Gerzon 2010), communicating in an L2, in an international lingua franca such as English or even in their L1. Intercultural competence is more than mastering an L2—it entails the development of new understandings, of multiple identities, and a change of mindset. It is a “process of continuous transformation that, ideally, never ends” (Guilherme et al. 2010: 243–44 in Jackson 2014: 297). Therefore, notions of interculturality and cultural understanding are increasingly present in a number of school subjects at different educational levels.7 Many university studies, especially within humanities, social sciences and business, contain courses on intercultural communication, where interculturality is treated from different theoretical perspectives and trained with project work, case studies and the like, a trend that started in late 1960s/early 1970s in several American universities (Jackson 2014). These courses do not focus on the acquisition of an L2, but rather present a “conceptual cultural encounter” (Caviglia et al. 2017) through the study of key issues in culture and communication studies. There are a considerable number of textbooks and manuals intended for these kinds of courses, e.g., Hua (2011a); Jackson (2014); Martin and Nakayama (2018); Nakayama and Halualani (2010); Neuliep (2009); Spencer-Oatey and Franklin (2009). They include topics such as definitions of culture and communication, different perspectives on cultural studies (e.g., emic and etic approaches), language and nonverbal communication, language and identity, language and gender, language and power, barriers to intercultural communication, intercultural conflict and intercultural communication in the workplace. These courses and related materials are established based on

7

In the most recent reform (June 2016) of the higher secondary school sector in Denmark (https:// www.uvm.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/uvm/udd/gym/2016/jun/160603%20bredt%20forlig%20om%20gym nasiereform), it is stipulated that all subjects at this educational level should promote “global competence.”

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intercultural communication as a field of study. This line of inquiry originated around the mid-twentieth century with anthropologist Edward T. Hall as a founding father (Neuliep 2009). From its origin, the field expanded, matured, and came to include scholars from a growing number of disciplines, with a consequent increase in perspectives, including a focus on language and pragmatics as well as a critical dimension with attention to power relations and different politicized identities, intending to overcome an essentialist view on culture (Hua 2011b; Jackson 2014). Cultural scripts are already present in intercultural communication courses (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2007) and in manuals on intercultural communication. Hua (2011a), in his Language and Intercultural Communication Reader, reproduces Goddard and Wierzbicka’s article “Cultural scripts: what are they and what are they good for?” (2004) in a section entitled “Cultural approaches to discourse and pragmatics: theoretical considerations.” The section includes four other articles, dealing with politeness, honorifics, and managing rapport, and ends with questions and tasks for the students. One of the tasks consists in writing cultural scripts for personal autonomy, directives, and suggestions like the ones presented in the article, but from the point of view of a different culture (p. 131).8 Jackson (2014) includes a brief section about cultural scripts under the heading of “culture as learned,” showing that the cultural scripts that we are socialized into can vary from one cultural context to another (exemplified by two opposing scripts on saying (or not) what you feel/think from Russia and Malaysia, respectively). In the discussion questions belonging to the chapter, one question makes the students identify a situation they are familiar with and give a cultural script associated with it, and reflect whether they have been in a different cultural context where another cultural script was more widely followed (p. 72). In the following section, I will present an attempt to include NSM-based semantics and pragmatics in an intercultural communication course at a university level in Denmark.

2.4.1

NSM at a Danish University

The course in question aims to focus on intercultural communication both from a theoretical point of view, by introducing to the main topics and researchers from the field, as sketched in the previous section, and from a more practical point of view, by aiming at producing “cultural encounters” in the classroom. The course is an elective subject in the third semester of bachelor studies, taught in English and open to all students from the Faculty of Arts. This makes the student population very diverse, with students from anthropology, linguistics, area studies (such as Brazilian studies), foreign language philologies, philosophy, and more. Teaching the course 8

Interestingly, all the questions related to Goddard and Wierzbicka’s article end with a subquestion about whether the student agrees with the theory. This is not the case in the questions related to the other four articles in the section. It seems that the editor finds NSM theory more open to debate than the other presented theories.

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in English as a lingua franca allows the inclusion of exchange students, an essential component of the course and a trigger of authentic intercultural encounters and, at the same time, sets off the challenge of intercultural communication in an L2 lingua franca. The students are organized in mixed study groups, bringing together students from different disciplines and different origins, who engage in intercultural discussions and shared task solving throughout the semester. Through the years, the instructor group has also been interdisciplinary in nature, featuring linguists, and pedagogy and communication experts from different language areas. The inclusion of NSM-based semantics and pragmatics responds to the intention of adopting a critical stance toward ethnocentric and Anglocentric approaches to linguistics, and to intercultural communication, and making the students aware of the risk of ethnocentric bias in academic work and in the way we think and speak about others. The presentation of this emic-oriented model stands in contrast to other etic approaches to the study of language and culture presented in the course in a historical overview of culture theories (e.g., Hofstede, Hall, Brown & Levinson). Two classes are devoted to the topic of ethnopragmatics and the associated readings have included an introduction to the field of “cross-cultural semantics,” included the universalism versus relativity controversy in language (Dirven and Verspoor 2004: Chap. 6), Goddard and Wierzbicka’s article on cultural scripts (2004) and Levisen’s chapter on “hygge”9 (2012: Chap. 3).10 The students are presented with the theory and a concrete application to a Danish cultural keyword (hygge). As group task for the first session on the topic, the students are asked to discuss and take a stand about universalism and linguistic relativity, to get familiarized with basic concepts within NSM theory (by trying to explain main concepts with their own words), to think of cultural keywords from the languages they speak and to familiarize themselves with the NSM webpage.11 After this familiarization task, the assignment for the following session consists of working creatively with NSM by: – identifying cultural keywords and communicative norms in their cultures – arguing for their choices and finding linguistic evidence – attempting to write semantic explications and cultural scripts

After a round of feedback (both instructor and peer-feedback), the groups are encouraged to write a subsequent, improved version of their work. The experience of working in this way has shown that students, with very little training on how to understand and use NSM, are able not only to recognize relevant keywords and communicative/social norms, but also to write explications and scripts. These applications of NSM by the students differ from the highly edited, well-formed

“Hygge” is probably the main Danish cultural keyword and encapsulates the core of Danish sociality. 10 The list of readings has changed from year to year. This is the list from 2016. Besides these NSM texts, Ye (2006) was read for the session on nonverbal communication. 11 https://intranet.secure.griffith.edu.au/schools-departments/natural-semantic-metalanguage. 9

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published explications and scripts made by NSM scholars, but many of them are able to capture the essence of the phenomenon in question and are both creative and insightful. Finding keywords seems to fall more naturally to these students than identifying communicative norms, so the results are more often explications than cultural scripts. The mixed study groups have produced explications of keywords from a number of languages, reflecting the origin and interests of the group members. Here are some of the results12: [A] A Danish keyword “overskud” (surplus of energy) Someone X has overskud It is something you want to have Someone X feels like this at this time “I feel very good” “I can do more for some time/at this time” Someone X thinks like this at this time “I can do all I want” “Something bad can not make(M) me feel not this good”

[B] A Danish keyword “Janteloven” (law of Jante)13 A. Janteloven says that it is bad when people think that they are better than other people. B. Person Y does not think about Janteloven and feels that Y is better than person X a. Y thinks like this: i. “I am better than person X” ii. “I am above person X” C. Person X thinks about Janteloven a. X thinks like this: i. “Person Y is not better” ii. “Person Y is not above person X” iii. “Person Y is like person X; Y and X are the same” D. People do not like when people think they are better

[C] A Chinese keyword “Mianzi” (face) something People can say what this something is with the word Mianzi. People can have this something Mianzi. a. It can be like this: b. When I don’t have this something, I feel bad and small.

12

All participating students signed certificates of consent allowing the reproduction of their group work and their individual answers to evaluation questions. 13 Originally from a novel by Aksel Sandemose (1933).

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c. It is good if I can have this for some time. d. Maybe you cannot see it, you know you can feel it. e. When someone says or do something to me, this someone can make me feel this something. f. Now you want it, after a long time you want it more. g. Someone want this something very much, if someone do not have this something, someone maybe wants to die.

[D] A Japanese cultural script for “Bowing” 1: (Don’t know the person) If I do not know this person. I can not feel better. When I see this person, I do this thing because I can not feel like I am better. 2: (Do know this person) If I do know this person. I feel this person is better. When I see this person I do this thing. All people feel good. 3: (Below) If I do know this person. I feel like I am better. This person do this thing. I do this thing after. All people feel good. 4: (Equals): If I do know this person. This someone is someone like me. I do not do this thing, this person do not do this thing. If someone do not do this thing, this person is bad. If someone feel better when someone is not better, this is very bad.

Judging by these examples, the students are clearly qualified to work with NSM, despite having received very little training. Their evaluation of learning about the theory and working with it was, nevertheless, mixed. From 31 answers received from the evaluation form,14 14 students were decidedly negative, 13 placed themselves in an intermediate position, acknowledging some advantages and pointing at problems, and four were overtly positive. Among the negative comments, there was a tendency to point to the fact that it was difficult to work with the semantic primes, as they were time-consuming and felt constraining and unable to capture nuances of feeling. The students felt, therefore, that the explications were simplistic or overgeneralizing: (5) “The work with differences and similarities in the languages of the world is very interesting, and I like the idea of the universally translatable explications, but I think that I find the concrete use of the NSM language overtly limiting, rendering the explications either slightly simplistic or not completely explaining the content. I am not entirely sure about the culture keywords, it seems a little too structuralistic to my taste.” (6) “I think it is overly simplistic and doesn’t take into account the complexity of individuals and that individuals are different and that most words are expressions of individual feelings and world views and not just definitions. Hygge means different things to different people even if they share the same language. It searches to find a clear formula where none is to be found.”

In a more positive note, a number of students acknowledged that it was interesting to learn about the theory and they valued the purpose of the NSM enterprise.

The evaluation question was: “Here you can write your opinion about working with NSM, both the texts that you read (e.g., Levisen’s explication of hygge) and your own experience of trying to make your own explications.”

14

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They could see how the use of the semantic primes could be of help in avoiding ethnocentric bias in intercultural communication work (sometimes with the reservation that it was difficult to work in this way and to read NSM): (7) At first I was not very keen on working with the NSM but reading the text by Ye I felt that it kind of made sense and it seemed somewhat useful. In cases where we have to start from scratch when trying to understand a new phrase or idea from other cultures the NSM made it quite clear. (8) I think it is an interesting way to explain keywords so that they can be understood by many people - maybe not the complete concept but the main idea of what it contains.

Working with the NSM theory has evidently aroused the interest of the students,15 but there was also considerable criticism—the kind of criticism toward NSM that has also been posed elsewhere (e.g., Riemer 2006; Blumczyński 2013; Quinn 2015). Two possible ways of improving the students’ experience are allowing more time for working with the theory and allowing the use of both primes and molecules (what Goddard (2018a) refers to as “minimal” language). In the course under discussion, there were only two sessions allocated for NSM, which consequently lead to a rather superficial presentation of the theory. The students were presented with the list of semantic primes to work with but adding a list of molecules may allow the students more freedom and creativity—while still profiting on the advantages of a non-technical, non-ethnocentric approach and still functioning as a good instrument of thought. This assumption needs to be tested in new pedagogical attempts.

2.5

Conclusion and Perspectives

In this chapter, I have discussed how NSM theory, including the recent addition of “Minimal English,” can contribute to fostering intercultural communicative competence in L2 learning and teaching, as well as intercultural awareness in intercultural communication courses. I have shortly reviewed the work done so far in connection to applying NSM to different learning contexts and sketched my results in applying NSM in Danish education. An analysis of L2 teaching materials used for Spanish instruction revealed that there is a gap in pragmatic focus that NSM has the potential to fill, with short, easy to read explications and cultural scripts. As regards courses on intercultural communication, a trial with university students has demonstrated that learners can produce interesting explications with little instruction. In spite of this, a number of students showed reluctance to use the NSM

15

Throughout the years, a number of students have chosen to work with NSM for their monographic exam in the subject intercultural communication, producing papers on, e.g., Danish lykke and at jule, Anglo happiness, Japanese Uchi to Soto, Swedish fika, Spanish siesta.

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method, as they found semantic primes too constraining. In this respect, I have argued for the need of new trials where a more extensive metalanguage, in the form of some sort of Minimal English, is used in order to overcome some of the students’ critique and increase the theory’s appeal in the classroom.

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Fernández, S. S. (2016a). Possible contributions of ethnopragmatics to second language learning and teaching. In S. Vikner H. Jørgensen, & E. van Gelderen (Eds.), Let us have articles betwixt us: Papers in historical and comparative linguistics in honour of Johanna L. Wood (pp. 185– 206). Aarhus: Aarhus University. Fernández, S. S. (2016b). Etnopragmatik og interkulturel kompetence: Didaktiske nytænkninger i fremmedsprogsundervisningen. Ny Forskning i Grammatik, 23, 38–54. Gerzon, M. (2010). Global citizens: How our vision of the world is outdated, and what we can do about it. London: Rider. Goddard, C. (2004). “Cultural scripts”: A new medium for ethnopragmatic instruction. In M. Achard & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Cognitive Linguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language teaching (pp. 143–163). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10. 1515/9783110199857.143. Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2006). Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114. Goddard, C. (2010). Cultural scripts: Applications to language teaching and intercultural communication. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association), 3, 105–119. Goddard, C. (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. Goddard, C. (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, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (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. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2007). Semantic primes and cultural scripts in language learning and intercultural communication. In F. Sharifian & G. B. Palmer (Eds.), Applied Cultural Linguistics: Implications for second language learning and intercultural communication (pp. 105–124). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.7.08god. House, J. (2008). What is an “intercultural spealer”? In E. Alcón Soler & M. P. Safont Jordà (Eds.), Intercultural language use and language learning (pp. 7–21). New York: Springer. Hua, Z. (Ed.). (2011a). The language and intercultural communication reader. London: Routledge. Hua, Z. (2011b). Introduction: Themes and issues in the study of language and intercultural communication. In Z. Hua (Ed.), The language and intercultural communication reader (pp. 1–15). London: Routledge. Hymes, D. (1971). Competence and performance in linguistic theory. In R. Huxley & E. Ingram (Eds.), Language acquisition: Models and methods (pp. 3–28). New York: Academic Press. Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Harlow: Pearson Education. Jackson, J. (2014). Introducing language and intercultural communication. London: Routledge. Jedynak, M. (2011). The attitudes of English teachers towards developing intercultural communicative competence. In J. Arabski & A. Wojtaszek (Eds.), Aspects of culture in second language acquisition and foreign language learning (pp. 63–73). Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20201-8_6. Jensen, P.R., & Klitnæs, P. (2008). Vidas. Copenhagen: Malling Beck. Karimnia, A., & Afghari, A. (2010). On the applicability of cultural scripts in teaching L2 compliments. English Language Teaching, 3(3), 349–358. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v3n3p71. Koike, D., & Lacorte, M. (2014). Toward intercultural competence: From questions to perspectives and practices of the target culture. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 1 (1), 15–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/23247797.2014.898497. Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning as the science of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Kramsch, C. (2006). Culture in language teaching. In H. L. Andersen, K. Lund, & K. Risager (Eds.), Culture in language learning (pp. 11–26). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. New Haven: Yale University Press. Levisen, C. (2012). Cultural semantics and social cognition: A case study of the Danish universe of meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110294651. Levisen, C. (2013). On pigs and people: The porcine semantics of Danish interaction and cognition. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3), 344–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07268602.2013.846455. Liddicoat, A., & Scarino, A. (2013). Intercultural language teaching and learning. Malden: Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118482070. Lo Bianco, J., Liddicoat, A., & Crozet, C. (Eds.). (1999). Striving for the third place: Intercultural competence through language education. Melbourne: Language Australia. Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Martin, J., & Nakayama, T. (2018). Experiencing intercultural communication: An introduction (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Matsuo, C. (2012). A critique of Michael Byram’s Intercultural communicative competence model from the perspective of model type and conceptualization of culture. Fukuoka University Review of Literature & Humanities, 44, 347–380. Miquel, L., & Sans, N. (1992). El componente cultural: Un ingrediente más en las clases de lengua. Cable, 9, 15–21. Nakayama, T. K., & Halualani, R. T. (Eds.). (2010). The handbook of critical intercultural communication. London: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444390681. Neuliep, J. (2009). Intercultural communication. A contextual approach. Los Angeles: Sage. Pedersen, C., & Petersen, H. (2006). Buena idea 1. Copenhagen: L&R Uddannelse. Pedersen, C., & Petersen, H. (2009). Buena idea 2. Copenhagen: L&R Uddannelse. Peeters, B. (2009). Language and cultural values: The ethnolinguistic pathways model. FULGOR: Flinders University Languages Group Online Review, 4(1), 59–73. Peeters, B. (2013). Language and cultural values: Towards an applied ethnolinguistics for the foreign language classroom. In B. Peeters, K. Mullan, & C. Béal (Eds.), Cross-culturally speaking, speaking cross-culturally (pp. 231–259). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Porto, M. (2013). Language and intercultural education: An interview with Michael Byram. Pedagogies, 8(2), 143–162. https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2013.769196. Pozzo, M. I., & Fernández, S. S. (2008). La cultura en la enseñanza de español LE: Argentina y Dinamarca, un estudio comparativo. Diálogos Latinoamericanos, 14, 99–127. Quinn, N. (2015). A critique of Wierzbicka’s theory of cultural scripts: The case of Ifaluk fago. Ethos, 43(2), 165–186. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12079. Richards, J., Gallo, P., & Renandya, W. (2001). Exploring teachers’ beliefs and the processes of change. The PAC Journal, 1(1), 41–62. Riemer, N. (2006). Reductive paraphrase and meaning: A critique of Wierzbickian semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy, 29(3), 347–379. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-006-0001-4. Risager, K. (2006). Language and culture (Languages for intercultural communication and education)—Global Flows and Local Complexity. Buffalo: Multilingual Matters. Risager, K. (2012). Intercultural learning: Raising cultural awareness. In M. Eisenmann & T. Summer (Eds.), Basic issues in EFL teaching and learning (pp. 143–155). Heidelberg: Winter. Risager, K. (2018). Representations of the world in language textbooks. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sadow, L. (2014). Cultural scripts in practice: An investigation into applying cultural scripts as a pedagogical tool in ESL classrooms (Master’s thesis). University of New England. Sadow, L. (2018). Can cultural scripts be used for teaching interactional norms? Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 41(1), 92–117. https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.17030.sad. Sandemose, A. (1933). En flyktning krysser sitt spor. Oslo: Aschehoug.

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Savignon, S. J. (1987). Communicative language teaching. Theory into Practice, 26(4), 235–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405848709543281. Sercu, L., Méndez García, M. C., & Castro Prieto, P. (2005). Culture learning from a constructivist perspective: An investigation of Spanish foreign language teachers’ views. Language and Education, 19(6), 483–495. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500780508668699. Spencer-Oatey, H., & Franklin, P. (2009). Intercultural interaction: A multidisciplinary approach to intercultural communication. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/ 9780230244511. Spitzberg, B., & Changnon, G. (2009). Conceptualizing intercultural competence. In D. K. Deardorff (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of intercultural competence (pp. 2–52). London: Sage. Tranekjær, L., Pedersen, M. S., Daryai-Hansen, P., & Gregersen, A. S. (2015). Slutrapport fra følgeforskningsgruppen på projekt om Internationalisering i Gymnasiet. København: Undervsiningsministeriet. Travis, C. (2006). The communicative realization of confianza and calor humano in Colombian Spanish. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 199–230). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.199. Tully, A. (2016). Applications of NSM and Minimal English in second language teaching (Master’s thesis). Australian National University. van Compernolle, R. A. (2013). Concept appropriation and the emergence of L2 sociostylistic variation. Language Teaching Research, 17(3), 343–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1362168813482937. Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Different languages, different cultures, different speech acts: English versus Polish. Journal of Pragmatics, 9(2/3), 145–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(85)90023-2. Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (1999). Emotions across languages and cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ye, Z. (2006). Why the “inscrutable” Chinese face? Emotionality and facial expression in Chinese. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 127– 169). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.127. Young, T. J., & Sachdev, I. (2011). Intercultural communicative competence: Exploring English language beliefs and practices. Language Awareness, 20(2), 81–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09658416.2010.540328.

Susana S. Fernández is an associate professor at the Department of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. She is the coordinator of Spanish Studies at Aarhus University and the head of the foreign language group at the Pedagogical Education for upper secondary school teachers in Denmark. Her research areas include Spanish grammar and foreign language pedagogy, with focus on pedagogical applications of Cognitive Linguistics in grammar teaching and intercultural competence. She is the coordinator of the Language Pedagogy Research Unit at Aarhus University.

Chapter 3

From Expensive English to Minimal English Deborah Hill

Abstract Minimal English is a useful tool for improving communication between monolingual English speakers and multilingual Tok Pisin and English speakers in PNG. This chapter reports on the use of Minimal English in an agricultural development project in PNG, arguing that it can help to go ‘under’ the language barriers created by Expensive English, that is, English that is not easily understood by the majority of people in PNG. The chapter demonstrates two ways in which Minimal English can be useful in this multilingual context: (1) semantic explications in Minimal English can distinguish different senses of the same word used by agricultural training facilitators and participants, and (2) words that are important in the local context can be chosen to replace Expensive English words that are less familiar to participants. The chapter argues that Minimal English is a valuable tool in agricultural development training and can be used to improve communication in a multilingual context where English is the language of instruction.




Keywords Minimal English Expensive English New Guinea Communication




3.1


Agricultural training
Papua

Introduction

Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018) describe the use of Minimal English with a metaphor, saying that it: ‘offers a way of going “under” a language barrier.’ This metaphor nicely captures the value of Minimal English as a tool to meet the challenges of using English in an agricultural training context in Papua New Guinea

D. Hill (&) University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_3

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(PNG). The ability of Minimal English to go ‘under’ language barriers contrasts with what is called in PNG, Expensive English1: language that is not easily accessible to the majority of people. Not surprisingly, some of the language used in a training setting is not everyday language and can be seen as Expensive English. This chapter discusses two ways in which Minimal English can go ‘under’ language barriers in a multilingual agricultural training context. The first is that semantic explications in Minimal English can illuminate different senses of the same words used by English-speaking facilitators and multilingual PNG trainers and participants; the second is that the lexicon of Minimal English includes words that are important in a local context. The chapter argues that communication between (generally) monolingual English-speaking trainers2 and multilingual participants with varying levels of English literacy can be improved, firstly, by attending to the different senses in which English words are used, and, secondly, by replacing Expensive English terms with ones that are more culturally familiar and important. The chapter addresses the first point by discussing three senses of the word ‘brainstorm’ used in training contexts in PNG and suggests semantic explications for each sense; it addresses the second point by suggesting that a common training term ‘case study’ could be replaced with the more culturally familiar ‘story’. The research discussed in this chapter was undertaken in PNG as a sub-project of the Improving opportunities for economic development for women smallholders in rural Papua New Guinea project. This project is commonly known as The Family Farm Teams (FFT)3 project (Pamphilon et al. 2017). The aim of the FFT project is to improve the uptake and impact of training and small business development for women smallholder food crop producers across PNG, where over 75% of households depend on subsistence agriculture (Department of Education 2016). The medium of instruction in the FFT agricultural training program was English and participants were expected to be literate in English. However, the majority of participants were more comfortable speaking in Tok Pisin than English. The training was carried out across a range of provinces (Western Highlands, Eastern Highlands, New Ireland, and Bougainville) in village communities and regional towns. Caffery and Hill (2018) reported on the importance of making the English used in the FFT program more accessible to participants and on the use of Minimal 1

I am not aware of the phrase Expensive English being used in studies on language or development in PNG before Caffery and Hill (2018). It was used by participants in the FFT training program and its use and meaning was discussed in detail with participants from different parts of PNG. 2 English-speaking facilitators also vary in their abilities to speak and understand Tok Pisin and all facilitators become more proficient over time. However, in general they are not highly proficient. For this reason, I have used the label ‘(generally) monolingual’. 3 In Papua New Guinea the term ‘garden’ is commonly used to refer to the land on which families grow produce and sustain themselves. The use of the word ‘farm’, rather than ‘garden’ was deliberate in the project as the project’s aim was to assist participants to see their gardens as potential businesses, thus moving from semi-subsistence to small businesses. In this context, using the word ‘farm’ has different connotations to ‘garden’ for participants. It is used throughout this chapter in this way.

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English as a tool to support this. Accessible language in development training programs is an important issue; capacity development programs are unlikely to achieve their full potential unless their messages are clearly communicated. Despite awareness of the importance of language in development (e.g. Abbott 2000; Bamgbose 2014; Khan 2014; Longangapuo 2015), funding bodies do not necessarily go beyond assuming that those delivering aid and development training have the language capacity to conduct their work (Crack 2018). A careful review of the language that is used in the FFT program (Caffery and Hill 2018) demonstrates the importance of not assuming that the English used is clearly understood by participants and highlights the value of Minimal English as a tool to improve the accessibility of language in agricultural development. The chapter is organized in the following way: Sect. 3.2 introduces the concept of Expensive English and its relationship to Tok Pisin and English; Sect. 3.3 discusses the use of Minimal English in agricultural development training in PNG; Sect. 3.4 discusses three senses of the word ‘brainstorm’, presenting Minimal English explications for each sense; Sect. 3.5 discusses reasons for replacing the term ‘case study’ with the word ‘story’ in training materials; Sect. 3.6 concludes the chapter.

3.2

Expensive English, Tok Pisin and English

English is one of the official languages of PNG, along with Tok Pisin.4 Its status is reflected in its role as the language of education. Language policies on the use of vernacular languages and English in education have changed since PNG’s independence in 1975. For example, from the 1990s [until 2010—DH], communities could decide on which language to use in the first three years of primary school, after which English was used (Siegel 2008: 237). However, PNG’s current national development strategic plan withdrew funding for vernacular education and promotes an English-only policy, arguing that: The recent introduction of an elementary education system based on the vernacular language has been counterproductive. English is the national language, is the language of later years of schooling and is an important language of international commerce. Children need to be competent in English to later access the benefits of education and formal employment. The National Government will therefore no longer fund elementary education in the vernacular language. (Department of National Planning and Monitoring 2010)

One reason for changing the language in education policy was the desire to improve literacy levels. According to figures published in 2016, PNG has an overall literacy rate of 68% (referring to literacy in either English, Tok Pisin or a vernacular language), and a literacy rate of 49% in English. (Department of Education 2016)

4

For more information, see the Ethnologue: Languages of the world database at https://www. ethnologue.com/country/PG. Accessed 11 May 2019.

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These figures, of course, do not reflect an equal spread of literacy throughout the country, or in urban and rural areas, or between males and females. Research on literacy in five provinces (ASPBAE 2012) showed that the majority of individuals were either semi-literature or non-literate. A higher proportion of females were assessed as illiterate compared to males, and a smaller proportion of females than males were assessed as literate. The research did not identify the language in which participants were literate (i.e. participants may have been literate in Tok Pisin, Motu or English). The historical, linguistic, social, and semantic relationships between languages in PNG, a country that has roughly 850 indigenous languages, have been widely researched, for example in studies on the history of Tok Pisin and the linguistic and social relationship between English and Tok Pisin (e.g. Smith 2000; Tryon and Charpentier 2004), the dynamic nature of Tok Pisin and the urban and rural, as well as regional, differences in the use of Tok Pisin (e.g. Tryon and Charpentier 2004; Devette-Chee 2011; Levisen et al. 2017), and the semantics of Tok Pisin words and English words with similar forms (Levisen et al. 2017). In the context of this discussion, the most significant points are (1) that Tok Pisin is a creole language that includes a large number of words that developed from English, but that an ‘English lexical base does not equal “Anglo semantics” (Levisen and Priestley 2017: 102), and (2) that there are growing differences between the Tok Pisin spoken in rural and urban areas and that there is dialect shift towards the most English-like variety of Tok Pisin in urban areas (Devette-Chee 2011). These two points highlight why monolingual English speakers may assume that participants understand the training messages well (i.e. Tok Pisin words may be similar to English words, and the variety of Tok Pisin that they hear from urban Papua New Guineans may be similar to English), and why this should not be assumed (i.e. the lexical semantics of English words that are similar in form to Tok Pisin, or the English spoken in urban PNG, may differ). Thus, although English is the language of education and an official language of the country, it is not used by everyone throughout the country. The phrase Expensive English suggests that, unlike Tok Pisin, which is seen as a unifying language, some uses of English are potentially alienating and, like expensive objects, out of reach for some people. As Caffery and Hill (2018) argued, Expensive English can also be expensive for funding bodies in agricultural development if their messages are not fully understood. The phrase Expensive English can be used pejoratively to criticize someone’s use of unfamiliar or academic language, or any use of language that is not appropriate to the context or audience. The adjective ‘expensive’ cannot be applied to Tok Pisin or any other language to reflect this social distance. Expensive English may be seen as a social key word (Levisen and Priestley 2017) in parts of Papua New Guinea. As Levisen and Priestley (2017) have shown for the Melanesian terms kastom ‘traditional culture’ and tumbuna ‘ancestors’, key words may be significant in one area rather than the whole region. A detailed analysis of the geographic spread and use of the term Expensive English in PNG, as well as a full exploration of its semantics, is yet to be done. Nevertheless, the term Expensive English reflects a shared semantic-conceptual

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view that English, particularly some uses and phrases, can create social barriers. The importance of understanding socially acceptable ways of speaking in PNG has been described for Tok Pisin. Socially acceptable Tok Pisin should not include expressions that are ‘regarded as socially harmful because they create divisions, e.g. insults, group labels or elite language’ (Mühlhäusler 1982: 108). ‘Elite language’, is one way to create divisions or barriers between people and should be avoided. Thus, although Expensive English was not a phrase used by Mühlhäusler, his discussion of Tok Pisin highlights the cultural value of using language that does not divide or alienate people in a highly multilingual country. In the agricultural training setting of the FFT program, code-switching is one way in which participants avoid creating social and linguistic barriers within the group. Siegel notes that code-switching is common in PNG (2008: 248). English is the medium of instruction in the FFT program, with some translation into Tok Pisin by PNG facilitators during workshops, and some translation of written materials into Tok Pisin. However, the majority of participants and facilitators (both PNG and some Australian facilitators) in the workshops code-switch between Tok Pisin and English. Code-switching acknowledges the multilingual context and the variation in participants’ and facilitators’ capacities to use English and Tok Pisin. The following short text is an example of code-switching during a training workshop in New Ireland, PNG in June 2018. There are alternating phrases and clauses in English and Tok Pisin, with examples of a Tok Pisin word used as a tag after an English sentence (e.g. laka ‘right?’ OK?), and English phrases ‘at the end of the day’ preceding a Tok Pisin clause. The speaker described a photograph her group had chosen to represent something about leadership. The photograph depicted the hands of three people in one basin preparing a food together. The speaker addressed a group of 22 female Tok Pisin speakers from the same region.5 1. Morning everyone. Ok. Because we are talking about leaders, mipela ol dispela lain ya, mipela i lukim lida olsem. 2. Dispela ol han ya, na han ya em i tok olsem, we have to work together, laka? 3. So as leaders, we have to work together, we have to share ideas together and we have to submit, ok? 4. Yumi mas harim tok ananit lo husat i go pas lo yumi, ok? 5. So long dispela liklik grup ya, em working together meaning olsem yumi ol lidas i kam na yumi putim ol tingting wantaim. 6. Ideas em ol tingting wantaim na blong mekim dispela program, sapos i gat program bai i kamap gut. 7. And at the end of the day bai mi tok olsem, sapos yumi wok wantaim yumi putim ideas wantaim, na yumi submit ananit long ol arapela lidas bai yumi sanap wantaim, united we stand and divided we fall, em tasol. Thank you. (F, 60+ , New Ireland, June 20 2018) 1. Morning everyone. Ok. Because we are talking about leaders, within our group, we see leaders like this. 2. There are hands here [in picture] and these hands show that we have to work together, ok? 3. So as leaders, we have to work together, we have to share ideas together and we have to submit, ok? 4. We must listen to those that have preceded us, ok?

5

I was leading the workshop and can speak the closely related Solomons Pijin and understand most but not all of the Tok Pisin spoken during the training. Two PNG facilitators spoke English, Tok Pisin and a vernacular language.

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D. Hill [i.e. * “those” refers to other leaders] 5. So, amongst our small group, working together means that we as leaders come together and share our ideas. 6. Ideas are “ol tingting wantaim” and are needed to make this program, if there is a program, turn out well. 7. And at the end of the day I would say, if we work together, we share our ideas and we submit to the other leaders, we will stand together; united we stand and divided we fall, that’s all. Thank you.6

Because of the high levels of code-switching, and the range of proficiency in English and Tok Pisin, it is important to ensure mutual understanding. It is not up to the participants to understand complex written English, or indeed up to the facilitators to become fluent in Tok Pisin, as the program has been designed for PNG farmers who have some level of English proficiency, but it is important that English-speaking facilitators can present material in English that is most likely to be understood by participants, and that facilitators do more than assume (Crack 2018) that because their messages can be translated into Tok Pisin, they are easily understood. In this context, Minimal English can play an important role.

3.3

Minimal English and Agricultural Training in PNG

Minimal English includes words that are important in a local context, as well as semantic primes and semantic molecules (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018). Explaining the concepts using simpler and more easily translatable language and using words that are important in a local context underpin Minimal English. The importance of principles such as these in agricultural training is supported by feedback from FFT participants, who said they valued language materials that were accessible because of their relatively simple English and preferred definitions that included local examples (i.e. from their experience in farming and in the training program) (Caffery and Hill 2018). Using the lexicon of Minimal English, along with strategies such as document design, repetition of noun phrases, reduction of synonyms, and pronouns, can make written training materials more accessible (Caffery and Hill 2018). Minimal English can be used to support the development of definitions and explanations of concepts and terminology. FFT participants suggested the following three points as useful considerations for good definitions and explanations: 1. The use of concrete examples to support a definition. 2. The use of English words that have a similar form and meaning as Tok Pisin words. 3. The use of Tok Bokis (i.e. parables) to support a definition. Each of these points addresses, in some way, the importance of drawing on locally important words and language to communicate ideas. For example, in

6

Kila Raka assisted with the transcription and translation of this text.

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providing feedback on English definitions of concepts and key terms used in the FFT program, some participants suggested including examples from the training program as part of the definition. For example, for the noun ‘produce’ the definition was ‘things grown on the farm’, participants suggested that the definition should be ‘things grown on the farm: fruits, garden food, greens, cocoa, coconuts, pigs, and chickens’. The second point, the use of English words that have a similar form and meaning as Tok Pisin words, raises an interesting question about the balance between using easily translatable (i.e. universal) words and using words that are more familiar in a particular context. For example, participants preferred the English word ‘plenty’ rather than Minimal English ‘many’, as ‘plenty’ is closer to the Tok Pisin quantifier planti. This was an important finding but requires caution as similarity between the forms of the words in English and Tok Pisin does not equate to shared lexical semantics (Levisen and Priestley 2017; Levisen et al. 2017). Nevertheless, participants found this to be a useful strategy where the meaning of words was the same or very similar. The third point, the use of parables (Tok Bokis7), supports the overall argument that participants in the FFT program wanted explanations and definitions that included concrete examples directly related to participants’ experience and culture. As noted above, the lexicon of Minimal English includes words that are important in the local context. In PNG, these words could include words such as ‘family’, ‘village’, ‘garden’, and words referring to animals and crops (e.g. pig, coffee, cocoa, and chicken). For this reason, it is also important to consider whether terms common in a training setting could be replaced with words important in the local context. For example, the term ‘case study’ could be replaced with ‘story’, an important concept in PNG and Melanesia more generally. This example, not discussed in Caffery and Hill (2018), is discussed in more detail in Sect. 3.5. In addition to incorporating the lexicon of Minimal English into written materials, and paying close attention to the local context, semantic explications in Minimal English can illuminate similarities and differences in the lexical semantics of words which may have the same or similar forms (Levisen and Priestley 2017). To exemplify this, three senses of the word ‘brainstorm’ are discussed in Sect. 3.4.

3.4

Three Senses of ‘Brainstorm’

The lexical semantics of a word may not be the same for all multilingual speakers of Tok Pisin and English as it is for Australian English-speaking facilitators. This discussion supports the argument that English and Tok Pisin words may share the same or a similar form, but not necessarily share the same lexical semantics

7

See, Schieffelin (2008) for a detailed discussion of Tok Bokis in PNG, including variation in how the term has been used over time.

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(Levisen and Priestley 2017). The example of ‘brainstorm’, discussed here, suggests that this argument is also relevant to the lexical semantics of English words used in PNG. Three senses of the English word ‘brainstorm’ were used by training facilitators and training participants in the FFT. For ease of comparison, I have distinguished them by presenting them in their most typical colocation or syntactic structure. Before discussing the lexical semantics of each sense in detail, I introduce the three senses. The first sense of ‘brainstorm’ is brainstorm ideas. ‘Brainstorm’ is a verb and collocates typically with ‘ideas’ in the training setting. The word was used in written training materials and as a verbal instruction in workshops by English-speaking facilitators. Participants were typically invited to ‘brainstorm ideas’ about something, e.g. goals to be achieved in the family and on the farm. In the training setting, ‘brainstorming’ is a group activity, involving more than one person. The second sense of ‘brainstorm’ can be glossed as brainstorm first. This sense was used primarily by multilingual PNG facilitators and participants and can be glossed as ‘think before doing something’. The third sense, ‘brainstorm me’, was used by a limited number of participants and only in a particular region, New Ireland. This sense expresses that, for example, an idea has caused a sudden and dramatic change in how someone thinks about something or how they behave. The consultants who discussed these three senses of ‘brainstorm’ included rural farmers with low levels of education and urban, educated PNG professionals. Each sense of ‘brainstorm’ was considered to be English, not Tok Pisin, by all consultants; all consultants provided Tok Pisin glosses to explain their meanings. No consultant was familiar with all three senses; urban and educated consultants expressed familiarity with brainstorm ideas and also brainstorm first, and some rural consultants were familiar with brainstorm me. I did not encounter anyone who used both brainstorm first and brainstorm me, although some people were aware of both senses. Regional differences accounted for the use of brainstorm me (New Ireland province only). In the following section, I propose semantic explications of brainstorm ideas, brainstorm first, and brainstorm me. The three uses have different Lexico-syntactic frames (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2016), but all have something to do with ‘thinking’. The explications attempt to reflect the specific cultural and training context of the participants.

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Brainstorm Ideas

‘Brainstorm’ (i.e. brainstorm ideas) is the word used by English-speaking facilitators to describe a workshop activity. As part of the training, facilitators use ‘brainstorming’ as a way of encouraging participants (e.g. members of the same family or community) to think about what they want to achieve on their farm (e.g. build a fence; buy more pigs), in their family (e.g. education for their children), or in their savings. Facilitators present ‘brainstorming’ as a process, i.e. brainstorming as an activity that can be used to help people think about something and come to an agreement or solution. Brainstorm(ing) ideas is something that people typically do together. It can be done individually, but is more commonly done with other people. In a workshop, it is done as a group activity. The intentionality of the activity, and the separate contributions, one after another, that each person makes, suggests that it is an activity that someone does with someone else (or other people), rather than simply something that several people do at the same time (i.e. turn-taking is an important element of ‘brainstorming’, whereas it is not a necessary element of group activities such as ‘singing’ together). It is typically done for ‘some time’, it could be a relatively short time (i.e. perhaps half an hour or longer) but not for a long time. The phrase brainstorm ideas was used in written materials (e.g. a training manual for participants) in the FFT training in the context of a workshop activity: Put up a piece of paper for all to see for each goal and brainstorm ideas of possible goals with the whole group. (Pamphilon et al. 2017: 34)

This written example reflects its use in spoken language, i.e. it forms part of an instruction to do a group activity so that the group can discuss ideas and form conclusions on a topic based on their discussions. The semantic explication below has the Lexico-syntactic frame ‘someone brainstormed something with someone else’ as the activity is typically something that is done with someone else in the FFT context. The semantic explication includes an example of a name that could be included to enhance the readability of the explication for those less familiar with reading explications. Incorporating the names of people into explications, rather than only using semantic primes, e.g. ‘someone’, has proved useful in other culturally focused applications of Minimal English (e.g. Sadow 2019). The person’s name in the explication is Maria. Maria is the name used in a series of bilingual children’s books that have been written and published as part of the FFT project (e.g. Simoncini, Pamphilon and Veal 2016).

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[A] Brainstorm ideas Someone brainstormed something with someone else Someone (e.g. Maria) wanted to do something. She thought like this: ‘I want to do this well. I don’t know how. Because of this, I want to think about this for some time.’ At the same time, she thought, ‘one person can’t think about something in many ways like a few people can if they think about something in the same place, at the same time for some time.’ Because of this, she wanted to think about this something with someone else in the same place, at the same time. Because she thought like this, she did something with someone else. This something happened in this way: Maria said something like this about this something, ‘people can do it well if they do it in this way.’ after this someone else said something else like this about it, ‘people can do it well if they do it in this way.’ After someone said something about it, someone else could say to this someone, ‘I think like you, people can do it well if they do it in this way. I can say why.’ At the same time they can say to this someone, ‘I don’t think like you, people can’t do it well if they do it in this way. I can say why.’ It happened like this many times for some time, not a long time. Because of this, after this, Maria thought like this: ‘I want to do it well. I know how.’ People think it is good when something like this happens.

The explication includes the component ‘Someone (e.g. Maria) wanted to do something. She thought like this’, which is followed by components expressing what Maria thinks before she does something with others. The components ‘I want to do this well. I don’t know how’ and ‘one person can’t think about something in many ways like a few people can if they think about it in the same place, at the same time for some time’ provide a purpose for the activity. The explication includes a component referring to awareness that a few people can think about something better than one. The components following ‘This something happened in this way’ focus on turn-taking and possible agreement and disagreement as part of the activity. ‘Brainstorming’ has a time constraint. It cannot be momentary, but because it has a focus, it is not something that is done for a long time. The phrase ‘for some time, not a long time’ allows for the possibility that it is done in a short time, but also a time frame that is longer than this. Brainstorm ideas should have some outcome. This is reflected in the component ‘Because of this, after this, Maria thought like this: “I want to do it well. I know how”’. The final component, ‘People think it is good when something like this happens’, demonstrates that this way of saying things about something with others is seen as a good way to decide on something or ‘know how to’ do something well. To sum up, brainstorm ideas is used by English-speaking facilitators, and is incorporated into written materials intended for PNG farmers who have varying levels of English proficiency and literacy. It is used within a formalized training

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context as an activity that can be done by small groups so that they can make decisions about their ‘goals’ and collocates especially with the word ‘ideas’.

3.4.2

Brainstorm First

As discussed above, English-speaking facilitators used the phrase brainstorm ideas to describe a workshop activity. However, observation and elicitation in training workshops in different regions of PNG revealed that participants also used the word ‘brainstorm’ in a different sense. This is not to say that brainstorm ideas is not understood, but that another sense of ‘brainstorm’ is more familiar to participants and is unfamiliar to English-speaking facilitators. In this section, I discuss this second sense, which can be roughly glossed as brainstorm first. This discussion is based on information elicited from six FFT participants and three PNG trainers involved in the FFT training. This phrase is used by PNG facilitators in training settings (e.g. agricultural extension training) and was the most familiar sense of ‘brainstorm’ to participants in the FFT program. The Lexico-syntactic frame for brainstorm first is the imperative. For this reason, the explication includes the second person ‘you’, rather than the third person (someone, Maria). Brainstorm first can be expressed by phrases in Tok Pisin such as tingting pastaim ‘think first’ [before doing something]; toktok pastaim ‘talk first’ [before doing something]. Multilingual training facilitators from Port Moresby, Bougainville, and Goroka used phrases such as ‘think twice’, or ‘think before doing something’ to describe the meaning of ‘brainstorm’. These glosses do not closely reflect the discussion of brainstorm ideas, above, rather they reflect the sense brainstorm first. The following Tok Pisin translations of brainstorm first were also provided from participants and trainers from Bougainville, Eastern Highlands, and New Ireland: tingting tupla taim ‘think twice’; nokan tingting wanpla taim tasol ‘you can’t just think of today; don’t think only of today; don’t think only one time’, and kirapim tingting ‘start thinking’. Other glosses were skelim gut tinging, skelim tinging ‘think on all angles/break it down, simplify’ and lukim gut olgeta sait na kona blo samting ‘look at it from all angles’, and bungim tingting ‘put ideas together’. These glosses, with the repeated use of tingting ‘thinking’ highlight the centrality of ‘thinking’ in brainstorm first, rather than specifying how it is done as brainstorm ideas seems to suggest. Brainstorm first differs from brainstorm ideas with respect to time and number of participants. Brainstorm first does not have to be done in a short time; and the thinking does not have to be done with other people, although it can be. However, like brainstorm ideas it typically involves saying things to other people and intentional thinking (i.e. thinking for a purpose). The proposed semantic explication for brainstorm first is presented below:

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[B] Brainstorm first Brainstorm something! Because you want to do something well, before you do this something, I want you to do something in this way: You can say some things about this something to other people, Other people can say some things about this something to you Because of this you can think about this something well Because of this, after this, you can know how to do this something well People think it is good if something like this happens.

The Tok Pisin word pastaim in the phrase tingting pastaim ‘think first’ [before doing something] is similar to English ‘first time’. Its position after the verb is the same as post-verbal particles in some Austronesian languages, which express the same meaning.8 For this reason, the explication includes a component ‘before you do this something’ in the first line. As noted above, its lexical frame is an imperative and as such can express a command, advice, and suggestions. Its use in a training context in PNG is to offer advice and suggestions. The last component of the semantic explication, thus, expresses that: ‘People think it is good if something like this happens’. This line also demonstrates a shared semantic component between brainstorm ideas and brainstorm first—in both senses it is seen as something good to do if someone wants to know how to do something well. Like brainstorm ideas, the semantic explication for brainstorm first includes meaning components that relate to thinking and saying before doing and happening. The meaning components that are not present in brainstorm first are those that are associated with a formal setting: a time frame for the activity and the manner of interaction (one person saying something, followed by another).

3.4.3

Brainstorm Me

The third sense of ‘brainstorm’, brainstorm me, occurs in a syntactic structure that is commonly used in Melanesia for concepts that are mental processes, including physiological and psychological experiences, or involuntary or uncontrolled actions; that is, the experiencer as the grammatical object (Pawley et al. 2000; Roberts 2001). Brainstorm (me) happens to someone when they hear something new that changes their thinking. This change in thinking can lead to a change in behaviour or ways of doing something (e.g. a change in thinking can change parents’ decisions about sending their children to school every day, or change their

8

In Longgu, (Southeast Solomonic, Oceanic) the particle ga/ga’a occurs within a verb phrase, after the head verb, to express the same meaning: do something, before doing another thing [e.g. zudu ga ‘sit first’ (i.e. sit first before you continue working)].

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thinking about how often and when children should work in their family’s garden). This sense of ‘brainstorm’ was used in a village training setting in New Ireland by a FFT participant to describe the impact of some ideas from the FFT program on his life. This sense of ‘brainstorm’ differs from brainstorm ideas and brainstorm first insofar as brainstorm me is something that is experienced, rather than something someone does. The thinking is involuntary rather than an intentional activity. Language consultants described it as being like a bolt of lightning, feeling like something happening to your body as well as your mind. It is not something that is done with a group of people, or in a formal setting. It is not something that someone can be instructed to do, like brainstorm ideas, or advised to do, like brainstorm first. In Tok Pisin, brainstorm me was described as something that happens when something muvim tingting blong yu ‘moves your thinking’. With brainstorm me, the person has no control over this change of ideas; it is the idea that ‘does the work’, as one consultant put it. Two Motu speakers who participated in the FFT program confirmed the following Motu sentences and their relationship to brainstorm me. Example (2) demonstrates the use of the experiencer as grammatical object (-gu ‘1SG.OBJ) 1. Kwara-gu eme hamarere’a badina una lalohadainai ‘My head it is shaking because of that idea.’/‘That idea brainstormed me.’

2. Una hereva ese lau eme hamarere-gu.

‘The word that you use brainstormed me.’

The semantic explication is presented below. The Lexico-syntactic frame is ‘something brainstormed me’, with a first-person singular object. The explication begins with the component ‘I can know something, I did not know this something before’ to account for an idea, or information, that is new. This is followed by components that reflect the physical and psychological experience that is the result of this new information (‘something happened in me’). The time frame is momentary (‘it happened it a moment’), in contrast to brainstorm ideas, which includes a component referring to ‘for some time, not a long time’, and brainstorm first, which has no semantic component that refers to time. The result of the new idea or information is expressed in the components ‘Because of this, it is like this: I can think in a way I could not think before. I can’t not think like this now. I can do some things in a way I could not do before. I can’t not do these things now.’ These components express the idea that the change in thinking or behaviour is not voluntary.

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[C] Something brainstormed me I know something, I did not know this something before, Because I can know this something, something happened in me, it happened in a moment, it was like something in my head moved, it was like something happened in my body, Because of this, it is like this: I can think in a way I could not think before. I can’t not think like this now. I can do some things in a way I could not do before. I can’t not do these things now.

This section has discussed three senses of the word ‘brainstorm’, only one of which was used or explained by training facilitators in the FFT program. The Minimal English explications presented here demonstrate the shared semantic components between the three senses. In the following section, Minimal English and Expensive English are discussed in the context of choosing appropriate training terms.

3.5

‘Case Study’ or ‘Story’?

Minimal English includes words that are important in the local context. As discussed above, in PNG these words could include words such as ‘family’, ‘village’, ‘garden’, and words referring to animals and crops (e.g. pig, coffee, cocoa, and chicken). Another word that expresses an important concept in PNG, and Melanesia more broadly, is ‘story’. It is also found in Tok Pisin (stori). From the perspective of Minimal English, it is important to consider whether locally important terms could replace English terms, especially Expensive English terms, in training materials. One such example is the replacement of the term ‘case study’ with ‘story’.9 ‘Case study’ is an example of a phrase that requires defining within a training context as it is not an everyday phrase used by farmers. Like ‘brainstorm’ (in the sense of brainstorm ideas), it can be defined and understood. Nevertheless, I suggest that ‘story’ is a more culturally appropriate term and is more easily understood by FFT participants. As noted in Sect. 3.3, Tok Bokis (parable) is a common way to explain key messages in PNG. The use of Tok Bokis varies throughout PNG, and people in some areas (e.g. Sepik) are known to use them extensively while others do not. At the same time, the use of parables and stories to teach cultural knowledge is important. The way that the term ‘case study’ is used in the FFT training is in reality the same as the way ‘story’ could be used (i.e. ‘case study’ is unnecessary): it is used to illustrate how someone or some people (e.g. a

Caffery and Hill (2018) did not discuss the use of ‘story’ instead of ‘case study’.

9

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family) achieved something (e.g. a savings goal that allowed them to build a fence). The term ‘case study’ in a research context has implications which are not part of the FFT training (i.e. it is not a research methodology that is being explained in the FFT program). Moreover, the FFT program includes peer-to-peer training. Once participants have been trained they go on to train other farmers. The language of instruction in the FFT program is English, but peer-to-peer training is undertaken in Tok Pisin or a vernacular language. One of the challenges FFT trainers face is to effectively translate the concepts and ideas they have learned in English into another language (Caffery and Hill 2018). By choosing more easily translatable and locally important terms, such as ‘story’, the FFT program can support the effectiveness of peer-to-peer training. In addition, ‘case study’ is an example of an Expensive English word. As one PNG consultant put it, the word ‘case study’ has ‘weight’. This ‘weight’ creates social distance between trainers and participants. Stories and parables have cultural resonance in PNG. As noted above, the FFT program includes a series of children’s story books (the ‘Maria books’) (Simoncini et al. 2016) which convey key messages from the program. Different versions of the books depict the lives of people in the highlands and the coastal areas (e.g. different kinds of baskets, called bilums, used in different parts of PNG; different ways of selling vegetables, i.e. sitting on the ground, or placing the vegetables and fruit on a table). Thus, the project already explains its messages through stories that are culturally appropriate and that have been developed in close consultation with participants. Replacing ‘case study’ with ‘story’ in the workshops and training manual is a simple change in keeping with the existing FFT approach and with principles of Minimal English. Semantic explications of ‘case study’ and ‘story’ are presented below. The explications reflect the sense in which these terms are used in the FFT project. The term ‘case study’ as a method of research in an academic setting would require a different, more detailed, explication. A key difference between ‘case study’ and ‘story’ in the FFT context is that a ‘story’ is something that can be remembered and repeated to others. By contrast a ‘case study’ is something that is like a ‘story’; we can ‘know something of the same kind’ if we know about a case study but, I would argue, unlike a ‘story’ it is not necessarily something that is passed on to others. The peer-to-peer training involved in the FFT program requires passing knowledge on and as such a ‘story’ is a more useful term to use. I propose ‘story’ as a locally important word in PNG that forms part of Minimal English in the PNG context, and so have included the word ‘story’ in the explication of ‘case study’.

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[D] Case study Something This something is like a story, this story is about people like us, these people live in a place like us, these people can do some things like us, these people can know some things like us. If I know something about this story, I can know something about something else of the same kind.

The proposed semantic explication of ‘story’, below, clarifies the differences between ‘case study’, as it was used in the FFT program, and ‘story’. In both explications, people live in a place (like the PNG farmers do) and do and know some things that are the same. I suggest that because a ‘story’ creates less social distance than ‘case study’, as discussed above, a ‘story’ can show people what they could do that they are not doing now (e.g. now they are not saving money, but they could do that in the future). For this reason, the explication includes the component ‘These people do some things we do not do, it is good if we do some things like these people’. Because ‘story’ is already an important way in which knowledge is transferred in PNG, the explication includes components that refer to telling the story again to other people, so that they too can learn from it. That is, it can be argued that with a ‘case study’ the learning is more likely to stay in the training setting, but with a ‘story’, the learning is shared through the community. Sharing information throughout the community is, of course, one of the aims of the FFT program. [E] Story Something I know something about this something, I can say something about this something, this something is about people like us, these people live in a place like us, these people can do some things like us, these people can know some things like us. these people do some things, we do not do these things now, it is good if we do some things like these people. Because of this something, we can know well about some things, We can say some things to other people about this something, Because of this, other people can know about these some things, People think it is good if we can know about this something, if we can say something about this something.

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This discussion of ‘case study’ and ‘story’ demonstrates that the lexicon of Minimal English allows agricultural training facilitators to review and revise their lexical choices. By choosing words that fit well with a community’s existing way of speaking and teaching, rather than relying on more academic language, information is more likely to be understood and to be communicated beyond the training classroom to the wider community.

3.6

Conclusion

In agricultural training programs in PNG, English is typically the language of instruction. Although English is an official language and the language of education in PNG, some of the English used in training programs is not necessarily easily understood by participants. English that is not easily understood is referred to as Expensive English in PNG, yet it is not necessarily clear to monolingual English-speaking training facilitators, which kinds of English or which phrases may be more difficult for participants to understand. This chapter has discussed the linguistic context of an agricultural training program in PNG and has demonstrated how Minimal English can be used to remove some of the barriers created by Expensive English through the discussion of three senses of the word ‘brainstorm’ and a discussion of the terms ‘case study’ and ‘story’. The ability of Minimal English to go ‘under’ language barriers makes it a valuable tool for English-speaking facilitators in agricultural training in PNG and can assist in making English more accessible and removing some of the social barriers created by Expensive English. Acknowledgements Thanks to participants in the Family Farm Team project for their willingness to discuss their use of language, especially English, with me. Particular thanks to Pastor Nou and Lucy Siki in New Ireland who helped me to clarify the different senses of ‘brainstorm’. The chapter benefitted from discussions with Barbara Pamphilon, Jo Caffery, Anna Wierzbicka and Helen Bromhead and from detailed and constructive feedback from two anonymous referees.

References Abott, G. (2000). Languages in lifelong education for Third World development. Development in Practice, 10(2), 216–222. ASPBAE [Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education]. (2012). The power of literacy: Women’s journeys in India, Indonesia, Philippines and Papua New Guinea. http:// www.aspbae.org/sites/default/files/pdf/The%20Power%20of%20Literacy.pdf. Accessed May 11, 2019. Bamgbose, A. (2014). The language factor in development goals. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(7), 646–657. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2014.908888.

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Caffery, J., & Hill, D. (2018). Expensive English: An accessible language approach for Papua New Guinea agricultural development. Development in Practice, 29(2), 147–158. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09614524.2018.15301095. Crack, A. M. (2018). Language, NGOs and inclusion: The donor perspective. Development in Practice, 29(2), 159–169. https://doi.org/10.1090/09614524.2018.1546827. Department of Education. (2016). National Education Plan 2015–2019: Quality learning for all. Port Moresby: Papua New Guinea Department of Education. Department of National Planning and Monitoring. (2010). Papua New Guinea Development Strategic Plan 2010–2030. Port Moresby: Department of National Planning and Monitoring. Devette-Chee, K. (2011). Decreolization of Tok Pisin: Is there a Tok Pisin-to-English continuum? Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, 29, 95–103. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2016). Explicating the English lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. Functions of Language, 23(2), 214–256. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.23.2.03god. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2018). Minimal English and how it can add to Global English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 5–27). Cham: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-31962512-6_2. Khan, M. (2014). Indigenous languages and Africa’s development dilemma. Development in Practice, 24(5/6), 764–776. Levisen, C., & Priestley, C. (2017). Social keywords in postcolonial Melanesian discourse. In C. Levisen & S. Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 83–106). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.277.04lev. Levisen, C., Priestley, C., Nicholls, S., & Goldshtein, Y. (2017). The semantics of Englishes and creoles: Pacific and Australian perspectives. In P. Bakker, F. Borchsenius, C. Levisen, & E. Sippola (Eds.), Creole studies–Phylogenetic approaches (pp. 345–368). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.211.15lev. Longangapuo, K. M. (2015). Language and the development of agriculture in Kenya. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 5(2), 27–34. Mühlhäusler, P. (1982). Language and communicational efficiency: The case of Tok Pisin. Language and Communication, 2(2), 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/0271-5309(82)90001-5. Pamphilon, B., Mikhailovich, K., & Gwatirisa, P. (2017). The PNG family farm teams manual. Canberra: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. Pawley, A., Gi, S. P., Majnep, I. S., & Kias, J. (2000). Hunger acts on me: The grammar and semantics of bodily and mental process expression in Kalam. In V. P. De Guzman & B. W. Bender (Eds.), Grammatical analysis: Morphology, syntax and semantics (pp. 153–185). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Roberts, J. R. (2001). Impersonal constructions in Amele. In A. Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon, & M. Onishi (Eds.), Non-canonical marking of subjects and objects (pp. 201–250). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.46.09rob. Sadow, L. (2019). An NSM-based cultural dictionary of Australian English (Ph.D. thesis). Australian National University. Schieffelin, B. B. (2008). Tok Bokis, tok Piksa: Translating parables in Papua New Guinea. In M. Meyerhoff & N. Najy (Eds.), Social lives in language: Sociolinguistics and multilingal speech communities (pp. 111–134). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.24. 10sch. Siegel, J. (2008). The emergence of pidgin and creole languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simoncini, K., Pamphilon, B., & Veal, D. (2016). Maria’s family raises chickens [Femili bilong Maria i lukautim kakaruk]. Canberra: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

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Smith, G. P. (2000). Tok Pisin and English: The current relationship. In J. Siegel (Ed.), Processes of language contact: Studies from Australia and the South Pacific (pp. 271–292). Quebec: Fides. Tryon, D. T., & Charpentier, J.-M. (2004). Pacific pidgins and creoles: Origins, growth and development. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Deborah Hill is Senior Lecture at the University of Canberra. Her main research interests are in descriptive linguistics, lexical semantics, Oceanic linguistics, and the language and culture of Longgu, Solomon Islands.

Chapter 4

“There is no Sex in the Soviet Union”: From Sex to Seks Anna Wierzbicka and Anna Gladkova

Abstract In Russian, the loan word seks is linked for many speakers with a famous episode from the pre-perestrojka period when in the course of one of the first Soviet–American tele-bridges a Russian respondent famously declared: “U nas seksa net …”, ‘there is no sex in the Soviet Union’. Focussing on seks as a loan word in Russian and exploring the meaning of its ubiquitous English counterpart in a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective, this paper shows that the meaning of sex is a conceptual artefact of modern Anglo culture and that the differences between the two words can be illuminated through Minimal English.













Keywords Sex Seks Russian English Natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) Polysemy Cross-cultural comparison




4.1




Introduction

Sex is a ubiquitous word in modern English. According to Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) data,1 sex is the 817th most common word in American English, more frequent than sister, happy, knowledge, truth, laugh, study, enjoy, nice, marriage and smile (to name just a few). Like many prominent discourse topics, sex is a concept with ‘loose’ boundaries and there is no full agreement on the exact content of the word among speakers of English (e.g. Bogart et al. 2000; Randall and Byers 2003; Sanders and Reinisch 1999; Hill et al. 2016). Different perceptions of what sex depend on gender, age and sexual orientation. Identifying 1

https://corpus.byu.edu/COCA/.

A. Wierzbicka Australian National University, Canberra, Australia e-mail: [email protected] A. Gladkova (&) Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Monash University, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_4

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more exact boundaries of the concept ‘sex’ is often said to be of importance in public health and education (Burns 2011). For example, if a patient is asked by a doctor ‘When was the last time you had sex?”, the patient’s interpretation may differ from the doctor’s, leading to miscommunication. How sex is defined can have major implications in people’s lives, in particular those of public figures (as was the case with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, for example) (Cameron and Kulick 2003). Undoubtedly, the vagueness of the concept is linked to taboo nature of the topic (Allan and Burridge 2006). ‘Sex’ is a language- and culture-specific concept. It is also time-bound. The fact that the word is so commonly used and so salient in discourse in the Anglosphere might lead to the perception that the concept it stands for is universal, especially given the widespread use of the word sex in global media, internet, etc. The phenomenon of widespread borrowing of sex into other languages may also obscure the language specificity of the concept. Both the importance of this issue and the lack of clarity surrounding it point to the need to explore it from a semantic and cross-linguistic perspective. There are numerous studies on the social and economic aspects of sexuality (Bogart et al. 2000; Hill et al. 2016; Randall and Byers 2003; Tratner 2001) yet the studies of cultural specificity of the conceptualization of ‘sex’ are very rare (e.g. Burns 2011; Cameron and Kulick 2003; Sanders and Reinisch 1999; Sauntson and Kyratzis 2007). As already mentioned, loan words based on the English word sex are increasingly becoming established in other languages, usually with meanings somewhat different from those sex has in English. Often, the difference between the meaning of sex as a loanword in other languages illuminates the culturally distinctive aspects of the English concept. In this paper, we will compare the meaning of the English sex with the meaning of the Russian loan word seks using the methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002, 2014).

4.2

No Sex in the Soviet Union?

In Russian, the word seks is linked, for many speakers, with a famous episode from the pre-perestrojka period, when Phil Donahue and Vladimir Posner organized one of the first Soviet–American “tele-bridges”. When an American participant in this encounter complained about the use of sex images in American TV ads and asked if the same was the case in the Soviet Union, the Russian respondent, a certain Ivanova (a representative of the “Committee of Soviet Women”) replied famously: “U nas seksa net …”, ‘there is no sex in the USSR …”, a comment that created a still popular catch phrase. While the phrase was uttered in the context of discussion of the presence of sex in TV ads, it became a catch phrase referring to presence of sex in the country (Serov 2003). According to Posner, the woman meant (and said) “on television”, but these last words were drowned in an outburst of laughter. According to Ivanova herself, however, she wanted to say (and said) “In the USSR there is no ‘sex’, there is love”.

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Her additional comment on this point is instructive: “Later, people remembered only the beginning of the phrase. (…) But in our country, the word sex was really almost a dirty word. We always occupied ourselves not with sex [seks] but with love. And this is what I had in mind”. Ivanova’s version is confirmed by responses to an opinion survey conducted in 2008 on the subject “The generations of Russian sex [seks]” (Žuravleva 2008). Many of the young respondents, who presumably know English to some extent, use the word seks in ways comparable to how the word sex is used in English. Older respondents, however, offer comments like the following: Of course there was no sex (seks) in the Soviet Union. (…) The process, of course, was there, but there were no words for it, only interjections. Married couples used to say: “Why don’t we that, this, y’know what?” (Maria, 78 years old) It sounds paradoxical, but there was really no sex in the Soviet Union. In this country, there was love, and all the rest was just added on. (Valeriy, 63 years old) At the beginning of the 1980s the air was, it seemed, saturated with sex, although the concept as such did not yet exist. (Anna, 45 years old)

Before we discuss the differences between the English sex and loanwords like the Russian seks (as used by the older generation of Russian speakers), however, we need to note that sex has several different meanings in modern English and to try to sort them out.

4.3

Different Meanings of the English Word ‘Sex’

Above all, sex in phrases like age, weight and sex, regardless of sex, and sex discrimination has a different meaning from sex in sex drive, sex life and safe sex. Thus, broadly speaking, there are two main types of uses of sex in contemporary English: sex as the difference between two kinds of people based on two main kinds of human bodies, and sex as something that people do, or can do, and that is perceived against the background of activities involving two people with two different kinds of bodies (a man and a woman). To begin with the first use of sex, there is the heading “sex” on countless forms which people living in English-speaking countries have to fill out and which offers the respondents the choice between “M” and “F”, “male” and “female”, and there are many uses of sex linked with the distinction between the two categories, “male” and “female”. The assumption that there are two kinds of people, by virtue of people’s anatomy, is reflected in contemporary examples such as the following ones from Cobuild2:

2

Cobuild Wordbanks wordbanks.

Online

[CWO]:

http://www.collinslanguage.com/content-solutions/

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A. Wierzbicka and A. Gladkova Many professional women prefer to deal with members of their own sex. The reality is that good financial advisers of any sex are scarce.

The use of sex as, roughly speaking, one of two major categories of people (defined in terms of their anatomy) is closely related to, but not identical with, sex as an abstract parameter, distinguishing between those two categories of people. This ‘parameter’ sense of sex can be illustrated with the following sentences from Cobuild: Nor, when hiring people, may you make your hiring decision based on age, sex, or appearance. Obviously, the intention of banning advertisements which specify age or sex is to ensure older people, or women, get a fair go. The Stairmaster machine measures your fitness level by testing your ability to walk on the spot for five minutes. By taking into account your age, weight and sex it spits out a fitness reading.

While the meaning of sex as an abstract parameter is of course different from that of sex as a category of people, basically, both these meanings can be linked with the following way of thinking (which we will label here sex1): [A] sex1 a. b. c. d. e. f.

people can think like this about people: there are two kinds of people because there are two kinds of people’s bodies women’s bodies are bodies of one of these two kinds men’s bodies are bodies of the other kind people can think in the same way about children people can think in the same way about animals

We have used in this schematic explication the words men and women rather than male and female for a number of reasons. First, men and women are semantically simpler and more accessible than male and female. For example, if one wanted to explain the meaning of sex to a child, men and women would be more useful than male and female which would not be clear to a child. Second, the idea that there are “two sexes” focuses on the difference between men and women (adults) rather than on all ‘males’ and all ‘females’, regardless of age. One can, of course, speak about the ‘sex’ of a baby, but in doing so, one assumes that there are two main kinds of human bodies, with their prototypes in a man and a woman. In asking about the ‘sex’ of a baby one is asking, essentially, to which of these two main kinds of human bodies the baby’s body belongs.

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Continuity and Change in the Use of ‘Sex’ in English

It is interesting to note that the use of sex referring to two kinds of people has changed somewhat over the centuries. In older English, it was common to refer to “the sexes”, “the two sexes” and “both sexes”, and sex usually stood for a category of people rather than for an abstract parameter, as in modern questionnaires. Consider for example the following quotes: Sometimes, through pride, the sexes change their airs; My lord has vapours, and my lady swears. Young, Love of Fame (18th century)

The nonsense of the old women (of both sexes). Sterne, Tristram Shandy (18th century)

Breathes there a man with hide so tough Who says two sexes aren’t enough? Samuel Hoffenstein, The Sexes (early 20th century)

The little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one sex of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys. Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque (19th century)

While sex in its older meaning could, in principle, refer to both “divisions of the human race” (as the OED puts it), in practice in older periods it tended to refer predominantly to one of these two ‘divisions’: women. For example, the 19 uses of sex in Shakespeare’s works all refer to women—usually in phrases with possessive pronouns, like “her sex”, “my sex”, “our sex” and “your sex”. For example, in King Henry VI, “Joan La Pucelle” (Joan D’Arc) says to the Dauphin (Part 1, Act 1, Scene 2): My courage try by combat, if thou darest, And thou shalt find that I exceed my sex.

Similarly, in the Rape of Lucrece, one reads (of women, of course) that “their gentle sex to weep are often willing” (Stanza 177). The common collocations with sex in older English include, prominently, the fair sex, the gentle sex and the weak (er) sex.

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The use of sex in such collocations is still possible, or at least understandable, in contemporary English, as are also references to “the sexes”, as the following example from Cobuild illustrates: The former Midday host is in charge of a Channel 9 studio debate called the Battle of the Sex-es.

Generally, however, such uses tend to be perceived as old-fashioned. The use of sex as a parameter (as in the phrase sex discrimination) is closely related to the old-fashioned sense of “the two divisions of the human race” but, as mentioned earlier, it is not identical to it. Roughly speaking, it does not have the ‘collective’ ring of the earlier usage and focuses instead on identifying features of an individual. Furthermore, it appears that the modern emphasis on sex as an abstract feature of an individual rather than a collectivity is linked with a more biological emphasis, which allows sex in the relevant sense to be readily extended to animals, as in the following example (from Cobuild) about horse races: Sams is keen to try Like A Rose over 1400 m, but will restrict her to races for her own sex while they are available.

The predominantly biological emphasis of the word sex used in relation to the features distinguishing two major categories of people has often been perceived as a limitation of this concept as a basic tool for categorizing people and characterizing them. Hence, the emergence and spread of the word gender in modern Anglo usage, especially in feminist discourse—a word which makes room, so to speak, for the psychological and social aspects, in addition to biological ones. But despite the growing use of the word gender in some registers of English, especially the academic and feminist ones, the word sex as a major conceptual tool for categorizing people continues to hold its own.

4.5

Sex2, as in “Sex and the City” and “Sex on TV”

The predominant contemporary use of sex which focuses on what people do with their bodies is quite recent. The ‘explosion’ of this new use is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon, although phrases like sex mania and sex maniac started to be used in the late nineteenth century, as the following examples cited by the OED testify: Sex mania in art and literature can be but a passing phase. (1895) Sex in modern literature. (1895)

The expression to have sex appears to have been popularized, if not introduced, by D.H. Lawrence, in contexts like the following one: If you want to have sex, you’ve got to trust, at the core of your heart, the other creature. (1929)

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This relatively recent, activity-based use of sex developed a large network of collocations during the twentieth century, some of them neutral and lending themselves to positive interpretations (for example, sex appeal, sex life, sex drive, safe sex and sex education) and some more or less negative ones (for example, sex offences, sex offenders, sex slaves, unprotected sex, sex object, underage sex, sex abuse, sex crime and so on). The predominant contemporary use of the word sex (as a type of human activity) can be explicated as follows: [B] sex (as in: There is a lot of sex on TV) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i.

some people are doing something of one kind two people can do something of this kind when it is like this: one of these two people is a man, the other is a woman people know that men’s bodies have one part not like any part of women’s bodies this man is doing something with this part of his body to some parts of this woman’s body people know that men’s bodies don’t have parts like these these two people are doing this because they want to feel something good people can do things of the same kind when it is not like this people can do things of this kind in many ways

This explication treats a heterosexual couple engaged in activities allowed by the differences in their anatomy as a conceptual model for a wider range of human activities, seen by the speakers of English as being “of the same kind”—including gay sex, lesbian sex, group sex and so on. If we compare sex in the sense of an activity with the older sense of ‘two categories of people’ we will note a number of differences, in addition to the basic one, between ‘being someone (a man or a woman)’ and ‘doing something’. First, there is an extension from a dichotomy between men and women to a wider perspective including other (unspecified) possibility: “people can do things of the same kind when it is not like this”, for example, when the actors are not a heterosexual couple. Second, there is a greater anatomical specificity in the concept: the older concept made a reference to men’s and women’s bodies, but the more recent one refers, more specifically, to one part of men’s bodies which women’s bodies do not have, as well as to some parts of women’s bodies that men do not have. Third, while the activity in question is conceptualized as being of “one kind”, it is also conceptualized as one that can be performed in “many ways”, thus allowing various extensions from the prototype and potentially activating the speaker’s imagination. Fourth, the most prominent contemporary sense of sex includes a reference to pleasurable feelings, thus inviting a plethora of phraseological and cultural extensions (from good sex to sex toys and the like). One of the sentences with sex in the Cobuild database reads: “‘Say cheese’, photographers used to mutter to get a smile before they switched to ‘say sex’”, thus highlighting the presence of ‘good feelings’ in the conceptual prototype of sex.

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These potential ‘good’ feelings are evoked not only by the topic (i.e. the thought of the physical activity as such) but more specifically, by the word sex. Thus, while “Say sex” may work as a substitute for “Say cheese”, alternatives like “Say intercourse” or “Say sexual act” would not. This shows that the word sex itself (in contrast to intercourse and sexual act) is linked for speakers of English with a thought of pleasurable experience. Despite the reference to ‘good feelings’ in the conceptual prototype implicit in the modern English concept of ‘sex’ (as explicated here) what is most striking about this concept from a cross-cultural, cross-linguistic, and also, historical point of view is the largely physical, ‘behaviouristic’ characterization of the activity in question, without any reference to human relationships and interpersonal emotional attitudes.

4.6

English ‘Sex’ in a Cross-Cultural Perspective

While a reference to seeking pleasure is included in the prototype, it is not accompanied by any reference to good feelings directed at the other person (not even in the prototype). Of course phrases (and book titles) like “Love, sex and marriage” linking ‘sex’ with ‘love’ are possible and even common, but by itself sex is free of such associations (unlike, for example, the French phrase faire l’amour, or indeed its literal English equivalent to make love). In Tim Parks’s novel Destiny polyglot prostitutes on a night train in Italy offer sex to passengers, possibly international tourists, with two words “amore” in Italian and “sex” in English: Amore. A black woman is standing beside me. Sex? You want? (…) Amore, she repeats. (pp. 189–190)

The offer is the same but it is conceptualized differently because the meaning of the words is different. In English, the physical activity which is being proposed is conceived without any reference to emotions: sex is, roughly, what a man and a woman can do together with some parts of their bodies (because the body of a man is not like the body of a woman). In Italian, however, the same physical activity is conceptualized with an indirect reference to love: roughly, amore (in the relevant sense) is what a man and a woman can do together with their bodies (because the body of a man is not like a body of a woman), of the kind that men and women often do if they love one another. It is not that Italian has no word to refer to the physical activity in question as such, as in fact the same polyglot prostitute in Tim Parks’s novel also illustrates when she persists: “Fuckie. Figa. Baiser.” (p. 190). But these words are not neutral and descriptive: they also express an attitude to this activity—one which dissociates the activity itself from any emotions and interpersonal relationships. For example, they could not be used in titles like “Love, sex and marriage”.

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As this last example illustrates, sex can be used in English not only in relation to a particular act of intercourse, but more generally, to an aspect of life involving such acts but understood more broadly. In most other languages, for example, in Russian or even in French—there is no colloquial equivalent of “they were talking about sex”. One could use something euphemistic like l’amour (‘love’), or use something vulgar and “in your face” like baiser, or use something scientific-sounding like sexual act, but nothing as neutral, matter of fact, and colloquial as sex. It is this dissociation of physical acts (of what people do with some parts of their bodies) from the expectations about the accompanying feelings and attitudes which is the hallmark of the prevalent contemporary use of the English word sex. The lexical dissociation between the body and the heart, or between physical activities involving the genitals and interpersonal relations, has wide-ranging ramifications in modern English phraseology and discourse. Expressions such as good sex, enjoy sex, consensual sex, sex toy, sex games, sex-starved, kinky sex, sex industry, sex workers and even sex education are translators’ nightmares and their untranslatability contributes to the widespread borrowing of the English word sex into other languages, and also, to changes in meaning which often go with such borrowing. The lack of conceptual and cultural equivalents of such phrases in other languages often leads to the perception that ‘sex’ is something specific to Anglo-American culture, something cheap, immoral and lending itself to commercialization. Hence, the somewhat pejorative meaning of loanwords such as Russian seks mentioned earlier. The discourse of sex as something separate from human relations and emotions has often been the subject of critical discussions in English itself. For example, Cobuild includes some critical remarks on a government-sponsored ‘Safe Sex Guide’ promoted by “Cleo” magazine under the motto “It is not who you have sex with but how safe the sex is that counts”. According to the commentator cited in Cobuild, “The naked truth about the values promoted in this ‘Safe Sex Guide’ is that sex has nothing to do with relationships, love, other people’. (…) If the value of the other person is totally discounted in this most deeply personal human activity, how long can we survive as a human society?” This is, of course, a commentary that one may or may not agree with. Someone else can take the view that the largely ‘behaviourist’ character of the prevalent modern English meaning of sex (with its connotations of potential pleasure rather than interpersonal connectedness) reflects a healthy attitude to the body, without “hang-ups” of any kind, and that the same applies to publications like the “Safe Sex Guide” promoted by “Cleo”. Whatever view of the modern English ‘discourse of sex’ one takes, it needs to be recognized that this discourse—which is now spreading, through English, across the global world—is a new cultural phenomenon, entrenched in and transmitted through, contemporary English.

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Seks in Russian

The word seks in Russian is a borrowing from English. Its use is relatively recent. According to the Russian National Corpus (RNC) written subcorpus,3 its first instances of use refer to the mid 1960s and the 1970s.4 In the oral subcorpus, the first instances of use refer to 1974 and 1976. The data of Russian Google Books confirms the 1960s and the 1970s as the period of the initial use of the word which was not frequent till the mid 1980s when its use increased (Google Books Ngram Viewer 2017). While resembling the English word sex to a significant extent, the Russian seks differs from it conceptually as well as in use. The following discussion outlines these differences and similarities. The polysemy of the English sex does not apply to the Russian seks. The difference between two different kinds of people (that is the first meaning of sex) is rendered with the word pol, which can be either mužskoj ‘male’ or ženskij ‘female’. The adjective polovoj (a derivative of pol) is highly productive in Russian in this sphere. The following are common collocates with polovoj: polovoj akt ‘sex act’, polovye otnošenija ‘sex relations’, polovaja zrelost’ ‘puberty’, polovoe sozrevanie ‘puberty’, polovye organy ‘sex organs’, polovaja funkcija ‘sex function’, polovaja prinadležnost’ ‘lit. sex/gender belonging, gender’, polovoj člen ‘sex organ’, polovaja vozbudimost’ ‘sex arousal’, polovoe vospitanie ‘sex education’, polovaja aktivnost’ ‘sex activity’, polovye različija ‘sex differences’, polovoe želanie ‘sex desire’, polovoe vlečenie ‘sex desire/attraction’, polovaja kletka ‘sex cell’, polovaja nepolnocennost’ ‘sexual inferiority’, polovaja izvraščennost’ ‘sexual perversity’, polovaja raspuščennost’ ‘sexual promiscuity’, polovoj gormon ‘sex hormone’, polovaja svjaz’ ‘lit. sex connection/relations’, polovoj put’ ‘sexual way’ (as in peredavat’sja polovym putem—sexually transmitted). The adjective polovoj (feminine form polovaja), derived from the noun pol, was used to refer to people’s sexual activities before the term seks became established in Russian, and is still in use in this sense today. In particular, the phrases polovaja žizn’ (‘life’) and polovoj akt (‘act’) could be used in a sense comparable to the English phrases sex life and sex act. RNC attributes the first use of the expression polovaja žizn’ to Alexander Herzen in the mid 1860s.5 This expression has been in use in medical, religious and public discourse. Several instances of use of this expression are attributed to Leo Tolstoy according to the corpus:

3

http://www.ruscorpora.ru. It is difficult to trace the exact date of the first occurrence in the corpus because RNC gives only a range of years as the date for creation for these documents, like 1960–1990, for example. English– Russian parallel subcorpus gives instances of earlier use of seks in translation of the English (language) literature. For example, there are three instances of use of seks in the 1965 translation of J. Salinger’s (1951) The Catcher in the Rye. 5 Herzen was a Russian thinker and writer who lived many years of his life in exile in Europe. 4

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[…] ženit’ba, krome prijatnostej domašnego očaga, ustranjaja nepravil’nost’ polovoj žizni, davala vozmožnost’ nravstvennoj žizni […]. (L. N. Tolstoy. Voskresenie 1899) ‘[…] marriage, apart from providing pleasures of domestic comfort and eliminating the wrongness of sexual life, gave an opportunity to lead moral life.’ Resurrection (1899) [translation by William E. Smith, 1900: There was the pleasure of domestic life, which made it possible to lead a moral life, as he called married life […]. [Leo Tolstoy. The Awakening] Odin iz samyx vernyx priznakov togo, čto čelovek točno xočet žit’ dobroj žizn’ju, ėto – strogost’ k sebe v polovoj žizni. (L. N. Tolstoy. Put’ žizni 1910) ‘One of the best signs that a person decided to live a good life is his/her restraint in sexual life. (Leo Tolstoy. The way of life (1910)’

The main verb collocates with polovaja žizn’ are žit’ ‘live’, načat’ ‘begin’ and vesti ‘lead’ (see Table 4.1). Therefore, this expression refers to a period of a person’s life when one engages in, roughly speaking, sexual behaviour. As such, it does not focus on particular instances of these activities and their details. As the first example from Tolstoy illustrates, the expression polovaja žizn’ refers to one (physical) side of someone’s life and can be opposed to the moral side of his or her life. According to RNC, the expression polovoj akt came into use in Russian slightly later than polovaja žizn’ and the first example in the corpus is attributed to the Russian botanist and physiologist Kliment Timiryazev in 1878: […] morskie vodorosli predstavljajut odin ljubopytnyj, ne imejuščij analogii vo vsej ostal’noj organičeskoj prirode, primer polovogo akta ne meždu dvumja, a meždu tremja kletočkami […] ‘[…] seaweed presents a curious example, with ‘sexual acts’ between three, not two cells. There are no other such cases elsewhere in organic nature […].’

The expression polovoj akt is used more like a medical term and has restricted use in colloquial speech. As mentioned before, sometimes in the 1960s and 1970s, the Russian words pol (noun) and polovoj (adjective) found themselves in competition with the new loan word: seks. It is possible, even likely, that as this loan word gradually spread in Russian, the meanings of the older words pol and polovoj have also undergone some changes. In this paper, however, we will restrict our attention to the semantics of seks, and in particular, to the differences between seks and its source: the English word sex. Table 4.1 Top verb collocates with polovaja žizn’ ‘sex life’ (written and oral data) from RNC Main subcorpus

Oral subcorpus

žit’ ‘live’ 19 žit’ ‘live’ 1 načat’ ‘start’ 19 zanimat’sja ‘engage in’ 1 vesti ‘lead’ 10 govorit’ ‘speak’ 1 Notes Data present the total number of occurrences in the main (written) and oral subcorpora of RNC. Total number of words in the main (written) subcorpus is 283 mln., in the oral subcorpus 12 mln.

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Table 4.2 Top verb collocates with seks (written and oral data) from RNC Main subcorpus

Oral subcorpus

zanimat’sja ‘occupy oneself/be busy 137 zanimat’sja ‘occupy oneself/be busy 20 with’ with’ byt’ ‘(there) be’ 30 interesovat’ ‘to interest’ 2 xotet’ ‘want’ 15 byt’ ‘(there) be’ 1 imet’ ‘have’ 13 xotet’ ‘want’ 1 delat’ ‘do’ 5 imet’ ‘have’ 1 Notes Data present total number of occurrences in the main (written) and oral subcorpora of RNC. Total number of words in the main (written) subcorpus is 283 mln., in the oral subcorpus 12 mln.

Some clues to the differences in meaning between seks and sex come from the difference in the collocational profiles of the two words. In Russian, the most common verb collocate with seks is zanimat’sja (see Table 4.2). We will therefore take a closer look at the semantics of this verb. The Oxford Russian-English Dictionary (1978) posits three different meanings for the verb zanimat’sja, with the following English glosses: (1) To be occupied (with), to be engaged (in); to work (at, on); to study. (2) To bury oneself (with); to devote oneself (to). (3) To assist; to attend to. All these glosses suggest that someone wants to do something for some time (not a short time); that one is doing something (of one kind) because one wants to do it, and that while doing it, one does not want to think about other things. There is also an implication that the kind of activity in which the person is engaged is recognizable as worthwhile. The Russian-English dictionary produced in Moscow (Taube et al. 1978) posits as many as five distinct meanings, among them three glossed as follows: (1) Be occupied (busy with); (2) Be engaged in, be concerned (with); (3) Study, learn (with a telling example: Ne mešajte emu zanimat’sja ‘let him get on with his work’). All these glosses suggest, roughly speaking, something like ‘absorption’ and ‘interest’, as well as an extended period of time. Thus, they too are consistent with the NSM components of (a) “he/she wants to do something for some time, not a short time; (b) he/she is doing something of one kind because he/she wants to do it; (c) during this time, he/she does not want to think about anything else. While we cannot undertake here a full semantic analysis of the verb zanimat’sja, we would also suggest that it implies an attitude which can be modelled more accurately in a first person format: [C] On zanima lsja upakovkoj veščej ‘he was busy with the packing’ a. b. c. d. e.

he was doing something of one kind (packing) as people do when they think like this: “it will be good if I do this now I want to do it, I want to do it for some time I don’t want to think about other things during this time”

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As we will show shortly, the semantic components of zanimat’sja presented in this explication provide previous clues to the meanings of the collocation zanimat’sja seksom, and also, to the conceptualization reflected in the noun seks itself. The second most frequent verb that the Russian seks collocates with is byt’ used in the impersonal construction u kogo-to byl seks (lit. ‘at someone there was sex’) (see Table 4.2). It is 4.5 times less frequent than the verb zanimat’sja in the written subcorpus and 20 times less frequent in the oral subcorpus. It indicates a considerable degree of detachment on the part of the speaker. For example, Kogda u vas poslednij raz byl seks? When did you have sex last time? U nas ešče ne bylo seksa. We haven’t had sex yet.

In English, the most frequent verb which collocates with sex is to have (see Table 4.3). It is significantly more frequent than any of the other verb collocates. In comparison with zanimat’sja seksom, to have sex sounds more matter of fact and does not imply any particular attitude. In fact, the English expression to have sex is closer to the Russian expression u kogo-to byl seks (lit. ‘at someone there was sex’). However, the Russian expression is much more restricted in use in terms of frequency as well as linguistic possibilities. For example, titles like How to have sex for the first time would be impossible to translate with this Russian expression because it requires mentioning an agent or agents. Other most frequent verbs co-occurring with sex suggest that it is seen as an enjoyable and desirable activity (want, enjoy, like). Interestingly, the enjoyable aspect of seks is not equally evident from its most frequent verb collocates and the whole range of such collocates in Russian is much poorer. The adjectival collocates with seks (see Table 4.4) reflect the perception that unlike the traditional Russian words pol and polovoj, this loan word seems to highlight various technical aspects of the activity, with the words gruppovoj

Table 4.3 Top verb collocates with sex (sorted by raw frequencies) from Cobuild Wordbanks Online Verb

Number of occurrences

MI score

Have Be Want Enjoy Perform Make Say Use Like Think

9904 1102 443 301 203 167 143 135 121 117

8.00 3.32 7.3 7.54 7.54 3.38 3.24 4.26 6.38 5.37

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Table 4.4 Top adjectival collocates with seks (written and oral data) from RNC Main subcorpus

Oral subcorpus

gruppovoj ‘group’ 38 anal’nyj ‘anal’ 4 bezopasnyj ‘safe’ 32 ėkstremal’nyj ‘extreme’ 4 oral’nyj ‘oral’ 30 oral’nyj ‘oral’ 3 anal’nyj ‘anal’ 20 vnebračnyj ‘extramarital’ 3 xorošij ‘good’ 15 bezopasnyj ‘safe’ 2 telefonnyj ‘telephone’ 11 xorošij ‘good’ 2 komp’juternyj ‘computer’ 10 virtual’nyj ‘virtual’ 9 svobodnyj ‘free’ 8 7 nastojaščij ‘true/real’ Notes Data present total number of occurrences in the main (written) and oral subcorpora of RNC. Total number of words in the main (written) subcorpus is 283 mln., in the oral subcorpus 12 mln.

Table 4.5 Top adjectival collocates with sex (sorted by raw frequencies) from Cobuild Wordbanks Online Adjective

Number of occurrences

MI score

Oral 1042 11.18 823 10.48 Oppositea Safe 497 9.33 356 5.87 Samea Unprotected 341 9.99 Good 338 4.76 Casual 305 9.36 Anal 247 9.51 Consensual 246 9.55 More 242 4.9 Notes data from the Word sketch of sex in the Collins Wordbanks online. Tokens marked with (a) could be disregarded for the purpose of our study as representing different meaning of sex

‘group’, bezopasnyj ‘safe’, oral’nyj’ ‘oral’ and anal’nyj ‘anal’ being the four most frequent adjectives co-occurring with seks. This apparent interest in the technical aspects of the activity is also reflected in the frequency data concerning the adjectival collocates of the English word sex (see Table 4.5). It is interesting to note, though, that the adjective gruppovoj ‘group’, is at the top of the Russian list, whereas in English, group sex does not feature among the ten topmost collocations of sex. This may or may not be significant, but it is puzzling. (In this connection, we will note that as we are finalizing this paper, an article in the British “Guardian” (27 July 2018) notes that according to The Dictionary of European Anglicisms (Görlach 2001) which gathers together English terms found in 16 European languages, the most prevalent include “last minute”, “fitness” and “group sex”.)

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Table 4.6 Top and/or collocates with sex (sorted by raw frequencies) from Cobuild Wordbanks Online And/or

Number of occurrences

MI score

Agea 656 10.19 Drug 426 9.41 Love 326 9.09 Violence 297 9.05 210 8.79 Racea Money 118 7.3 Alcohol 111 8.02 Death 106 7.2 Religion 98 7.78 Woman 96 5.81 Notes data from the Word sketch of sex in the Collins Wordbanks online. Tokens marked with (a) could be disregarded for the purpose of our study as representing different meaning of sex

The data from the corpus on the co-occurrence of sex with the conjunctions and and or show that sex co-occurs with words with positive as well as negative connotations (see Table 4.6). While love is the third most frequent word co-occurring with sex, it is outscored by drug and is followed by violence, money, alcohol and death. This data confirm Burns’ finding (Burns 2011) based on the representation of the concept of ‘sex’ in the Australian media. She writes: “[…] within the media, sex and sexuality are constructs imbued with ambiguities. […] media discourses of sex and sexuality (and, indeed, sexual discourses outside the media) are a mixture of pleasure and danger, repression and agency” (Burns 2011: 220). Comparable information on the co-occurrence of the Russian word seks with the equivalents of conjunctions and and or is difficult to obtain from the corpus due to the limited data. We would venture to hypothesize, however, that the picture of such co-occurrences in Russian would be rather different (but of course the matter would need to be further investigated). To represent the semantic content of the Russian word seks, we will focus on its most common collocation zanimat’sja seksom. To illustrate the use of the expression zanimat’sja seksom, we will adduce here an example from a contemporary Russian novel by Lyudmila Ulitskaya Lestnica Iakova (‘Jacob’s Ladder’). In this novel, a woman, nine month pregnant, is on her way to hospital to give birth. She starts giving birth before reaching the hospital building. She ca not walk, she will have to give birth in the guard’s cabin (v budke oxrannika). The guard himself is nowhere to be seen. Akušerka Ljuda raspaxnula dver’ budki – tam oxrannik zanimalsja seksom s goloj ženščinoj. ‘Midwife Ljuda threw open the door of the cabin; the guard was occupied in sex with a naked woman there.’

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While the gloss provided above conveys the core meaning of the Russian sentence, it loses, we would argue, some semantic nuances. In order to capture these nuances, we would propose the following explication: [D] On zanimat’sja seksom (s goloj ženščinoj) (‘he was occupied in seks [with a naked woman])’ a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k.

he was doing something (with someone else) for some time, as people do when they think like this: “I want to do something of one kind now, I want to do it for some time, not a short time when I do it, I don’t want to think about anything else” two people can do something of this kind when it is like this: one of these two people is a man, the other is a woman people know that men’s bodies have one part not like any part of women’s bodies this man is doing something with this part of his body to some parts of this woman’s body people know that men’s bodies don’t have parts like these these two people are doing this because they want to feel something good people can do things of the same kind when it is not like this people can do things of this kind in many ways

As noted before in relation to the English word sex, it needs to be emphasized that the indented lines (e–i) present a prototype, not a set of necessary conditions. This explication treats a heterosexual couple engaged in activities allowed by the differences in their anatomy as a conceptual model for a wider range of human activities, seen by the speakers of English as being “of the same kind”—including, for example, gay sex, lesbian sex, group sex and so on. Language reflects the conceptualizations of its speakers and can be seen as heterocentric. The framing of the explication (components a-c) highlights the difference between the Russian and the English concepts. This explication of the Russian collocation zanimat’sja seksom differs from that of the English to have sex in two ways. First, there is the temporal component: “for some time” in the first line, echoed (and perhaps even expanded, in the second line: “for some time, not a short time”), which implicitly likens the activity so described to purposeful, meaningful activities that are understandably extended in time. Second, there is the psychological component, with two subcomponents: “I want to do something of one kind now, I don’t want to think about anything else during this time”. The single-minded concentration on the bodily activity, seemingly excluding any thoughts of the co-participant as a person, appears to suggest that this activity is presented as meaningless. In the Russian cultural context, talking about bodily activities described in the prototype (in the five indented lines in the middle of the explication, e–i) without any reference to any accompanying thoughts can be confronting—or, alternatively, somewhat jocular. The English expression to have sex can be seen as matter of fact and devoid of any reference to meaning. By

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contrast, the Russian expression zanimat’sja seksom appears to refer to the absence of any thoughts or meaning, thus producing a somewhat incongruous (and potentially, mildly humorous) effect. These semantic observations, which we only offer tentatively, are consistent, it seems to us, with Carbaugh’s (2005) comments on a more restricted way of talking about sex-related matters in Russian culture, based on the analysis of the talk show “Donahue in Russia”. In particular, he analyses a 3 min 40 s segment of the talk show which appeared as part of a week-long series which was taped in Moscow and broadcast in the United States during the week of 9 February 1987. In this episode, Donahue addresses the Russian audience and brings up the question of having sex, using contraceptive, and unwanted pregnancies. The Russian audience reacts to this topic with bewilderment. Carbaugh (2005: 69) describes the reaction as follows: “Immediately on hearing Donahue’s first question, the largely Russian audience is aroused. Eyebrows are raised, laughter ensues, torsos wave back and forth with startled glances exchanged”. A couple of people respond to Donahue’s confronting questions, but after three minutes it becomes clear that the audience is experiencing discomfort and Donahue follows the suggestion of one of the women to change the topic (said in English): “I think it is necessary to change the subject of conversation, because these questions are very deep to be concerned by us” (ibid. 64). Carbaugh explains this kind of reaction on the part of the Russian audience by the Russian cultural rule that sexual matters fall into the domain that should not be discussed publicly, especially with outsiders. This cultural rule is consistent with the culture-specific classification of people into svoi (‘one’s own/insiders’) and čužie (‘alien/outsiders’) and the existence of cultural rules prescribing an open and sincere interaction with svoi and reserved and restrained interaction with čužie (Gladkova 2013; Richmond 2009). Talking about sex falls into the domain of ‘private’ life and is not expected to be discussed in public. Carbaugh (ibid: 73) also gives the following explanation to this attitude: […] for Russians, the concept “sex” entitles an activity that is more in the physical and animalistic domain than it is in the distinctively inter-human. As such, it violates the Russian sense of “soul”, for the deeper soul of the person can and should involve only those things that can happen among persons. As one Russian woman put it: “Sex is something animals do.” To discuss this topic in a factual, rational, scientific way, with regard to contraceptive techniques and “practices”, in public terms of “animalistic mechanics,” rather than in a proper moral tone of deep feeling that weds it with a common morality, and with uniquely human sensual passion, all of this is rather incoherent, even immoral, thus laughable within a Russian discourse.

Carbaugh also provides a valuable insight from one of his Russian students on the culturally shared attitude to talking about such topics: “We don’t discuss our personal experiences whatever they are [in public], love, sex, relations with God. We cannot express these in words. You make it shallow if you speak it in public” (ibid: 72).

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It goes without saying that Carbaugh’s analysis uses data from the late 1980s. As RNC data suggest, it was the time when the word seks started being more common in Russian discourse and it coincided with significant changes in the country. Since the late 1980s, the attitude to talking about sex has ‘loosened’ up. It is a possible topic to be discussed in public and one can hear such talks on TV. In particular, in 1997–2000 there was a special talk show called “Pro ėto” ‘About it’ on NTV (Independent TV) hosted by Elena Hanga and dedicated to issues relating to sex. It had specialized shows like ‘Lesbian love’, ‘Oral sex’, ‘Male prostitution’, among others. However, the cultural interpretation put forward by Carbaugh still applies because the subject of sex falls into the domain of private matters in Russian culture and talking about it is still largely limited to that sphere. To summarize, the Russian concept seks has emerged in the Russian conceptual lexicon through a borrowing from English. The loan word seks began to be used in Russian in the 1960s and gained frequency in the 1980s following political transition in the country. While sharing a core semantic content, the Russian seks and the English sex differ nonetheless in certain ways which are culturally revealing. Whereas the English sex sounds matter of fact and may seem to many English speakers to refer simply to a fact of life (a ‘normal’ aspect of human life, and ‘normal’ subject of conversation), for many speakers of Russian such a separation of the physical from the psychological may seem ‘unnatural’. This difference in cultural expectations may lead to a difference in meaning, with different cultural attitudes becoming reflected not only in the use of the two words (with seks being more restricted than sex) but also in their semantics.

4.8

Conclusion

The semantic history of the English word sex is exceptionally instructive, as it illuminates important changes in social cognition as well as in social practices— both within the Anglosphere and in the global world. With the global spread of English words, English concepts are spreading, too, around the world. But in the process, they undergo modifications which throw light on differences in psychological attitudes and social expectations—both between speakers of different languages and between different generations of speakers of the same language. The phenomena to which the English word sex refers can be seen as part of common human biology and behaviour. The difference in how the word sex and the loan words based on it are used to highlight the cultural nature of meaning, and the poverty of reference-based approaches to semantics. Yes, there are some meanings which reflect shared human ways of thinking about the world, grounded in common human biology and common social practices: meanings like “men”, “women” and “children”, and also “mother” and “father” (see Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014; Wierzbicka 2016). But the separation of such meanings is very limited. Far more

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common are meanings which reflect diversity in human ways of thinking about the world, including ways of thinking about behaviours underpinned by our shared human biology. Here as elsewhere, to pinpoint differences in ways of thinking, we need an effective semantic methodology.

References Allan, K., & Burridge, K. (2006). Forbidden words: Taboo and the censoring of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bogart, L. M., Cecile, H., Wagstaff, D. A., Pinkerton, S. D., & Abramson, P. R. (2000). Is it “sex”? College students’ interpretations of sexual behaviour terminology. The Journal of Sex Research, 37(2), 108–116. Burns, M. (2011). A sociolinguistic exploration of sexual language: Discourses of sexualities in the Australian media (Ph.D. thesis). Monash University. Cameron, D., & Kulick, D. (2003). Language and sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carbaugh, D. (2005). Cultures in conversation. New York: Routledge. Gladkova, A. (2013). “Is he one of ours?” Cultural semantics and ethnopragmatics of social categories in Russian. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 180–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma. 2013.06.010. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (Eds.). (2002). Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings (Vol. 2). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.61. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/ 9780199668434.001.0001. Google Books Ngram Viewer. (2019). https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%D1% 81%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=25&smoothing= 3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%3B%2Cc0 (accessed 09/09/2019). Hyperlink: https://researchers.anu.edu.au/publications/120362 Görlach, M. (2001). A dictionary of European Anglicisms: A usage dictionary of Anglicisms in selected European languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hill, B., Sanders, S., & Reinisch, J. M. (2016). Variability in sex attitudes and sexual histories across age groups of bisexual women and men in the United States. Journal of Bisexuality, 16 (1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299716.2016.1142810. Randall, H. E., & Byers, E. S. (2003). What is sex? Students’ definitions of having sex, sexual partner, and unfaithful behaviour. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 12(2), 87–96. Richmond, Y. (2009). From Nyet to Da: Understanding the new Russia (4th ed.). Boston: Nicholas Brealey. Serov, V. (2003). Aenciklopedičeskij slovar’ krylatyx slov i vyraženij [Encyclopaedic dictionary of popular words and expressions]. Moscow: Lokid-Press. Sanders, S., & Reinisch, J. M. (1999). Would you say you “had sex” if…? The Journal of the American Medical Association, 281(3), 275–277. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.281.3.275. Sauntson, H., & Kyratzis, S. (Eds.). (2007). Language, sexualities and desires: Cross-cultural perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Taube, Alexander, et al. (1978). Russko-anglijskij slovar’ [Russian-English dictionary]. Moscow: Russkij Jazyk. Tratner, M. (2001). Deficits and desires: Economics and sexuality in twentieth-century literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Wierzbicka, A. (2016). Back to ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ overcoming the eurocentrism of kinship studies through eight lexical universals, Current Anthropology, 57(4), 408–429. Žuravleva, E. (2008). Pokolenija russkogo seksa [The generations of Russian sex]. Liga svobodnyx gorodov [A league of free towns]. http://www.freetowns.ru/ru/projects/demography/-/love_poll. Accessed July–August 2008.

Anna Wierzbicka is Professor of Linguistics (Emerita) at the Australian National University. She has published over twenty books and edited or co-edited several others. Her latest book is What Christians Believe: The story of God and people in Minimal English (Oxford University Press 2019) published in Cracow, Poland, in 2017 by Znak. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies as well as linguistics, and has been published in many journals across all these disciplines. She is Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the winner of the Dobrushin Prize for 2010 and the Polish Science Foundation’s 2010 prize for the humanities and social sciences. Anna Gladkova is Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash University and Honorary Lecturer in Linguistics at the Australian National University. Her research interests include semantics, pragmatics, language and culture interface, cognitive linguistics and Natural Semantic Metalanguage. She has taught linguistics and applied linguistics at the Australian National University, Monash University and University of New England (Australia); University of Sussex and University of Brighton (UK); and Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University (Russia). She is member of the Editorial Board of Corpus Pragmatics and Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics (Springer).

Chapter 5

When Value Words Cross Cultural Borders: English Tolerant Versus Russian Tolerantnyj Anna Gladkova

Abstract This chapter investigates the situation of language change in contemporary Russian with a particular focus on value words. Using data from the Russian National Corpus, it analyses the meaning of the word tolerantnyj which has been borrowed from English. It compares its meaning with the English tolerant as a source of borrowing and the traditional Russian term terpimyj. The chapter demonstrates a shift in meaning in the borrowed term, which allows it to accommodate to the Russian value system. The meanings of the terms in question are formulated using universal meanings employed in Minimal English, which makes the comparison transparent and explicit. Keywords Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) English Russian Cross cultural comparison




5.1





Tolerant
Tolerantnyj


Introduction: Global English in Present-Day Russia

The status of English in Russia has changed significantly since the Soviet Union disintegrated. In late Soviet times, English was the most common foreign language taught in schools and universities, but the actual communicative competence of lay people was very low. There was little access to ‘live’ English, spoken or written, so English was ‘foreign’ and distant to the majority of Russians. Russia’s opening to the world in the 1980s along with considerable changes in lifestyle, mentality, attitudes and values had a significant impact on the language. In the last three decades, the borrowing of new words from other languages (particularly English) and the use of previously borrowed words have notably increased in Russian (Krysin 1996; Ryazanova-Clarke and Wade 1999, see also Krongauz 2008,

A. Gladkova (&) Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Monash University, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_5

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2013). Kravchenko and Boiko (2014) quote data (from Volodarskaja 2002) that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of Anglicisms in modern Russian, which has grown from 2.57% of the entire vocabulary stock in the early twentieth century to a striking 25% in 2000. English borrowings are salient in the areas of economics, finance, marketing, advertising, fashion and computer sciences—that is, areas which developed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and were almost non-existent before (cf. Ratmajr 2013: 18). During these years, the knowledge of English of an average educated Russian has also increased. Compared to the Soviet times, Russians now freely travel abroad, and some send their children to schools and universities in foreign countries. Russia’s attempts to be open to the world make the role of English even more prominent in the country. For example, recent changes and reforms in Russian education and research implicitly increase the role of English. Here, I need to note that until recently, and throughout the Soviet history, Russian has been the sole language in Russian academia. Russian was the medium in undergraduate and postgraduate studies; mainly all research publications and theses were written and published in Russian. There was limited access to international research (books and journals), and there was no incentive to publish in English. The reform of 2012 introduced several measures to encourage Russian academics to publish in international journals indexed in the Scopus and Web of Science databases. Among them, there is also a national program Project 5-100 (https://5top100.ru/) which sets a target of five Russian universities reaching the list of top 100 universities in the world in international rankings and making Russian higher education more competitive (currently only Lomonosov State Moscow University is ranked among 100 best universities in the world according to the 2018 QS ranking with the 90th place). All these measures make English more prominent in Russian education and research. So, in contemporary Russia, the global role of English is strongly felt. Yet Anglo values and concepts cannot be considered an adequate grid for understanding the Russian ways of thinking and living as it is presented to us via language. I would like to look at changes in vocabulary in the domain of value words. Among the most significant examples of such borrowings into Russian are the words tolerantnost’ (n.) and tolerantnyj (adj.) from English tolerance and tolerant. The story of these words in the Russian language is fascinating and bound up with the history of the country. Tolerantnost’ and tolerantnyj came into use as value terms in Russian in the middle of the nineteenth century (Lara 2001; Mixajlova 2003). However, even in those days, the attitude towards this linguistic innovation differed among representatives of different political movements: pro-Westerners actively supported it, while Slavophiles rejected these words and encouraged the use of traditional Russian value words. After the Revolution in 1917, tolerantnost’ and tolerantnyj were discredited and banned because they were associated with the

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Fig. 5.1 Frequency of use of tolerantnost’ (in blue) and tolerantnyj (in red) in Russian in the twentieth–beginning of the twenty-first century based on the Google books data

influence of the capitalist West. During the reforms of the 1980–90s, they were ‘rehabilitated’ and became ‘in’ words of political discourse to show that Russia was becoming an open society that shares democratic values with the West. Figure 5.1 reports the frequency of use of tolerantnost’ and tolerantnyj in Russian over the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. It demonstrates a sharp rise in frequency of their use after the mid-1990s. The assimilation of these new words is influenced by the fact that as new members of the linguistic system they ‘compete’ with the traditional Russian value terms terpimost’ ‘tolerance/indulgence’, terpimyj ‘tolerant/indulgent/forbearing’ and terpet’ ‘bear/endure/suffer/put up with/tolerate’. In fact, the new words are often identified with these traditional terms, even though their meanings are by no means identical. I will compare the English word tolerant with the traditional Russian word terpimyj and the newly borrowed word tolerantnyj and will demonstrate the differences in meaning between the English and Russian counterparts.1 I will formulate the meanings of the words in Minimal English and will attempt to provide a cultural explanation of these differences. I rely on data from two online corpora— Collins Wordbanks Online for English and Russian National Corpus for Russian.2

1

I will only analyse the use of the words in the area of social cognition and will ignore their use as a physical bodily reaction. 2 Some parts of this work have been previously published in Gladkova (2008). The analysis has been revisited and reviewed, particularly in line with the Minimal English development as an offshoot of NSM. The parts from Gladkova (2008) are reproduced with the permission of the publisher John Benjamins.

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5.2

Methodological Approach and Data

The research methodology used for the analysis of cross-linguistic conceptualisation needs to account for the specificity of meanings embedded in the realisation of concepts. Empirical research over the last forty years suggests that such methodology can be found in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002a, 2014) and its latest offshoot version Minimal English (Goddard 2018a, b). This study will apply the NSM approach and Minimal English to formulate the meaning of the words in question. NSM is a contrasted and well-documented technique for semantic and ethnopragmatic analysis. It comprises sixty-five semantic universals (Table 5.1), and their universal syntactic properties have been identified on the basis of empirical studies (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002a). These semantic universals, or ‘primes’, are meanings that are semantically simple, i.e. they cannot be defined further, and are accepted as indefinable. For this theory, primes constitute the core of human lexicon and can be used to explicate more complex meanings. Apart from words, these meanings can be expressed by bound morphemes or phrasemes, which equal lexical units (cf. Goddard 2001a). Certain syntactic qualities of the primes have also been shown to be universal and can be listed as universal canonical combinations of primes. Therefore, primes combine with each other and form a metalanguage that lies at the core of every language. For example, the following syntactic properties of the prime FEEL are considered universal (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002b): someone feels something (good/bad) (in part of the body), someone feels like this, someone feels something good/bad towards someone else.

Therefore, at a universal level, FEEL can distinguish between emotional experience (positive or negative) and bodily feelings. It can also express emotional attitude to another person. Goddard (2010: 464) formulates two major requirements for developing a good NSM explication: The validity of NSM explications can be tested on the basis of two main conditions. The first is substitutability in a broad sense: explications have to make intuitive sense to native speakers when substituted into their context of use, and to generate the appropriate entailments and implications. The second condition is well-formedness: they have to be framed entirely in semantic primes or molecules, and to conform to the syntax of the natural semantic metalanguage. In addition, explications have to conform to a coherence condition, i.e. they have to make sense as a whole, with appropriate chains of anaphora, co-reference, causal links, etc.

NSM has been successfully applied in numerous cross-linguistic studies demonstrating conceptual differences with Goddard advocating the approach known as

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Table 5.1 Exponents of semantic primes in English and Russian (after Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014; Gladkova 2010) ja, ty, kto-to, čto-to * vešč’ ljudi, telo Substantives i, you, someone, something * thing, people, body rod * vid, čast’ Relational substantives kind, part ėtot, tot že, drugoj Determiners this, the same, other * else odin, dva, nekotorye, vse, mnogo, nemnogo one, two, some, all, much * many, little * few xorošij * xorošo, ploxoj * ploxo Evaluators good, bad bol’šoj, malen’kij Descriptors big, small znat’, dumat’, xotet’, ne xotet’, čuvstvovat’, videt’, slyšat’ Mental predicates know, think, want, don’t want, feel, see, hear govorit’ * skazat’, slova, pravda Speech say, words, true delat’, proisxodit’ * slučat’sja, dvigat’sja Actions, events, movement do, happen, move Location, existence, byt’ (gde-to), byt’ * est’, byt’ (kem-to/čem-to) specification be (somewhere), there is, be (someone/something) moj/moja/moe Possession (is) mine žit’, umeret’ Life and death live, die kogda * vremja, sejčas, do, posle, dolgo, korotkoe vremja, Time nekotoroe vremja, moment when * time, now, before, after, a long time, a short time, for some time, moment gde * mesto, zdes’, nad, pod, daleko, blizko, storona, vnutri, Place kasat’sja where * place, here, above, below, far, near, side, inside, touch ne, možet byt’, moč’, potomu čto, esli Logical concepts not, maybe, can, because, if očen’, bol’še * ešče Intensifier, augmentor very, more kak * tak Similarity like * as Notes (1) Exponents of primes can be polysemous, i.e. they can have other, additional meanings (2) Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes or phrasemes (3) They can be formally, i.e. morphologically, complex (4) They can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with *) (5) Each prime has well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties

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cross-linguistic semantics (e.g. Gladkova 2010; Goddard 2001b, 2008, Habib 2011; Wierzbicka 1997). In order to obtain contextualised data, we carried out our study based on the following corpora: – Cobuild Wordbanks Online [CWO] for English, – Russian National Corpus [RNC] for Russian. The two corpora include written and spoken data. CWO has around 550 million words dating between 2001 and 2005. RNC contains around 300 million words from the eighteenth century to present.3

5.3

Tolerant in English

Being tolerant is a virtue in English (Bollinger 1988; Mendus 1989). It is a quality of a person who is capable of accepting other people’s behaviour, views and beliefs which are different from what is considered in a given society or milieu as normal and acceptable. Based on the data from the Collins Wordbanks Online corpus, I will distinguish two uses and syntactico-semantic contexts of tolerant: tolerant towards people of some kinds and tolerant towards ‘bad things that people do’. I will first analyse the meaning ‘tolerant towards people of some kind.’ In the majority of examples from the corpus, an object of this attitude is represented by a group of people. Most prototypical examples of such groups are people of a race, nationality or sexual behaviour which are different from the mainstream. The following examples can illustrate such cases: (1) One was a visit to the synagogue of La Griba where an ancient Jewish community continues to flourish in the midst of these most tolerant of Arab peoples. (2) Flamboyant alternative performer and founder of the German-language Deutches Theater Down Under, Wolfgang Kreuzer says Australia has become far more tolerant of ethnic cultures in the 30 years since he arrived here. (3) We’ve become more tolerant of minority groups such as homosexuals, Aborigines and the ethnic population: and that’s reflected in our films. (4) Australian films like Priscilla Queen of the Desert were not creating a nation of crossdressers but rather a society more tolerant of minority groups, it was claimed yesterday. (5) People are still remarkably tolerant of gays.

3

In this study, we use data from Standard modern Russian as spoken across Russian Federation and represented in the RNC main written and oral subcorpora. Historically, it is the main standardized language variety used across Russia (Beyer 2001). Dialectal differences in Russian are primarily distinguished by pronunciation and some grammatical and lexical variation. In RNC, they are represented in the dialectal subcorpus, and this data was not included in our study.

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(6) Prof Schewe cited an analysis of three decades of surveys that seem to show that older people are becoming more tolerant of homosexuals, premarital sex, and other sexual alternatives.

A tolerant attitude can also apply to representatives of other political movements —that is people with different worldviews and political interests: (7) The days of the splinter groups, Toll busters Gold Coast motorway protesters and law and order groups are numbered if they vote for the Nationals and Liberals. The Goss Government has been very tolerant of these groups in their protests. (8) And John Selwyn Gummer, the Minister for Agriculture, once proposed to the Federation of Conservative Students the abolition of immigration controls. Small wonder then that their colleagues are tolerant of the excesses of the new generation of young Tories.

Other examples mention a tolerant attitude towards people who are different [from the mainstream] in other ways: (9) It’s worth thinking about that before he becomes known as a prodigy who’s having problems fitting into a society that isn’t always very tolerant of people who are different. (10) In September 1901, after several strokes, Toulouse-Lautrec died aged 36. Not quite regarded as a genius, he is remembered as a talented artist who found the accepting and uncritical inhabitants of the seamy side of Paris more tolerant of his disability than conventional society.

Analysing the contexts of the corpus examples, I will try to identify the attitude of a tolerant person. It is most clearly revealed from the opposite situation when a person is not being tolerant. The examples suggest the reaction of losing one’s temper and expressing one’s dislike of another person. The following examples are illustrative: (11) “Everyone loses his temper”, he said. “You must learn to be more tolerant, my dear, more understanding, more mindful of your husband’s problems”. (12) To me she does seem slightly more tolerant and less likely to flare up the moment something goes wrong. (13) Would his friends describe him as a tolerant person or an impatient person? (14) She doesn’t have the short fuse that my father had. She is tolerant of other ways of life, believing in the essential goodness of mankind.

Some examples also suggest that the attitude of a tolerant person might involve some positive expression—an action or a smile: (15) We thought of ourselves as being very tolerant, because after all there were Jewish people in our midst, and look how well we treated them! Looking back, we were taught to be tolerant of people who were a lot less strong, numerically and politically, than us.

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While I do not suggest that doing something good for the other is an invariant of meaning of tolerant, it would be safe to suggest that a tolerant attitude involves not expressing a negative attitude. The point of view of a tolerant person is to a certain degree determined by being a representative of society and respecting certain societal norms. A tolerant person recognises differences in other people, and his or her possible reaction to them can result in a negative verbal expression intended to stop those people doing these things. However, a tolerant person chooses not to resort to this, being driven by the culturally important idea of ‘not imposing one’s point of view on other people’. This value and associated speech practices are discussed in Wierzbicka (2006). Therefore, the meaning of tolerant can be related to the Anglo cultural rule of ‘non-imposition’. I would formulate the hypothesis about this meaning of tolerant in the following way using Minimal English: [A] someone is tolerant towards people of some kinds (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

it can be like this: someone thinks like this about some people in the place where this someone lives: “these people are not like other people here, these people are not people like me” this someone doesn’t want to think something bad about these people because of this this someone doesn’t want to say anything bad about these people it is good if it is like this

This explication comprises a prototypical way of thinking associated with the quality tolerant. Therefore, it identifies people in the place where a person lives as potential objects of this attitude (component b). This choice of wording is not random, and it supported by reference to the place in several examples under analysis (examples 1–4, among others). Another use of tolerant reflects an attitude directed towards someone else’s negative behaviour, or to paraphrase it in universal concepts ‘bad things that people do’. Some examples of the use of tolerant refer to the attitude of parents towards misbehaving children: (17) I would think I’m more of a nurturing parent. That means: I would give more positive strokes and be a little more tolerant of mistakes. (18) One hypothesis is that adults are simply more tolerant of disruptive or difficult behavior in boys than in girls.

This attitude can be directed towards members of a society deviating from the norm in some way:

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(19) Society is less tolerant of behavioral disabilities than any other form of handicap, and Ted’s outbursts could result in more rejection and social isolation as he grew older. (20) […]Canadians grew increasingly tolerant of marijuana use[…]

It can also be directed towards personal maltreatment: (21) By then he’d downed three highballs. I nodded patiently, letting him have his little joke; the martinis had made me more tolerant about being teased. (22) My landlord Dr Simon Norton was ceaselessly tolerant about my always-late rent and my messy habits. (23) Although largely unaware of his father’s inner turmoil, Nick was surprisingly tolerant of the abuse he received from him. Having realized at an early age that he was different from other boys and would be made to suffer for it, he fell easily into the role of victim. He was well used to being the butt of jokes, although his own father’s ridicule was much harder to bear - and to understand.

This meaning can be captured in the following way using universal concepts: [B] someone is tolerant towards bad things that people do (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

it can be like this: someone thinks like this about someone else: “this someone does some bad things, this can be bad for people here” this someone doesn’t feel something bad towards this other someone because of this, this someone doesn’t want to think something bad about this other someone because of this

5.4 5.4.1

Terpimyj in Russian Terpet’ as a Culturally Significant Word in Russian

The semantics of the word terpimyj cannot be discussed without reference to the word it derives from, that is, the verb terpet’. Terpet’ is a very common verb of attitude which reflects, roughly speaking, a culturally valued patient and stoic acceptance of hardships and sufferings. Terpet’ does not have an exact equivalent in English, only several near-equivalents—suffer, endure, stand, bear, put up with, tolerate. Terpet’ is morphologically very productive and gives rise to numerous derivatives, most of which reflect culturally valued attitudes: terpelivyj (adj.) ‘patient’; terpelivost’ (n.) ‘patience/endurance’; terpelivo (adv.) ‘patiently’; terpenie (n.) ‘patience/perseverance’; terpež (n.) ‘patience’; terpimyj (adj.) ‘tolerant/indulgent’; terpimost’ (n.) ‘tolerance/indulgence’; terpimo (adv.) ‘tolerantly’. These words are parts of numerous common collocations and expressions. Interestingly, in Russian, the words terpimost’ ‘tolerance/indulgence’ and terpenie ‘patience’ are related both derivationally and semantically; whereas, English patience and tolerance have only some semantic relationship, but not derivational. This fact also supports the idea of salience of the word terpet’ in the Russian language.

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The salience of the attitude described as terpet’ in Russian culture is not very surprising. A long history of oppressive rule in combination with a severe climate might well have led to the realisation that the ability to accept sufferings without protest was the way to survive. Many Russian proverbs, a common source and repository of folk wisdom, emphasise the importance of terpet’ as an attitude to life (Dal’ 1957): (24) Bog terpel i nam velel. ‘God endured/suffered [terpet’] and ordered us to suffer’

(25) Terpi, kazak, ataman budeš’. ‘Suffer/endure [terpet’], Cossack, you will become an ataman’.

(26) S bedoju ne perekorjajsja, terpi! ‘Don’t argue with misfortune, bear [terpet’] it!’

(27) Čas terpet’, a vek žit’.

‘An hour to endure/suffer [terpet’], a century to live’.

(28) Terpja, v ljudi vyxodjat. ‘By suffering/bearing [terpet’], one becomes a respected person’.

Most proverbs are difficult to translate into English. It is also difficult to find proverbs with similar meanings among common English proverbs or sayings. The value of terpet’ is also reinforced by the Russian Orthodox tradition. The significant place of the attitude terpet’ among other virtues can be illustrated by a famous prayer which was written in the second half of the nineteenth century by a group of monks from the small remote Russian monastery Optina Pustyn’. This place attracted numerous Russian thinkers by its spiritual power, among them Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The prayer addresses God with the following words: (29) Gospodi, rukovodi Sam Ty moeju voleju i nauči menja molit’sja, nadejat’sja, verit’, ljubit’, terpet’ i proščat’. ‘Lord, You yourself guide my will and teach me to pray, to hope, to believe, to love, to endure [terpet’] and to forgive’.

In this prayer, terpet’ is mentioned along with other most important virtues. Nowadays, this prayer is still known and treasured by Russian believers. At a cultural level, terpet’ relates to two Russian cultural key words—smirenie (roughly, ‘humility’) and sud’ba (roughly, ‘fate/destiny’) (cf. Wierzbicka 1997). All these words are reflective of the cultural theme of ‘reconciliation with the reality’ (see also Ozymenko and Larina 2018; Šmelev 2005, 2012; Sternin and Shilikhina 2001). Two uses of terpet’ can be distinguished: terpet’1 as an attitude towards a difficult physical or moral condition which this person consciously accepts and makes no attempt to stop and terpet’2 as an attitude towards other people. Terpimyj derives from terpet’ and, consequently, also has two corresponding meanings— terpimyj1 (as an attitude to hardships) and termipyj2 (as an attitude to people). We will analyse both meanings of terpet’, but only terpimyj2 will be the focus of our analysis.

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Terpet’1 is a conscious attitude of a person who encounters trouble in life. This attitude builds up due to a certain cognitive scenario which allows the person to remain in the same state. A certain way of thinking rejects a possible (perhaps more logical and natural) scenario of interrupting this state by performing some action. The essence of this way of thinking is that the person realises his or her capacity to remain in this state longer and decides to do so. This attitude is valued in Russian culture as a temporary attitude towards pain or discomfort as well as a general attitude to life. In simple universal concepts, the explication of terpet’1 can be presented along the following lines: [C] čelovek X terpit1 O / bol’ / muki / stradanija (person X terpit1 O / pain / sorrows / sufferings) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i) (j) (k) (l) (m)

something very bad has been happening to someone (X) for some time this someone feels something very bad because of this this someone can think about it like this: I don’t want it to be happening maybe if I do something, this bad thing will not be happening to me any more because of this, I will not feel something bad any more this someone doesn’t want to think like this, this someone thinks like this: it will be good if I don’t do this something I can feel like this some more time I will not do anything because of this because this someone (X) thinks like this, this someone doesn’t do anything people think: it is good if someone can think like this it is good if someone can live like this

This explication shows that terpet’1 is an attitude of a person towards painful conditions which happen against the person’s will and which leads to this person’s negative emotional state (components a and b). This person decides not to act in this situation because he or she thinks that it is good not to try to change it and that it is possible to continue to bear it (components c–k). This kind of attitude has a positive social evaluation (components l and m). Terpet’2 is the attitude of a person towards another person in a situation when they have to be together for some reason—living or working. The experiencer of terpet’2 does not like the other person for some objective or subjective reason, but expresses no dissatisfaction with that person and continues to be in the same situation as the other person. Terpet’2 implies some kind of dissatisfaction with another person, which is not expressed. There can be different reasons why the person chooses not to express this dissatisfaction; it can be moral principles, a desire to please someone else or considerations of personal benefit. Unlike terpet’1, terpet’2 does not have a component of a positive social evaluation because this kind of attitude can serve selfish purposes, and it can be perceived as some kind of humiliation by the object of the attitude.

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The explication of terpet’2 can be as follows: [D] čelovek X terpit2 čeloveka Y (person X terpit2 person Y) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i) (j) (k) (l) (m) (n)

someone (X) is with another someone (Y) for some time Y has been doing something for some time X thinks like this about it: this someone is doing something bad because of this, something bad is happening to me when I am with this someone X feels something bad when X is with Y because of this, X doesn’t want to be with Y any more X wants to do something because of this X doesn’t do it because X thinks like this at the same time: it will be good if I don’t do anything I can feel like this some more time I can be with this someone some more time I will not do anything because of this because X thinks like this, X doesn’t do anything

This explication shows that the meaning of terpet’2 is a kind of extension of the meaning terpet’1. Component (a) shows that terpet’2 applies to situations when a person has to be with another person for some time. Component (b) states that the other person does something that is perceived by the experiencer as something bad and that negatively affects this person’s state (components b–e). Components (f–h) state an objective effect of the presence and actions of another person on the experience: this person feels something bad and wants to cease being with this other person by some action. Components (i–m) present a mental scenario of the experiencer which explains this person’s inaction: this person decides that it is good not to do anything and realises that he or she can be with that other person for some more time because he or she can continue feeling in this way. Component (n) states that the person does not take any action to end the unpleasant situation caused by the necessity to be with that other person.

5.4.2

The Semantics of Terpimyj

Terpimyj expresses a characteristic of a person who is capable of being patient and not hostile towards the views, opinions and behaviour of other people. Terpimyj can characterise an attitude towards people of different religious beliefs or views: (30) Požiloj pan Juzef byl bolee terpim k moemu s trudom skryvaemomu ateizmu. ‘The old Pan Juzef was more tolerant [terpimyj] towards my barely concealed atheism’.

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(31) Pri ėtom avtor “Zapisok iz mertvogo doma” v vysšej stepeni terpim k inoveriju. ‘At the same time the author of Memoirs from the House of the Dead is highly tolerant [terpimyj] towards adherence to different faith’.

Terpimyj can also denote an attitude towards other people’s more general opinions or views: (32) Golovin byl mjagkij, isključitel’no delikatnyj čelovek, pokladistyj v rabote, terpimyj k inakomysljaščim tovariščam po iskusstvu. ‘Golovin was a mild, extremely tactful person, pliable in work, tolerant [terpimyj] towards otherwise-minded colleagues in art’.

(33) Pili malo, sporili mnogo. Sporili, kak vsegda, neistovo i bestolkovo. Sam A.Ė. byl terpim v sporax, no molodye doxodili do glupostej, krajnostej. ‘They drank little, but argued a lot. They argued, as usual, furiously and senselessly. A.Ė. himself was tolerant [terpimyj], but the young ones came to foolishness and extremes’.

(34) Daže terpimogo Pavla Alekseeviča on umel vyvesti iz sebja, i ix vstreči obyknovenno končalis’ ssorami, krikami, xlopan’em dverjami. ‘He could make even the tolerant [terpimyj] Pavel Alekseevič lose his temper and their meetings usually ended with quarrels, shouts, and slammed doors’.

Most importantly, terpimyj is regarded in the Russian ‘naïve’ axiology as an essential quality in interpersonal relationships, especially within a family. The National Corpus contains numerous examples of contemporary use of terpimyj seen as a necessary virtue in family relationship. The following two examples are taken from a website where people, especially women, share their experience of family life: (35) Esli tak, to dajte mužu šans dovospitat’sja! Postarajtes’ ponjat’ ego ešče bol’še, posočuvstvujte emu, bud’te terpimee, ton’še, gibče, xitree esli xotite. ‘If so, give your husband a chance to improve himself! Try to understand him even more, sympathise with him, be more tolerant [terpimyj], subtle, flexible, even shrewder’.

(36) Čtoby razobrat’sja, sleduet byt’ terpimee, čašče stavit’ sebja na mesto muža (ženy) i pytat’sja ponjat’ čužie problemy. ‘In order to achieve understanding, one should be more tolerant [terpimyj] and imagine oneself more often in the shoes of one’s husband (wife) and try to understand his or her problems’.

Interestingly, several examples show that this quality is more often associated with women than with men, and women with this quality are highly valued by their partners. The following quotation is a record of a greeting which was sent by a boy to his girlfriend over the radio: (37) Ljublju tebja po-prežnemu/i čuvstvo ėto navsegda/vot tak vot/Ostavajsja takoj že prekrasnoj i terpimoj. ‘I love you now as before/and this feeling is forever/indeed/Remain as wonderful and tolerant [terpimyj] as you are now’.

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Contextual examples from the Russian National Corpus suggest that terpimyj is a positively evaluated quality because it is usually named among other human virtues, as in the following examples: (38) … otca sčitali dobrym i terpimym čelovekom, mnogie ego ljubili…

‘… my father was considered a kind and tolerant [terpimyj] man, many people loved him …’

(39) Prezident – korrektnyj, terpimyj, vnimatel’nyj čelovek.

‘The President is a tactful, tolerant [terpimyj], attentive person’.

(40) On byl terpim i čutok.

‘He was tolerant [terpimyj] and sensitive’.

(41) Ėto menja naučilo tomu, čto umnye ljudi terpimy i samokritičny. ‘It taught me that clever people are tolerant [terpimyj] and self-critical’.

Interestingly, terpimyj is regarded as an absolute quality. Or to put it differently, in a folk system of values, a person cannot have too much of this quality. This is evidenced by a difficult compatibility of terpimyj with the adverb sliškom ‘too (much)’. In the corpus, only one example of this collocation is recorded for the twentieth and twenty-first century data, and overall it can be considered marginal and attributed to professional discourse. ([…] my sliškom terpimy stali k posredstvennosti […]. ‘we became too tolerant to mediocrity’). At the same time, tolerant in English is used with the adverb ‘too’, and there are 29 examples of this collocation in the CWO corpus. The examples analysed here suggest that being terpimyj is a quality of people who can develop a conscious attitude towards other people whom they do not like but with whom they have to be together. This conscious attitude rejects the possibility of putting an end to the overall unpleasant situation and accepts another person as he or she is. This quality has a positive social evaluation. This attitude can be captured as follows: [E] terpimyj (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i)

it can be like this: someone lives with someone else this someone thinks like this about this someone: “this someone often does bad things, this is bad for me” this someone doesn’t feel something bad towards this other someone because of this this someone doesn’t want to say to this other someone: “I don’t want you to do these things” it is very good if it is like this

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Tolerantnyj and Tolerantnost’ in Contemporary Russian

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the changing society needed new reference points and a new ‘system of axes’. In the situation of increasing disintegration— national, ethnic, cultural and economic—the word tolerantnost’ became such a reference point. The value of the attitude embedded in this word was recognised by the Russian government, which in 2001 launched a federal program called ‘Tolerantnost’ aimed at the ‘development of tolerant consciousness and prevention of extremism in Russian society’. The program lasted for five years (2001–2005) with an annual budget of about US$1,000,000. The money was mainly allocated to the Ministry of Education to develop and implement educational programs and textbooks reflecting the value of tolerance, particularly towards ethnic minorities. The program also included training for policemen and migration officers, that is, professionals who frequently come into contact with migrants. Numerous examples in the corpus are directly or indirectly related to the implementation of this program. The word is increasing in use, but being a foreign word, it remains vague and sometimes unknown to some sections of the population. One newspaper article in the corpus from 2001 quotes the results of a street poll conducted by the newspaper Izvestiia about the meaning of the word tolerantnost’. The answers were ‘a chemical element’, ‘a type of liberalism’, ‘something from the sphere of art’, ‘from the sphere of relationship between shop assistants and shoppers’ and, finally, an answer from the head of a private company ‘terpimost’ towards other opinions, behaviour and beliefs’. In this section, I include discussion of two words—noun tolerantnost’ and adjective tolerantnyj with the aim of explicating the latter for the sake of comparison with the other words in question. I refer to the noun in the discussion due to the scarcity of linguistic data on these recently introduced words with the idea that there is semantic connection between them. However, the noun tolerantnost’ is not explicated in this work and would require further analysis. I will pay special attention to the difference in use between tolerantnost’ and tolerance. To start with, the evaluative aspect of tolerantnost’ is not clearly positive. Some examples do suggest a positive value of this attitude: (42) Formirovanie tolerantnogo myšlenija narodov Rossii – važnejšee uslovie dostiženija stabil’nosti v rossijskom obščestve. ‘The development of a tolerant mindset in Russia’s peoples is the most important condition for achieving stability in Russian society’.

There are, however, examples that clearly demonstrate that this attitude is not appreciated. Such contexts often imply that it is a Western, that is, alien concept, and that the attitude embedded in it is not good for Russia and Russians.

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A. Gladkova (43) Davit modnaja tolerantnost’, mnogotrudnyj socium ljubit terpet’. ‘The fashionable tolerance [tolerantnost’] puts pressure on us; hardworking society likes to suffer [terpet’]’.

(44) Oni predali russkuju intelligenciju so vsej ee sektanskoj neterpimost’ju […], promenjali na melkoburžuaznuju tolerantnost’ i konformnost’. ‘They betrayed the Russian intelligentsia with its sectarian intolerance […], exchanged it for petty bourgeois tolerance and conformity’.

(45) […] i protestantizm, i bol’ševizm postepenno smjagčalis’, perexodja ot plamennoj neterpimosti k ravnodušnoj tolerantnosti. ‘[…] Both Protestantism and Bolshevism gradually became milder, moving from fanatical intolerance to indifferent tolerance’.

Ozyumenko and Larina (2018) also provide evidence for a common negative attitude associated with the term tolerantnost’. Similarly, tolerantnyj is used either as an absolute value (examples 46–47), or in a sarcastic way (examples 48–49). The latter use emphasises the lack of positive evaluation in the word. (46) Teper’ važno dlja nas, posledujuščix pokolenij, xorošo pomnit’ uroki prošlogo i berežno otnosit’sja drug k drugu, byt’ tolerantnymi, spločennymi, gumannymi. ‘Now it is important for us—next generations—to remember well the lessons of the past and be attentive to each other, tolerant, solidary and humane’.

(47) Arsen’ev byl čelovekom tolerantnym i ponimajuščim. ‘Arseniev was a tolerant and understanding person’.

(48) U druga v pod’’ezde sdali 2 kV. migrantam. Teper’ v gorškax s cvetami okurki, v akvariume vmesto rybok – tože… No ljudi tolerantnye. Terpjat!!! ‘Two flats were let to migrants in the apartment block where my friend lives. Now there are butts in the flower pots, as well as in the aquarium, instead of fish. … But people are tolerant. They are putting up with it!’

(49) Ladno, esli Vy tak ponimaete, “drugomu čeloveku pozvoljaetsja imet’ svoju točku zrenija ili dejstvovat’ tak, kak tot sčitaet pravil’nym”, pravda? Vot i smirites’ (po tolerantnomu!), čto est’ Russkaja Pravoslavnaja Cerkov’ s desjatkami millionov členov,, a u nix est’ Evangelie. I my sami znaem, čto i kak dumat’, delat’. A vy projavljajte “terpimost’”! ‘Fine, if you understand it as “another person is allowed to have his/her own point of view or act according to what he/she considers to be right”, correct? Then put up (in a tolerant way) with the fact that there is Russian Orthodox Church with dozens millions of members and that they have Gospels. We ourselves know what and how to think and do. And you exercise “forbearance”!’

Tolerantnost’ involves suppression of a negative attitude towards someone else who is different. The following examples are indicative of this attitude: (50) Sejčas poka delo puščeno na samotek: esli čelovek tolerantnyj vnutri, on obxoditsja s migrantom po-dobromu, esli grubyj, skažet: ponaexali tut, u nas i tak ploxo s

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žilploščad’ju. Treningi budut ustraivat’sja i dlja sotrudnikov milicii: kak tolerantno proverit’ u čeloveka dokumenty? ‘So far things are left to chance; if a person is tolerant inside, he [sic] will treat a migrant kindly, if he is rude, he will say: too many of you have come here, we ourselves have a problem with dwelling space. Training sessions will be organised for policemen, too, about how to check a person’s documents in a tolerant way [tolerantno]’.

(51) […] soznanie dorogix rossijan i vprjam’ stradaet ot nedostatka tolerantnosti. Projavlenij množestvo – ot zavisti k bogatym, blizkoj k tomu, čtoby sxvatit’sja za oružie, do nenavisti k licam kavkazskoj nacional’nosti i antisemitizma. ‘[…] the consciousness of dear Russians indeed suffers from a shortage [dearth] of tolerance. The manifestations are numerous – from envy of the rich, almost to the point of resorting to weapons/ firearms to hatred of people of Caucasian nationality and anti-Semitism’.

It is important to note that the negativity of these attitudes is not surprising. In Russian culture, there exists a traditional divide between svoi (lit. ‘one’s own people’, ‘insiders’) and čužie (lit. ‘alien people’, ‘outsiders’) and an associated polarity of behaviour with such people. Svoi are treated with warmth and generosity, and čužie are treated with suspicion and mistrust (Gladkova 2013, 2017). There is also some indication among the examples that the behaviour of people who are different is perceived as a personal threat to the experiencer even if their actions are not directed at him/her: (52) Vot/naprimer/sistema nenavisti k predprinimatel’stvu na urovne sel’skogo rajona […]. Tolerantnost’ zdes’ očen’ var’iruet ot mesta k mestu. Ot situacii k situacii. Ot ličnosti k ličnosti. ‘Take, for example, the hatred towards small business in rural areas. Tolerance here varies from place to place, from situation to situation and from person to person’.

(53) Pokolenčeskaja tolerantnost’ vozrastaet, a tolerantnost’ po otnošeniju k vlasti, naoborot, umen’šaetsja. ‘Tolerance [tolerantnost’] between generations is growing, but tolerance [tolerantnost’] towards the authorities, on the contrary, is decreasing’.

I propose the following definition of tolerantnyj in Minimal English:

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[F] tolerantnyj (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

5.6

it can be like this: someone thinks like this about some people in the place where this someone lives: “people of this kind are not like many other people here they are not like people like me this may be bad for me” this someone doesn’t want to think something bad about these people because of this this someone doesn’t want to feel something bad towards these people this someone doesn’t want to do something bad to these people because of this

The Comparison of the Russian and English Words

The use of simple universal terms as constituents of explications makes it possible to compare the words in question. Terpimyj is an attitude that a person develops towards someone whose behaviour he or she considers bad mainly at a personal level. The attitude of a tolerant person is aimed mostly at people deviating from social norms and not necessarily affecting the experiencer personally. Therefore, terpimyj is more ‘personal’ in its attitude; whereas, tolerant is more ‘social’. The element of an emotional attitude is significant for terpimyj, but not for tolerant. The nature of a terpimyj attitude can be explained by the cultural idea of ‘reconciliation with the reality’. A tolerant person is significantly influenced by the cultural norm of ‘non-imposition’. The Russian word has a greater positive social value. If we analyse and compare ten most frequent nouns collocating with tolerant of and terpimyj k and expressing objects of these attitudes, we can notice that in the case of terpimyj, these words tend to express objectively negatively evaluated states or actions, while in the case of tolerant, these are negative or neutral words (Table 5.2). This fact suggests a greater personal psychological tension and reaction associated with terpimyj than tolerant. Table 5.2 Ten most frequent collocates of terpimyj k and tolerant of

terpimyj k

tolerant of

person reference 11 slabost’ ‘weakness’ 7 mnenie ‘opinion’ 5 nedostatok ‘fault’ 4 drugoj ‘other’ 2 brak ‘marriage’ 2 ošibka ‘mistake’ 2 revoljucija ‘revolution’ 2 sebja ‘oneself’ 2 inoverie ‘heterodoxy’ 2

religion 10 other 10 condition 9 mistake 7 difference 7 diversity 6 everything 5 creed 4 pain 4 lifestyle 3

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The differences in meaning between terpimyj and tolerant can be attributed to different cultural norms prevailing in Russian- and English-speaking societies. The cultural significance of terpimyj can be discussed in association with the word terpet’, which in its turn can be related to two Russian cultural key words— smirenie (roughly, ‘humility’) and sud’ba (roughly, ‘fate/destiny’) and the cultural theme of ‘reconciliation with reality’. The meanings of English to tolerate and tolerant are shaped by Anglo-specific cultural norms of ‘not imposing one’s views on others’, ‘personal autonomy’ and the recognition of the fact that a person has ‘rights’ to be the way he or she wants (see Wierzbicka 2006). English quasi-equivalents of sud’ba and smirenie, that is the words ‘fate’ and ‘humility’, have a less important role in the Anglo cultural universe, and their meanings do not ‘connect’ with the meanings of to tolerate and tolerant. The English word tolerant as a source of borrowing for the Russian word tolerantnyj carries the ‘cultural baggage’ associated with the ideas of ‘non-imposition’ and ‘personal autonomy’. But for tolerantnyj to keep its original meaning, it has to match a system of cultural ideas and beliefs that is significantly similar to the system that it comes from. As the Russian cultural system differs from the Anglo one, we observe a shift in meaning in the word tolerantnyj. Comparing English tolerance and Russian tolerantnost’, it is possible to note that Russian tolerantnost’ embeds a suppression of a more ‘aggressive’ attitude. There is also an element of a more personal perception of the threat of the behaviour of other people who are different, which partially explains the negativity of the attitude. The attitude also involves the suppression of a negative emotional attitude. These aspects of meaning correlate with the traditional Russian term terpimyj. Importantly, tolerantnyj is not a clearly positive value in Russian.

5.7

Concluding Remarks

To conclude, contrastive semantic analysis can tell us a great deal about differences between the cultures and societies in which particular words are used. Linguists can contribute to the social sciences and to the investigation of values prevailing in different cultures and societies by a detailed semantic analysis, which in turn can be successful if an appropriate methodology is used. Minimal English is able to record subtle differences in the meaning of value words and proves to be an adequate tool for this kind of task. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Anna Wierzbicka, Kevin Windle, Cliff Goddard and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the chapter.

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References Beyer, T. (2001). Russian. In J. Garry & C. Rubino (Eds.), Facts about the world’s languages. An encyclopedia of the world’s major languages: Past and present (pp. 605–607). New York: H. W. Wilson. Bollinger, L. C. (1988). The tolerant society: Freedom of speech and extremist speech in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dal’, V. (1957). Poslovicy russkogo naroda [Proverbs of the Russian people]. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Xudožestvennoj Literatury. Originally published in 1862. Gladkova, A. (2008). Tolerance: New and traditional values in Russian in comparison with English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 301–329). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.102.19gla. Gladkova, A. (2010). Russkaja kul’turnaja semantika: Ėmocii, cennosti, žiznennye ustanovki [Russian cultural semantics: Emotions, values and attitudes]. Moscow: Languages of Slavonic Cultures. Gladkova, A. (2013). “Is he one of ours?” The cultural semantics and ethnopragmatics of social categories in Russian. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 180–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma. 2013.06.010. Gladkova, A. (2017). Communication modes, Russian. In Y. Y. Kim (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of intercultural communication. Hoboken: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/ 9781118783665.ieicc0147. Goddard, C. (2001a). Lexico-semantic universals: A critical overview. Linguistic Typology, 5(1), 1–65. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.5.1.1. Goddard, C. (2001b). Sabar, ikhlas, setia—patient, sincere, loyal? Contrastive semantics of some ‘virtues’ in Malay and English. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(5), 653–681. https://doi.org/10. 1016/S0378-2166(00)00028-X. Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2008). Cross-linguistic semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi. org/10.1075/slcs.102. Goddard, C. (2010). The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In B. Heine & H. Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 459–484). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goddard, C. (2018a). Ten lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring language, thought and culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/ 9789004357723. Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2018b). Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (Eds.). (2002a). Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings (Vol. 1). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60, https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.61 (vol. 2). Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2002b). Semantic primes and universal grammar. In C. Goddard & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings (Vol. 1, pp. 41–85). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60.08god. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Words and Meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/ 9780199668434.001.0001. Habib, S. (2011). Contrastive lexical-conceptual analysis of folk religious concepts in English, Arabic and Hebrew (Ph.D. thesis). University of New England. Kravchenko, A., & Boiko, S. (2014). What is happening to Russian? Linguistic change as an ecological process. Russian Journal of Communication, 6(3), 232–245. https://doi.org/10. 1080/19409419.2014.908733. Krongauz, M. (2008). Russkij jazyk nag rani nervnogo sryva [The Russian language at the edge of a nervous breakdown]. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. Krongauz, M. (2013). Samouchitel’ Olbanskogo [Teach yourself Olbanian]. Moscow: ACT.

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Krysin, L. (1996). Inojazyčnoe slovo v kontekste sovremennoj obščestvennoj žizni [A foreign word in the context of contemporary social life]. In E. Zemskaja (Ed.), Russkij jazyk konca XX stoletija (1985–1995) [The Russian language at the end of the 20th century (1985–1995)] (pp. 142–161). Moskva: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury. Lara, U. (2001). Zloklučenija slov-izgoev [Misadventures of ‘outcast’ words]. Ličnost’ i mir, 10. http://www.ifgo.ru/?n=339. Accessed October 2014. Mendus, S. (1989). Toleration and the limits of liberation. London: Macmillan. Mixajlova, O. (2003). Tolerantnost’ i terpimost’: Vzgljad lingvista [Tolerantnost’ and terpimost’: A linguist’s view]. In N. Kupina & M. Xomjakov (Eds.), Filosofskie i lingvokul’turologičeskie problemy tolerantnosti [Philosophical, linguistic and cultural aspects of tolerance] (pp. 99– 111). Ekaterinburg: Izdatel’stvo Ural’skogo Universiteta. Ozyumenko, V., & Larina, T. (2018). Understanding social values and attitudes through cultural semantics: Tolerance versus tolerantnost’. In INTCESS18 Proceedings: 5th International Conference on Education and Social Sciences (pp. 589–595). Istanbul. QS Top Universities. http://www.topuniversities.com/. Accessed July 5, 2018. Ratmajr, R. (2013). Russkaja reč’ i rynok: Tradicii i innovacii v delovom i povsednevnom obščenii [Russian speech and tbe market: Tradition and innovation in business and everyday communication]. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskix kul’tur. Ryazanova-Clarke, L., & Wade, T. (1999). The Russian language today. London: Routledge. Šmelev, A. (2005). Terpimost’ v russkoj yazykovoj kartine mira [Tolerance in the Russian linguistic picture of the world]. In A. A. Zalizniak, I. Levontina, & A. Šmelev (Eds.), Ključevye idei russkoj jazykovoj kartiny mira [Key ideas of the Russian linguistic picture of the world] (pp. 410–464). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. Šmelev, A. (2012). Terpimost’ v russkoj yazykovoj kartine mira [Tolerance in the Russian linguistic picture of the world]. In A. A. Zalizniak, I. Levontina, & A. Šmelev (Eds.), Konstanty i peremennye russkoj jazykovoj kartiny mira [Invariants and variables of the Russian linguistic picture of the world] (pp. 268–277). Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury. Sternin, I. A., & Shilikhina, K. M. (2001). Kommunikativnye aspekty tolerantnosti [Communicative aspects of tolerance]. Voronezh: Istoki. Volodarskaja, E. F. (2002). Zaimstvovanija kak otraženie russko–anglijskix kontaktov [Borrowings as a reflection of the Russian-English contacts]. Voprosy jazykoznanija, 4, 102–104. Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2006). English: Meaning and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Anna Gladkova is an Adjunct Lecturer in English as an International Language at Monash University and an Honorary Lecturer in Linguistics at the Australian National University. Her research interests include semantics, pragmatics, language and culture interface, cognitive linguistics and Natural Semantic Metalanguage. She has taught linguistics and applied linguistics at the Australian National University, Monash University and University of New England (Australia) as well as the University of Sussex, University of Brighton (United Kingdom) and Nizhny Novgorod State Linguistic University (Russia). She is the member of the Editorial Board of Corpus Pragmatics and Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics (Springer).

Chapter 6

The Confounding Mandarin Colour Term ‘Qīng’: Green, Blue, Black or All of the Above and More? Jiashu Tao and Jock Wong

Abstract The Mandarin word qīng (‘青’), which Google translates to ‘green’, ‘blue’ and even ‘black’, among other colour terms in English, is one of the oldest, most frequently used colour terms in Mandarin and probably the most confounding. The word is polysemous and its multiple meanings and combinations with other words have generated much confusion among generations of non-native speakers and learners of Mandarin, and perhaps even native speakers. To help Mandarin speakers and learners better understand the word, dictionaries mainly define qīng using English colour terms, such as ‘green’, ‘blue’ and ‘black’, which is to a certain extent helpful but which raises questions, such as if Mandarin speakers do not distinguish between the colours green and blue. There is thus a need to semantically analyse this word to help Mandarin learners acquire a deeper understanding of its multiple meanings and uses. The objective of this paper is to study the multiple meanings of the character qīng, one of which dates back to the late Shang Dynasty (1200–1050 BC), when the oracle bone script, the earliest known form of Chinese writing, was first used. This paper also compares its meanings with those of two related colour terms lǜ (‘绿’) and lán (‘蓝’), which are associated with the English ‘green’ and ‘blue’, respectively. To capture the meanings and their differences with maximal clarity and minimal ethnocentrism, the authors use Minimal English. Keywords Colours


Ancient Chinese
Literary Chinese
Green
Blue

J. Wong (&) National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] J. Tao National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_6

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Introduction

According to Baxter (1983: 1), during the Eastern Zhou and the Han Dynasty (700 BC–220 AD), there were five ‘basic colour’ terms in Chinese: bái (白, ‘white’), huáng (黄, ‘yellow’), chì (赤, ‘red’), qīng (青, ‘grue (green/blue)’, and hēi (黑, ‘black’). This way of categorising colours in Mandarin is documented in Chap. 131 of ‘玉藻’ (yùzăo, ‘strings of jade beads on a Chinese emperor’s crown’) in the Book of Rites (礼记, Lĭ Jì). However, in this source, the Chinese term used does not correspond to ‘basic colour’ but ‘pure colour’ (‘正色’, zhèngsè), which stands in contrast to ‘mixed/impure colour’ (杂色, zásè), a classification also used elsewhere (Xu 1994). Interestingly, according to Xiao et al. (2011), the classification (zhèngsè vs. zásè, or ‘pure’ vs. ‘mixed’) was used to refer to the purity of textile dyes. If only one type of dye was used, the colour was considered ‘pure’. Otherwise, it was ‘mixed’. According to the same chapter in the Book of Rites, examples of mixed colours include lǜ (绿), hóng (红), bì (碧), and zĭ (紫), which in the modern-day context may be translated into English as ‘green’, ‘red’, ‘jade green’ and ‘purple’, respectively. Obviously, all these colour terms in their ancient usage are not easy for a cultural outsider to understand and a translator to translate; they are all language- and culture-specific. After all, even the concept underlying the English word ‘colour’ is complex and not universal (Goddard 1998; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014; Wierzbicka 2005, 2008), although it seems that Mandarin has a word that, for all intents and purposes, means the same thing, yánsè (‘颜色’). From the perspectives of a cultural outsider and a translator, a particularly problematic Mandarin colour term is arguably qīng (青, phonologically/tɕıŋ/). The colour term is translated by various sources, such as Google, into a host of colour terms in English, such as ‘green’, ‘blue’, ‘cyan’ (Gao and Sutrop 2014, p. 343) and even ‘black’—for example 青丝 (qīngsī), literally ‘qīng silk strands’ but meaning ‘black hair’ (Li 2014; Xin 2012). As mentioned, Baxter calls it ‘grue’, which he describes as ‘green/blue’ (Baxter 1983: 1), whatever that means. It is one of the oldest and probably the most confounding colour terms in Mandarin. While it is less frequently used in contemporary Mandarin, it is commonly found in texts written in Literary Chinese (文言文, wényánwén), especially of the literary kind. The word is polysemous, as a number of sources attest (Franck 2002; Li 2017; Xiao et al. 2011; Xing 2008). To complicate matters, one could use qīng as a visual but non-colour term (Wang 2006)—for example 青天 (qīngtiān), referentially ‘clear sky’ (Gao and Shen 2013; Lin 2014; Xin 2012). Many non-native Mandarin speakers do not know about this usage and often wonder why the sky can be called qīngtiān when it should be lántiān (literally ‘blue sky’). In fact, even in the countries where Mandarin is spoken as an official language, such as Singapore, speakers can fail to grasp the word’s semantic complexity. It would seem that some of the semantic distinctions and meanings associated with the word have been lost among many Singapore Mandarin speakers (such as one of 1

http://ctext.org/liji/yu-zao.

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the authors of this paper). It has generated much confusion among learners of Mandarin, including the more proficient ones; Fang (2009) even claims that the majority of the native speakers only have a rough understanding of the meanings of this word. All these are of course not good news, given that qīng is one of the most commonly used visual terms in traditional Chinese literature (Xu 1988). Without a good understanding of the meanings of the word qīng, readers of Chinese literature may not be able to visualise the images that authors want to portray and the emotions that they want to figuratively express. Dictionaries might help but they mainly define the word qīng using English colour terms, such as ‘green’, ‘blue’ and ‘black’ (Baxter 1983), which is to a certain extent helpful but also raises questions —for example do Mandarin speakers not distinguish between the colours green and blue? Furthermore, trying to explain a non-English word (in this case Chinese) using complex English words is Anglo-centric, because we end up seeing things from an Anglo perspective (Goddard 2011; Wierzbicka 2013). Thus, to explain the Chinese word qīng in a way that is maximally clear to a cultural outsider, one has to use words that are minimally ethnocentric. This paper aims to study the multiple meanings of the word qīng, which dates back to late Shang Dynasty (1200–1050 BC), when the earliest known form of Chinese writing, the oracle bone script or characters (甲骨文, jiăgŭ wén) (Boltz 1986), was used. In addition, this paper compares the meanings of qīng with the meanings of two related colour terms lǜ (‘绿’, ‘green’) and lán (‘蓝’, ‘blue’). To avoid confusion, the authors use subscripts to represent the various meanings (e.g. qīng1 vs. qīng2). To state meaning, the authors need to use a minimally ethnocentric metalanguage and this can be found in NSM and its offshoot Minimal English. NSM consists of words and word combinations that can be found in or can be generated by all languages (Goddard 2011). On the other hand, Minimal English uses complex English words that are expected to have equivalents or near equivalents in most languages, and which are familiar to many people (Goddard 2018). In this paper, the authors use Minimal English to present statements of meanings. It is of utmost importance that a study of this nature is minimally affected by ethnocentrism, which Goddard describes as ‘the distortions that can arise when the concepts, values or practices of people of one culture are described through the prism of concepts from an alien culture’ (Goddard 2011: 14). In what follows, we discuss the meanings of qīng, lǜ and lán from Shang Dynasty to the present, in order to present the evolution of their meanings. NSM explications will mainly be presented for colour terms. For example, during the Shang Dynasty, qīng was not used as a colour term, and so no explication is presented. To capture the meaning of a colour term, we attempt to identify what Goddard (1998: 127) might call its ‘visual prototype’. For example, the visual prototype for the English word ‘blue’ might be something like ‘the sky at many times during the day when people can see the sun’ (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014, p. 5).

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Data or examples are collected from a number of sources. An important source of data is the Chinese corpus Aihanyu2 compiled by the State Language Commission of China, which includes all major Chinese literature from the Zhou Dynasty (1046 BC). Unless otherwise stated, all examples come from this corpus. Another source of data is Shuowen Jiezi (说文解字, ‘explaining text and words’), the name of which is often abbreviated to Shuowen. It is a Chinese dictionary compiled by Zhen Xu (许慎) in the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD). Although it is not the first comprehensive Chinese dictionary, it is the first that analyses the structures and organizations of Chinese characters. It is also the first dictionary that employs the method of categorising characters based on shared components, which are called radicals (部首 bùshŏu).

6.2

Shang Dynasty (1600 BC–1046 BC): Qīng and Lǜ

The Shang Dynasty is one of the earliest known dynasties in Chinese history. It is during this period when the earliest form of Chinese writing—the archaic script, also known as the ‘oracle bone inscriptions [OBI]’, was created (Boltz 1986). An oracle bone, as explained by Keightley (1996), is either a cattle scapula or a turtle plastron used for divine rituals. Although the oracle bone script is the predecessor to all subsequent forms of Chinese writing (Keightley 1996), many OBI characters have no identified descendants (Boltz 1986) and some characters have constituent parts that cannot be matched with any part in modern characters. This poses a great problem in recognising and understanding OBI characters. Fortunately, there is evidence showing that qīng can be found in the OBI, even if some studies (Fang 2009; Xu 1988) claim otherwise. According to the Chinese University of Hong Kong3 and an authoritative dictionary of OBI characters published by Shanghai University (Ma 2008), qīng only appeared once in the OBI and it looks like this:4

Ma (2008), citing Wang (1925), argues that qīng was used in combination with shì (室, ‘room’) in its only appearance in the OBI, and shì refers to ancestral halls. However, Ma (2008) suspects that qīng was the name of a specific ore during this period. Ma’s hypothesis is supported by the visual makeup of the OBI character 2

http://www.aihanyu.org/cncorpus/index.aspx. http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=%E9%9D%92. 4 http://www.vividict.com/WordInfo.aspx?id=2094. 3

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qīng. According to an Internet source, 5 it consists of two parts. The bottom part comes from the OBI character for dān (丹), which then meant ore or mine, while the upper part comes from the OBI iconic character for shēng (生), which could then mean something akin to ‘appear’, ‘produce’ or ‘extract’. Thus, qīng probably referred to ore that was extracted from a mine. Interestingly, scholars from the Chinese University of Hong Kong argue that the upper part of the icon refers to plant growth and therefore, the meaning of qīng was the colour of plants.6 However, there are two issues with this line of argument. Firstly, it ignores the bottom part of the icon, which clearly indicates qīng is related to ores and mining (Wang 2012). Secondly, although the notion of colour presumably existed in the late Shang Dynasty, qīng was not used as a colour term in this period. Wang (1996: 2; 2007: 305) identifies eight colour terms in OBI, chì (赤, ‘red’), xīng (骍, ‘red-yellow’), wù (物, ‘multicolour’), zhì (戠, ‘brown’), hēi (黑, ‘black’), yōu (幽, ‘from xuán 玄, dark-red’), and notably, qīng is not among them. This idea is consistent with Baxter’s argument that during the (earlier) Shang and Western Zhou dynasties, the five basic colour terms were bái 白 (‘white’), huáng 黄 (‘yellow’), chì 赤, zhū 朱 (both ‘red’) and xuán 玄 (which Baxter glosses as ‘dark-cool black/green/ blue’) (Baxter 1983: 1); Baxter does not include qīng. Based on the limited evidence that we could find, we believe that during the Shang Dynasty, qīng was not a colour term. Other evidence suggests that it referred to a type of ore. The specific type of ore qīng referred to is not a single mineral but a mixture of azurite (which is blue) and malachite (which is green), in Chinese, lántóngkuàng (蓝铜矿) and kŏngquèshí (孔雀石), respectively (Xu 1988). These two types of copper-containing minerals are often found together, because azurite is less stable and when exposed to air over time, it pseudomorphically transforms to malachite (Crane et al. 2001). These two minerals were used extensively in the Shang and Zhou Dynasty to produce elementary dyes (Du 1982) and smelt bronze (Xu 1988). Chunks of malachite have been found in the ruins of Shang’s bronze smelting sites, where the largest one weighing 18.8 kg was unearthed (Xu 1988). Similarly, lǜ also only appeared once in OBI and it looks like this:

(Ma

2008). Interestingly, this is the only OBI character whose context of usage is undecipherable. Therefore, it is impossible for us to study the meaning of lǜ in OBI. However, we can still study the structure of the character. The OBI character of lǜ consists of two parts: the left part is associated with sī (糸), which means threads of silk, while the right part lù (录), which decides the pronunciation of the character (Ma 2008). Another source claims that the right part represents ‘the process of drawing well water’,7 which is the meaning of lù according to a dictionary (Ma 2008). Although the meaning of the OBI character of lǜ is unknown, it was probably not used as a colour term in OBI, as it is not among the eight colour terms

5

http://www.vividict.com/WordInfo.aspx?id=2094. http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=%E9%9D%92. 7 http://www.vividict.com/WordInfo.aspx?id=1788. 6

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identified by Wang (1996, 2007). Lán is not found in the OBI, which suggests that the word did not originate in this period.

6.3

Western Zhou Dynasty (1046 BC–770 BC) and Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BC): Qīng, Lǜ and Lán

The Zhou Dynasty replaced the Shang Dynasty in 1046 BC. It is the longest dynasty in Chinese history, lasting for almost 800 years. It is divided into the Western Zhou Dynasty and the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, based on the location of its capital. In this section, we will discuss the meanings of qīng and lǜ in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Fortunately, there are more written records on Zhou Dynasty than on Shang Dynasty. The oldest existing poetry collection in China is known as 诗经 (shījīng), which contains 305 pieces of work dating from the beginning of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn period. As one of the Five Classics (五经 wŭ jīng), the collection has been read and studied by scholars for the past two thousand years. It is the main source of reference for this section of our study on the meanings of qīng, lǜ and lán in the Western Zhou Dynasty and the Spring and Autumn period. Scholars are divided as to when qīng became a colour term. Xu (1988) conjectures that qīng became a colour term in as early as the Shang Dynasty, which is not consistent with Wang’s (1996, 2007) arguments. As discussed, we believe that qīng referred to azurite and malachite ore in the Shang Dynasty. However, from existing written records, it would appear that both qīng and lǜ were used as colour terms in the Western Zhou Dynasty. We hypothesise that when qīng was first used as a colour term, it referred to the range of colours between green and blue, which corresponds to the colour of the mixture of azurite and malachite; this mixture can appear in a range of colours from green to blue depending on the proportion of the two minerals in the mixture. If azurite is the dominant mineral, the colour of the mixture leans towards blue, and if malachite, green. This suggests that there was a time in history when Chinese people did not see the need to distinguish between what contemporary English speakers call ‘green’ and ‘blue’ (Zhao 2012). It is difficult to formulate a statement of meaning for qīng associated with the early Western Zhou dynasty partly because neither the colour of azurite or malachite can be easily explicated. Moreover, it is not known how Chinese people of those days referred to azurite and malachite (or if even they considered them different minerals). We will thus use lántóngkuàng (‘azurite’) and kŏngquèshí (‘malachite’) to represent the Chinese terms used then, whatever they might be. The word ‘colour’ will also be used as a semantic molecule, assuming for now that it has the same meaning as the Chinese sè (色). This meaning of ‘colour’ has been described by Wierzbicka (2005: 229), which is presented below.

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[A] colour (of something) = A kind of thing that people can know about things. When a person sees something at a time when people can see things well, this person can know something of this kind about this thing because of this. If a person wants someone else to know the same kind of thing about it, this person can say something like this: ‘People can see something like this when they see something else. I can say what.’

Now, we present a tentative statement of meaning for qīng in the early stage of the Western Zhou Dynasty on the basis of our discussion. We assume that to understand a colour term, one has to understand the meaning of the equivalent of ‘colour’ in the language in question. [B] The colour of X is qīng = People think about the colour of X like this: ‘It can be like the colour of lántóngkuàng (‘azurite’). At the same time, it can be like the colour of kŏngquèshí (‘malachite’).’

The character lán (‘blue’ in contemporary Chinese) appeared in shījīng, which suggests that it was in use in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Interestingly, according to the Chinese corpus Aihanyu8, it only appeared once in Shijing. Evidence suggests that it was originally used to refer to a type of plant commonly known as indigo plant (Franck 2002; Legge 1871), and was not used as a colour term until a few hundred years later. According to Xu (1988), it is recorded in Dà Dài Lĭjì (大戴礼 记), a book written at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, that the Chinese started growing indigo plants (i.e. lán) in the Xia Dynasty (2070 BC–1600 BC). Here is an example of how it was used to refer to the plant. 终朝采蓝, 不盈一襜 (‘All the morning I gather the indigo plant, And do not collect enough to fill my apron’) (Legge 1871: 412) (Lesser Court Hymns (小雅 xiăoyă), 9th to 8th century BC, (Dobson 1964))

Apparently, the sap of the plant, acquired by squeezing it, could be used to dye textile (Du 1982). Xu (1988) explains that the colour of the sap resembles what qīng represents, which is blue with a tinge of green. Thus, the colour of the dye was called qīng (see Sect. 4). Because of this, we posit that, in the later part of this period, the meaning qīng underwent a change and began to split into two; the word could refer to either a colour close to green (only when referring to living things) or a colour close to dark blue (only when referring to non-living things). In order to distinguish these two

8

http://www.aihanyu.org/cncorpus/index.aspx.

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different meanings, we now use qīng1 when it refers to what seems to be green, and qīng2 when it refers to what seems to be dark blue (i.e. the colour of the dye that comes from the sap of the indigo plant). While it seems both qīng1 and lǜ meant something very similar to the meaning of the English colour term ‘green’ and there were overlaps in their ranges of use, qīng1 was mainly used to describe the colour of plants and animals while lǜ could be used to describe the colour of plants and clothes (Xu 1988). Below are some examples from Shījing. 瞻彼淇奥, 绿竹青青 (‘Look at banks of the meandering river Qi. The green bamboos are qīng1 (‘green and lush’)!’) (Airs of the States9 (国风 guó fēng), 8th to 7th century BC, (Dobson 1964))

In this last example, both lǜ and qīng1 are used to describe the colour of bamboo. It is like saying ‘lǜ bamboos are qīng1’ (where both are colour terms). However, it noted that lǜ could be used to refer to the green colour of fabric, as the example below shows. 绿兮衣兮, 绿衣黄裳 ‘lǜ (‘green’) top and yellow bottom!’ (Airs of the States (国风 guófēng), 8th to 7th century BC, (Dobson 1964))

There is no evidence to suggest that qīng1 could be used to refer to the green colour of someone’s clothes. Evidence suggests that during this time (Western Zhou, Spring and Autumn), it mainly referred to the colour green on plants, in particular grass and leaves. Below is an example. The plant in question is probably Bignonia grandiflora, which is also known as the Chinese trumpet vine10. In this example, qīng1 refers to the colour of its leaves. 苕之华, 其叶青青 (‘The flowers of the bignonia [are gone]; [There are only] its leaves all-green’) (Legge 1871: 423) (Lesser Court Hymns (小雅 xiăoyă), 9th to 8th century BC, (Dobson 1964))

There is another example from the Classic of Mountains and Seas11 (山海经), which is a collection of Chinese mythologies from the fourth century BC to the second century BC. The example also shows that qing1 refers to the colour of leaves. 有木, 青叶紫茎 (‘a plant that has qīng1 (‘green’) leaves and purple stems’)

Interestingly, according to Shuowen, qīng is the colour of the east. However, this statement regarding qīng is vague and mythical, because it implies that east has a colour. Then again, some sources (Fang 2009; Gao and Shen 2013; Xin 2012) claim that the direction east corresponds to spring, which is the season of growth 9

https://ctext.org/book-of-poetry/lessons-from-the-states. http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200021392. 11 https://ctext.org/shan-hai-jing. 10

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and life. The word qīng could thus be associated with the colour of thriving plants. On the basis of this line of argument and the examples studied, we now propose that the meaning of qīng1 may be represented in this way (in Chinese and English): [C] The colour of X is qīng1 = X是有生命的东西 人们这么想X的颜色: ‘有一些地方有很多水 X的颜色就像生长在这种地方的草的颜色, X的颜色就像生长在这种地方的叶子的颜色’ X is a living thing = People think about the colour of X like this: ‘In some places there is a lot of water. The colour of X is like the colour of grass that grows in a place like this. It is like the colour of leaves that grow in a place like this.’

On the basis of limited evidence, we propose that the meaning of lǜ during this period was close to that of ‘green’. However, as implied by a definition in Shuowen, lù includes huáng, which is yellow: 緑, 帛靑黃色也。从糸, 彔聲 (‘Lǜ is textile that displays a colour made by mixing yellow and qīng. The character is derived from a character that means ‘threads of silk’, and its pronunciation comes from lu.)

Admittedly, in this definition, lǜ refers to textile. However, an example from a poem written in the same period12 suggests that it was also used as a colour term. 回风动地起, 秋草萋已绿 (‘The strong wind is whirling, [and] the once thriving grass has become lǜ’ in autumn’)

The example implies that lǜ ranged from what we now call green to the colour of leaves that are withering (usually interpreted as yellow). Secondly, as mentioned, it could refer to non-living things, like clothes; Baxter similarly says that it ‘refers to clothing’ (Baxter 1983: 9). We thus propose that the meaning of lǜ could be represented in this way: [D] The colour of X is lǜ = 人们这么想X的颜色: ‘X的颜色就像草的颜色, X的颜色就像叶子的颜色’

‘Nineteen Old Poems’ (‘古诗十九首’): https://zh.wikisource.org/zh/%E5%8F%A4%E8%A9% A9%E5%8D%81%E4%B9%9D%E9%A6%96. 12

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People think about the colour of X like this: ‘It is like the colour of grass. It is like the colour of leaves.’

However, by semantic extension, the word qīng1 (but not lǜ) could be used to describe the colour of animals. Here is an example. 营营青蝇, 止于樊 (‘They buzz about, the blue (qīng) flies, Lighting on the fences’) (Legge 1871: 394) (Lesser Court Hymns (小雅 xiăoyă), 9th to 8th century BC, (Dobson 1964))

In this example, qīng is probably used to refer to the colour of a fly (qīngyíng). It is interesting to note that Legge (1871) translated qīng to ‘blue’, while Baxter refers to it as ‘grue fly’ (Baxter 1983: 10). Unfortunately, Legge does not explain why he calls 青蝇 (qīngyíng) ‘blue fly’, although he cites a source that says that ‘the fly in the text dirties what is white, and makes it black’ (Legge 1871: 394), which does not explain much. On the other hand, several other scholars (Xiao 2011; Xu 1988) believe that qīng referred to green in this case. Xiao (2011) cites Xu (2006) and Gao et al. (2005) to argue that the qīng flies mentioned here are known as Chrysomya megacephala, which is commonly known as ‘green-headed fly’ (绿头大苍蝇) in modern Chinese. We agree with Xu (1988) and Xiao (2011) and believe qīng (which is qīng1) here refers to green instead of blue or dark blue. Also, as discussed, in the same period, qīng (qīng2) could also refer to what we now call dark blue (noting at the same time that translator Legge used the term ‘blue’, not ‘dark blue’), as the following example also demonstrates. 青青子衿, 悠悠我心 (‘O you, with the blue (qīng) collar, Prolonged is the anxiety of my heart’) (Legge 1871: 144) (Airs of the States (国风 guófēng), 8th to 7th century BC, (Dobson 1964))

The meaning of qīng2, as well as its relationship with lán, is discussed in the next section.

6.4

Warring States Period (战国时代) (475–221 BC)

The Warring States period began in 476 BC according to Sima Qian, who documented this period in the Records of the Grand Historian (史记 shľjί).13 It would appear that this period witnessed the coinage of the most famous saying involving qīng2 and lán, a phrase that has undoubtedly confused many Chinese learners as

13

https://ctext.org/shiji/zhs.

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well as younger native speakers from China in years to come. The phrase supports the argument that lán originally referred to the indigo plant, while qīng2 referred to the colour of the dye made from the sap of indigo plants. It is from Xunzi (荀子)14, a collection of essays written by Confucian philosopher Xunzi: 青, 取之于蓝, 而青于蓝 (‘Qīng is a colour extracted from lán, but it is darker (more qīng2) than lán’) (3rd century BC)

Baxter translates the saying as ‘Qing is obtained from the indigo plant, but is more qing than the indigo plant’ (Baxter 1983: 9), which clarifies that lán was not a colour term then. Evidence that lán originally referred to a plant also comes from Shuowen, which presented the following definition: 蓝, 染靑艸也。从艸, 監聲。

(‘Lán is a plant that dyes other objects to the colour of qīng2. The character comes from the character that means ‘grass’, and the pronunciation comes from jiān.’) As for qīng2, one could refer to the Book of Rites (礼记), one of the ‘Five Classics’ of Confucian literature allegedly compiled by the Confucius15, for an example: 具父母, 衣纯以青 ‘If both of one’s parents are alive, one should wear clothes that have qīng coloured linings.’

It would seem that the meaning of qīng2 referred to the colour of the dye that comes from the sap of the indigo plant or, in other words, dark blue; our argument is that if the colour referred to was green, the character would have been lǜ, not qīng2. To state the meaning of the colour term qīng2, one would thus need to use lán (the indigo plant) as the visual prototype. In what follows, we present the meanings of lán and qīng2 in Warring States period. [E] lán = 有生命的东西 它是从某些地方的地上长出来 它里面有很多像水的东西 人们会这么想这些像水的东西: ‘这些像水的东西的颜色很深, 人们可以用它来染衣服’

14

https://ctext.org/xunzi. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Liji.

15

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A living thing. It grows out of the ground in some places. There is a lot of something like water inside it. People think about this something like this: ‘The colour of this something is dark. People can use it to dye clothes.’

[F] The colour of X is qīng2 = X不是活的 人们这么想X的颜色: 这个颜色像蓝里面一些像水的东西的颜色’ ‘

X is not a living thing. People think about the colour of X like this: ‘It is like the colour of something like water inside lán.’

It should be noted that although qīng2 is no longer freely in use in contemporary Mandarin, it can be found in some compounds, such as 靛青 (diànqīng, ‘indigo blue’), 藏青 (zàngqīng, ‘navy blue’), and perhaps most revealingly, 青花瓷 (qīnghuācí, ‘qīng flower porcelain’, ‘blue-and-white ware’16), all of which make reference to dark or darker shades of blue. These compounds ‘preserve’ the meaning of qīng2 until this day. Interestingly, there is evidence to suggest that during this period, the use of qīng1 was extended. While previously it was used mainly to refer to the colour green on living things, it was now also used to describe the colour of jade, which is usually green. Jade was an important cultural artefact in ancient China; it was a symbol of status in various social settings. Jade is usually dark green with a tinge of blue. Probably because qīng1 originally referred to a type of ore that had similar colours, when describing the colour of jade, it could be used. Here is an example from Lǚshì Chūnqīu (吕氏春秋), which is ‘a compendium of folklore and pseudoscientific and Daoist writings’. It shows that qīng could be used to refer to the colour of jade.17 载青旗, 衣青衣, 服青玉 ‘(A king’s chariot should be) equipped with a qīng (‘indigo’) flag, and he should wear qīng (‘indigo’) clothes with qīng (‘green’) jade.’

This example is particularly interesting as the form qīng here refers to two distinct colours, indigo and green. The same form qīng is used in phrases that mean ‘indigo flag’, ‘indigo clothes’ and ‘green jade’. It could not have been ‘green flag’ and ‘green clothes’; one would not use qīng then to refer to green clothes but, as the reader might recall, lǜ instead. In short, during that time, blue clothes were ‘qīng’,

16

https://www.britannica.com/art/blue-and-white-ware. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lu-Buwei#ref284675.

17

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green jade was also ‘qīng’, but green clothes were ‘lǜ’. It is thus of little wonder that contemporary Mandarin learners are confused

6.5

Three Kingdoms (三国), Jin (晋) and Northern and Southern (南北朝) (220–589 AD) and Beyond: Qīng, Lǜ and Lán

After around four hundred years of stability brought about by the Han Dynasty, China was once again divided. Shortly after the Three Kingdoms period (220– 280 AD) was ended by Jin’s conquest, northern China was invaded by what was then called the five tribes of barbarians (五胡乱华). This was followed by a chaotic period, marked by interstate wars and rebellions. Subsequently, China entered a period called Northern and Southern Dynasties (420–589 AD). During all these turbulent periods, the meanings of all the three words underwent semantic change. Lán emerged as a colour term. During this time, it would appear that lán and qīng2 had the same meaning (i.e. indigo) (Xu 1988). The NSM explication of lán will not be given here because it is presumed to be the same as qīng2. It was also during this period that an interesting use of the word qīng emerged. The word was used to represent black. Let us call it qīng3. It was first used in combination with 眼 (eye, yăn) and 丝 (silk, sī) (Xu 1988). Below is an example from the Book of Jin (晋书),18 which is a historical text about the Jin Dynasty: 籍又能为青白眼。见礼俗之士以白眼对之 (‘Ji Ruan can look at a person with qīng3 eyes [‘looking straight at a person, showing respect’] or with white eyes [‘turning eyes away from the person, showing disrespect or contempt’]. When he sees people with herd mentality, he treats them with white eyes.’)

In this example, the eyes are described by two colour terms, qīng3 and bái (‘white’). Báiyăn (‘white eyes’) refers to the act of turning one’s eyes away from someone by looking upwards or sideways (without moving the head) to show contempt, and when this happens, more of the white parts of the eyeballs are visible (Xu 1988). By contrast, qīng3yăn refers to the act of looking straight at someone, which means that the black pupils are fully visible (Xu 1988). Therefore, it may be concluded that qīng3 refers to the colour black in this example. Because qīng3 yăn implies respect, subsequent compounds involving qīng3 that emerged, such as 青目 (qīng3 mù, ‘black eyes (eyeballs)’), 垂青 (chuí qīng, ‘think highly of’), also imply some form or respect (Xu 1988). Consider a line from a poem by Li (李白 Lĭ Bái) entitled ‘Bring in the Wine’ (将进酒 qiāng jìn jiŭ), written in the eighth century AD:

18

https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=788577&remap=gb.

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君不见高堂明镜悲白发, 朝如青丝暮成雪 (‘Can’t you see that your parents are grieving because of their white hair in front of the mirror. Their hair was qīng3 (‘black’) in the morning but turned white in the evening [figuratively].’)

Li, arguably the most celebrated poet in Chinese history, used qīng3 sī (‘qīng3 strands of silk’) to refer to black hair. Xu (1988) points out that Li Bai used qīng to show affection and respect. When referring to black hair without any emotional attachment, the norm is to use the phrase 黑发 (hēi fà). For example, in the Book of Jin, the author consistently used hēi fà to contrast bái fà (‘white hair’, 白发). However, according to Zhu (2012), some authors use qīng instead of hēi (‘black’) because hēi was associated with death. It was inauspicious to use hēi, so people used qīng instead. Furthermore, it should be noted that, previously, the character qīng enjoyed positive connotations. This could be inferred from the example regarding a king’s chariot presented above. Kings were supposed to wear qīng2 (‘indigo/dark blue’) clothes and qīng1 (‘green’) jade. However, in the period under discussion, due to social instability, people disliked black because it reminded them of darkness, wars and horror (Gao and Shen 2013). We thus hypothesise that this led people to avoid the word hēi and use qīng3 as a euphemism. In literary works, authors often referred to a woman’s black hair poetically as qīng3sī. Thus, we may conclude that qīng3 could be used to refer to black in this period. We now present a cultural script to represent this use. [G] Cultural script on the use of ‘qīng3’ 有些时候, 人们想这么说, ‘这个东西的颜色是黑色’ 于此同时, 人们不想说“黑”这个字 因为他们这么想: 如果我说这个字, 会有不好的事情发生, 别人听到了会有不好的感觉 因此, 他们说另一个字, 这个字是 ‘青’ 当他们想说 ‘这个东西的颜色是黑色’, 他们会这么说 ‘这个东西的颜色是青色’ 别人能知道他们想要说什么, 因为他们知道那是什么东西。

Sometimes, people want to say something like, ‘This colour of this thing is hēi.’ At the same time, they don’t want to say the word ‘hēi’. This is because they think like this: ‘Something bad can happen if I say this word. Other people will feel something bad if they hear this word.’ Because of this, they say it with another word. The word is ‘qīng’. They say something like ‘The colour of this thing is qīng’ when they want to say ‘The colour of this thing is hēi ‘. Other people can know what they want to say because these other people know what that something is.

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Ironically, we believe that consequently qīng acquired negative connotations that were once associated with hēi. We further hypothesise that, subsequently, history saw the decline in the use of the character qīng, which resulted in the rise of the status of lǜ. In fact, by the Tang Dynasty, the status of lǜ was already above that of qīng. This could be seen in government officers’ dress code. According to a source (Gao and Shen 2013), sixth and seventh ranked officers wore lǜ, whereas lower, eighth and ninth ranked officers wore qīng2. Moreover, the compound 青楼 qīng lóu, previously used to mean ornate mansions of rich families, now referred to brothels. Interestingly, Xu (1988) notices that from this period, lǜ could be used to refer to darker green too. According to the same author, when used to refer to the colours of natural things, lǜ and qīng1 gradually acquired the same range of reference. Presumably, lǜ started to lose its meaning of yellow. In other words, lǜ was used to refer to all things that were green, which is also its contemporary meaning; it is not used contemporarily to refer to the colour of withering grass anymore.

6.6

Ming Dynasty (1388–1644 AD) to Present: Qīng and Lán

From Ming Dynasty, novels were normally written in Vernacular Chinese (白话 文), in contrast to Literary Chinese (文言文). Xu (1988) confirms that since the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279 AD), people increasingly used lán to replace qīng2 in Vernacular Chinese to refer to the colour of dark blue textiles. Since lán became the common word to represent dark or indigo blue in Vernacular Chinese, qīng2 started to lose its meaning of ‘blue’ (Xu 1988). Xu (1988) contends that from the Ming Dynasty, the meaning of qīng2 was changed from blue to black. He presents the example of hēiqīng2 (黑青, ‘black qīng2’, which can be used to refer to the colour of a bruise, sometimes called a ‘black and blue mark’ in English19,20) and mòqīng2 (墨青, ‘ink qīng2’), both of which are colour terms. He believes that since qīng is modified by hēi (‘black’) and mò (‘ink’, which is black), it means black. However, we do not fully agree with Xu; we do not think qīng2 lost the meaning of ‘indigo blue’ in such compounds. We hypothesise that in Ming and later periods, the form qīng was used in combination with other colour or non-colour terms to refer to various shades of dark blue—such as diànqīng (靛青, literally ‘indigo qīng2’), 藏青 (zàngqīng, literally ‘Tibetan qīng2’, ‘dark/navy blue’) and 群青 (qúnqīng, where qún is a colour term; ‘ultramarine’ according to Internet sources21,22). The meanings of these combinatorial colour words are in some instances dictated by the character in front of qīng. For instance, diànqīng means indigo, 19

https://www.healthline.com/health/bruise. https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/guide/bruises-article#1. 21 https://fanyi.baidu.com/?aldtype=85&keyfrom=alading&mod=oxford#en/zh/ultramarine. 22 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/ultramarine. 20

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which is the meaning of diàn itself. However, during the Ming Dynasty or later, the meaning of lán expanded to include other shades of blue and so lán replaced qīng2 as a free word (not as part of a compound) to mean ‘blue’. We think that it is also possible that the semantic change coincided with the introduction of English into China. According to one source, English ‘has had a lengthy, complicated and often forgotten history that began in the early seventeenth century’ (Bolton and Graddol 2012: 4), which was just a few hundred years after the Ming Dynasty. Interestingly, despite the semantic change in Vernacular Chinese, the meaning of qīng2 remained unchanged in Literary Chinese, the official written form. Xu (1988) explains that this is because qīng2 was one of the five pure colours in ancient Chinese (i.e. Spring Autumn and Warring States period). There is also evidence to suggest that, in Literary Chinese during this period, while qīng2 referred to indigo, lán referred to lighter versions of blue. This difference can be illustrated by a phrase from the Book of Qīng: qīngchòu lányuàn (青绸蓝缘, ‘qīng2 silk with lán hem’), where qīng refers to indigo or dark blue and lán a non-dark version of blue. Qīng2 and lán were considered different colours (Xu 1988). Now, very few Mandarin speakers, native or otherwise, use the form qīng to refer to dark blue in everyday speech.

6.7

Present Day

In the present day, qīng can also be used as a non-colour term (but its origins will not be discussed). Common examples include qīngtiān (青天, ‘qīng sky’) and qīngyún (青云, ‘qīng clouds’). Wang (2006) argues that qīng is not a colour term in these phrases but means something like ‘sky’. We agree with Wang that qīng is not a colour term in such compounds but think that it implies something that is visibly very high above us. Qīngyún refers to clouds high up in the sky and qīngtiān to the sky on a clear day. Of course, it is too tempting to think that qīngtiān refers to blue sky. After all, a clear sky on a sunny day is usually blue. However, we maintain that qīng in this compound does not mean ‘blue’. We now present the meaning of qīng in such combinations. [H] qīng X (sky, cloud) = People think about X like this: ‘X is somewhere very far above us. When someone sees X now, this someone can see it well, like people can see something somewhere far well because the sun is above them.’

This is an interesting development. What began as a non-colour term lost its non-colour meaning, acquired meanings associated with colours, but finally acquired another non-colour meaning. The processes took place over hundreds and thousands of years.

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Table 6.1 Table of summary of the meanings of the word forms qīng, lǜ and lán (from Shang to the present) Period

qīng (青)

lǜ (绿)

lán (蓝)

Shang (1600 BC–1046 BC) Early Western Zhou (Western Zhou: 1046 BC–220 AD) Late Western Zhou to Han

(Ore) a mixture of azurite and malachite, in Chinese, lántóngkuàng (蓝铜矿) and kŏngquèshí (孔雀石) A range of colours from green to blue, corresponding to the colour of the azurite-malachite mixture (used to refer to textiles, among other things)

Meaning cannot be determined

NA

Same as above

NA

Three Kingdoms to Yuan (220 AD–1368 AD) Ming to the present (1368 AD to now)

6.7.1

qīng1: Colour of fresh, healthy grass and leaves (used mainly to refer to plants and by extension animals and jade) qīng1: qīng2: Same Same as as above above

qīng2: Colour of the sap of the indigo plant (i.e. dark or indigo blue)

Colour of grass and leaves ranging from green to yellow (used to refer to living things and fabric)

(Plant) indigo plant

qīng3: Black

Colour green.

Same as qīng2

qīng1: Same as above

qīng3: Same as above (poetically or literarily)

Same as above

Colour blue

qīng2: Same as above (poetically or literarily)

Table of Summary

Table 6.1 presents a summary of the meanings of the three word-forms from the Shang Dynasty until now that are the objects of this study. Unless otherwise stated, the meaning refers to a colour.

6.8

Discussion and Conclusion

In this section, we present a summary of our findings, several implications and some limitations.

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Implications

Hopefully, this study can help us better understand the confusion that has arisen from these words—for example how qīng could refer to a wide range of colours from green to dark blue and black. Readers will hopefully be in a better position to understand what certain literary texts mean, especially phrases in which the same word refers to different colours, such as 载青旗, 衣青衣, 服青玉 (‘(A king’s chariot should be) equipped with an indigo flag, and he should wear indigo clothes with green jade’). Among other things, the study helps us understand the ethnocentrism inherent in some opinion pieces regarding colours. An article published in Business Insider makes the following claim: ‘…ancient languages did not have a word for blue — not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew. And without a word for the colour, there is evidence that they may not have seen it at all’ (Loria 2015). This study suggests that such a claim may be untrue and ethnocentric. It is not true that ancient Chinese people could not differentiate between green and blue; this study suggests that, at some stage, they could. Over two thousand years ago, Chinese did have a term for dark blue, qīng2, even if the range of reference did not coincide with that associated with the contemporary meaning of the English word ‘blue’. They also had a term for lǜ (‘green’). The crux of the matter is that different languages organise the colour spectrum differently and there is no reason to accept that the English way of seeing colours is the most objective or logical. Saying that some ancient languages did not have a word for blue is simply seeing the past through contemporary Anglo lens. A hypothetical ancient Chinese person who could time travel to the present day would probably say that English does not have a word for qīng2. The paper shows additionally that colour terms from different languages which refer to similar colours can have different meanings. For example, the Russian colour term sinij (‘dark blue’) (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014, p. 4) and qīng2 presumably have very similar ranges of reference. However, they have different meanings because they are associated with different visual prototypes—the night sky for sinij (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014) versus the sap of the indigo plant for qīng2. These two words are thus conceptually different, even if their ranges of reference are similar. This paper is useful to readers of literary works written or set in the past. It can help modern non-native Chinese speakers (e.g. Singaporean Chinese), many of whom associate qīng with green, understand that it could mean ‘dark blue’ in the past, or ‘black’, depending on what it refers to. It helps them understand that ‘qīng sky’ in Chinese does not mean ‘green sky’ or ‘blue sky’ but (roughly) ‘clear, visible sky’. Above all, it helps Chinese learners understand that the form qīng as a visual term could refer to a number of visual properties, including colours, and not just green. In this way, they will not interpret all instances of qīng as green. This study is especially important in non-native Mandarin-speaking places where Mandarin is an official or otherwise important language, such as Singapore. In Singapore

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Mandarin, many meanings of which have been shaped by English, qīng has the same range of reference as the English word ‘green’; the word lǜ (‘green’ in Standard Mandarin’) is uncommonly used.

6.8.2

Limitations and Conclusion

This study is not meant to be exhaustive. There are meanings of the word form qīng which are not described here, such as that which is similar to the meaning of ‘turquoise’. In the compound qīngyī (青衣, ‘green clothes’) found in literature, qīng could refer to different colours depending on who the wearer is. If it was a man, it would usually be sombre ‘dark blue’ but if it was a young woman, then the meaning is probably something akin to ‘turquoise’. In fact, qīngyī refers to certain virtuous female characters in Northern Chinese operas who characteristically don turquoise coloured clothes.23 There are also other combinations that are not described in this paper, such as qīnglóng (青龙, ‘qīng dragon’), qīngmiàn shòu (青面兽, ‘qīng-faced beast’), qīngfēng jiàn (青锋剑, ‘qīng-edged sword’), qīngfēng (青风, ‘qīng wind’), and qīngxié (青鞋, ‘qīng shoes’), which this paper does not address. Many Mandarin speakers, including native speakers born and bred in China, do not seem to have a clear understanding of some of these terms. For example, neither of the authors, one of whom speaks Mandarin with native speaker competence, and the other as a second language, did not know that ‘qīng shoes’ refers to shoes woven from grass before they embarked on this study. Another challenge comes from the sources. Some authors do not use the colour terms consistently. Some of them seem to be confused about the older and contemporary meanings. Most of them do not posit polysemy like we do, giving the impression that Chinese people in the distant past did not see what we now consider green and blue as different colours. Most do not make a difference between colour and non-colour terms, as when ‘light-warm’ and ‘dark-cool’ are given colour interpretations; Baxter, for example, glosses them as ‘white/red/yellow’ and ‘black/ green/blue’ respectively (Baxter 1983: 3). Evidence is also not always available, especially because of the lack of proper documentation during the various dynasties. As a result, we have made some claims on the basis of modest evidence. For example, while we believe that the contemporary of lán is shaped by the English ‘blue’, we do not have strong evidence for it. Consequently, further study to confirm our initial findings is needed. Nevertheless, we believe that this study is a good starting point for future study for two reasons. Firstly, it uses the NSM methodology, and thus we can at least begin to understand past meanings from the perspective of the speakers of those times, rather than from the perspective of modern English or Chinese. Secondly, it

23

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%9D%92%E8%A1%A3/53451.

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raises awareness that a colour term can be polysemous. The form qīng is a good case in point as it can refer to a range of colours (green, dark blue, black) and non-colour visual properties. It is hoped that this study will spark interest in the study of ancient Chinese colour terms in particular and ancient colour terms in general, which will tell us more about how the worlds of colours in various cultures have evolved and perhaps converged. Acknowledgements We are indebted to Daron Benjamin Loo for his editorial assistance. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

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Li, Q. (2017). Cultural connotations and English translations of qing, one of the Chinese color words. Journal of Shenzhen Polytechnic, 4, 35–39. Li, X. (2014). Color words between English and Chinese. In D. Howard, T. Volodina, Y. Zhang, & R. Green (Eds.), International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Intercultural Communication (ICELAIC 2014) (pp. 707–710). Paris: Atlantis Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/ icelaic-14.2014.186. Lin, X. (2014). 浅论“青天”及《故都的秋》中“碧绿的天色” (A brief discussion on qingtian and “green sky” in “autumn in the old capital”). Secondary School Curriculum Counseling Teaching Forum Magazine, 2, 59–60. Loria, K. (2015). No one could describe the color ‘blue’ until modern times. Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2. Accessed 11 May 2019. Ma, R. (2008). 殷墟甲骨文实用字典 (A useful dictionary of the oracle bone inscriptions found in the ruins of the Shang Dynasty). Shanghai: 上海大学出版社 (Shanghai University Press). Wang, C. (2012). Study on the family of cyan color terms in Shuowen Jiezi. Master’s Thesis, Xiang Tan University. Wang, Q. (2006). “青云”系列中的“青”是颜色词吗 (Is qing in the Qing Yun Series a color term?). Journal of Weinan Teachers College, 21(4), 40–41. Wang, T. (1996). Colour terms in Shang oracle bone inscriptions. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 59(1), 63–101. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00028561. Wang, T. (2007). Shang ritual animals: Colour and meaning (Part 1). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 70(2), 305–372. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X07000444. Wang, X. (1925). 簠室殷契征文 (Fu shi yin qi zheng wen). Tianjin: Tianjin Museum. Wierzbicka, A. (2005). There are no “color universals” but there are universals of visual semantics. Anthropological Linguistics, 47(2), 217–244. Wierzbicka, A. (2008). Why there are no ‘colour universals’ in language and thought. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, N.S. 14, 407–425. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655. 2008.00509.x. Wierzbicka, A. (2013). Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199321490.001.0001. Xiao, S. (2011). 先秦“青”色考. 第五届全国高校美术史学年会会议论文集. Xiao, S., Wu, J., & Zhang, Y. (2011). Hue of five pure colors in Pre-Chin Era. Journal of Tianjin University (Social Sciences), 13(3), 265–267. Xin, H. (2012). 关于汉语颜色词“青”的语义文化探析 (Analysing the semantics of the Chinese color term qing). Modern Chinese, 1, 138–139. Xing, J. Z. (2008). Studies of Chinese linguistics: Functional approaches. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Xu, C. (1988). 析“青”作为颜色词的内涵及其演变 [Analysis of the meaning and evolution of qing as a colour term]. Nankai Journal (Philosophy, Literature and Social Science Edition), 34 (6), 33–39. Xu, D. (2006). 毛诗名物图说. 清华大学出版社. Xu, J. (1994). 说“正色” ──《说文》颜色词考察 (Talking about “pure colours”: Investigating colour terms in Shuowen). 古汉语研究 (Research on Ancient Chinese), S1, 5–7. Zhao, X. (2012). The color category of qing (青) of Chinese language in cross-linguistic perspective. Research in Ancient Chinese Language, 3, 73–79. Zhu, X. (2012). 论汉语颜色词”青” (On the Chinese colour term qing). Modern Chinese, 11, 27– 28.

Jiashu Tao is currently an undergraduate at the National University of Singapore. He is pursuing double Honours in mathematics and computer science. His research interests include machine learning and artificial intelligence. He is also interested in Chinese semantics.

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Jock Wong is a lecturer at the National University of Singapore. He teaches semantics and academic writing. His research interests include Singapore English linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, intercultural communication, academic writing and language pedagogy. His publications include the monograph The culture of Singapore English (2014).

Chapter 7

Semantic Challenges in Understanding Global English: Hypothesis, Theory, and Proof in Singapore English Jock Wong

Abstract Since the 1980s, the Singapore government has relentlessly, and with some level of success, promoted the use of English among Singaporeans. Many younger people now use English at home and as their dominant language and have no problem pursuing a basic university degree, locally or overseas, using English. However, while there is evidence to suggest that the ‘well-educated’ variety of Singapore English is mutually intelligible with other varieties of Standard English, numerous studies have shown that many Singaporeans speak a variety of English that is distinct from Standard English. Singapore English (or ‘Singlish’) is shaped by Singapore culture and exhibits linguistic elements of that culture. Given that many Singaporeans speak Singapore English on an everyday basis, one wonders how proficient they truly are in Standard English. Indeed, some ‘educated’ Singaporeans, including university students, understand words often used in the academic context (like hypothesis, theory, and proof) differently from native Standard (Anglo) English users. This raises two questions. Are Singapore university students semantically challenged in Standard English? If so, what can be done to address this problem? One objective of this study is to examine Singapore university students’ understanding of several words that are important in Standard English. A further objective is to use Minimal English (ME) to explain the meaning of four Standard English words used in academic writing, hypothesis, theory, prove, and proof, and to show that ME can be used as a language pedagogic tool. Keywords Hypothesis Singapore English


Theory
Prove
Proof
First language
Dialects


J. Wong (&) National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_7

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Introduction

Presumably, ‘Global English’ is expected to be a kind of English that English speakers from all cultures can understand. However, it is conceptually vague, perhaps primarily because it ‘means different things to different peoples, societies, and cultures’ (Payack 2008: 21). In fact, it might even mean different things to different individuals. However, it is presumed that Global English essentially refers to Anglo English or inner circle English and is given the title ‘Global’ because it has become, to borrow Payack’s words (2008: XIV), ‘the language of global discourse, commerce, science, entertainment, and communications’. Nevertheless, because Global English is supposed to be a form of Anglo English, its usefulness or even relevance may be questionable in many non-Anglo English cultural contexts, such as Singapore. In Singapore, people use a common, usually colloquial, variety of Singapore English to communicate with fellow Singaporeans, and studies have shown that this common variety of Singapore English, known as ‘Singlish’, is culturally distinct from Anglo English (Wierzbicka 2003; Wong 2014). This means that if one takes a cultural interpretation and argues that language and culture are inextricably linked, Singlish could be considered a different language from English as we know it. Perhaps because of this and other related reasons, the Singapore government is bent on eliminating Singlish. They consider Singlish, among other things, ‘bad English’ and thus discourage Singaporeans from using it, even at home. Their idea is that Singlish is an obstacle interfering with the learning of Standard English or ‘internationally acceptable English’,1 a variety of English that has global implications because it serves important purposes such as national development and international communications. Standard English is the variety of English that the Singapore government promotes through various bodies, such as its Ministry of Education (MOE). An example of a government-supported movement to promote the use of Good English (where the term ‘Good English’ is a synonym for ‘Standard English’ in the Singaporean context) is the ‘Speak Good English Movement’, or SGEM. SGEM has a website2 detailing, among other things, what Standard English is about and how to promote it to children. The government’s stand that Standard English is important is well taken and their concern that Singaporeans are not learning Standard English is perhaps not unfounded. However, it does not follow that the more standard variety of Singapore English used by Singaporeans as a result of the government’s efforts may be considered Global English. It is noted that the objective of the SGEM is to ‘encourage Singaporeans to speak grammatically correct English that is universally understood’. The emphasis on ‘grammatically correct English’ or grammar, and not 1

As it is referred to for instance in documents released by the English Unit of the Curriculum Planning and Development Division of Singapore’s Ministry of Education (cf. Ministry of Education 2010: 7). 2 http://www.goodenglish.org.sg/.

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meaning, seems clear, even though meaning is what language is primarily about (Wierzbicka 1996). If Singaporean speakers of ‘English’ do not pay sufficient attention to meaning, how can they hope to say things that are always ‘universally understood’? Ironically, the Singapore government itself does not always use Standard English meanings in its official discourse: they use certain Standard English words, such as race, dialect, and first language, and associate them with non-standard meanings. In Singapore, one’s race is considered an important aspect of one’s identity and every citizen is officially assigned a race. For example, Indians are officially and racially ‘Indian’. However, studies have shown that they do not constitute a race (Basu et al. 2003) and that, in fact, India is racially diverse (Meena 2015): there is no such thing as an Indian race. Also, in Singapore, there can be double-barrelled race classifications, as one could be declared a ‘Caucasian Chinese’ or ‘Malay Indian’, and if one has a double-barrelled race classification, one has to choose a ‘dominant’ race, which will be presented as the first race in a double-barrelled race classification (Tay 2010). Further, parents with a different double-barrelled race classification will have to choose two of the three or four races to be the child’s race (Tay 2010). This means that, somewhat paradoxically, one’s race in some instances can be a matter of personal choice. Arguably, therefore, race is a problematic word in the Singaporean context. Similarly, the word dialect, as used in the Singapore context, has a different meaning. From the Singaporean perspective, Mandarin is a language, while, curiously, other Chinese languages, such as Cantonese and Hokkien, are dialects. The reason is that the word dialect in Singapore English has a meaning that originates in Mandarin (cf. below). Other than the government, it is also observed that many university students do not fully understand certain important Standard English words that are used in academic writing, such as theory, hypothesis, evidence, proof (and the verb form prove), and a host of logical connectors. The students either use them in non-standard ways or avoid them altogether. If Singaporeans want to learn a variety of English that allows them to connect with an international audience, or in other words one that is maximally ‘standard’ and ‘global’, one of the things they have to do is to understand the meaning of English words as they are understood in Anglo English contexts. University students would have to know the meaning of words such as those mentioned above as they are understood by Anglo English speakers for the purposes of academic writing and communicating with an international academic audience. However, meaning is not an easy subject, if only because it is difficult to analyse and state (Wierzbicka 1996). To explain meaning, what many teachers and dictionaries may do is use a synonymous word or phrase, not uncommonly one from the student’s first language (something this author has also been guilty of). Obviously, this ‘lexical equivalent’ approach (Wierzbicka 1986: 521) assumes that there is a close match between the English word and the translational equivalent in another language, but this is an assumption one cannot always make. Most words in a language are language-specific; using a word from the student’s first language to explain an English word would encourage the student to understand it from their

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native, non-English perspective, which amounts to ethnocentrism. Obviously, just as semantic documentation ‘cannot be reduced to collecting words and pairing them with putative English equivalents’ (Wierzbicka 2014: 140), the teaching of English meaning cannot be reduced to the use of presumed equivalents from the students’ home languages if ethnocentrism is to be minimalized. To teach Standard Anglo English meaning to non-Anglo English speakers with minimal ethnocentrism, it is proposed here that we make use of the Minimal English (ME) approach (Goddard 2018a), which is an extension of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach (Goddard 2018b). ME could be used to explain the meaning of complex words. ME comprises (i) semantic primes, or indefinable words, (ii) complex English words that are expected to have counterparts in many languages, and (iii) a maximally universal grammar of word combinations. This chapter has several related objectives. It first contextualizes the study by examining three Standard Singapore English phrases (dialects, Chinese language, and first language) that do not mean the same as they do in Standard Anglo English; these represent the semantic challenges Singaporeans face. It then argues that Standard Anglo English does not come naturally to Singaporeans, including university students, as exemplified by the words hypothesis, theory and prove/ proof. The paper uses ME to explicate these words, advocating it as a pedagogic tool to help students learn Standard Anglo or ‘Global’ English meanings.

7.2

Standard English Words with Non-standard Meanings

This section discusses three Singapore English words and phrases that are not associated with Standard Anglo English meanings. It thus shows how meaning can be a challenge in the Singapore context.

7.2.1

Semantic Challenge I: Dialects and Chinese Language

The word dialect(s) is often used in Singapore in discussions of Chinese Singaporean sociolinguistic matters. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese Singaporeans spoke a range of Chinese languages, including Hokkien (the language of the Fujian province) and Cantonese, and did not speak a common Chinese language. Although Hokkien often served as the lingua franca, it had neither high nor official status. From the government’s perspective, it was imperative for Chinese Singaporeans to be united by a single Chinese language coinciding with the official Chinese language in China, i.e. Mandarin. In this way, not only could Chinese Singaporeans

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share a common language, they could also communicate with Chinese people elsewhere, including China. Ironically, the English word Mandarin does not have a counterpart in Mandarin. In China Mandarin, some may refer to it as hànyŭ (汉语, ‘speech of the Hans’) or perhaps even pŭtōnghuà (普通话, ‘ordinary speech’); huáyǔ (华语, ‘Chinese speech’) is sometimes used in Singapore Mandarin. In Singapore English, Mandarin is often referred to as simply ‘Chinese’. The Ministry of Education, for example, routinely uses the word Chinese to refer to Mandarin (Ministry of Education 2018). This means that when a Singaporean says that someone speaks ‘Chinese’ or ‘华语’ (huáyǔ), what is meant is that the person speaks Mandarin, not another Chinese language. In fact, it seems that in a number of ‘teach yourself’ Mandarin textbooks published elsewhere, Mandarin is often referred to as ‘Chinese’. For example, Williamson’s (1982 [1947]) book Chinese is about Mandarin, not other Chinese languages. Similarly, McNaughton’s (2013) Reading and Writing Chinese refers to Mandarin, evidenced in its reference to hànyŭ pìnyīn, the Mandarin pronunciation representation system. On the other hand, as mentioned, non-Mandarin Chinese languages (e.g. Cantonese and Hokkien), which are mostly mutually unintelligible, are collectively called ‘方言’ (fāngyán; ‘areal speech’), both in China Mandarin and Singapore Mandarin. They are called this way because they are usually associated with an area or region in China. Mandarin by contrast is not considered a fāngyán because, being the national language (guānfāng yŭyán, 官方语言, ‘official speech’), it is not perceived to be bound by location. Obviously, the phrase fāngyán does not have a positive connotation because it refers to non-standard or non-official Chinese languages (including non-standard Mandarin dialects). The Singapore government, which does not support the use of non-Mandarin Chinese languages in Singapore, has thus used the phrase for decades to refer to the non-Mandarin languages, even though its meaning is irrelevant to the Singapore context (because Chinese languages are not regionally based in Singapore). As is stated in the Singapore ‘Speak Mandarin Campaign’ website,3 the campaign organizer’s ‘task was to transform a deeply entrenched social–linguistic habit of Chinese Singaporeans who were long used to the speaking of dialects’. The implicit message seems to be that Mandarin is good, whereas fāngyán (‘dialects’) is bad. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, which is the period when the Singapore government started to discourage Singaporeans from speaking non-Mandarin Chinese languages, an English word was needed for use as a semantic equivalent for fāngyán. The government adopted the word dialect and has done so for decades, even though the English word does not have the same meaning as fāngyán. In Standard Anglo English, the word dialect refers to a variety of a language. According to one of Collins Dictionary’s two definitions, it is ‘a form of a language

3

http://mandarin.org.sg/en/about/milestones.

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spoken in a particular geographical area or by members of a class or occupational group, distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation’4; it does not mean ‘areal speech’. The Standard English definition clearly does not apply in the Singapore context. There is no evidence to suggest that Singaporeans see non-Mandarin Chinese languages (i.e. ‘dialects’) as different forms of a particular language. Cantonese, for example, is not seen as a form of Mandarin. It is nonetheless true that dialect has a negative connotation: according to Collins Dictionary’s other definition; a dialect is ‘a form of a language that is considered inferior’. This allows it to be used as a semantic equivalent for fāngyán. Subsequently, many or most Singaporeans have no idea that the Singapore English meaning of dialect, which has a Chinese origin, is not the Standard English meaning. Interestingly, while the Singapore English word dialect might have originally meant something akin to ‘areal speech’, I argue here that this may not be what it means to younger Singaporeans. The idea that younger Singaporeans see Cantonese (for example) as a ‘speech’ belonging to Canton seems far-fetched, even if older Singaporeans might make that connection. It is proposed here that the word dialect has a different, non-Anglo, non-Mandarin, but uniquely Singaporean meaning in contemporary Singapore culture. It is noted that the Singapore English dialect is used almost exclusively to refer to non-Mandarin languages, which were commonly spoken at a time when Chinese Singaporeans did not speak a common Chinese language. To understand the Singapore English word dialect, one has to understand its cultural context. It is used in the context of nation-building, a context in which the government wants Chinese Singaporeans to speak only one Chinese language for intra-ethnic communication. They want it to be Mandarin, which is China’s national language. The government does not want Chinese Singaporeans to speak other Chinese languages because they think that such a situation is divisive. Consequently, in Singapore, to speak Chinese is to speak Mandarin, and vice versa. A proposed explication of the word dialects as it is used in Singapore English appears in [A]. [A] Dialects (as used in Singapore English) It is like this: Very many people live in China. All these people are people of the same kind. People of this kind are called Chinese people. These people live in many places in China. People in one of these places say things with words of one kind. People in other places say things with words of other kinds. Because of this, it can be like this at some time:

4

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/dialect.

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When someone from one place says some things with some words to someone from another place, this other someone doesn’t know what this someone wants to say with these words. At the same time, it is like this: Some Chinese people don’t live in China. They live in other countries. Many of them live in Singapore. They say things with words of many kinds, like people in China say things with words of many kinds. Our government doesn’t want it to be like this. Our government thinks like this: “When Chinese people in Singapore say things with words of many kinds, some Chinese people in Singapore can’t know what some other Chinese people want to say. Because of this, it is bad to say things with words of these kinds.”

The Singapore English phrase Chinese language thus refers to something that is seen as the solution to the need for unity among the linguistically diverse Chinese people. [B] is the explication proposed for the Singapore English phrase Chinese language. [B] Chinese language (as used in Singapore English) It is like this:

Very many people live in China. All these people are people of the same kind. People of this kind are called Chinese people. These people live in many places in China. Very many people in all of these places can say things with words of one kind. Because of this, when some people in China want to say some things with words of this kind to other people in China, these other people can know what these people want to say. At the same time, it is like this:

Some Chinese people don’t live in China. They live in other countries. Many of them live in Singapore. Very many people in China can say things with words of one kind, many people in Singapore can say things with words of the same kind. When someone says things with words of this kind, people in Singapore can say: “This someone says things in Mandarin.” Our government wants all Chinese people in Singapore to say things with words of this kind. Our government thinks like this: “When all Chinese people in Singapore say things with words of this kind, Chinese people in Singapore can always know what other Chinese people want to say. It is good if Chinese people in Singapore can say things with words of one kind. It is good if Chinese people in Singapore can say things with words of this kind.”

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Clearly, the phrase Chinese language as it is used in Singapore English reflects the divide between Mandarin and the other Chinese languages (or ‘dialects’) (Dixon 2005: 31; Lee 2001; Wong and Teo 2011: 7). The government wants Chinese people to speak only in Mandarin (‘words of one kind’), not in other Chinese languages. The phrase Chinese language is thus a culturally significant one. As for whether young Singaporeans know what the word dialect means in Standard Anglo English, classroom evidence suggests that many do not. For a number of semesters now, I have asked my students if they understood the word and most of them did not seem to. I then found myself obliged to explain to them what the word means in Standard English, using diagrams to help me discuss what regional dialects and sociolects are.

7.2.2

Semantic Challenge II: First Language

Another phrase used in Singapore English that is associated with a non-standard meaning is first language. In applied linguistics, scholars make a distinction between ‘language acquisition’ and ‘language learning’. Someone’s first language is usually acquired, not learned. However, it seems that in Singapore, a ‘first language’, at least in the past, could be something that is learned in the classroom. In the 1980s, when all public schools in Singapore started using English as a medium of instruction and English was a compulsory subject taught in school, it was referred to as ‘English as a first language’ (Chew 2005: 8). This use, of course, suggests that ‘first language’ in Singapore English then did not refer to the first language that a child acquires from their parents, as the phrase is normally understood in Anglo English. During that time, the languages that were supposed to represent the various ethnic groups, namely Mandarin or ‘Chinese’ (for the Chinese), Malay (for the Malays), and Tamil (for many Indians), were usually studied as ‘second languages’. In other words, in those days, Chinese students studied Chinese as a ‘second language’ and Malay students studied Malay as ‘a second language’. For the Chinese, the term was fine, as most Chinese people did not speak Mandarin as a first language. However, unlike the Chinese, Malay students did speak Malay as their first language. Interestingly, although it was uncommon, students could choose to study these languages as a ‘first language’, i.e. at a higher level than as a ‘second language’. However, while Chinese, Malay, and Tamil as a ‘first language’ were optional subjects, English as a ‘first language’ was mandatory. All this of course suggests that the terms first language and second language in Singapore English did not mean what the same terms mean in Anglo English. Admittedly, the 1990s witnessed a decline in the use of the phrase English as a first language; the MOE started to refer to the subject English as ‘English’ and not ‘English as a first language’. Nevertheless, as recently as 19 April 2010, the (then) Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Trade and Industry and Ministry of Education, S. Iswaran, referred to English as Singapore’s ‘first language’ in a speech given at

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the APEC-RELC (Regional Language Centre) International Language Seminar.5 Here is an excerpt of the speech (italics added): The importance of English has been recognised in Singapore from our earliest days of independence. Singapore adopted English as our first language in 1965, establishing English as the language of business, of government and as the language of instruction in all government mainstream schools. English is also the medium for communication and negotiations with our neighbouring countries. The ability to write and speak English well has always been an essential skill which we have striven to cultivate in our young. And there has been a concomitant change in the language habits of Singaporeans. In 1982, one in ten Chinese Singaporean students came from English-speaking families; today, that figure stands at six in ten. Similar trends are prevalent within our Malay and Indian communities.6

While in Anglo English, a first language is one that is acquired first and that is usually the home language, in Singapore English, it seems to refer to the dominant language, the language of business, government, education, and international communication. At this point, it might be interesting to note that a semantically similar term, mother tongue, was not used in the early days. However, it has been in use since at least 2014 to refer to the language that represents the student’s ethnicity, e.g. in MOE press releases relating to the 2015 ‘mother tongue languages curriculum’ for primary schools.7 The ‘mother tongues’ in Singapore are ‘Chinese’, which refers exclusively to Mandarin, for Chinese people, Malay for Malay people, and Tamil for Indian people, although for Indian people, it could also be Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Malayalam or Urdu (Ministry of Education 2018). Although some Chinese people speak Mandarin as a home language, many do not. This means that, in Singapore, one’s ‘mother tongue’ (like one’s ‘first language’) can curiously be something that is learned in school. When it was more commonly used, the phrase first language was contextually complicated. For many or most Singaporeans, English (as a ‘first language’) was a language learned in school, but many of them did not speak it with a high degree of proficiency. The linguistic diversity at that time provided the backdrop for the use of this phrase. English was declared Singaporean’s first language to signify its importance as the language that united all Singaporeans. It did not imply that all or most Singaporeans could speak it with the kind of proficiency and fluency expected of a native Anglo English speaker. Considering all that has been discussed, [C] is an attempt at explicating the phrase first language in ME:

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See http://hrd.apec.org/index.php/APEC-RELC_International_Language_Seminar. The entire speech is at http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/2010/04/19/speech-by-mr-siswaran-at-the-apec-relc-int-seminar-opening-ceremony.php. Accessed 3 June 2015. 7 See for instance https://www.moe.gov.sg/news/press-releases/2015-primary-school-mothertongue-languages-curriculum-to-help-students-become-active-learners–proficient-users. 6

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[C] First language (as used in Singapore English) It is like this: People of many kinds live here. Some of them are Chinese people. Some of them are Malay people. Some of them are Indian people. A long time ago, people of these kinds did not say things with words of the same kind. Because of this, people of one kind could not say things to people of another kind. The government thought that this was bad. The government did not want it to be like this. Many kinds of people in the West can say things well with words of one kind. When someone says things with words of this kind, people can say: “This someone says things in English.” Our government wants people here to say things well with words of this kind. Our government wants people here to learn how to say things with words of this kind in school. Our government did some things because of this. Now, many people here can say things with words of this kind. Because of this, people of one kind here can say things to people of another kind here. Our government thinks that this is very good. If someone can say many things with words of this kind well, this someone can do very many big things here. Many people will think something very good about this someone. If a child cannot say things with words of this kind, this child can learn it in school. Many people think something very good about this

The word first is not used in the explication, since there is nothing ‘first’ about the Singapore English ‘first language’. Rather, it is the dominant language and it is English. Without understanding the meaning of the term as it is used in Singapore English, a cultural outsider might find it odd that Singaporeans speak English as their ‘first language’, but Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil as their ‘mother tongue’.

7.3

Semantic Challenges for Singaporean University Students

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is generally considered a high-ranking tertiary institution. Most of its students, especially the local ones, have gone through at least 12 years of formal education in English. Those who attended high school in Singapore studied English Language and also something called ‘General Paper’, which ‘aims to develop in students the ability to think critically, to construct

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Fig. 7.1 A student definition of the word theory

cogent arguments, and to communicate their ideas using clear, accurate, and effective language’.8 The aim to develop in students the ability to communicate their ideas using ‘clear, accurate, and effective language’ is an important one, but not one that is easy to achieve. Class discussions and student writing suggest that many NUS students are not familiar with words important in academic writing that one would expect them to know, such as the logical connectors therefore, moreover, in fact (Wong 2018) and the objects of study in this chapter, the terms hypothesis, theory, and prove. For example, as shown in Fig. 7.1, one undergraduate stated rather incorrectly (on a whiteboard) that a theory is something that has been ‘proven true’. Even the metalinguistic phrase ‘proven true’ seems problematic in academic English (albeit not in ordinary ‘folk’ English) because something that is proven is usually considered a fact, not the truth (Wierzbicka 2006). In Wierzbicka’s words, facts are based on ‘secure and verifiable knowledge’ (2006: 43); cultural scripts about facts are thus ‘not based on the concepts of “true” and “not true”’ (Wierzbicka 2006: 44). The distinction between proof and truth (or what is true) may constitute a semantic challenge for Singapore university students, as Fig. 7.2 suggests. Figure 7.2 depicts a sign that is suspended from the ceiling in one of the classrooms in a college, and it indicates that whether proof and truth are the same is a question, not a known, as one might assume it to be for NUS undergraduates. Once, when asked what the words hypothesis, theory, fact, and truth mean, a group of students presented an ingenious visual explanation, as shown in Fig. 7.3. The students used what looks like a Venn diagram to showcase the relationship between the words. According to them, the set of what I assume to be all ideas ‘under the sun’ includes the subset of hypotheses, which includes the subset of theories, which includes the subset of truths, which includes the subset of facts. This of course means that facts are truths, and truths, theories, and theories, hypotheses. This interpretation is, of course, not a Standard English one, but a reflection of one of the semantic challenges Singapore university students face. Given that Standard English words like hypothesis, theory, and prove are important words in academic discourse, it is imperative that university students understand these words. However, it seems many Singapore students do not. At the time of going to press (June 2019), the latest available syllabus (2020) for ‘General Paper’ was available from the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board website at https://www. seab.gov.sg/docs/default-source/national-examinations/syllabus/alevel/2020syllabus/8807_y20_ sy.pdf.

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Fig. 7.2 An unknown: whether proof equals truth

Fig. 7.3 Student interpretations of the words hypothesis, theory, truth, and fact

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Additionally, teaching such words to Singapore students is also a challenge because similar words are not found in locally spoken languages, and high school English teachers may not have a sound methodology with which to teach meaning. It is proposed here that ME may be used to explain and clarify the meaning of these words for pedagogic purposes. In what follows, the words hypothesis, theory, prove, and proof are discussed and their meanings explicated using ME. Examples of how some Singaporean university students use these words are also presented. For the purposes of this study, a simple survey was conducted among 26 Singaporeans and undergraduates (mostly Singaporean but a few from other Asian countries) at the National University of Singapore. The same survey was also conducted among 53 students of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University for comparison. In the survey, students were asked to define several words, one of which was hypothesis. In the discussions that follow, unless otherwise stated, survey results come from the Singapore survey.

7.3.1

The Word Hypothesis

According to Firestein (2012: 77), ‘the hypothesis is supposed to be the starting point for all experiments’. This suggests that researchers often conduct experiments to test a hypothesis, even if they may end up rejecting the hypothesis. Commenting on this practice in an online article, one author writes: As noted by a group of scientific researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, “In science, ideas can never be completely proved or completely disproved. Instead, science accepts or rejects ideas based on supporting and refuting evidence, and may revise those conclusions if warranted by new evidence or perspectives.” The key to acceptance is not simply conducting an experiment in accordance with the scientific method. Instead, the key is to conduct numerous experiments that support the hypothesis with repeatable, predictable results. (Awana, n.d.)

Given that many experiments and studies begin with a hypothesis, one would expect the word hypothesis to be a rather common word in academic discourse, one whose meaning all undergraduates are familiar with. However, evidence from surveys suggests otherwise. Results from my own survey suggest that many of the Singapore students do not have a sound idea of what the word means. For example, some Singapore students equate a hypothesis with a theory. (1) It is a theory that one has formed but hasn’t proven it yet. (2) A theory or idea that has not been proven to be a fact.

As shown in (3) to (6), a few describe the word, presumably incorrectly, using the word true (which is incorrect because what is considered true need not be verifiable by any objective means—e.g. true religion, true faith, true love).

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Some students state that a hypothesis has an explanatory purpose (while many others do not), as suggested by (7) to (9). (7) A probable explanation for an (experimental) observation. Roughly speaking, ‘hypothesis’ is a ‘speculation’. (8) To explain the reason for a particular occurrence. (9) Explanation.

Many have only a partial understanding of the word, evident in their definitions, some of which are presented in (10) to (15). (10) An idea that we may have, which has yet to be proven accurate with experimental data. (11) A hypothesis is a tentative idea regarding a particular problem or issue that has not been subject to testing. (12) A logical guess that is yet to be proven. (13) A claim which is used as a basis for further research. (14) A predicted outcome to an experiment or study. (15) Assumptions made to advance certain knowledge. Conclusions made about something unsure.

These student definitions suggest that different students have different understandings of the word. To explain what the word hypothesis means, one could start by looking at a dictionary definition. According to Collins, in British English, a hypothesis ‘is an idea which is suggested as a possible explanation for a particular situation or condition, but which has not yet been proved to be correct’.9 This definition suggests that a hypothesis: i. is something that is ‘put forth’ or ‘stated’; ii. is not proven, which means it is not knowledge; it is not something people ‘know’; iii. may be used to explain something.

Let us now examine some examples of use to see if they can give us more clues. Below are examples taken from the British National Corpus online.10 Some, such as (16) to (18), do show that a hypothesis is something that is not proven. (16) The independently testable attempt to save Newton’s theory by a speculative hypothesis was a success because that hypothesis was confirmed by the discovery of Neptune and not because it was falsified. (17) The scientist should try to prove the hypothesis wrong.

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http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/hypothesis. http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/.

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(18) If these do not yield results which support the hypothesis, it may either be because the experiments were ineffectively designed, in which case the researcher will design some more, or because the hypothesis was invalid as formulated in the first place, in which case the researcher will reformulate it, and then work out what new experiments are needed to test it.

A hypothesis is not just something that is not proven. Its strength of claim is inherently not as strong as a theory, as suggested in example (19). (19) All we will have to do is look out of the window to determine which hypothesis is correct, and therefore deserves elevation to the status of a theory.

A hypothesis is also not simply an idea. The idea has to be carefully formulated, and the formulation constitutes a hypothesis, which can be strategically and methodically tested, as examples (20) and (21) show. (20) Even then, when formulated in this more precise and sociological way, the hypothesis is not yet proven. (21) […] the hypothesis was invalid as formulated in the first place, in which case the researcher will reformulate it, and then work out what new experiments are needed to test it.

In a nutshell, a hypothesis ‘is a statement of what one doesn’t know and a strategy for how one is going to find it out’ (Firestein 2012: 77). However, it should be added that the word is defined as a scientific term, which implies that the one who formulates a hypothesis about something is one who has some knowledge of the area. In Firestein’s words, a hypothesis is the scientist’s ‘idea about how something works based on past data, perhaps some casual observations, and a lot of thinking typically ending in an insightful and potential new explanation for how something works’ (Firestein 2012: 77). Taking all of the above into consideration, the following explication of the meaning of hypothesis, formulated in Minimal English, is proposed. [D] Hypothesis It can be like this: Someone wants to know how something happens. Because of this, this someone thinks some things about it for some time. This someone can do it because they know many of these things. After thinking about it for some time, this someone thinks something like this about it, with some words: “Maybe it is like this: it happens in this way: […]” After this, if this someone wants to, they can do some things. If this someone does these things, maybe after this they can think like this about it: “It is as I thought. I know it now.”

The one who formulates a hypothesis is prototypically a scientist, an expert who is interested in how something works. The formulator thinks about the matter for some time and formulates the hypothesis on the basis of what they know and on

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available related information. The hypothesis is by definition uncertain (‘maybe it is like this…’) and can be tested. Note that the explication does not rely on the semantic prime TRUE, which is arguably not a scientific word (Wierzbicka 2006) but a traditional, philosophical one. This ME formulation is, strictly speaking, not a definition. It does not define the word but, instead, explains the ‘events’ that lead to and follow the formulation of a hypothesis. These events help shape the meaning of the word, and knowledge of them can presumably help an English learner understand what a hypothesis is about.

7.3.2

The Word Theory

Wierzbicka (2014: 158) writes that ‘scientific statements phrased in complex English tend to be imprecise and compatible with many different interpretations’. The word theory may be considered a complex English word, and although it has a standard meaning that can be precisely stated, the way the word is used may be compatible with different interpretations, as evidenced in the observation that the word is interpreted differently by different students. Admittedly, the word theory seems to be more widely used than the word hypothesis. After all, we often hear phrases like ‘the big bang theory’, ‘the theory of evolution’, Einstein’s ‘theory of relativity’, ‘conspiracy theory’ in documentary programs and everyday speech. In fact, ‘The Big Bang Theory’ is the name of an American situational comedy, and incidentally, ‘The Theory of Everything’ is an acclaimed 2014 movie that earned several nominations and awards, so the word theory cannot be unfamiliar to university students in Singapore. Yet, if the survey results are anything to go by, the word means different things to different students. Admittedly, a few Singapore students seem to have a decent understanding of the word, as the student definitions in (22) to (24) suggest. (22) A logical and rational proposition that are used to explain phenomena. (23) A theory is a concept or idea regarding a particular problem or issue that has been subject to testing and has had evidence pointing to its verity and hence can be disproven. (24) Like a hypothesis, a theory is a probable explanation for an observation, but it has withstood (multiple, rigorous) tests, by failing to reject it.

However, many other students do not seem to agree on what the word means. Some students associate it with something that is ‘true’ or ‘proven true’, which might be acceptable in ordinary ‘folk’ English but arguably less so in academic English, as the student definitions in (25) to (28), taken from the survey, show.

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(25) A formal, fixed idea explaining a phenomenon, usually proven true in many occasions. (26) A teaching that is undeniably true in certain circumstances (27) It means something that is true or has been proven. (28) Something that people hypothesis [sic] and tested to be true so far.

Some students say it is something that has been proven or has the status of knowledge. (29) (30) (31) (32) (33)

A idea or thought that has been proven by past examples. An explanation for something that may or may not have been proven. Proven/well-thought (supported by evidences and reasons) knowledge. A series of concepts that can be proven empirically. Knowledge/conclusions/generality that [is] derived through experiments and various means of verification.

As can be seen, some of the given definitions are mutually contradictory. Some say a theory is something that ‘has been proven’ while some others say it ‘may not have been proven’. Some associate it with truth (or that which is true), while others associate it with knowledge. In fact, most of the students surveyed seem to have only a partial understanding of the word. (34) A theory is a conclusion made by cross examination of facts. However, that is no actual way of proving that the theory is actually true. It is only a logical conclusion. (35) An idea that is a concept but not a fact. (36) Theory could mean somewhat like invalidated knowledge. Theory ascends to become knowledge through experimentation and substantiation. Again, to explain the meaning of the word, a dictionary definition might be a good place to start. According to the online Collins Dictionary, a theory is ‘a formal idea or set of ideas intended to explain something’.11 The definition suggests that a theory has an explanatory function. Let us now examine some examples of use from the British National Corpus online and see what else they can tell us. Examples (37) to (39) suggest that a theory may be weak, even improbable, or strong, but it is not as weak as a hypothesis or as strong as a fact. (37) If the theory that DNA and its copying machinery arose spontaneously is so improbable that it obliges us to assume that life is very rare in the universe, and may even be unique to Earth, our first resort is to try to find a more probable theory. (38) All we will have to do is look out of the window to determine which hypothesis is correct, and therefore deserves elevation to the status of a theory. (39) There is an enormous body of data in support of the theory and it is as close to being a factual representation of the nature of evolutionary change as any theory can be.

11

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/theory.

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Examples (40) to (43) suggest that a theory can be expected to explain or ‘predict’ things: (40) The theory, however, was weak, since it was unlikely such material could have solidified, in any manner that astronomers understand, into planets. (41) According to the accepted theory, then, there was no such thing as time before the Big Bang. (42) If this theory is to explain the ‘flypaper effect’, it must be demonstrated that a rise in citizen’s [sic] incomes would raise the bureau’s budget by less. (43) In the absence of a theory of continental drift, the Darwinians were forced to postulate migration to explain similarities in the populations of widely separated continents — they could not envisage an original population being split up by the physical separation of the land mass it occupied.

A theory is, of course, not something that is proven, as shown in example (44). It has to be tested. (44) In both cases the theory becomes more important than the development being investigated, so that the evidence is made to fit, instead of being used to test, the theory.

In addition, a theory concerns not just one thing, but a vast area, and it can be expected to explain a number of things that would interest many people. For example, the theory of continental drift is presumably of interest to scholars of geology and evolutionary biology. Also, a theory cannot come from thin air; it is based or built on things already known or on data from experiments and observations. For example, the theory of continental drift is partly based on the observations that similar species of animals are found on different continents and that fossils of sea creatures are found on mountain tops. Because a theory is based on the analysis of data, it takes time to formulate a theory, prototypically a much longer time than that used for formulating a hypothesis. Lastly, a theory is expected to be stronger than a hypothesis, but no matter how strong it is, there is usually opposition to it. For example, it seems that while the theory of evolution is well accepted in scientific circles and forms the backbone for the field of biology, some Christians (the so-called creationists) and Muslims do not believe in it. On the basis of the above discussion, it is proposed that the meaning of the word theory may be explicated in this way. [E] Theory It can be like this: Many people want to know how things of one kind happen. Because of this, someone thinks a lot of things about it for some time. This someone can do it because they know many of these things. After thinking about it for some time, this someone thinks like this about it: “It can be like this: these things can happen like this”. After this, this someone says it to other people. After this, if people think about it, they can think like this:

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“It can be like this, as this someone says.” At the same time, some people don’t think in the same way. They think like this: “It can’t be like this.” If people want to know more about things of this kind, they can do some things.

This explication is similar to the one for hypothesis, except for a few significant differences. A theory concerns ‘things of one kind’, not ‘something’. A theory (‘it can be like this’) is stronger than a hypothesis (‘maybe it is like this’), but it usually has its opponents. One could find out more about a theory if one wanted to.

7.3.3

The Words Prove and Proof

The word prove is particularly interesting for this author. While one would expect the word evidence to be more commonly used in academic writing than the word prove (simply because it is relatively easier to look for evidence than to prove something), the student papers I have read at NUS suggest that it is the other way around. The word prove seems to be more commonly used in the writing of NUS undergraduate students than the word evidence. Examples of use of the word prove from NUS student writing are presented in (45) to (52) (emphasis added). (45) One’s whole belief system is reflected through language he or she uses – this includes grammar, lexicons, and syntax. This has been proven by numerous studies which support the notion that “language is largely an expression of the culture in which it is used”. (46) The thesis of this paper, that the sentence structure in the Japanese language reflect the Japanese value of protecting/conserving harmony (和), is thus proven to be true. (47) Gupta (1992) investigated the pragmatic particles of Singapore English, whereas Wierzbicka (2003) focused on some of the distinct features which have language-specific significance and prove culture-specific attitudes. (48) Nevertheless, both articles have shed some light onto the understanding of Singlish particles by relating them to the Singaporean culture and pragmatics. In this sense, linguistics may have just proven that Singlish is indeed part of our national identity. (49) She studies the natural occurrences of SCE via living with native speakers who use SCE particles in everyday conversation (Gupta 1992, p. 33). Consequently, Gupta is able to acquire the raw data needed in a linguistic analysis to prove the theory of assertiveness. (50) Readers can relate to Wierzbicka more than Gupta as Wierzbicka is able to break the key terms into simple and universal phrases that can be applied to all types of contexts, as she proved using substitutions such as explaining the word ‘ang moh’. She is able to do so by gathering various definitions of keywords from different sources, analyze them and propose her own definitions using the NSM approach. Furthermore, her examples spans across different ages and backgrounds, and covers more scope, making them more reliable. (51) In terms of the range of data types, Wierzbicka was able to provide a greater variety of data sources to support her points which thus make her article more engaging to read and provides more credibility as she proves how SCE particles not only exists in daily speech but is also present in local art from as drama.

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(52) NSM consists of a set of semantic primes and studies have proven these words to be universal as [there] is a semantic match for each prime in any natural language.

Although the word prove is used quite often, it can be seen from the examples that the writers do not always seem to have a good understanding of the word. It is thus not to be expected that many students will understand the noun proof either, which is evidenced in the survey results. Here are some student definitions. A number of students define or explain proof in terms of evidence. Their definitions of the word proof (from the survey) appear in (53) to (60). (53) (54) (55) (56) (57) (58) (59) (60)

Evidence. Evidence to argue that something is true without doubt. Evidence supporting something. Evidence that supports a statement or a theory. It is the evidence used to support a claim. Evidence to show that something is correct. Evidence or argument that helps to strengthen theories. A ‘proof’ is a piece of evidence that directly supports a given theory or concept regarding a certain problem or issue. Proofs typically are reasoned arguments that can draw from other more primary types of evidence.

A few students define proof incorrectly in terms of true. (61) (62) (63) (64) (65)

Evidence that something is true. The word ‘proof’ means evidence required to show that certain events are true. A piece of information that supports what you think to be true. Systematic mechanism showing that something is true, given certain circumstances. Proof is something to establish the logical truth of a statement by reducing the statement in logically correct steps into established axiom(s).

At least one student thinks it has to be something physical. (66) A physical thing that can show that something is true or false.

As can be seen, a number of students incorrectly equate proof with evidence. It could thus be said that the word proof is a difficult word for non-native speakers of Anglo English to understand. The difficulty that students face with this word also appears to stem from confusion caused by dictionary definitions, which are not always helpful. Some dictionaries define the word in terms of evidence and truth. For example, one entry in the online Cambridge dictionary states that proof is ‘a fact or piece of information that shows that something exists or is true’.12 The online Collins dictionary has several definitions, which include (67) to (70)13:

12

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/proof. http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/proof.

13

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(67) any evidence that establishes or helps to establish the truth, validity, quality, etc., of something (68) (law) the whole body of evidence upon which the verdict of a court is based (69) (mathematics, logic) a sequence of steps or statements that establishes the truth of a proposition (70) the act of testing the truth of something

Yet proof is, strictly speaking, not evidence, nor is it related to truth. Evidence may not be conclusive and truth can be subjective, but proof is expected to be both conclusive and objective. Thus, it may be said that ‘evidence does not mean the same as proof, and to “prove” something is not the same as to “provide evidence” for it’ (Wierzbicka 2010: 96). To understand the meaning of proof, one might have to look elsewhere. One could perhaps start with examples, such as the following from the British National Corpus online. Some examples of use of the word proof from the British National Corpus appear in (71) to (76): (71) Although the main thing was that he now had clear proof that she was alive, he could see a lot more work ahead before he found her, if he ever found her. (72) The story, passed down through the centuries, is that this powerful order somehow chanced upon the proof that Christ did not die upon the cross but was taken down, survived and was subsequently married. (73) Claiming that natural processes are carried out by ‘god’ and then further claiming that evidence of the process is proof of the independent and prior existence of the ‘god’, is an example of the ‘circular logic’ that is sometimes advanced as proof, and often can be quite difficult to expose for the fraud that it is. (74) The trouble with atheism was that it was no more susceptible to proof than the notion that God was a bearded gentleman of advanced years. (75) Police disciplinary hearings are similar to criminal court hearings in that the same rules of evidence and burden of proof, i.e. beyond reasonable doubt, are used. (76) Although it was hardly conclusive proof they were the same kegs as those discovered by the vagrant, all the signs pointed to it being more than just a coincidence.

One example is particularly telling: (77) The way people talk about faith, you would think that rationality, inquiry, investigation, understanding and proof had all joined hands to form a circle of knowledge, leaving faith outside in the cold.

The examples seem to suggest that the word proof, in the scientific sense, is expected to be objective and thus conclusive and unquestionable. Anything that is subjective cannot be considered proof. Proof thus has the status of knowledge, even if it is merely ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. Explication [F] is an attempt at showing, through ME, what prove means. [F] To prove something X It can be like this: Someone wants to know if something is like this: X Because of this, this someone does something.

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After this someone has done it, they think something like this about it: “I now know that it is like this: X. I know how I know it. I want other people to know it. I can do something because of this.” After this, this someone does something. Because of this, other people can see something. Because of this, they can know it is like this: X. They can’t say after this: “It is not like this”.

[G] is an attempt at defining proof. [G] Proof that it is like this: X It can be like this: Someone wants to know if something is like this: X. Because of this, this someone thinks about it for some time. After this someone thinks about it for some time, they think something like this about it: ‘I now know that it is like this: X. I know how I know it. I can say it to other people.’ After this, this someone says it to other people. After this, other people can know it is like this. Because of this, they can’t say, “It is not like this” after this.

Although the two words have a scientific meaning, they are often used in non-scientific situations, e.g. in a court case. In whatever context, the words have a high strength of claim, as the formulations try to show. They are words that should be used with extreme care, and university students need to know this. Hopefully, the ME formulations can clarify for students from non-Anglo-English-speaking backgrounds how the words should be used.

7.4

Discussion and Conclusion

Although English is an official language in Singapore, and it is well-known that Singaporeans speak a variety of English that many outsiders can understand (Kirkpatrick and Saunders 2005), challenges remain. Many Standard English words are not semantically well grounded in Singapore, in the sense that their meanings are not well understood. As a result, different people can attach different meanings to the same word and a Standard English word can be given a Singaporean meaning. Obviously, this challenge is not unique to Singaporeans. Evidence suggests that semantic challenges, perhaps more so than grammatical challenges, are also faced by other non-native speakers of Anglo English, especially speakers of all varieties of so-called English as a foreign language. An example can be found among

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Chinese university students in China. With assistance from Kevin Liu, a survey similar to the one used for this study was administered to over 50 students in Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2015. Most of the students were between 20 and 25 years of age and in their second year at university. The students were asked to state the meanings of the words hypothesis, theory, and proof and to provide examples of use. The answers suggest that many of them did not fully understand the meaning of these words as used in Standard English. (78) to (83) are attempts at defining the word hypothesis. (78) (79) (80) (81) (82) (83)

Guess or imagine. Say something which may be not right or existed. Make an analogy to what would thing be like if something happen[s]. Someone suppose that something is true. An idea put forward by yourself but it may be incorrect in fact. It [is] just a guess. If…then…

(84) to (89) are attempts at defining the word theory. (84) (85) (86) (87) (88) (89)

A kind of thinking that [is] summarized from experience. A well acknowledge explanation of some phenomenon of the natural world. Principle. It is a statement usually based on hypotheses instead of facts. A sentence or an opinion [that] is agreed by most of [the] people. A kind of saying or believing.

The word proof is just as challenging for the Chinese students, with some of them defining the word in terms of evidence. A few attempts at defining the word are given in (90) to (96). (90) (91) (92) (93) (94) (95) (96)

Evidence and something [that] could support an opinion. Some real truth or something [that] really happened which can support something. The process to prove [something] is proof. A kind of action in order to make others believe that what you have said is true. Some information to support our opinion, that information or documents are proof. All the things we do to let others believe that your results are true. Evidence that helps to prove the truth of an affair.

Some students have particularly interesting sets of definitions for the three words. Here are two examples. a. Hypothesis: A theory, opinion or conjecture which is not existing or tested before you prove something. b. Theory: An opinion or fruit of research which was proved and regarded as [a] workable thing, used to explain some phenomenon or objective fact, especially in some specific area. c. Proof: Something which can be used to prove the realness of an event or theory or hypothesis.

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The first set uses the word theory to define hypothesis and the word opinion to define the word theory. The second set uses the word assumption to define hypothesis and the word evidence to define proof. The answers presented thus suggest that, although many of the Chinese students seem to know that a hypothesis or a theory is used to explain something, they only have a partial understanding of what the words mean. To further illustrate, a few students say that proof is the process of proving something (e.g. ‘it’s the whole process to prove your opinion’), whereas in Standard English, it can refer to a physical object. Some in fact do not appear to understand what the words mean in Standard English. The findings from this paper suggest that meaning is a major but often unrecognized or underrated challenge faced by non-native speakers of Anglo or Standard English (often referred to in the literature as ‘ESL’ and ‘EFL’ speakers). Many English language proficiency syllabi focus on form, especially grammar. Other syllabi focus on communicative competence. However, much less attention is given to meaning. Even when meaning is taught, a presumed synonym or a short ad hoc paraphrase is used. As a result, many English language students do not have a good idea what certain Standard English words precisely mean. However, if we accept that language is primarily about meaning (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard 2011), English language teachers cannot afford to treat the teaching of meaning as a low priority. It is time tertiary English language teachers use an effective pedagogic tool to teach university students the meaning of important academic English words (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2007) such as those discussed in this paper. The pedagogic tool proposed in this paper is Minimal English, an offshoot of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Minimal English can help students understand meaning with maximal clarity and precision. Acknowledgements Initial research for this chapter was conducted at the Australian National University’s Humanities Research Centre in June 2015, with financial support from ANU HRC and the Centre for English Language Communication, National University of Singapore. I would like to thank Anna Wierzbicka, Cliff Goddard, Zhengdao Ye, Bert Peeters, Carsten Levisen, Lauren Sadow, and other participants of the Minimal English workshop held at the Australian National University (ANU) in June 2015, for giving me suggestions regarding the Minimal English explications. I am grateful to Brian Poole and two anonymous reviewers for commenting on earlier versions of this paper. I am indebted to Kevin Liu (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) for helping me collect data from his Chinese students.

References Awana, M. (n.d.). Steps in proving a hypothesis. http://classroom.synonym.com/steps-provinghypothesis-2955.html. Accessed 16 December 2018. Basu, A., Mukherjee, N., Roy, S., Sengupta, S., Banerjee, S., Chakraborty, M., et al. (2003). Ethnic India: A genomic view, with special reference to peopling and structure. Genome Research, 13, 2277–2290. https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.1413403.

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Chew, P. G.-L. (2005). Change and continuity: English language teaching in Singapore. Asian EFL Journal, 7(1), 1–21. Dixon, L. Q. (2005). Bilingual education policy in Singapore: An analysis of its sociohistorical roots and current academic outcomes. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 8(1), 25–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/jBEB.v8.i1.pg25. Firestein, S. (2012). Ignorance: How it drives science. New York: Oxford University Press. Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction (2nd edn.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goddard, C. (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. Goddard, C. (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, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2007). Semantic primes and cultural scripts in language learning and intercultural communication. In F. Sharifian & G. Palmer (Eds.), Applied cultural linguistics: Implications from second language learning and intercultural communication (pp. 105–124). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gupta, A. F. (1992). The pragmatic particles of Singapore colloquial English. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(1), 31–57. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/037821669290106L. Kirkpatrick, A., & Saunders, N. (2005). The intelligibility of Singaporean English: A case study in an Australian University. In D. Deterding, A. Brown, & E. L. Low (Eds.), English in Singapore: Phonetic research on a corpus (pp. 153–162). Singapore: McGraw Hill. Lee, E. E. (2001, April). Profile of the Singapore Chinese dialect groups. Statistics Singapore Newsletter, 2–6. McNaughton, W. (2013). Reading and writing Chinese: A comprehension guide to the Chinese writing system (3rd edn.). Hong Kong: Tuttle. Meena, K. (2015). Diversity dimensions of India and their organization implications: An analysis. International Journal of Economics and Management Sciences, 4(6), 1–11. https://doi.org/10. 4172/2162-6359.1000261. Ministry of Education. (2010). English language syllabus 2010: Primary & secondary (Express/ Normal [Academic]). https://www.moe.gov.sg/docs/default-source/document/education/ syllabuses/english-language-and-literature/files/english-primary-secondary-express-normalacademic.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2019. Ministry of Education. (2018). General information on studying in Singapore. https://www.moe. gov.sg/admissions/returning-singaporeans/general-information-on-studying-in-singapore. Accessed 12 May 2019. Payack, P. J. (2008). A million words and counting: How global English is rewriting the world. New York: Citadel Press. Tay, D. (2010). Mixed-race S’poreans can have double barrelled IC category. http://news.asiaone. com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20100113-191440.html. Accessed 12 June 2015. Wierzbicka, A. (1986). Introduction [to a special issue on ‘particles’]. Journal of Pragmatics, 10 (5), 519–534. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(86)90011-1. Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2003). Singapore English: A semantic and cultural perspective. Multilingua, 327– 366. https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.2003.018. Wierzbicka, A. (2006). English: Meaning and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2010). Experience, evidence, and sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199321490.001. 0001. Williamson, H.R. (1982). Chinese. New York: David McKay Company. Originally published in 1947.

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Wong, J. O. (2014). The culture of Singapore English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139519519. Wong, J. O. (2018). The semantics of logical connectors: ‘therefore’, ‘moreover’ and ‘in fact’. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 581–604. https://doi.org/10.22363/2312-9182-2018-223-581-604. Wong, Y. M., & Teo, Z. (2011, September). The elderly in Singapore. Statistics Singapore Newsletter, 1–9. https://www.singstat.gov.sg/-/media/files/publications/reference/newsletter/ ssnsep2011.pdf. Accessed 3 June 2015.

Jock Wong is Lecturer at the National University of Singapore. He teaches semantics and academic writing. His research interests include Singapore English linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, intercultural communication, academic writing, and language pedagogy. His publications include the monograph The culture of Singapore English (2014).

Chapter 8

Using Minimal English to Model a Parental Understanding of Autism Alexander Forbes

Abstract The challenges faced by families of children who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder have been well-studied, as have the impacts on the family of this diagnosis. What a parent prototypically thinks when confronted with the word ‘autism’, however, has not been well-studied. This study reviewed literature and examined multiple texts in order to posit two cognitive models held by the prototypical parent of an autistic child. These cognitive models are expressed in Minimal English, allowing readers to ‘get inside the head’ of a prototypical parent who hears that ‘X has autism’. Two scripts (cognitive models) are provided in this study: one noting perceptions of the autistic person and the other noting perceptions of other parents of autistic children. Script 1 reveals how the prototypical parent of an autistic child perceives an autistic person in relation to other people, including how the autistic person thinks, does things, feels and interacts with other people. It further describes how this prototypical parent assumes others perceive autistic people, and how the prototypical parent may want to do things in a particular way with an autistic person as opposed to non-autistic people. Script 2 reveals how the prototypical parent thinks of the parents of an autistic child, including assumptions of shared experiences, social isolation, and fear for the future. This innovative study breaks ground in the use of Minimal English and offers a new way forward for representing prototypical understandings of concepts.







Keywords Autism spectrum disorder Parental perceptions Minimal English Natural semantic metalanguage Cognitive model Cognitive script










A. Forbes (&) University of New England, Armidale, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_8

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Introduction

A neurodevelopmental disorder, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is characterised primarily by impairment in social interaction and repetitiveness of interest or action and is typically diagnosed in children as a lifelong condition (American Psychiatric Association 2013a). People diagnosed with ASD are, as the name implies, placed on a spectrum of severity, with higher impairment/lower functioning people placed on the upper end of the spectrum, and lower impairment/higher functioning people placed on the lower end. Prior to the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), number 5, several separate diagnoses existed for what is now called ASD. These were autistic disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (American Psychiatric Association 2013b). Over the past two decades, autism spectrum disorder has moved from relative obscurity to a more prominent place in mass media and has seen a significant increase in research funding (Singh et al. 2009). Over half of this funding has been allocated to basic science (Singh et al. 2009) in an attempt to find a cure for ASD. Some advocacy organisations, however, dispute the implication that ASD requires a cure (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, n.d.). This position, called ‘neurodiversity’, argues that people with ASD are not abnormal, but simply represent another expression of normality that has been marginalised and medicalised. As media coverage of autism spectrum disorder has increased, so too has public knowledge of the condition. Events such as National Autism Awareness Month in the USA, the annual UN-sponsored World Autism Awareness Day (first held on 2nd April 2008), and well-watched television shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Today Show created a marked increase in public searching of the term ‘autism’ on Google in the USA between 2004 and 2014 (DeVilbiss and Lee 2014). One study from Northern Ireland found local rates of public knowledge of autism at 84%, a figure that is similar in other ‘Western’ English-speaking countries (Dillenburger et al. 2013). How ASD is understood by general populations has been looked at in studies such as Dillenburger et al. (2013) and Obeid et al. (2015). Many studies examine the challenges faced by families of children who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (see, e.g., Bernheimer and Weisner 2007; Hastings et al. 2005a, b; Woodgate et al. 2008). In a similar vein, many studies have examined the impacts of such a diagnosis on both family and personal well-being and perceptions of autism severity (see, e.g., Bayat 2007; Benson 2006; Hamlyn-Wright et al. 2007; Hastings 2003; Hock and Ahmedani 2012; Lecavalier et al. 2006; Montes and Halterman, 2007; Pakenham et al. 2005; Sivberg 2002). These studies provide interesting insights into specific (and often statistically measurable) aspects of an ASD diagnosis’s implications and are complemented by qualitative research that has focused on thematic analysis of interviews with family members of those with ASD (see, e.g., Altiere and von Kluge 2009; Gray 2002; Schall 2000).

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Two points emerge from these studies: first, that there are different understandings of ASD in different groups of people, based on knowledge of the disorder and individual experiences of it; and second, that each of these understandings of ASD could be modelled. Modelling each of these understandings would allow for contrastive analysis. This chapter proposes to focus on modelling the understanding of one ‘identity group’, namely the parents of people with ASD. It will also include a minor component of contrastive analysis focused on some of the more relevant areas of contrast between parents and other identity groups.

8.2

Methodology and Scope

The aim of this chapter is to show how Minimal English can be used to model the way that a prototypical member within a group thinks about a particular concept. The concept to be studied is ‘autism’, a catch-all term for autism spectrum disorder, and the group to be studied are parents of people with autism. The chapter seeks to describe components of this prototypical parent’s cognition when they think about an autistic someone or the parent of an autistic someone. Despite obvious imperfections as a proxy, the language used by members of the group in discussing ASD is taken as the expression of the group members’ understanding(s) of ASD. Ultimately, this study examined texts in multiple modes to posit cognitive scenarios, formulated in Minimal English, that are hypothesised to be activated, either completely or in components, by parents of autistic people when the phrase ‘X has autism’ is heard. The technique used to justify the scripts is an adaptation of the NSM approach to semantic analysis. The NSM approach examines lexical units in their context of use, often with the help of corpora, and makes a claim about meaning. The ‘cognitive scripts’ approach, however, uses the same tools and interpretative techniques to instead make a claim about a group’s conceptualisation of what is associated with a word and what arises because of this. Thus, for the purpose of this study, relevant texts were examined to reveal the cognitive scenarios held by a prototypical member of a specific identity group upon receipt of specific information. The texts examined for this chapter are derived from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, representing a broad Western ‘Anglosphere’ perspective. For a table of text types, see the appendix. Minimal English is a recent development of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), which is a collection of, at time of writing, 65 ‘primes’—mental constructs thought to be semantically primitive and featuring exponents in potentially all natural languages (Goddard and Wierzbicka 1994, 2002, 2014a, b; Peeters 2006; Goddard 2011). These semantic primes ‘share a universal grammar of combination, valency, and complementation’ (Goddard 2006, p. 3). In other words, a sentence constructed solely of semantic primes with correct grammar can be expressed in the exponents of any language without loss or change of meaning. Augmenting this set of primes are semantic molecules. Semantic molecules represent concepts that are

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relatively simpler than many other concepts, but are not primitive (Goddard 2015, 2016). At the cognitive level, semantic molecules allow conceptual chunking, leading to a more efficient system of meaning-making. This is important when writing scripts, which are the vehicles that present cognitive scenarios like those in this study. The concepts that molecules describe (e.g. ‘child’, ‘parents’, ‘brain’) can be unwieldy to decompose within a script, and the inclusion of these decompositions detracts from the overarching thrust of a script. By convention in semantic explication, a semantic molecule is marked by the symbol [m]; however, molecules are not marked in Minimal English scripts, a convention continued in this study. This chapter contains a portion of the work that was done within a larger whole as part of a master’s research project that examined contrastive analysis of different identity groups’ perceptions of autism (Forbes 2017), of which more will be said in Sect. 8.4. Thus, this chapter focuses only on one group, the parents of autistic people. It should be noted that autistic people and those close to autistic people disagree about the use of language to describe autism (see, e.g., Autism and Oughtisms 2011; Autism Daddy 2012; Autistic Hoya 2011; Lowery 2015; Titchkosky 2001). This disagreement centres around the use of person-first language, i.e. forms of reference which syntactically place the person before the disability, e.g. ‘person with autism’, as opposed to labels that are said to embed the disability into the person, e.g. ‘autistic person’. This disagreement is beyond the scope of this article, which will use terms of reference with only readability in mind. No assumption about intent behind the use of any given terminology should be imputed. Further, the word ‘autism’ will be used in place of autism spectrum disorder or ASD, again for readability.

8.3

Results and Discussion

Two scripts are presented in this section, one focusing on the construction of an autistic someone [A], the other on the construction of that someone’s parents and related reflections about one’s own experience [B]. Both scripts are structured into two sections. Section 1 of Script [A] outlines how the autistic someone is perceived, while in Script [B] it reflects attitudes towards and beliefs about the autistic someone’s parents. Section 2 of Script [A] describes beliefs regarding how others perceive the autistic someone, while in Script [B] it reflects how parents feel towards their own autistic child. Given the length of the scripts, they will be analysed component by component rather than script by script. A short discussion alongside scholarly evidence and discourse examples is provided before each component. These discourse examples closely support the components in question, but they often also ‘speak to’ components that are elsewhere in either script. For example, a discourse example in one component may incidentally include a parent expressing fear for the future, which is

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covered in a separate component of either script. This approach strikes a balance between the length it would take to minutely pick apart each line, and the confusion that may be caused by discussing a script as a whole and then placing the entirety of the script at the end. The discourse examples are provided verbatim, including errors in original forum text. The scripts open with a statement about what someone may think when they ‘hear’ something; for this to make sense, the reader should imagine that the understanding of autism represented in the script is formulated at the moment the hypothetical parent hears it mentioned that someone ‘has autism’. This style of presenting the information was chosen to capture, as best as possible, a representation of the hypothetical parent’s ‘unguarded’ thinking. Script [A]—the autistic someone Section 1 There is a maxim in the autism community, commonly attributed to Stephen Shore, that reads: ‘if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism’. This maxim is widely known by parents of autistic people and speaks to a notion of uniqueness—a sense that one person’s autism cannot be replicated.1 Component (a) expresses the dual knowledge that an autistic someone is first delineated from other people by their categorisation within the autism spectrum but is also on the spectrum in a way uniquely their own. This categorisation of a child within the spectrum alongside specifics of the child’s unique expressions of autism is a common subject for parents. For example, (1) What I failed to notice when he was little … was lack of pointing, obsessive play, lack of interest in others, rigidity in terms of routines. (Mumsnet, n.d.) (2) As the mom of an Aspie - I totally agree with you. My friend’s son has classic moderate to severe autism. These kids are in two separate categories when it comes to autism (in Autism Daddy 2012) (3) … I think it’s great that you’re constantly encouraging others to be aware of and think about the enormous diversity across the spectrum … trying to get people to appreciate that diversity and what it means for our children … (Autism and Oughtisms 2011)

This understanding of autism’s unique expressions extends beyond component (a) and influences the language throughout the remaining components, for example in expressions such as NOT ALL PEOPLE OF THIS KIND ARE LIKE THIS.2 Language that limits the general applicability of each component is justified by this initial understanding of autistic diversity.

This is referred to as ‘heterogeneity’ in the autism research community. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this insight. 2 The usage of ‘PEOPLE OF THIS KIND’ refers to anyone who fits under the social label of ‘autistic’ or ‘on the spectrum’. While parents may be aware of heterogeneity, there is still an understanding that ASD is a catch-all categorisation. Further, the NSM/Minimal English approach does not attach any disparaging meaning to this phrase, and it merely claims that it is cognitively basic in how humans construct social reality. 1

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When parents of an autistic child hear this,3 they often think about this someone like this: a. this someone is not someone like other people because this someone is someone of one kind, not like other people this someone is of this kind in one way, not like other people of this kind

Component (b) conceptualises the autistic someone’s thinking. For parents of autistic people, there are two key factors to this conceptualisation. First is the knowledge that autistic people can have very focused interests. Second is a recognition that a body of knowledge is built through that focused interest. The tendency towards highly focused interests is explained to parents in a publication titled ‘Obsessions, repetitive behaviour and routines’ (National Autistic Society 2016). Examples in discourse include: (4) He … didn’t play with toys appropriately unless they were cause and effect toys, e.g. pop up animals, or ball heater skelters. He would open and close doors obsessively and do up the straps on any abandoned car seat … He liked cars/trains which moved if you pushed the driver down, etc. (Mumsnet, n.d.) (5) I have a good memory and I can remember the AFL and NRL and FIFA World Cup sporting winners and champions that came first and second and who come in the grand final and stuff like that. (in Miller 2017) (6) He is entranced by the numbers on the microwave display panel, and counts the stairs in English, Spanish and Japanese. One day you notice he has scored 79,550 points on a tricky iPad game, Doodle Jump. This is 50,000 points higher than the top score achieved by any “neuro-typical” member of the household. (Mitchell 2013)

b. people of this kind don’t think like other people many people of this kind often want to think about one something for a very long time; not all people of this kind are like this many people of this kind know very many things about one something, not like many other people know about this something; not all people of this kind are like this

In hand with the ‘thinking’ of component (b) is the ‘doing’ of component (c) (below). The use of MANY in line two of (c) reveals the widespread nature of repetitive action in autistic people, as discussed in the aforementioned article by the National Autistic Society, and examples such as: (7) He loved action songs and he watched the same videos over and over, copying the actions. Nice and visual and safely repetitive. (Mumsnet, n.d.) (8) I have often seen young kids repeat things for 1 to 2 h before the parents get tired of it enough to intervene and tantrum like behavior often has followed. (Wrong Planet Autism Community Forum 2015) (9) Sure, nearly everyone with AS will be rigid/stubborn to some extent, more so than their peers that is, but it can range from mild to extreme. (Wrong Planet Autism Community Forum 2009)

See final paragraph before ‘Script [A]’ for brief explanation on what is being heard.

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In contrast, the use of SOME in line (c) reflects the fact that, while the texts contain references to an autistic child being non-verbal, this is less common than discussion about other key traits, yet common enough for many to know that some autistic people can be like this (and in many cases, to be grateful that their autistic child is not like this). For example, (10) …my son is autistic and quirky AND non-verbal (11) I’m a 47 year old neurotypical dad with a 14 year old son with severe, non-verbal autism … (Autism Daddy 2012) (12) DS was pretty much non verbal at those ages… (13) Dd was non verbal… (Mumsnet, n.d.) c. people of this kind don’t do some things like other people many people of this kind always want to do something in one way; not all people of this kind are like this some people of this kind don’t say words; not all people of this kind are like this

Component (d) outlines an acknowledgement that there are times at which some autistic people have very intense emotional reactions. This includes the autistic ‘tantrum’ or ‘meltdown’ in which an autistic someone feels something to a greater degree of intensity than other people would believe warranted, often stemming from sensory input or from disruption to rigid ways of doing things, whether internal or external, for example, (14) And he is highly sensory so he hates things like getting his teeth brushed, his hair brushed and getting washed. He doesn’t like the way certain things feel … (Belfast Telegraph 2017) (15) Meltdowns that could last 3-5 h after a simple thing like being told ‘wait your turn’ when she wanted a toy another DC was playing with, or anything really. (Mumsnet, n.d.) (16) We are experiencing tantrums like we have never seen before. She has been so fixated on routines and not handling change at all. She was always like this but she used to have tollerance, now she just loses it whenever things don’t go her way. (in ‘Autism thread—lifestyle’, 2010–2018) (17) The shoe shop lady rolls her eyes in contempt at your child’s meltdown at the foot-measuring stool, and the owner of a hair salon doesn’t hide what she thinks of such a big kid getting freaked out by buzzing clippers. (Mitchell 2013; see also: Washburn 2016; Lewis et al. 2017; Xiberras 2017)

d. sometimes someone of this kind feels something very bad in one moment, not like other people: it can be like this because this someone sees something at this moment this someone hears something at this moment this someone feels something in a part of their body at this moment this someone does something in one way at this moment, not as this someone wants to do it at very many times someone else does something in one way at this moment, not as this someone wants this other someone to do it

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The autistic someone’s social interactive capabilities are elaborated in component (e). Of importance is the use of CAN BE LIKE THIS, which acknowledges that there is some variability in the capacities of autistic people in social situations. This is supported by Dillenburger et al.’s survey participants perceiving the understanding of others’ feelings to be a challenge for autistic people. In this study, communication was the largest area of weakness identified, followed by learning, social interaction and understanding (2013). The father of an autistic boy in Smith and Mackenzie describes autistic children as typically socially hamstrung (2017), an autistic man describes himself as ‘not that good’ with social cues and reading emotions (in Xiberras 2017), and one woman in Gibson et al. (2017) who is pursuing a possible autism diagnosis recounts the reaction of friends to this news: (18) Don’t be silly, you couldn’t have something like that, you’re so good with people, oh you’re so good with words.

Component (e) goes on to note a communicative danger that people close to those with autism are often well aware of: the autistic someone who wants constantly to discuss their own special interest [the something that an autistic someone can think about often or know many things about, as per component (b)]. Paul Jordan, a writer on the autism spectrum, addresses this issue in his book targeted at youth with autism (2017), acknowledging its status as a common problem for autistic people, and therefore also in the minds of parents. e. when someone of this kind is with someone else, it can be like this: if this someone wants to say something to this other someone, sometimes this someone can’t say it well if this other someone says something with parts of the body, sometimes this someone doesn’t know well what this someone wants to say if this other someone feels something, sometimes this someone doesn’t know well what this other someone feels if this someone says many things about one something for a very long time at very many times, not like other people, often this other someone does not want to hear this

Components (a)–(e) focused on the way in which an autistic someone is constructed by a prototypical parent. These components cover the ways in which an autistic someone thinks, does things, feels things and does things with other people. A set of expressions limiting the general applicability of these components is justified by the initial observation in component (a) of autistic diversity, and each component’s use of limiters such as MANY and SOME. Section 2 Section 2 of Script [A] presents the many ways that a parent can think about the social situation an autistic someone finds themselves in. Component (a) articulates the parent’s perception of stigma attached to autism, for example,

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(19) Many an autistic child has suffered more in mainstream schools from ignorance of the teacher, or the school kids, and stigmas attached to autism were the cause of bulling and not the label itself. (20) It breaks my heart watching my children try so hard to fit into a world built by typical people, for typical people. (Autism and Oughtisms 2011) (21) I’m happy when he’s not call retard. (Autism Daddy 2012) (22) I wouldn’t want anyone to think he was a freak. (in Schall 2000, p. 416) (23) I felt totally isolated and Cain was totally isolated at school in the early years (in Xiberras 2017; see also: Autistic Hoya 2011; Smith and Mackenzie 2017)

At the same time,4 when parents of an autistic child hear this about someone, they can think like this: a. many people don’t want to do things with someone like this many people don’t want to be near someone like this

Component (b) reflects a belief about relationship quality and a lack of public awareness of potential relationship quality with the autistic someone. Because parents of autistic children, by and large, have good relationships with their children and know other people who have good relationships with their own, component (b) reflects an explicit understanding that, contrary to what the parent considers general belief, it is perfectly natural to have a good relationship with an autistic someone. Hastings et al. found that ‘mothers and fathers identified positive perceptions about their child, and his or her impact on themselves and other family members’ (2005b, p. 641). Schall found that internal family experiences are ‘largely unknown outside of their families … all of the families discussed what they gained from the experience of raising a child with autism’ (2000, pp. 421, 423). b. if other people know this someone well, they can feel many good things towards this someone; many other people do not know this

because of this, many people don’t want to know this someone well

Component (c) outlines the knowledge that many parents possess regarding how they should do things with an autistic someone. Because of the highly specific and individual nature of what may cause an autistic meltdown (see component (d) of Section 1) or even ‘bad feelings’ not to the extent of a meltdown, parents are aware that there may be behaviours that are best avoided with a given autistic someone. c. because this someone is like this, when I am with this someone it is good if I do some things not like I do them when I am with other people

if I do these things like I do them when I am with other people, maybe this someone can feel something bad because of it

Component (d) reflects an understanding that autistic children can be seen as ‘naughty’ and ‘disruptive’ by others, whereas parents of autistic people know that This portion of the script is ‘at the same time’ as all of the previous information regarding how the autistic someone is constructed. This is clearer when viewing the script as a whole.

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very often the autistic someone does not intend for his or her actions to be so. Take, for example, (24) Might print it out and stick it on the school gate to be read by the parents who don’t bother much to disguise their sneers at my son’s behaviour nor their contempt for my clearly deficient parenting. (in Mitchell 2013) (25) He can be seen as naughty but he just can’t cope the way other children can. When he was younger he hit another child on the way to school and he was suspended for a month. After that he wouldn’t go to school for months and we had a real battle, and the welfare services were involved. (Belfast Telegraph 2017) (26) Primary school was where it got really bad, teachers, they just didn’t know what to do with me so they just put me on detention all the time. (in Xiberras 2017; see also: Mumsnet, n.d.)

d. if this someone is a child, sometimes people can think something like this: “this someone does bad things, maybe this someone wants to do bad things” I know: very often this someone does not want to do bad things when this someone does bad things, they often do not know: these things are bad other people do not know this well

Script [A] presented a range of possibilities for how an autistic someone can be constructed by the parent of another autistic someone when that parent first hears that ‘X has autism’. Section 1 focused on the construction specifically of the autistic someone’s thinking, feeling and doing, while Sect. 2 focused on how the prototypical parent understands the autistic someone’s social world and how to engage with that someone. Script [B]—parental experiences Where Script [A] focused on a parent’s understanding of an autistic someone, Script [B] captures specific aspects of the parental experience, including the empathy and support that can exist among parents of children with autism. The script is presented in two sections: the first relating to knowledge about other parents and the second relating to knowledge about the parent’s own experience. Section 1 Script [B] begins with a birth scenario, which is a piece of potential solidarity in the parental understanding of autism. Birth parents (or those who are taking on a child close to its birth, perhaps in an adoptive scenario) know well what it was like to have a new child, with the hopes that come along with that, and for them to have to readjust to life after an autism diagnosis. The ‘age of diagnosis’ and ‘reasons for suspecting autism’ are common themes in fora where parents discuss autism, and within these themes the feelings associated with the diagnosis are often discussed. Also common are feelings of having ‘lost’ a future that the parents had imagined, for example,

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(27) did any of you mmmys have periods like this were u feel so sad for your dc? (28) yes, lots of periods of feeling sad, and confused, and angry. (29) [about feeding a newborn] He was so unwilling to look at me that I used to sit and sob, convinced he hated me and he had decided I was a bad mother. (Mumsnet, n.d.) (30) I don’t know, here we were raising this kid for three and a half years, and all of a sudden we realize that he was not going to be a normal kid. It was like kind of a curse or something. Why couldn’t we have known this to start with? Everything would have been better if he had died. I mean I really thought that. It was like this huge curse or something. (in Schall 2000, p. 413) (31) I was very emotional. I did feel, I guess, guilt in a way that I had done something … (in Xiberras 2017; see also: Mitchell 2013)

Conversely, no cases were found during discourse analysis where a parent ‘celebrated’ a child’s diagnosis of autism, leading to component (a)’s evaluation of associated feelings as BAD. When parents of an autistic child hear this, they often think like this about this child’s parents: a. at the time when this child was born, the parents of this child felt something very good, like all parents feel at such a time these parents thought like this at this time: “our child is like other children, we can live for a long time as many other people live”

some time after this, they knew it is not like this, they knew their child is not like other children at this time these parents could feel something bad because they thought like this: “we cannot live as we want anymore, we cannot live as many other people can live”

Component (b) sets out a piece of knowledge relating to the possibility of social isolation. Every parent in the Schall (2000) study recounted experiences of social rejection and isolation, while studies by Woodgate et al. (2008) and Gray (1993, 1997) also found social isolation to be a common experience for parents of autistic children, with the former finding that perceptions of society’s lack of understanding were the key reason for isolation, and the latter finding that participants were more prone to select themselves out of social participation for fear of the resultant encounters. Logan Whitaker, National Inclusion Director of the AFL, explains that some volunteer parents in youth AFL do not want to say or do the wrong thing, and therefore find it easier to claim that the needs of an autistic child cannot be met (in Smith and Mackenzie 2017). Mitchell (2013) expresses the situation as such: (32) Your social horizon dwindles. Friends assure you, “Bring him over. It’s fine – our place always looks like a bomb’s hit it” but you know they’ll be less laid-back when a curtain rail gets used as a gym bar and comes down in a shower of plaster. Babysitters, air travel, hotels and B&Bs are off the menu. (33) [commenter on article] It’s sad that social conventions can make being a parent of an autistic kid that much more difficult. Something I have often reflected on with a friend of mine that is in such a position.

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Whatever the reason for potential social isolation, the parental figure within this script acknowledges that it is a distinct possibility, as shown by their belief that people often do not want to associate with the parents of autistic children, which they have experienced. b. because this child is like this, many people can think about the parents of this child like this: “I don’t want to do many things with these people”

Component (c) shows how the experience of parenting an autistic child often leads to a desire not only for connection, but the expression of something akin to ‘solidarity’ in the face of external difficulties. Rather than specific instances of parents expressing this in text, however, the substantial presence of fora in which parents openly discuss their autistic children and related feelings is taken as evidence of component (c). c. because I know this, maybe I want to feel something good towards this child’s parents maybe I want this child’s parents to know that some other people know this well because of this, maybe I think like this: “it can be good if I listen to some things they say If I do this, maybe they can feel something good because of it, like people can feel when they think like this: “this other someone knows well how I feel””

Section 2 Where Section 1 focused on perceptions of other parents, Section 2 focuses on attitudes towards one’s own autistic child (of any age). While the disappointment of an autism diagnosis can be sharp at the time a diagnosis is made, as explored in Section 1, component (c), the bad feelings do not necessarily disappear completely as a parent raises their autistic child. The impact on families can be painful, and there is often a pervasive fear of what the future holds for the autistic someone. For example, (34) A severely autistic child can disrupt an entire family structure. You no longer hope for that child to be a professional. You hope that he learns to speak again, to take care of himself, to be toilet trained, to be, dare I say it, a human being again. As the older sister of a brother with autism I lived with and still have the fear that no matter how smart he is or how well he handles himself, someone who wants to take advantage of him will. His intelligence does not extend to understanding others malice towards those who are different. I worry about what will happen after I die should I predecease him… (in Padawer 2014) (35) [e]very day my son is the best thing in my life … But some days autism really is not [wonderful] … not matter what mental gymnastics I try to perform… (in Autism and Oughtisms 2011) (36) [interviewer] Do you ever wish things were different? … were there ever times when you wished this wasn’t your life? [guest] Of course, of course. I’ve wished that, I suppose, at times, ever since Matty was born. I just wished it wasn’t my life but wished it wasn’t his and his siblings’ … they didn’t ask to have a brother like Matty.

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I’ve just told them that they’re never to forget they do and not to completely neglect him, but they have to live their lives. (Lewis et al. 2017) (37) … I have heard stories like those tonight of those young women who get to their teenage years and depression comes up and I did not want that. I could see it, I could see that path and I did not want that for her … I think we were all being deprived of a really good relationship with her because, she would come home, she’d lose it at me. At that point I didn’t have the full understanding that it was her exhaustion and I’d walk out of the room. (in Xiberras 2017; see also: Mitchell 2013)

The Australian informational web site Raising Children (2017) advises that parents who already have an autistic child and are expecting another child might ‘feel guilty for wanting a child without ASD’ or ‘feel excited at the thought of having a child with typical development’. Various literature also explores the impact of autism on the family: Hock and Ahmedani (2012) report that parents of a child with ASD tend to report lower levels of marital relationship satisfaction; Gray (1997) and Woodgate et al. (2008) found that parents of autistic children either felt a sense of losing one’s identity or struggled to maintain their own identity; while Benson’s (2006) study showed that parents of children with autism report higher levels of stress and depression (or, in very basic NSM, they FEEL SOMETHING BAD AT MANY TIMES). Section 2 makes explicit that any wish that the autistic someone were ‘normal’, and acknowledgement of difficulties that come with parenting an autistic child, are not in any way connected with a decrease in love for the autistic someone. Instead, they are connected to the parent’s desire for good things to happen to the autistic someone, fear that it is easier for bad things to happen to the autistic someone than most people, and the perpetual realisation that the autistic someone cannot have the kind of life that most people can have. It is important to note that when such insecurities and wishes are expressed in online autism communities, the people expressing them are not subject to censure from others within this community, which suggests at best a shared understanding of mutual feelings, and at least the importance of listening to another’s experiences, as in Section 1, component (c). For some parents of a child with autism, living with autism can be an incredibly draining experience, and it would be both unrealistic and unkind to expect that they never experience disappointment with, so to speak, the hand that life has dealt them. At the same time, parents of an autistic child can think like this: a. when we live with someone like this, we can often feel something bad we can feel like this because we cannot live as many other people live we can feel like this because this someone cannot live as other people live we don’t feel anything bad towards this someone; we feel very good things towards this someone, we want many good things to happen to this someone at the same time, we often think like this: “many bad things can happen to this someone because this someone is like this” I know that many people like us often think about autism like this: “this is bad” it is good if we can think like this: “it is not always bad, sometimes it can be good”

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Script [B] focused primarily, via Section 1, on a parent’s thoughts regarding other parents of autistic children, but also considered, via Section 2, the broader implications for their own life from raising or having raised an autistic someone. Taken together, Scripts [A] and [B] show a prototypical parental figure who has an emotionally coloured approach to their working knowledge of an autistic someone’s capabilities, and a deep understanding of the implications of autism on life both for the autistic someone and those close to that someone.

8.4

Brief Notes on Contrastive Analysis

The research presented in this chapter is part of a larger whole, undertaken during a master’s research project that contrasted these parental understandings with the understandings of people in the general public, medical professionals working with autistic people and those in the neurodiversity movement (Forbes 2017). While this chapter has focused solely on sketching out a prototypical understanding of autism held by a prototypical parent of an autistic someone, the central thrust of the original project was an experimentation with Minimal English for contrastive analysis of cognitive models. This section will present a small selection of components from the scripts representing other cognitive models as a means of showing how Minimal English can capture fine-grained differences in group cognition. Due to space constraints, this section cannot include a more thoroughly argued case for each of the components; they exist purely to show the practicability of this technique. Deficit Model One of the key differences between the parental understanding presented in this chapter and the understandings of those in the general public and the medical community is the characterisation of an autistic someone’s ability. While parents have a nuanced sense that an autistic someone is often able to do things just the same as ‘normal’ people do them, even if they might also do things differently, people in the general public and medical community tend towards seeing the autistic someone as simply unable to do certain things. This is expressed through subtly different language in scripting, for example, When many people hear this, they often think about this someone like this: a. this someone is not someone like other people b. this someone can’t think like other people c. this someone can’t do things like other people

This excerpt is taken from the opening of Section 1 of the script for the general public and shows clearly that an autistic someone is immediately ‘othered’ in component (a) and painted as ‘less than’ other people in components (b)–(c). Rather than different capabilities, the autistic someone is deficient. The specific deficiencies

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are not clear to the prototypical member of the general public, but this prototypical member has a vague sense that autistic people ‘can’t’ do things like other people can. The prototypical member of the medical community who deals with autism, however, maintains the deficit model alongside an understanding of more specific ways in which the deficiency occurs. In other words, this group has a similar level of knowledge to the parental group regarding how an autistic someone is unable to do things like other people but does not see this inability through the lens of difference. Rather, they see a deficit that is caused by the brain. Brain as Causal Locus One of the most interesting aspects of the script for prototypical members of the medical community who deal with autism is the understanding that autism manifests from a physical location, namely the brain. a. this someone is not someone like other people because this someone’s brain is not like other people’s brains this someone cannot be someone like other people

The medical professional, when constructing the autistic someone, not only gives a reason for the autistic someone being different to other people, but also holds an understanding that the autistic someone’s status as autistic cannot be changed, i.e. they will always be as they are. This construction of deficit is fully in line with the language used in the DSM-V when describing how autism spectrum disorder is to be diagnosed. The brain is also important in the prototypical medical professional’s understanding of potential comorbidities, i.e. the claim is that when a prototypical member of this group hears that ‘X has autism’, part of their thinking is that it is possible this someone has other conditions alongside the autism. people like me know much about the brain, not like other people we know that it is like this: when someone is like this, it is because something happens in this someone’s brain not like it happens in other people’s brains, this is bad for this someone in one way often when this someone’s brain is like this, other things happen in this someone’s brain not like they happen in other people’s brains, this is bad for this someone in another way because of this, I think like this: “maybe some other things happen in this someone’s brain at the same time, maybe these things are bad for this someone”

Neurodiversity’s Metacognitive Self-Awareness While the three groups of general public, parents and medical professionals maintain a similar structure within their scripts, the prototypical member of the neurodiversity movement condenses this structure (how the autistic someone thinks, does things, feels things and does things with other people) into one

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difference model component that deliberately recasts this from being a negative into a positive. c. this someone doesn’t think like other people this someone doesn’t do things like other people this someone doesn’t say things like other people this someone doesn’t feel things like other people this is not bad, it is good

This occurs in the context of the prototypical neurodiversity advocate having deliberately thought about the construction of an autistic someone, and the way they wish to construct that someone. a. many other people want me to think in one way about this someone I don’t want to think about this someone in this way b. I want to think about this someone like this: “this someone is someone not like anyone else, as all people are not someone like anyone else: this is good at the same time, this someone is someone like all other people, as all people are someone like all other people: this is good”

Thus, while the script for the prototypical neurodiversity advocate has substantial differences in format to the scripts for the other three groups, it still retains key elements that make contrastive analysis between the groups not only possible but enlightening.

8.5

Limitations and Conclusion

This chapter has used Minimal English to posit an understanding of autism held by the prototypical parent of an autistic someone, as well as introduced Minimal English as a tool for fine-grained contrastive analysis of differing group understandings of the same concept. It must be restated that this study does not claim every parent thinks about autism in the way described. The claim is rather that there are some overall ‘touchstones’ of thinking that correlate broadly to groups of people with similar identifying features, with this chapter focusing on parents of autistic people. The scripts are written in such a manner as to provide recourse for those who do not fully subscribe to various components of the script (through the use of primes/ portmanteaus such as OFTEN, CAN and SOMETIMES). The discourse examples used in this study were derived from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, representing a broad Western ‘Anglosphere’ perspective. Likely sources of intra-group diversity, if contrasting on the basis of easily measured factors, could include nationality, gender, ethnicity and economic background. Of these, gender may be of particular interest. Research by

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Hastings et al. (2005a, b), for example, indicates some differences between the degree of positive and negative feelings for a child with autism between mothers and fathers, while there is evidence that stigma towards autistic people can vary between men and women (Gillespie-Lynch et al. 2015). Further, some research has found that young males respond less positively to ‘disabled’ children than young females (Rosenbaum et al. 1988). Further examination of studies relating to the gender-controlled assessment of autistic people by not only the parental identity group presented in full here but also the general public identity group introduced in Sect. 4 could provide further detail regarding variations in prototypical assessment between gender intra-group. Minimal English is a developing area of inquiry and has promising potential applications. This study acted as a proof of concept for one such application, the contrastive analysis of mean cognition in different identity groups, with this chapter describing in full how this was manifested in scripts for the parental identity group. Rather than providing an outside-looking-in description of these groups, this technique allows readers to see, in this case, an autistic person from the perspective of a prototypical member of each group while retaining strong cross-translatability. With some relatively minor prior reading to understand Minimal English, these ‘cognitive scripts’ can be easily understood by the casual reader. Thus, Minimal English can act as a powerful tool in describing group cognition.

Appendix: Table of Texts5 Text type

Name and title

Blogs and Fora (including reader comments)

Autism and Oughtisms, ‘Has autism’ versus ‘is autistic’; a muddled debate Autism Daddy, ‘Autistic’ vs ‘has autism’ is this debate still going on?! Autistic Hoya, The significance of semantics: person-first language: why it matters Mumsnet, if your child has autism what were they like when they were 2 to 3 years Whirlpool Forums, Autism thread—lifestyle Wrong Planet Autism Community Forum, Repetitive behaviour autistic kids vs NT kids Wrong Planet Autism Community Forum, Asperger’s without repetitive routines and inflexibility (continued)

5

See reference list for full bibliographic details including URLs.

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(continued) Text type

Name and title

News/Commentary

ABC, Meet ‘the mutants’: the students who wear their autism with pride The Guardian, David Mitchell: learning to live with my son’s autism The New York Times, The kids who beat autism The Washington Post, Raising a tween who has autism Belfast Telegraph, What’s it like when your child has autism? All the Best, So you think I’m sick? Background Briefing, Nowhere to go: disability housing sell-off sparks fears for vulnerable Life Matters, Best of Life Matters: Auskick and autism, 3 men talk hope, millennials volunteer, and the plumbing ballet dancer SBS Insight, Diagnosing autism Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Position statements Raising Children, Having another child when your child has autism spectrum disorder The National Autistic Society, Autism; Obsessions, repetitive behaviour and routines Paul Jordan, How to start, carry on and end conversations

Podcast/Radio

Television Other Website

Book

References Altiere, M. J., & von Kluge, S. (2009). Searching for acceptance: Challenges encountered while raising a child with autism. Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, 34(2), 142– 152. https://doi.org/10.1080/13668250902845202. American Psychiatric Association. (2013a). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington: American Psychiatric Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books. 9780890425596.dsm01. American Psychiatric Association. (2013b). Autism spectrum disorder fact sheet. https://web. archive.org/web/20131006210933http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/Autism%20Spectrum% 20Disorder%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf. Accessed 26 September 2017. Autism and Oughtisms. (2011). ‘Has autism’ versus ‘is autistic’: A muddled debate. https:// autismandoughtisms.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/has-autism-versus-is-autistic-a-muddleddebate/. Accessed 23 May 2017. Autism Daddy. (2012). ‘Autistic’ vs ‘has autism’: is this debate still going on?! http://www. theautismdaddy.com/2012/06/vs-autism-is-this-debate-still-going-on.html. Accessed 23 May 2017. Autistic Hoya. (2011). The significance of semantics. Person-first language: Why it matters. http:// www.autistichoya.com/2011/08/significance-of-semantics-person-first.html. Accessed 23 May 2017. Autistic Self Advocacy Network. (n.d.). Position statements. http://autisticadvocacy.org/aboutasan/position-statements/. Accessed 22 September 2017. Bayat, M. (2007). Evidence of resilience in families of children with autism. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 51(9), 702–714. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2007.00960.x.

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Belfast Telegraph. (2017). What’s it like when your child has autism? Belfast Telegraph. http:// www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/whats-it-like-when-your-child-has-autism-35629540. html. Accessed 11 May 2019. Benson, P. (2006). The impact of child symptom severity on depressed mood among parents of children with ASD: The mediating role of stress proliferation. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 36(5), 685–695. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0112-3. Bernheimer, L. P., & Weisner, T. S. (2007). ‘Let me just tell you what I do all day…’: The family story at the Center of Intervention Research and Practice. Infants & Young Children, 20(3), 192–201. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.IYC.0000277751.62819.9b. DeVilbiss, E. A., & Lee, B. K. (2014). Trends in U.S. national autism awareness from 2004 to 2014: The impact of National Autism Awareness Month. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 44(12), 3271–3273. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-014-2160-4. Dillenburger, K., Jordan, J. A., McKerr, L., Devine, P., & Keenan, M. (2013). Awareness and knowledge of autism and autism interventions: A general population survey. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 7(12), 1558–1567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2013.09.004. Forbes, A. (2017). Contested understandings of ‘autism’: The view from NSM semantics. Master’s thesis, University of New England. Gibson, B., Shannon, S., & Hamilton, J. (2017). So you think I’m sick? http://allthebestradio.com/ shows/1712-think-im-sick/. Accessed 11 May 2019. Gillespie-Lynch, K., Brooks, P., Someki, F., Obeid, R., Shane-Simpson, C., Kapp, S. K., et al. (2015). Changing college students’ conceptions of autism: An online training to increase knowledge and decrease stigma. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(8), 2553–2566. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2422-9. Goddard, C. (2006). Ethnopragmatics: A new paradigm. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 1–30). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi. org/10.1515/9783110911114.1. Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goddard, C. (2015). The natural semantic metalanguage approach. In B. Heine & H. Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistics analysis (2nd ed., pp. 817–841). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199677078.013.0018. Goddard, C. (2016). Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de lexicologie, 109, 13–34. https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0013. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (Eds.). (1994). Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.25. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (Eds.). (2002). Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2014a). Semantic fieldwork and lexical universals. Studies in Language, 38(1), 80–127. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.38.1.03god. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2014b). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/ 9780199668434.001.0001. Gray, D. E. (1993). Perceptions of stigma: The parents of autistic children. Sociology of Health & Illness, 15(1), 102–120. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.ep11343802. Gray, D. E. (1997). High functioning autistic children and the construction of ‘normal family life’. Social Science and Medicine, 44(8), 1097–1106. Gray, D. E. (2002). Ten years on: A longitudinal study of families of children with autism. Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, 27(3), 215–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1366825021000008639. Hamlyn-Wright, S., Draghi-Lorenz, R., & Ellis, J. (2007). Locus of control fails to mediate between stress and anxiety and depression in parents of children with a developmental disorder. Autism, 11(6), 489–501. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361307083258.

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Hastings, R. P. (2003). Child behaviour problems and partner mental health as correlates of stress in mothers and fathers of children with autism. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 47 (4/5), 231–237. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2788.2003.00485.x. Hastings, R. P., Kovshoff, H., Brown, T., Ward, N. J., Espinosa, F. D., & Remington, B. (2005a). Coping strategies in mothers and fathers of preschool and school-age children with autism. Autism, 9(4), 377–391. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305056078. Hastings, R. P., Kovshoff, H., Ward, N. J., Espinosa, F. D., Brown, T., & Remington, B. (2005b). Systems analysis of stress and positive perceptions in mothers and fathers of pre-school children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 35(5), 635. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10803-005-0007-8. Hock, R., & Ahmedani, B. K. (2012). Parent perceptions of autism severity: Exploring the social ecological context. Disability and Health Journal, 5(4), 298–304. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. dhjo.2012.06.002. Jordan, P. (2017). How to start, carry on and end conversations: Scripts for social situations for people on the autism spectrum. London: Jessica Kingsley. Lecavalier, L., Leone, S., & Wiltz, J. (2006). The impact of behaviour problems on caregiver stress in young people with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 50(3), 172–183. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2005.00732.x. Lewis, D., O’Callaghan, J., & McGinness, L. (2017). Nowhere to go: Disability housing sell-off sparks fears for vulnerable. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/ 2017-07-30/8727666. Accessed 11 May 2019. Lowery, A. (2015). Am I autistic, or do I have autism?| Alex Lowery speaks about autism. http:// www.alexlowery.co.uk/am-i-autistic-or-do-i-have-autism/. Accessed 23 May 2017. Miller, B. (2017). Meet ‘The Mutants’: The students who wear their autism with pride. http:// www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-22/meet-the-mutants-students-on-the-autism-spectrum/ 8546644. Accessed 23 May 2017. Mitchell, D. (2013). David Mitchell: Learning to live with my son’s autism. The Guardian. http:// www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jun/29/david-mitchell-my-sons-autism. Accessed 11 May 2019. Montes, G., & Halterman, J. S. (2007). Psychological functioning and coping among mothers of children with autism: A population-based study. Pediatrics, 119(5), e1040–e1046. https://doi. org/10.1542/peds.2006-2819. Mumsnet. (n.d.). If your child has autism what were they like when they were 2 to 3 years. https:// www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/1702180-if-your-child-has-autism-what-were-theylike-when-they-were-2-to-3-years. Accessed 27 May 2017. National Autistic Society. (2016). Obsessions, repetitive behaviour and routines. http://www. autism.org.uk/about/behaviour/obsessions-repetitive-routines.aspx. Accessed 9 October 2017. Obeid, R., Daou, N., DeNigris, D., Shane-Simpson, C., Brooks, P., & Gillespie-Lynch, K. (2015). A cross-cultural comparison of knowledge and stigma associated with autism spectrum disorder among college students in Lebanon and the United States. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(11), 3520–3536. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2499-1. Padawer, R. (2014). The kids who beat autism. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2014/08/03/magazine/the-kids-who-beat-autism.html. Accessed 27 May 2017. Pakenham, K. I., Samios, C., & Sofronoff, K. (2005). Adjustment in mothers of children with Asperger syndrome: An application of the double ABCX model of family adjustment. Autism, 9(2), 191–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305049033. Peeters, B. (Ed.). (2006). Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical evidence from the Romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.81. Raising Children. (2017). Having another child when your child has autism spectrum disorder. http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/autism_spectrum_disorder_having_another_child.html. Accessed 24 May 2017. Rosenbaum, P. L., Armstrong, R. W., & King, S. M. (1988). Determinants of children’s attitudes toward disability: A review of evidence. Children’s Health Care, 17(1), 32–39. https://doi.org/ 10.1207/s15326888chc1701_5.

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Schall, C. (2000). Family perspectives on raising a child with autism. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 9(4), 409–423. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009456825063. Singh, J., Illes, J., Lazzeroni, L., & Hallmayer, J. (2009). Trends in US autism research funding. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39(5), 788–795. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10803-008-0685-0. Sivberg, B. (2002). Family system and coping behaviors: A comparison between parents of children with autistic spectrum disorders and parents with non-autistic children. Autism, 6(4), 397–409. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361302006004006. Smith, A., & Mackenzie, M. (2017). Best of life matters: Auskick and autism, 3 men talk hope, millennials volunteer, and the plumbing ballet dancer. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/ programs/lifematters/best-of-life-matters:-15th-july/8710294. Accessed 11 May 2019. Titchkosky, T. (2001). Disability: A rose by any other name? ‘People-first’ language in Canadian society. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 38(2), 125–140. https://doi.org/10. 1111/j.1755-618X.2001.tb00967.x. Washburn, K. (2016). Raising a tween who has autism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ parenting/wp/2016/03/17/raising-a-tween-who-has-autism/. Accessed 27 May 2017. Whirlpool Forums (2010–2018). Autism thread—lifestyle. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/ 1420170. Accessed 24 June 2018. Wrong Planet Autism Community Forum. (2015). Repetitive behaviour autistic kids vs NT kids. https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=289967. Accessed 24 June 2018. Wrong Planet Autism Community Forum. (2009). Asperger’s without repetitive routines and inflexibility. https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=105985. Accessed 24 June 2018. Woodgate, R. L., Ateah, C., & Secco, L. (2008). Living in a world of our own: The experience of parents who have a child with autism. Qualitative Health Research, 18(8), 1075–1083. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1049732308320112. Xiberras, A. (2017). Fighting to fit in: Growing up with autism. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/ insight/fighting-to-fit-in-growing-up-with-autism. Accessed 11 May 2019.

Alexander Forbes is a Learning Advisor at Southern Cross University Melbourne Campus, where he provides academic support to international students. He completed a Master of Applied Linguistics (TESOL) through the University of New England with a major research project under the guidance of Cliff Goddard. He is grateful for Cliff’s guidance through his master’s project and beyond.

Chapter 9

Principles and Prototypes of a Cultural Dictionary of Australian English for Learners Lauren Sadow

Abstract This chapter discusses some of the issues that need to be considered when producing a user-friendly resource intended to familiarize ESL learners with the invisible culture of Australian English. It draws on specialized function lexicography (Tarp Lexicography in the borderland between knowledge and non-knowledge. Mouton De Gruyter, Berlin 2008) and on the cultural scripts approach as proposed by Goddard (Cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language teaching. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp 143–163, 2004). The resource takes the form of an encyclopedic dictionary focusing on Australian values, attitudes and interactional norms and aims to respond to an industry need for pedagogical materials that introduce migrants coming to Australia to the culture embodied in Australian English. Best practice for teaching cultural awareness and related skills is to use a method for teaching that encourages students to reflect on their experience and to analyse it from an insider or emic perspective (Pulverness and Tomlinson in Lang Teach 45(2):143–179, 2003). The cultural scripts approach, which deconstructs complex cultural elements into simpler and universally intelligible building blocks, provides an effective means to this end. The chapter contents that drawing connections between different cultural scripts and illustrating those connections in a way that promotes the acquisition of concepts for learners is one of the most important elements in cultural dictionary design.







Keywords Ethnopragmatics Learner lexicography English as a second language Cultural awareness Intercultural competence Australian English




9.1







Introduction

Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) scholars have more than once drawn attention to the relevance of cultural scripts theory and ethnopragmatics as potential resources for language teaching and learning in general, and for the teaching of L. Sadow (&) The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_9

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pragmatics and the acquisition of interactional competences, in particular (see e.g. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004; Goddard 2004, 2010; Fernández 2016; Sadow 2018). In doing so, they have almost invariably focused on classroom pedagogies rather than learner resources. Goddard, in particular, has proposed a number of ways in which cultural scripts can be used to benefit students from different language backgrounds and has discussed, in several publications, how best to alter established cultural scripts for pedagogical purposes. In contrast, not much work has been done on how language learners can use cultural scripts theory and ethnopragmatics in their own private language learning. There is a clear need to develop student resources that make the best possible use of the pedagogical work that has been done to date, and that are primarily designed for independent study (but could still be used in the classroom as well). The format of a dictionary—i.e. a lexicographical format—appears to be the obvious choice for a pedagogical resource, focused on shared linguistic knowledge, that offers language learners access to emic perspectives on the languaculture they are studying. This chapter suggests that a combination of ethnopragmatics and lexicography can benefit language learners in a way that furthers their acquisition of interactional, strategic, cultural and intercultural competences. The combination of ethnopragmatics and lexicography is innovative.1 It is one of the hallmarks, if not the most outstanding feature, of my ethnopragmatic dictionary for learners of English, the Cultural Dictionary of Australian English for Learners (CDAEL), which is the focus of this chapter. The idea of a learners’ dictionary containing cultural content is a direct challenge of lexicographical convention, since the standard expectations of dictionary content are clearly not adhered to, particularly in terms of headwords to be defined. The CDAEL uses so-called compositions to articulate ethnopragmatic information (as well as some culturally salient lexical information) and convey it to the audience of English language learners from diverse backgrounds. Compositions are written in Minimal English (Goddard 2018), a by-product of NSM that provides a flexible framework for developing pedagogically oriented cultural scripts and explications in a standardized format. The term ‘composition’ aims to capture the careful and methodical nature of explications and cultural scripts written in Minimal English. It can be used to summarize a combination of explications and cultural scripts, or to describe a piece in Minimal English that does not naturally fall into either category. By using Minimal English, the information is made accessible to all learners, without losing its cultural significance. While the CDAEL is still under development, some prototyping has already taken place (cf. Sadow 2019). The Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers (AusDICT) (Sadow 2019) is based on the same principles, but is aimed at English language teachers, rather than language learners, as its main users. This version of a Minimal English-based dictionary of ethnopragmatics used design-based research (Amiel and Reeves 2008) to consult with language teachers

1

Publications that connect NSM and lexicography have typically focused on lexical semantics and have not included pragmatics.

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around Australia to develop the content, structure, and general format of the book. Many of the principles emerging from the design-based research are discussed throughout this chapter. However, it will be useful to briefly illustrate the prototype. The AusDICT includes both ethnopragmatic entries, as well as entries for cultural keywords (Levisen and Waters 2017), as both were articulated by teachers as needing further resources for teaching. Figure 9.1 illustrates the AusDICT entry for whinge, a cultural keyword of Australian English (Wierzbicka 1997). Figure 9.2 illustrates the AusDICT entry for ‘doing something when something bad happens’, a widespread way of thinking among speakers of Australian English (Wierzbicka 2002). These two examples show how a more Minimal English approach to writing ethnopragmatic scripts for pedagogical purposes can make the information contained therein more practical for pedagogical contexts. They also show that the principles of lexicography and dictionary-making, such as including examples, structuring entries to draw attention to particular aspects, and indicating related terms, and support the more non-traditional entries. As previously indicated, AusDICT is aimed at English language teachers. The target users of the CDAEL (the focus of the current chapter) are language learners. There are specific knowledge, pedagogical and user needs unique to this target

Fig. 9.1 Entry for whinge from the AusDICT (Sadow 2019)

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Fig. 9.2 Entry for doing something when something bad happens from the AusDICT (Sadow 2019)

audience. In this chapter, I engage with the three key fields that need to be united for the CDAEL project to be viable. The first of these is second language teaching and learning, more specifically the creation of language education materials. The second is lexicography, in particular learner lexicography. The third is ethnopragmatics. I discuss the contribution ethnopragmatics can make to second language teaching and learning, materials creation and learner lexicography, and I conclude with a discussion of the practicalities of creating an ethnopragmatic dictionary for learners.

9.2 9.2.1

Ethnopragmatics for Teaching Ethnopragmatics for Teaching What?—Knowledge Needs

The first thing to be clear about is what ethnopragmatics should be used to teach, and why. Ethnopragmatic cultural scripts do not define the semantic content of lexical items in the same way that NSM explications do. Instead, they capture detailed and emic perspectives on the ways in which speakers interact, and the values and attitudes that underpin these behaviours. As a result, their titles are all

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rough ‘translations’ or recordings (usually in English) of the deconstructed concept. In some cases, this is a concept with terms attached (as in ‘jocular abuse’; see Goddard 2017a), sometimes it is epitomized by an expression (as in ‘you don’t abandon a mate’; Wierzbicka 2002), sometimes it is a concept best expressed through a number of explanatory words (as in ‘it’s my house, I do what I want’; Wierzbicka 2012). The examples in [A] and [B] illustrate the difference between an NSM explication and a cultural script (which reflects a way of thinking, rather than the semantic meaning). [A] X was whingeing (Wierzbicka 1997: 215) for some time, X was saying something like this: something bad is happening to me X was saying it as people say things when they want to say something like this: something bad is happening to me I feel something bad because of this I can not do anything I want someone to know this I want someone to do something because of this I think no one wants to do anything I want to say this many times because of this people think: it is bad if someone does this

[B] A cultural script for ‘doing something when something bad happens’ (Wierzbicka 2002: 1198) when a person feels something bad, it is good if this person thinks: ‘I want to do something because of this’

Each of the concepts articulated in ethnopragmatics map onto ‘culture’ of some description, but within the overlap between pragmatics, sociopragmatics, and culture. In many ways, each of those linguistic elements has a culturally mediated component that has been described using cultural scripts. In language teaching, each of these aspects of language map onto a different competence: pragmatic, strategic, sociopragmatic, and cultural. These competences comprise what is generally accepted as the ideal aim for language learners to achieve—intercultural competence (IC) (Byram 1997; Kramsch 1993; Liddicoat and Scarino 2013). IC has many different aspects, but is underpinned by an understanding of how cultures and people differ on the level of values and interaction, and strategies to navigate interactions outside of one’s own cultural background. Also important is the ability to value other cultures in the same way as one’s own, and to be able to analyse and develop understandings about situations in real time. These competences are essential for language learners because language use is heavily linked to identity and self-expression (Liddicoat 1997). Without the tools to express and manage their image in their second language, learners find it difficult to

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be accepted into a community, to make meaningful relationships, or even to be understood, which leaves them susceptible to otherwise avoidable mental health challenges (Department of Social Services 2014). Journal articles, books and newspaper interviews illustrate again and again how isolation is among the most significant struggles faced by migrants and international students, especially from non-native English speaking backgrounds (e.g. Huang 2016; Mills 2018). Importantly, it is clear that the implicit instruction received by language students is not sufficient to address their problem, and particular care should be taken to provide explicit instruction in pragmatics, sociopragmatics and culture in classroom contexts and materials targeted at language learners. That culture has a significant role in language teaching and is now the prevalent position of language educators and researchers (Risager 2006). At first glance, it appears that there are numerous resources for language learners to learn cultural content. However, upon closer inspection, the suggested methods are incomplete both in scope and in appropriateness of the materials to students of diverse backgrounds. Ethnopragmatics can intervene here and demystify the values, assumptions, and interactional norms experienced by native speakers of the language. By describing each of these in cross-translatable terms and breaking them down into a series of components that capture how native speakers conceptualize the world, ethnopragmatics can fill an apparent gap in the education of language learners.

9.2.2

Ethnopragmatics for Teaching How?—Pedagogical Needs

The theory for creating language teaching materials has specific recommendations for materials aimed at cultural instruction (Pulverness and Tomlinson 2003), as well as pragmatics and other associated skills. The recommendations stem from Pulverness and Tomlinson’s observation that teaching materials do not explicitly address culture in nuanced ways, focusing more on the visible elements, rather than critically engaging with cultural diversity and emic perspectives. Ethnopragmatics inherently provides the emic perspectives (Goddard and Ye 2015), and through the structure of compositions is also able to provide nuance between different approaches to interaction and individual variation. Teaching materials can be considered to be anything a student uses to promote learning (Tomlinson 2012), including material in and outside of classrooms, as well as pedagogically directed materials (such as homework, textbooks, and assigned reading .) or self-directed materials (such as YouTube videos, TV shows, podcasts, newspapers, and self-chosen novels). These categories overlap in many ways. The intention is to acknowledge the role that all materials play in the teaching of language, not just traditional classroom worksheets. Importantly, this definition of teaching materials includes dictionaries.

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Materials for teaching culture should promote the same kinds of skills and attributes expected of an interculturally competent speaker. They should encourage students to: • Accept that one’s practices are influenced by the cultures in which one participates, and so are those of one’s interlocutors; • Accept that there is no one right way to do things; • Value one’s own culture and other cultures; • Use language to explore culture; • Find personal ways of engaging in intercultural interaction; • Use one’s existing knowledge of cultures as a resource for learning about new cultures; • Find a personal intercultural style and identity. (Liddicoat and Scarino 2013: 23–24) To achieve this, materials need to be able to be targeted at developing these attributes. Many of these are not just about the L2 culture, but about recognizing cultures in contrast to one another, and recognizing the ways in which individuals within those cultures can vary while not promoting any as being superior to the others. Keeping this in mind, it is interesting to note that individual and sub-group variation is a nuance often missed in cultural teaching materials (Weninger and Kiss 2013). For the most part, ‘cultural’ materials present a monolithic view of culture, facts, figures, and enhance stereotypes (e.g. Usó-Juan 2008). However, the real need is for students to engage critically and reflectively with materials, but also to be able to understand the underlying reasons and causes of cultural differences. Cohen and Ishihara (2012) and Pulverness and Tomlinson (2003) discuss the ideal qualities of teaching and learning materials for pragmatic and cultural awareness; these can be summarized as follows: • Materials should use real speech (or text) examples; • Materials should give explicit information on situational and contextual variation (including gender usage); • Materials should explain the cultural reasoning for norms; • Materials should connect pragmatic and interactional information to vocabulary; • Materials should provide information to teachers and learners on norms and pragmatics; • Materials should encourage student to develop analytic skills so they can become ethnographic observers. A key theme emerging in these suggested qualities of good teaching materials is that the information on culturally mediated features of language should be explicit in teaching materials and given time for learners to focus on. Naturally, many of these qualities are far easier to capture in classroom tasks than in reference material. However, the cultural scripts approach to describing cultural norms and pragmatics captures much of this information as explicitly and

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clearly as is possible. It provides situational context, permits for variation in differing degrees, explains the cultural reasonings behind norms, and can be connected to vocabulary. In addition, by breaking down the pragmatic and cultural concepts into components, cultural scripts encourage readers (and therefore learners) to think about each part on its own, thus developing their analytic skills in interactions. The challenge for a dictionary containing this information is to present it in a way that is accessible for language learners, so that they are able to retrieve as much of that content from within the cultural scripts as possible.

9.3

Learner Lexicography and User Needs

A dictionary is designed based on the functions it should perform for its users in order to meet their specific needs (Tarp 2008). The CDAEL is not intended to be used exclusively in classrooms with teacher support, but rather for it to be reference material that is accessible in the day-to-day lives of language learners. This means that the material needs to stand on its own, and be accessible to non-native speakers, despite being a monolingual dictionary. Learner dictionaries vary based firstly on whether they are providing encoding or decoding information to users. Encoding dictionaries assist users to find the best way of expressing their intended message, while decoding is an interpretive task, helping users to understand native speaker utterances. An encoding dictionary of ethnopragmatics could be seen as prescriptive, implying that non-native speakers must conform to native speaker standards—an idea now disfavoured in language pedagogy research (Kramsch 2014). The CDAEL focuses instead on decoding as its main function by framing cultural scripts from a hearer’s perspective (e.g. ‘when someone says to me…’) rather than the speaker’s perspective (e.g. ‘when I want to say…’). Still under debate is where to draw the line on what information constitutes a lexicographical work. While some lexicographers argue there ought to be no difference between dictionaries and encyclopedias, many argue that the distinction is required (Peeters 2000). At the heart of this debate is the issue of which information should be considered encyclopedic and which semantic. Goddard (2011: 16) draws a distinction between the two by saying that ‘linguistic knowledge is essentially shared between all the speakers of a language, whereas real-world knowledge is not’. Ethnopragmatics, being directly related to language as shared by the broad speech community (in awareness if not in practice), comprises linguistic knowledge, and not encyclopedic knowledge. Building on this concept of linguistic knowledge is the developing field of cognitive lexicography, which advocates for the inclusion of cognitive information alongside the semantic, as well as for the better design of dictionaries in line with our cognitive conceptualizations of concepts, rather than mere alphabetical order (Ostermann 2015). The needs of dictionary users have changed significantly in the last twenty years —most importantly because of the prevalence of the Internet and technology today

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(Lew and de Schryver 2014). As a result, print dictionaries are selling fewer copies, but online access is popular. This of course presents another challenge for lexicography as an industry, but this question will not be discussed here. From a user perspective, however, the convenience of something as portable as online access (or a smartphone application) is significantly preferable to a paper-based resource. As a result, the ideal learners’ dictionary in this case is electronic and searchable.

9.3.1

Dictionaries as Educational Tools

Learner dictionaries in educational contexts have an essential role in language teaching and learning as they provide definitive, reliable reference materials for both students and teachers on the meanings and usages of words. At the same time, they help students to develop skills in independent research, analysis and critical thought about language use. In this way, dictionaries are used as teaching materials in classroom exercises, but they also feature in student learning outside the classroom as independent skills development. Other materials can perform similar functions, but none has the breadth of information across all topics that a dictionary does. Using dictionaries as teaching materials can also have its drawbacks. Most dictionaries do not contain critical discussion of the words and phrases defined within them (even if they can be used to start that critical discussion), and they are so packed with information that it can be difficult to discern related topics and boundaries of material. This leaves the development of such questions and the generation of these discussions up to teachers, who may not have the knowledge or confidence in these topics to discuss them in an in-depth manner. A dictionary designed for the teaching context could be arranged with conceptual domains or teaching topics that would guide teachers and students through the material. Such a design would enhance the connectedness of the ideas discussed, without sacrificing the accessibility gained through alphabetization. Some of the issues related to structuring an ethnopragmatic dictionary in this context are discussed in Sect. 9.6.

9.3.2

Learner Dictionaries

Although the first learner dictionaries were created in the 1930s, there is still no coherent methodology for creating them (Tarp 2008). I suggest this is in part because they are approached as purely lexicographical exercises, rather than language teaching materials. Fuertes-Olivera (2010) suggests that, to remedy some of the problems with learner dictionaries, companies ought to cater to a specific user with an explicit language ability and use purpose instead of catering to the broadest possible range of users. In addition, learners need to acquire language skills in

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addition to language knowledge. However, ‘skill’ is not a category that is incorporated into lexicographical theory (Tarp 2008). Some innovations and additions in recent years have tried to rectify this omission (see below). Nevertheless, this content has been made supplementary to the original definitions—creating the impression that the meaning and the cultural connotations associated with it are separate parts of the language and are not intertwined (Sánchez 2010). That said, learner lexicography has been marked by some interesting innovations compared to traditional lexicography. The Longman dictionary series, in particular, has made innovative decisions regarding flow and organization. In the Longman Essential Activator (LEA) (Pearson Education, Inc. 2006), articles are organized by theses and related terms, not alphabetically. The LEA is designed for encoding purposes: it allows users to explore connected ideas through a single word, thereby enabling them to find the word that best suits their expressive needs, rather than the word that most literally translates a word in their mother tongue. A problem mentioned by both Tarp (2008) and Fuertes-Olivera (2010) is the difficulty in selecting headwords for learners’ dictionaries. Both state, it is impossible to include every item in a dictionary aimed at learners, but the process for deciding what to include is unclear—how much should be included, and what is of greatest importance to the users. Currently, there is no methodology for determining which headwords belong in dictionaries, regardless of whether they are aimed at native speakers or at learners. Seargeant (2011) points out that the status of English as a global language adds to the difficulty. The proposal of this chapter is that the required resource be specific to one particular variety of English (or that each variety requires its own resource), not generalized across all Englishes. While there is some overlap in interactional styles between varieties of English, it is also important to have resources with the different varieties as focal points and this does raise questions of granularity—how specific is that variety of English? If ‘Australian English’ is the variety chosen, how is that variety subsequently defined? What happens to varieties such as Aboriginal Australian English? Should regional variation be included beyond slang? How are those regions delineated? Etcetera. In selecting headwords for this dictionary, there is an advantage in the specificity of an ethnopragmatic dictionary. The headwords need to be relevant to ethnopragmatics. However, bearing in mind the tenets of good design of teaching materials, they should also be linked to real language use and real phrases. Therefore, some lexical headwords (such as cultural keywords, see Fig. 9.1) are included in addition to ethnopragmatic headwords (e.g. Fig. 9.2). In terms of scope, the extent of ethnopragmatics that can be described is enormous. It is important to narrow this down to resolve issues of information density mentioned above. This can be done through relating words to classroom teaching topics, e.g. the ‘units of instruction’ offered by ACARA (2011) or the AMEP (Department of Education and Training 2011). It can also be done through the levels of cultural scripts offered within the field of ethnopragmatics. Perhaps it is best to include only master-level scripts, or only interactional scripts, as the remainder are not relevant to student experiences. This will be discussed further in Sect. 9.5.

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Learner Needs and Teacher Needs

User research on a proposed ethnopragmatic dictionary shows that the needs of both language learners and teachers need to be considered in creating materials for classroom practice. Both are important, because even materials used exclusively by learners need to be integrated into the class content, or otherwise fit into the curriculum. At the same time, the dictionary cannot rely on that context, as its intended audience is not exclusively located in classrooms. Trials of the NSM framework with English language students have shown that the approach is suitable for teaching contexts (see Sadow 2018). However, for a dictionary requiring students to access the data by themselves, the use of Minimal English rather than NSM was preferred by those students. Additional adjustments to Minimal English are discussed in Sect. 9.5.1. Teacher needs, on the other hand, were both more general and more explicit. Through a teacher survey and several focus groups, language teachers elaborated on the content they needed to teach, as well as the pedagogical requirements of resources aimed at language students. In summary, from their perspective, an ethnopragmatic dictionary needed to be: – Contextualized—i.e. able to be related to the students’ lives, particularly their needs and questions about language and culture, as well as the content being taught in their classes; – Practical—i.e. providing practical direction on how to implement the ethnopragmatics in interactional contexts, rather than constrained to a theoretical discussion of values; – Accessible—i.e. teaching and learning resources need to be portable and accessible for their students, meaning that an online dictionary, or a smart phone application is the ideal publication method for an ethnopragmatic dictionary, not a paper publication.

The main concern for all teachers in the focus groups was that the material be of maximum applicability to their students, and that their students be able to develop effective communication skills by using such a resource.

9.4 9.4.1

Lexicography in Practice Digital Versus Paper Dictionaries

In the current age of lexicography, electronic lexicography (e-lexicography) dominates the field. Even in the creation of paper dictionaries, electronic databases and coding systems are the norms in maintaining the large number of entries and articles of commercial dictionaries. In turn, online dictionaries use similar systems to code and store their information. E-lexicography is a currently exploding field, as computer technologies develop capabilities across domains and become more

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accessible to people globally. As discussed above, an ethnopragmatic dictionary for learners is most practical if developed as an online dictionary. Online dictionaries are generally accessible through websites but also smartphone applications. They usually have a search function to help users find the terms they are looking for, making them ideal for information seeking. The search terms are not obliged to be the same as the headwords of an entry, and several search terms can lead to the same point (Tarp 2008). Also, importantly, online dictionaries do not have visible alphabetical structures. The entries in their database are stored and categorized in several different ways, which means that users can access the information in the same kinds of ways. This may be through the multiple search terms mentioned above, or via explore functions, designed by different types of domains, or even via common components in entries. The Longman Essential Activator (2010) presents a paper version of how this could be achieved. In an online dictionary, however, it is much easier to have headwords and entries belonging to several different domains, bridging domains, etc. This further improves accessibility and discoverability of connected and useful information. The key to creating online dictionaries is in creating effective coding systems for a database in a markup language that can be used across multiple platforms and in different iterations. For the proposed dictionary, I am using XML to mark up the entries to be maximally useful across platforms and projects—now as well as into future.

9.4.2

A ‘Good’ Definition

There are three key principles in writing good dictionary definitions (Landau 2001). First, a definition should not be circular: it should not refer back to itself either in the first instance or in subsequent definitions of included words. Second, definitions should not include words more complex than the word being defined (Zgusta 1971) and every word used in a definition should be defined in the dictionary. Third, items must be sufficiently defined, i.e. definitions must suit the dictionary’s function and should neither capture only encyclopedic information nor be too limited in its semantic information. These principles are remarkably close to the key principles of good NSM explications. However, NSM also requires definitions to be cross-translatable. Considering that the target user of the proposed dictionary is a language learner, using cross-translatable language to capture culture-specific concepts ensures users from all backgrounds can access the information in the same way. This also widens the user base of the dictionary, rather than constraining it to a single L1 user group. It is a common practice in lexicography to ensure definitions are as short as possible—space in paper dictionaries is at a premium (Landau 2001). Concision

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means commercial dictionaries can accommodate more entries. This is of core importance to commercial publishers, as the number of entries is a major criterion for judging lexicographical works (Atkins and Rundell 2008).

9.4.3

NSM/Minimal English as a Defining Vocabulary

Many learner dictionaries use a limited defining vocabulary (Atkins and Rundell 2008). Defining vocabularies improve the ability for non-native speakers to understand a monolingual dictionary by using a limited set of words. Most are made up of 1000–2000 words, with some flexibility for derived forms—significantly more than the number allowed in NSM, which lexicographers often dismiss as a defining methodology in part because of lexicographical conventions and established expectations in the market, but also because of space and time constraints (Atkins and Rundell 2008). The choice of words is usually based on frequency in the language, not on principles of translatability, which means that many are highly culture specific. Words such as reasonable and sense (Wierzbicka 2010) are often included. In contrast, NSM provides the basis for a highly controlled vocabulary that increases definitional accuracy. Not only are NSM definitions more accurate because they are more detailed; their accuracy is also enhanced by the fact that they are able to include the associations and scenarios that exist in a language user’s understanding of a concept, rather than just the semantic information. NSM definitions have the added benefit of being cross-translatable across a wide range of languages and language families and more accessible for non-native speakers. NSM also provides a defining syntax for language learners, not only a vocabulary. As a result, readers are guaranteed a certain degree of consistency between the entries, as well as the certainty that the meaning is consistent with their translation of the meaning. This is especially important for lower levels of language learners. The NSM approach includes both semantic primes and semantic molecules. It makes sense in a lexicographical context to also use semantic molecules to explain complex concepts (and in some cases, this is essential). However, as semantic primes are considered the core units of meaning in any language, they are as such indefinable in any simpler terms. This means that it is not possible to define them within a dictionary based on NSM principles. Previous NSM-based dictionary projects (see e.g. Bullock 2011) have resolved this challenge by first defining each prime pictorially before using them in definitions. I propose, however, that this learner dictionary does not need to do this, as the concepts ought to be well established for users of the dictionary. It would perhaps be possible to provide the list of primes in a number of languages to avoid complete opacity in meaning. Lists of primes in over 20 different languages are currently available on the NSM homepage at Griffith University, Australia.

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Key Features in Entries

While the definition is one of the key parts of a dictionary entry, it is not the only part of an entry that provides information to the user. In fact, a good dictionary will encourage its users to develop a greater understanding of the entries than their query required (Landau 2001). In creating a new dictionary not based on previous lexicographical publications, each of the features of an entry should be considered and their realizations should be reconsidered so that they meet the users’ specific needs within the function of the dictionary. I will consider some of the key features expected in dictionaries here and will discuss their use and realization in the proposed ethnopragmatic dictionary.

9.4.4.1

Headwords

The first component of an entry that users encounter is the headword. For most users, this is how they access information in a dictionary. Normally, the headword is a lexical item and the presentation of the headword also gives standard spelling/s. In the case of ethnopragmatic entries, the specific headword functions only as the access point for the entry. However, as discussed below, this has some challenges for the types of headwords required for cultural scripts versus explications.

9.4.4.2

Pronunciation

Headwords are traditionally followed by a pronunciation of some sort, which is particularly important for learner dictionaries. Many dictionaries provide this pronunciation guide in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), but some dictionaries use a ‘literal spelling’ guide, assuming that their users do not have familiarity with the IPA. In the case of ethnopragmatic entries, it is not possible to give pronunciation guides for values and attitudes. However, where entries represent specific words or phrases, IPA can give a guide to how these are said. It would be more useful to develop a way of capturing tone of voice and other extralinguistic features of speech that influence how these utterances are to be interpreted.

9.4.4.3

Part of Speech

The part of speech of the entry is important information governing the grammatical usage of the entry, and the context of the definition. Again, this is only relevant where the entries are lexical or phrasal in nature. Explications traditionally begin with a phrase that indicates the lexico-syntactic frame of the term being explicated (Goddard 2011) and that serves the same purpose as the part of speech label. As this is a learner dictionary, however, I propose that both these elements be combined to

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provide additional information to the user on the frame being explicated, but also on how it fits into their traditional model of language learning.

9.4.4.4

Usage Labels

Usage labels occur in different forms and provide information about different types of usage—typically with the help of specific ‘codes’. A common usage label is that of regional usage. While many learner dictionaries cover several language varieties, the proposed dictionary only covers Australian English; specifying country of origin is therefore unnecessary. This kind of nation-based specification is habitually the only type of regional variation found in dictionaries. However, other types of regional variation exist within Australian English (Moore 2008) and these regional differences (such as state/rural/urban) would be useful for language learners. Other kinds of usage labels, such as register, also contain useful information for language learners, but in the case of the proposed dictionary are not needed as the information is already contained within the Minimal English compositions in phrases such as ‘it can be bad if I say this to someone above me’ or ‘people feel something very bad when they hear this word’.

9.4.4.5

Notes

A common feature in learner dictionaries is the additional usage information (or sometimes encyclopedic information) in additional notes appended to entries. These notes are generally short in paper dictionaries and can be longer in digital dictionaries, but often only elaborate on a single point of usage—usually historical or social context. Much of this information is also included in the Minimal English compositions that comprise the definitions. On occasion, these notes also point out certain potential pitfalls for learners, such as other items the term should not be confused with, and points of difference between this and another entry. This kind of note would be particularly useful for language learners especially considering the different kind of definitions they are encountering. In addition, these notes would be an ideal place to highlight certain key points of the composition, such as particular usage of ‘bad’ vs. ‘very bad’ or where the ‘can’ is particularly relevant. In an online dictionary, these notes can be appended to every entry, thus providing users with key pieces of information at every opportunity.

9.4.4.6

Cross-references

Finally, and potentially most crucially, cross-references can maintain the complex connections between cultural values and present these connections in ways users can learn from. Some traditional dictionaries use cross-referencing sparingly, in notes such as those discussed above. In most cases, cross-referencing occurs where

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there are two words for a concept and searching the less common headword will cross-reference to the more common one, where the entry is. In an ethnopragmatic dictionary, using cross-referencing to connect cultural values to attitudes, interactional norms and utterances is an important way of teaching language learners about how invisible culture influences the ways in which native speakers interact. In an online dictionary, extensive use of hyperlinking and mouse-over features makes drawing these connections easier, resulting in the ability to include more of them, more often, on more entries.

9.5

A Minimal English for Learner Lexicography

As is to be expected, the NSM approach requires some adaptations for use in pedagogical and lexicographical contexts. Goddard (2017b) presents some explications in a lexicographical format that, in essence, has no line breaks and is a condensed form of the explication (in form, not in content). However, building on the research with learners mentioned above, I would suggest there are other adaptations that would be beneficial in a learner’s lexicography context. They are meant to improve readability, retrievability, and relatability for users. In many ways, they bring the cultural scripts towards Minimal English. However, this is a variation of Minimal English for a very specific purpose. As described above, there is more to a dictionary entry than the definition itself. Each of these parts should be carefully considered for a dictionary of ethnopragmatics, as well as being considered alongside the recommendations for good materials for developing intercultural competence. If we compare the semantic explication in [A] to the AusDICT entry for whinge in Fig. 9.1 (both repeated here for convenience), the changes from NSM to a Minimal-English-like phraseology are apparent in both wording and formatting.

[A] X was whingeing (Wierzbicka 1997: 215) for some time, X was saying something like this: something bad is happening to me X was saying it as people say things when they want to say something like this: something bad is happening to me I feel something bad because of this I can’t do anything I want someone to know this I want someone to do something because of this I think no one wants to do anything I want to say this many times because of this people think: it is bad if someone does this

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Fig. 9.1 (repeated). Entry for whinge from the AusDICT (Sadow 2019)

9.5.1

Language Adaptations

As described in Sect. 9.3.3, engaging with user needs is essential to the successful creation of a dictionary, especially in such a new paradigm. The added challenge comes in using Minimal English as a defining vocabulary and syntax. Therefore, Minimal English too should not escape examination by the potential users of the resource. From this research, users made some recommendations that are also discussed here. The first of these recommendations validate the need for Minimal English in place of NSM as a defining language. The potential users felt that the restrictions of only 65 concepts were too limiting to clearly define the terms they needed. For the teachers, some of the additional words needed were relevant specifically to classroom contexts, such as ‘student’ ‘teacher’ ‘class’ and ‘classroom’. Other words helped to simplify more complex concepts (as all molecules do in Minimal English). As for the students, they often felt that their vocabulary was larger than the 65 words and therefore they would be able to manage a larger defining vocabulary. Most of the students were in intermediate–advanced classes, so while this may be true of these students, it may not be true of others. The second of these recommendations was to simplify the repetition in the Minimal English compositions. In particular, students found the repetition of

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‘someone’ ‘this someone’ ‘this other someone’ ‘another someone’ to be confusing. As a result, they preferred either ‘person A’ ‘someone (A)’ or even using names as examples such as ‘someone (e.g. Mark)’. The challenge with using names in compositions is that it can unintentionally give the impression that the compositions are gendered in one way or another. In a dictionary, this can partly be resolved by either using gender neutral names, or by specifying with lines such as ‘someone can say something like this if this someone is a man’. This is not dissimilar to the pedagogical suggestions in Goddard (2010), who notes that additional components may be required for learners from different backgrounds. Despite this challenge with using names in compositions, the comments from teachers pointing out the need to make the compositions as relevant as possible to the lives of students mean that names are one of the most explicit ways to do this. Goddard (2017b) uses examples that do not exceed a single paragraph of definition in the NSM metalanguage. These definitions are precise, but also generalized. However, the longer the definition, the more difficult it can be for a reader to build up a complete picture of the meaning. This is especially important for ethnopragmatic compositions, as the different components are each important for the interaction. Losing a single piece of information can influence the reader’s understanding. In fact, the language learners liked the presentation of the explications, saying that the ‘step-by-step’ approach was very clear to them (Sadow 2018). However, the teachers noted that many of the line breaks in place of subordinate clauses and full stops were difficult for them to understand. Given this, I propose that a simplified version of the NSM explication structure be adopted, as illustrated in Fig. 9.1. In this version of Minimal English, some of the line breaks used in NSM are retained, but where indented lines would indicate subordinate clauses, they have been included as sentences in the same paragraph. This helps to keep connected ideas together, but it also keeps the flow of the compositions.

9.5.2

Headwords

One of the most complex considerations to make is the actual headword itself. This is a complex issue because it determines how the dictionary user accesses the information. However, in the NSM methodology, the cultural script itself should stand on its own without the need for a ‘summary in a single word or phrase’ provided by a headword. In some NSM publications, no title to an explication is given, and in some the title is a rough description in more complex language of what the cultural script is determining. These titles provide a reasonable starting point for the ‘headword’ of an entry. Although the challenge is determining how these headwords should be articulated. As discussed in Sect. 9.4.1, e-lexicography provides some answers to this challenge, through the use of ‘invisible’ headwords, and through attaching multiple headwords to the same entry (Tarp 2008). Combining both, it is possible for a user to then find the most relevant entry by searching several terms and being provided with the entry and composition without

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a headword. Despite this as a possibility, it is more effective for users to have a single visible headword so that they can assess relevance when presented with several alternatives. In the CDAEL, headwords that are reminiscent of the titles of cultural scripts are used because they express some of the complex ideas in plain language. The example below, based on Goddard (2012: 116), shows the ‘headword’ for a cultural script for projecting presumed solidarity in interaction. Projecting presumed solidarity in interaction Many people in Australia think like this: When I say something to someone, it is good if they can know that I think about them like this: This person is someone like me.

Other possible headwords that could function as ‘invisible’ headwords in addition to the visible one include ‘showing presumed solidarity in conversation’, ‘demonstrating solidarity’, ‘showing you are similar to someone’, and so on.

9.5.3

Examples

Many dictionaries contain examples, often from the media or constructed to illustrate certain meanings. For an ethnopragmatic dictionary, including examples of real speech is essential to capture contexts of the cultural scripts. Because many of the cultural scripts are not necessarily connected to specific words or phrases, several examples where the interactional norm or the value is evident in a conversational routine is ideal. Examples such as these are almost impossible to include in a paper dictionary, as they would take up too much space. However, in an online dictionary, space is of no concern, but more importantly, it is possible to include such examples as video or audio interactions, as well as text-based material.

9.5.4

Phrases/Connection to Language Production

As discussed in Sect. 9.2.2, it is important when teaching ethnopragmatic skills to include information about phrases and language production. Therefore, the dictionary should also, where relevant, include reference to phrases and utterances. In most cases, there is a large range of phrases that can capture that interactional intention, or else it can be captured in tone of voice alone. However, some indication is still needed for language learners, as long as there is acknowledgement of additional possibilities. Inclusion of this element could be done in several ways.

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First, through the examples discussed above. In many cases, the examples of interaction will have to include linguistic components. With several of these, it would be possible to capture different realizations of the interactional norm. Secondly, they could be included through additional notes or sections that simply list relevant phrases. Third, and most appropriate, would be to include these phrases in the dictionary as entries in their own right. Each ethnopragmatic composition then can be linked to the phrases, and the meanings and subtle differences between the phrases can then be elaborated on within the dictionary proper.

9.5.5

Roleplays/Practice

The third key attribute of good teaching materials was the opportunity to connect knowledge to practice. This need was also reflected in the research with language teachers, who reiterated the need for these materials to be connected to classroom practice exercises. In the first instance, this is possible to do through the adaptation of existing cultural scripts to different perspectives (Sadow 2018). In particular, interactional versions of the compositions could be used to prompt roleplay exercises as well as other opportunities for practice. Dictionaries do not traditionally contain exercises such as these, but the expanding domains of online dictionaries allow for concrete connections to classroom practice to be built into the site directory, as well as the dictionary entries themselves.

9.6

Structuring and Designing a Dictionary of Ethnopragmatics

Most important for dictionaries, as discussed above, is the retrievability of information for the users. If the entries themselves cannot be found, the dictionary is practically useless. One of the main difficulties in creating a dictionary of ethnopragmatics is the structuring of the entries in relation to one another in the main body of the dictionary. It is essential to maintain the links between each entry and to keep strong associations between related concepts. In addition, alphabetical order is not necessarily the most retrievable for students because the headwords do not necessarily map to a user’s intuition about the interaction. There are two ways to approach this problem. The first is by drawing on onomasiological lexicography (Trklja 2016), using pragmatic categories rather than semantic—such as ‘making a request’, ‘refusing a request’, etc. The second is through using lexical items as entry points to pragmatics. This approach would be difficult considering the range of expressions available or stemming from each pragmatic intention or cultural value. Either approach would require additional indexing and categorization. In traditional e-lexicography, the back-end structure and organization do not impact on the user’s experience of the dictionary. The user will still type in a word

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and be presented with the closest equivalent and be taken to the entry. In contrast, when creating a dictionary for ethnopragmatics, it is more difficult to determine what the search terms are for any single entry. As such, the search options and exploration options discussed in 5.1 are the only ways for users to find their query. In many cases for ethnopragmatic queries the explore options will be the most used options. While throughout this chapter, I have discussed several options for different features to include in individual entries, the key to creating an effective dictionary in this context is to have a user interface that is as clean and minimalistic as possible. This means removing and hiding additional options until they are needed by the user, as shown in the wireframes in Figs. 9.3, 9.4 and 9.5. Wireframes are tools for digital design that help to lay out elements on a page. They do not reflect design decisions beyond the layout. The three wireframes show one way in which simple design can still include all of the features discussed throughout this chapter, while not appearing too dense for language learners.

9.7

Conclusion

Creating an ethnopragmatic dictionary of Australian English as an online resource for language learners in Australia is a much-needed component of improving education in invisible culture and developing intercultural competence in language students. To create such a dictionary, there are many considerations for the types of

Fig. 9.3 Wireframe showing minimalist design for the proposed dictionary

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Fig. 9.4 Wireframe showing possible entry for ‘whinger’ from the proposed dictionary

Fig. 9.5 Wireframe showing possible entry for ‘valuing presumed social similarity’ from the proposed dictionary

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users and the contexts in which the dictionary should be used. Most significantly, the dictionary should be aimed at decoding language use, not encoding it. This removes the pressure on language students to move towards ‘native competence’ and allows them to retain their own identity in language expression, while also developing their skills in interpersonal communication within a new community. Dictionaries in teaching contexts should not be viewed as exclusively dictionaries —static reference materials—but should also be seen as dynamic tools of language education, able to fulfil semantic and pragmatic functions simultaneously. In creating an ethnopragmatic dictionary for language learners, consideration should be given to good practice for creating teaching materials within the context of intercultural language teaching. These principles encourage those materials to contain more than information, but also ways of critically engaging with that information. Using Minimal English to do this ensures that the concepts can be broken down into their components, and therefore examined and critiqued in necessary detail. The Minimal English approach also means that this can be done without valuing any one culture over another. Using this approach also creates opportunities to make explicit connections between values, attitudes and their expressions in language through similar components. Creating these connections is not the task of Minimal English alone in such a dictionary. Including many of the traditional elements of dictionaries within a new dictionary paradigm ensures that the users can gain as much information about the language as is possible, from a number of different perspectives. At the same time, they are able to draw on familiar features to orient themselves throughout the search. Above all additional features, however, is the need for good interface design. Easy navigation and options for accessing information in the dictionary are essential to its success. The next stages of this dictionary project are to continue with user engagement and user surveys—particularly with language learners—to determine how successful the dictionary is in actual usage, and then to adjust and update it as required. This will be undertaken in an iterative sequence as the dictionary is developed, culminating in testing of the resource in a classroom context. Following this, the dictionary will be expanded on to cover a wider range of topics and nuances in interactions. The principles discussed in this chapter can also be applied to any NSM-based lexicographical undertaking, whether semantic or pragmatic or a combination of the two. The advantage of NSM and Minimal English is that for the first time, it provides lexicographers with a consistent descriptive methodology to capture semantic and pragmatic information, even if it is highly culturally specific. This allows lexicographers and descriptive linguists to capture the cultural components of languages—which have been missing from standard dictionaries—globally, for language learners, for migrants, and for communities speaking endangered languages. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Zhengdao Ye and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and Bert Peeters for his editorial assistance.

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References ACARA. (2011). English as an additional language or dialect teacher resource. Sydney: Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. Amiel, T., & Reeves, T. C. (2008). Design-based research and educational technology: Rethinking technology and the research agenda. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 11(4), 29–40. Atkins, S., & Rundell, M. (2008). The Oxford guide to practical lexicography. New York: Oxford University Press. Bullock, D. (2011). NSM + LDOCE: A non-circular dictionary of English. International Journal of Lexicography, 24(2), 226–240. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecq035. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cohen, A. D., & Ishihara, N. (2012). Pragmatics. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Applied linguistics and materials development. London: Bloomsbury. Department of Education and Training. (2011). AMEP home tutor resources. Canberra: Australian Government Department of Education and Training. Department of Social Services. (2014). Getting settled: Women refugees in Australia. Canberra: Australian Government Department of Social Services. Fernández, S. S. (2016). Possible contributions of ethnopragmatics to second language learning and teaching. In S. Vikner, H. Jørgensen, & E. van Gelderen (Eds.), Let us have articles betwixt us: Papers in historical and comparative linguistics in honour of Johanna L. Wood (pp. 185– 206). Aarhus: Aarhus University. Fuertes-Olivera, P. A. (Ed.). (2010). Specialised dictionaries for learners. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110231335. Goddard, C. (2004). “Cultural scripts”: A new medium for ethnopragmatic instruction. In M. Achard, & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language teaching (pp. 143–163). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9783110199857.143. Goddard, C. (2010). Cultural scripts: Applications to language teaching and intercultural communication. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association), 3, 105– 119. Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goddard, C. (2017a). Ethnopragmatic perspectives on conversational humour, with special reference to Australian English. Language & Communication, 55, 55–68. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.langcom.2016.09.008. Goddard, C. (2017b). Natural semantic metalanguage and lexicography. In P. Hanks, & G.-M. de Schryver (Eds.), International handbook of modern lexis and lexicography. Berlin: Springer. http://doi.org/10.1007/978–3-642-45369-4_14-1. Goddard, Cliff (Ed.). (2018). Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (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. Goddard, C. (2012). Early interactions in Australian english, American english, and english english: Cultural differences and cultural scripts. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1038–1050. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.04.010 Goddard, C., & Ye, Z. (2015). Ethnopragmatics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 66–83). Routledge. Huang, C. (2016, 1 September). International students in Australia struggle on many fronts. https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/international-students-in-australia-struggle-on-many-fronts20160901-gr66dx.html. Accessed 11 September 2018.

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Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kramsch, C. (2014). Teaching foreign languages in an era of globalization: Introduction. The Modern Language Journal, 98(1), 296–311. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2014.12057.x. Landau, S. (2001). Dictionaries (2nd edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levisen, C., & Waters, S. (2017). Cultural keywords in discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.277. Lew, R., & de Schryver, G.-M. (2014). Dictionary users in the digital revolution. International Journal of Lexicography, 27(4), 341–359. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecu011. Liddicoat, A. (1997). Everyday speech as culture: Implications for language teaching. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, Series S, 14, 55–70. https://doi.org/10.1075/aralss.14.03lid. Liddicoat, A., & Scarino, A. (2013). Intercultural language teaching and learning. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118482070. Mills, N. (2018, May 1). International students say challenges in Australia include loneliness, racism, poverty. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-01/challenges-international-studentsface-in-melbourne-australia/9702606. Accessed 11 September 2018. Moore, B. (2008). Speaking our language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ostermann, C. (2015). Cognitive lexicography: A new approach to lexicography making use of cognitive semantics. Berlin: de Gruyter. Pearson Education, Inc. (2006). Longman Essential Activator. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Peeters, B. (2000). Setting the scene: Recent milestones in the lexicon-encyclopedia debate. In B. Peeters (Ed.), The lexicon-encyclopedia interface (pp. 1–52). Oxford: Elsevier Science. Pulverness, A., & Tomlinson, B. (2003). Materials for cultural awareness. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing materials for language teaching (pp. 443–460). London: Continuum. Risager, K. (2006). Language and culture. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sadow, L. (2018). Can cultural scripts be used for teaching interactional norms? Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 41(1), 92–117. https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.17030.sad. Sadow, L. (2019). An NSM-based cultural dictionary of Australian English: From theory to practice. Ph.D. thesis, Australian National University. https://doi.org/10.25911/5d514809 475cb Sánchez, A. (2010). The treatment of cultural and/or encyclopaedic items in specialised dictionaries for learners. In P.A. Fuertes-Olivera (Ed.), Specialised dictionaries for learners (pp. 107–131). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110231335.2.107. Seargeant, P. (2011). Lexicography as a philosophy of language. Language Sciences, 33(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.06.002. Tarp, S. (2008). Lexicography in the borderland between knowledge and non-knowledge. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Tomlinson, B. (2012). Materials development for language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 45(2), 143–179. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444811000528. Trklja, A. (2016). Corresponding lexical domains: A new resource for onomasiological bilingual dictionaries. International Journal of Lexicography, 36(3), ecw019–38. http://doi.org/10.1093/ ijl/ecw019. Usó-Juan, E. (2008). The presentation and practice of the communicative act of requesting in textbooks: Focusing on modifiers. In E. A. Soler, & M. P. Safont Jordà (Eds.), Intercultural language use and language learning (pp. 223–243). Dordrecht: Springer. http://doi.org/10. 1007/978-1-4020-5639-0_12. Weninger, C., & Kiss, T. (2013). Culture in EFL textbooks: A semiotic approach. TESOL Quarterly, 47(4), 694–716. Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2002). Australian cultural scripts—bloody revisited. Journal of Pragmatics, 34 (9), 1167–1209. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(01)00023-6. Wierzbicka, A. (2010). Experience, evidence, and sense. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Wierzbicka, A. (2012). When cultural scripts clash: Miscommunication in “multicultural” Australia. In Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky (Ed.), Intercultural miscommunication past and present (pp. 121–148). Lódz: Peter Lang. Zgusta, L. (1971). Manual of lexicography. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9783111349183.

Lauren Sadow is Sessional Academic at The Australian National University, Canberra. Her main research interests are teaching culture, interactional norms, cultural lexicography, and cross-cultural communication. Her Ph.D. thesis created an NSM-based dictionary titled The Australian Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers.

Chapter 10

Minimal and Inverse Definitions: A Semi-experimental Proposal for Compiling a Spanish Dictionary with Semantic Primes and Molecules María Auxiliadora Barrios Rodríguez

Abstract This chapter reflects on the possibility of compiling a dictionary largely based on a metalanguage of semantic primes and molecules, using a type of definitions that I call ‘minimal and inverse’. It describes progress to date against the backdrop of two research projects I have been associated with in the last few years. The first one is a collaborative project that has to date involved ninety student researchers working towards an NSM-based learning tool for students of Spanish as a second/foreign language. To find out whether NSM definitions could be put to good use in language learning materials, the student researchers have been subjecting different groups of informants to a number of test definitions over a period of two academic years. The second project, running in parallel with the first, is a pilot study, carried out by myself, towards a Spanish dictionary consisting of minimal and inverse definitions. More than one hundred definitions have so far been constructed, essentially out of semantic primes and molecules. All have been tested on different groups of informants, but only sixty definitions have been found to be satisfactory. The chapter includes an analysis of some of the data and a discussion of a range of methodological issues. Its main finding is that, on current expectations, not only is it possible to build a small dictionary mainly based on primes and molecules using minimal and inverse definitions, but it can be extremely rewarding to engage in such a venture in the context of a collaborative project with student researchers.







Keywords Lexicography Semantic primes and molecules Minimal and inverse definitions Language learning materials Spanish







M. A. Barrios Rodríguez (&) Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain e-mail: auxibarrios@filol.ucm.es © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_10

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Introduction

This chapter focuses on a Spanish language dictionary under development at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. The dictionary’s metalanguage for definitions is mostly but not entirely limited to semantic primes and molecules1 and its definitions are of a type that we call ‘minimal and inverse’. What such definitions entail will be clarified in the following pages. In this chapter, we try to answer three research questions. Is it possible to build a (small) dictionary mainly based on primes and molecules? Could this type of dictionary benefit from the input of a collaborative project involving research students? Is it useful, when compiling such a dictionary, to rely on minimal and inverse definitions? There are promising signs that the answer to the first question—is it possible to build a (small) dictionary mainly based on primes and molecules?—is in the affirmative, even though, in NSM circles, no such dictionary has yet seen the light of day. Goddard (2016, 2018) has hinted at the possibility of building entire dictionaries based on NSM principles. However, all we have to date (with the one exception described below) are explications of individual words or sets of semantically related words in several languages scattered throughout hundreds of NSM research papers. The potential contribution of NSM to lexicography has nonetheless been recognized—outside the NSM approach itself. Some time ago, Apresjan (2000), for instance, acknowledged that the proposals contained in Wierzbicka (1985) are insightful and could benefit dictionary makers. Bullock (2011), more recently, went a lot further: he actually proved NSM’s effectiveness by using the metalanguage to propose definitions for each word in the controlled defining vocabulary of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. The resulting 2000-word dictionary was published as an online tool for learning English called Learn these words first.2 The second question—could a dictionary mainly based on primes and molecules benefit from the input of a collaborative project involving research students?—is of a type that, to the best of my knowledge, no linguist has ever raised, let alone answered. Working with student collaborators is a common practice in degree programs in business (e.g. Folkman Curasi and Norman Kennedy 2002) and education (e.g. Cross and Steadman 1996). In the sciences, on the other hand, students are taught to develop collaborative skills and ‘make predictions, design investigations, collect and analyze data’ (Krajcik and Czerniak 2018: 5) from as early as the pre-tertiary level (i.e. in primary and secondary schools). The focus of these collaborative projects is on the students’ process of learning, not on the research itself, even in the case of projects developed at university level (Leinonen and Durall

1

While semantic primes are, generally speaking, lexicalized as plain words and expressions of ordinary language that children hear every day (Goddard 2001), semantic molecules are defined as “non-primitive meanings that function alongside the semantic primes as conceptual building blocks in the meaning structure of other, yet more complex words” (Goddard 2011: 71). 2 http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/.

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Gazulla 2014; Marín-Juarros et al. 2014; Pérez-Mateo et al. 2014). There is no reason why such practices should not be generalized. More than ever before, we have come to live in a space rife with knowledge and collective intelligence (Lévy 1999). Newer technologies—and particularly the Internet—enable us to be and to remain connected in real time, so that all our scientific endeavours should be able to count on, and benefit from, intelligence as something distributed. In that vein, I claim that student contributions are valuable, particularly within a lexicographic project, as I will try to show. The third question—is it useful, in a lexicographical undertaking, to rely on minimal and inverse definitions?—is closely linked to the second, because the potential of such definitions stands out among the preliminary outcomes of not one, but two research projects I have been closely associated with. The first is a collaborative project of the kind referred to in the second research question. It has so far involved ninety students over the course of two academic years who were training as researchers; its aim is to create a pedagogical tool for learners of Spanish as a second/foreign language, based on primes and molecules. The second project has been running in parallel with the first and is a pilot study for a Spanish language dictionary aimed at all audiences (native speakers and learners alike) and relying more precisely on minimal and inverse definitions. It will be shown that, subject to further improvements, such definitions can indeed be put to good use in dictionary writing. To assess the quality of the definitions proposed in both projects, dozens of them have already been tested on different groups of informants. In this chapter, I analyse and discuss the results, drawing attention to some of the methodological difficulties encountered both by myself and by the students involved in the collaborative project. It is foreshadowed that further adjustments will have to be implemented in both projects over the next two years. Nevertheless, I conclude that, on current expectations, it is possible to build a small dictionary mainly based on primes and molecules, and relying on minimal and inverse definitions, and that it can be extremely rewarding to engage in such a venture in the context of a collaborative project with student researchers. The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. In Sect. 10.2, we sketch how recent developments within the NSM approach have made NSM a more attractive option for use in lexicographical projects. Section 10.3 recounts the author’s private experiments with definitions relying on primes and molecules, and then introduces the concept of a ‘minimal and inverse definition’. Section 10.4 focuses on the first of the two projects referred to above—the innovative experience of conducting research together with students involved in building and testing their own NSM-inspired definitions. The main goal of the chapter is described in Sect. 10.5, which sets out the methodology I have implemented and continue to fine-tune in the second project, which is aimed at testing the feasibility of a new Spanish dictionary for native speakers and language learners alike. So far, I have concentrated on writing and testing a number of minimal and inverse definitions. However, it is envisaged that these will form the basis for a second type of definitions I will work with, namely the so-called expanded definitions presented in Sect. 10.6. To finish off, Sect. 10.7 outlines some preliminary conclusions.

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NSM, ‘Minimal English’ and Lexicography

The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) provides what it takes to conduct serious semantic research in any language. Lexicographers, too, stand to gain a lot from turning to NSM, because the metalanguage enables them to avoid one of the most common failures of their trade, namely circularity. Indeed, within NSM, a list of universal meanings, called ‘semantic primes’ because it is impossible to paraphrase them in semantically simpler terms, provides the building blocks by which the meanings of all other words in any language can be paraphrased in a noncircular manner (Wierzbicka 1985, 1996; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014). The flip side is that, although instructions to produce so-called reductive paraphrases using NSM primes and syntax are clear and simple (dixit Goddard 2011: 94–95), the practice of building such paraphrases appears to demand a sort of intuition that many feel no researcher without advanced NSM training will ever be able to develop. On the other hand, NSM paraphrases can be so long and detailed, and occasionally unnatural, that they could not be used as such in any dictionary for general purposes. How, then, could any individual lexicographer—or even a team of lexicographers—hope to compile, in a reasonable time span (say, a few years) an exhaustive dictionary for any language, relying on nothing but semantic primes and NSM principles? This was my first question to Cliff Goddard in 2006, and it gives me great pleasure to say that NSM scholars, today, are effectively able to produce brilliant and enlightening paraphrases for words such as sun or moon (as proven by Wierzbicka 2018: 181). But two words do not a dictionary make… Moreover, paraphrases such as those recently proposed by Wierzbicka for sun and moon do rely on more than just semantic primes (of which, at last count, there were only 65). They are written in what has been called ‘Minimal English’, a type of interlanguage that may be used to clarify and compare ideas by means of cross-translatable words, including the semantic primes of NSM (I, you, feel, think, etc.), a number of (near-) universal semantic molecules (hands, sky, day, water, etc.)3 and some other fairly easily translatable and useful words (e.g. hungry, brain, river, rain and family), the exact nature of which varies from one setting to the next (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018). The goal is to achieve ‘better intercultural understanding and clearer thinking’ (Goddard 2018: 1). Minimal English meets a need that cannot possibly be met by Global English, i.e. the English spoken by millions of native English speakers, and millions more of non-native speakers. Global English allows those millions to communicate but at the same time, because of different dialects and idiolects, it is likely to trigger what Carbaugh (2005) has called ‘invisible misunderstanding’. Minimal English invites scholars outside the NSM framework to stick to simple grammatical patterns, and to limit their word choice to universal, near-universal, and other widely known words. In this way, a complex idea such as 3

It seems that many semantic molecules are language-specific, although a small number are more than likely to be universal or at least near-universal (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018).

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‘International system’ can be explained avoiding words such as interests, mutual benefit and responsibility, which are untranslatable in many, perhaps even in most, languages. It can be explained as follows: ‘Many countries on Earth are parts of one big something. If some of these countries do some things, this can be very good for all these countries. If some of these countries don’t do some things, this can be very bad for all these countries’ (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018: 11).

10.3

Minimal and Inverse Definitions

My real exposure to NSM started seven years ago, when I began writing my first Spanish explications in the Spanish version of the metalanguage, using plenty of molecules. I was living in Australia at the time, in shared accommodation. I had two roommates, both native speakers of English. Just for the fun of it, I would translate my Spanish definitions into English and then ask my roommates to join me to play a variation on a popular Spanish TV game show called Pasapalabras, which I was one of thousands to watch back home and of which I had fond recollections. We played with approximately twenty definitions, similar to those shown in (1) (taken from Barrios Rodríguez 2013): (1) a. Something of one kind. This something was made [m] to be in touch with a small part of one finger [m]. This something was made [m] to look [m] good. b. Something of one kind. This something was made [m] to cover [m] the neck [m]. This something was made [m] to cover [m] a small part of the chest [m]. People wear [m] it when it is cold [m]. c. Something of one kind. This something was made [m] because people want to have many things inside this something. Women [m] have this something near them if they are not at home [m].

I would first read the definition (omitting, of course, the many occurrences of the symbol [m], used to identify the previous word as a molecule) and then ask my roommates to guess what they thought the word was that I had just defined.4 Do I need to add that (1a) is the definition of ring, (1b) of scarf, and (1c) of handbag? My roommates, at any rate, did not have any trouble coming up with the right answers, something that at the time did surprise me. In fact, they figured out not only these three words but all the others as well. Thinking about the experience, I eventually reached two conclusions. The first was that the primes and molecules are directly translatable; this was expected for the primes, but it also turned out to be the case for the molecules, or at least for the molecules that I had used. The second conclusion was that this kind of definition appears to be sufficient for a minimal explication. I took my findings back to Spain, where, in due course, I decided to refer to definitions of the kind illustrated in (1) as

The definition in (1a) should have read “[…] made to touch a small part […]”. My roommates never told me, and it did not stop them from giving me the correct answer.

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‘minimal and inverse’: minimal because I had limited myself to what I thought was the minimal set of relevant semantic features necessary to capture the meaning of the word and to solicit the right answer from a native speaker; inverse because I did not reveal what I was defining and wanted people to be able to figure out the word just by reading or hearing the meaning.

10.4

Outcomes of the Collaborative Project

Three years ago, I started working with what I had come to call ‘minimal and inverse definitions’ when training young researchers at my home university in Madrid. Initially, the definitions illustrated in Sect. 10.3 served as a starting point to illustrate the methodology, although the aim was to get the students to work with definitions in Minimal Spanish rather than with the much smaller set of primes and molecules of NSM. After one year, I changed strategies, inviting some students to read a pre-publication version of Goddard and Wierzbicka’s (2018) chapter on Minimal English and to create a list of twenty to thirty words defined in some sort of Minimal Spanish. In order to achieve that goal, I translated into Spanish the primes, molecules and words proposed by Goddard and Wierzbicka, and instructed the students to use that material to build their own definitions of Spanish words.5 It was an enriching experience, to say the least: the outcomes were very positive and instructive indeed. What the project demonstrated was that non-NSM specialist researchers were not the only individuals who could take advantage of the carefully designed and workable metalanguage Goddard and Wierzbicka had crafted out of their NSM (as pointed out in Sect. 10.2). Student researchers, too, were able to benefit of what proved to be an invaluable training aid offering new perspectives. What I wanted the students to learn was not only how to define words but also (and this was a first for most of them) how to set up a research experiment intended to test the effectiveness of their definitions. As a result, students started thinking about meaning in a different way, and they discovered features attached to the meaning of simple words they had never thought of before. They also enjoyed writing simple definitions and checking their proposals with their informants. The quality of some of the work carried out was such that it has actually resulted in a publication (Barrios Rodríguez et al. 2019). Overall, my students have now defined more than 1700 words. All definitions are minimal definitions written in Minimal Spanish, and all have been tested in an inverse way. Students worked on specific semantic fields (such as transports, creatures, clothes, etc.), with each of them focusing on a single field. They were 5

The experiments carried out in the last two years were developed as part of an Innovative Project (ref. UCM 125/2017) called Piensapalabras. The name is a non-existent Spanish compound word with a potential meaning that could be understood as an invitation (think and say the word!). Phonetically it sounds similar to the name of the Spanish TV game show Pasapalabras that, in a sense, started it all off.

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asked to conduct a pilot experiment first and test it out on ten to twenty people. Most of the students shared their first test definition with friends and family, either by direct (oral) interaction or via WhatsApp. Once they had ascertained the definition was of an appropriate standard, they were asked to share it more widely on the Internet, to get a larger number of informants in a relatively short time span (one or two days). All students tested their definitions on at least thirty informants; more than fifteen students got more than one hundred informants, and one student even reached more than seven hundred informants. Most informants were native speakers of Spanish, although some students also tested their proposals on advanced Spanish learners. As the task was proposed as a potential tool for Spanish learners, it was decided that a definition, to be declared understandable and of practical use, required no less than 95% of appropriate (i.e. correct) answers from informants. In hindsight, this was probably too much to ask. Nevertheless, for more than 300 student definitions the bar had not been placed too high and the goal was achieved. Some students, on the other hand, did not manage to make proper use of the Minimal Spanish I had created for them by translating Goddard and Wierzbicka’s Minimal English: the set of words was just too small for them. These students tried to define some other words they needed and that were missing from the initial list, but the task eluded them; and it is fair to say that the difficulties they faced have also been mine (cf. Sect. 10.5). The image that comes to mind is that of a set of Russian dolls. How does one build a big set of words, defined by means of a smaller set including words that are themselves defined in terms of an even smaller set—and so on, until the set of indefinable words is reached? Which words can we allow to be part of that set of indefinable words? The problems and reflections of students trying to apply NSM principles, particularly the idea of chains of semantic dependency between molecules illustrated in Goddard (2018), in an easy and straightforward manner have proven to be a source of inspiration for my own endeavours to get it right.

10.5

Methodological Issues Arising from the Pilot Project

In this section, I contextualize my attempts at finding a methodology for writing minimal and inverse definitions on a large scale. The definitions are to be included in a Spanish monolingual e-dictionary called DiRetEs (project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, BFF2017-83293; cf. Barrios Rodríguez 2019). As explained previously, the main difficulty I was struggling with lies in the delimitation of the initial set of defining words. In the NSM approach, as in any other approach that is aware of the pitfalls of circularity, the first step is to select the words that are allowed to appear at the lowest level. Subsequent levels of definitions can be built with any words previously defined. The 65 semantic primes could obviously all be part of the initial set. But was I going to allow some molecules as

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well? This seems counter-intuitive, since molecules, unlike primes, need to be defined before they can be used as defining words. I decided nonetheless to press ahead with the idea (see below for justification). Using my initial set of defining words, I built 49 definitions that, to be considered for inclusion in the dictionary, had to meet four conditions: (a) they had to be of the minimal and inverse type; (b) they were to be tested by means of a questionnaire; (c) a minimum of 30 people had to return the questionnaire for results to be considered statistically significant; and (d) they had to have a success ratio of at least 90% (instead of the 95% previously expected of the student definitions in the collaborative project described in Sect. 10.4). The reason for lowering the threshold was that test results can get distorted by external causes, for instance cognitive phenomena such as ‘crossed laterality’ (which causes some informants to write left when the context proves that they wanted to write right) or lack of maturity (which causes people to write invalid answers such as ‘I don’t know’ or ‘This doesn’t make sense’). The first 49 definitions were included in a questionnaire and tested on 35 people. Some of the unsuccessful definitions were improved and tested by means of a second questionnaire, which also had a total of 64 new definitions and was answered by 31 people. I followed the same procedure when preparing the third and last questionnaire: it contained some improved definitions, as well as 32 new ones, and it was answered by 70 people. A total of 20 words were covered in more than one questionnaire. Of the 145 definitions I tested, only 60 met the 90% threshold specified in condition (d). A chi-square test was applied to test the statistical significance of the results (p < 0.005). In the subsections that follow, I reflect on the pilot project, on progress realized to date, and in particular on the methodological processes I have so far developed in my attempt to determine which words should be defined first. I also identify some unsolved problems that will retain my attention in the months and years to come.

10.5.1 Defining Basic Nouns The first words I wanted to define were those used for common environmental referents. These include, among others, names of selected animals and plants closely linked to human life, as well as names of widely known food items. I took the view that this type of words, which I refer to as ‘basic nouns’, might become very useful as a defining vocabulary later on. I could see a lot of merit in the idea of using such nouns to subsequently define colour words or abstract words equivalent to English round, long, rough, smooth, etc. Colour words have been the subject of a lot of research, particularly from a cognitive perspective. Some have pointed out their arbitrariness, others (Wierzbicka 2008; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014) the lack thereof. Colours are so intimately tied up with vision that anyone born blind cannot understand the meaning of the word colour or of words referring to colours. Others, I assumed, would easily be

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able to understand the meaning of colour words such as orange or yellow once they were familiar with the meaning of words such as orange (the fruit) and banana. This, then, was the idea that I decided I would implement in my dictionary. It seemed to make a lot of sense to define the colour orange (or rather its Spanish counterpart, naranja) with reference to oranges, and the colour yellow with reference to bananas. The Spanish word for ‘orange’ (the fruit) is naranja. The definition for the colour, also called naranja, would be as shown in (2). (2) El color de la naranja. ‘The colour of an orange.’

As it turns out, this definition, which also relies on the word colour (on which see below), was successfully decoded by most people in my experiments. 98% wrote naranja, which was in line with my expectations. Only a few (2%) wrote anaranjado (a colour similar to orange, typical of some kinds of yolks). The 90% threshold was largely exceeded, so this was in all likelihood an acceptable definition. However, before I could integrate it in the dictionary, I had to make a decision on how to define the noun naranja (i.e. the name of the fruit). Since I wanted to use the noun to define the colour, how was I going to define the noun without referring to the colour? The answer that presented itself to me was to call upon a process called ‘naming’, which involves the semantic molecule IS CALLED. The latter can be explicated as in [A] (Goddard, personal communication 2017): [A] ‘Naming’ (e.g. something of this kind IS CALLED an orange) people can think about something of this kind (e.g. an orange) like this: “when I want other people to know that I’m thinking about something of this kind, not another kind, I can say the word orange”

As the term suggests, naming is what we do when we identify an object by means of its name, for instance, when pointing at it. Definitions that rely on naming through pointing are often referred to as ‘ostensive definitions’; we use them all the time, in particular in the prototypical situation of teaching a child the names of different things. In a dictionary, on the other hand, the process of naming logically requires complementation with the help of pictures. Similarly, to define yellow (or rather its Spanish counterpart), I decided to rely on the Spanish word for banana, which would itself be defined through naming, along the lines set out in (3) and (4) for the matching English words: (3) Something of this kind is called a banana. (4) The colour of a banana is…

I had to make one proviso, though. I wanted my Spanish dictionary to be usable in Europe as well as in Latin America. The word plátano is used to identify a type

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Fig. 10.1 Pictures for the nouns naranja (‘orange’) and plátano/banana (‘banana’) in the proposed Spanish dictionary

of banana from the Canary Islands; it is the word that native speakers of Peninsular Spanish are most likely to be familiar with. The word banana is the name of the equivalent fruit in Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. In my dictionary, I expect to use both words, and I intend to define them through naming. Figure 10.1 shows the pictures I propose to use for the nouns naranja (‘orange’) and plátano/ banana (‘banana’). The same nouns can and will in all likelihood be used in the minimal and reverse definitions of the kind of abstract words mentioned at the beginning of this section. Using the English words for the sake of convenience, the idea is to define round with reference to the shape of an orange; long with reference to the shape of a banana; rough with reference to the skin of an orange; smooth with reference to the skin of a banana. Other basic nouns to be defined from the outset include the Spanish word that matches up with grass, in order to obtain the Spanish word for green (which is the colour of grass), and perhaps the word for snow, in order to obtain the word for white (which is the colour of snow). However, snow, or rather its Spanish counterpart, may not be such a good choice, because some native speakers of Spanish may have little or no experience of snow. The definition in (5), which was accepted by 90% of the informants I questioned, could be used instead: (5) There is a big part of the eye [m] of people that is not black [m], nor blue [m], nor green [m]; it has the same colour [m] for all people. This colour is…

This definition was of course once again written in Spanish, but for the reader’s convenience I will go on using English versions of the Spanish definitions referred to in this chapter. As for the word colour, it can be defined based on a set of different colours, including green, red and blue, each of which can be defined in turn with reference to pictures of relevant entities: watermelon rind and grass in the case of green, watermelon core and blood for red, sky and sea for blue. The picture captions are proposed to read as follows: ‘a watermelon rind is green, grass is green’, ‘a watermelon is red, blood is red’, ‘the sky is blue, the sea is blue’. The word colour itself will be defined last: ‘green, red and blue are called colours’.

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In summary, a set of basic nouns, defined in the early stages through naming, could be really useful in the proposed dictionary. However, I do intend to keep the set of these basic nouns as small as I can and to use, wherever possible, standard minimal and reverse definitions relying on primes, molecules and other previously defined material.

10.5.2 Definitions of Creatures: What Comes First, the Chicken or the Egg? Five students who took part in the collaborative project (Sect. 10.4) wrote definitions for creatures. Compared with other definitions, these worked pretty well. One of the students scored a success ratio between 95 and 100% with the definitions shown in (6) and (7) and between 90 and 95% with the definition shown in (8): (6) a. Wild creature with a mane b. Big creature that gives milk c. Little creature that eats cheese d. Male creature that has a crest e. Creature with long teeth that eats carrots (7) a. Long and poisonous creature b. Female creature that lays eggs c. Creature with a body covered in wool d. Creature with a horn on the nose (8) Very big creature with a trunk

The words attached to the meanings in (6) are the Spanish equivalents of lion, cow, mouse, rooster and rabbit, in that order. The words corresponding to the meanings (7) are the Spanish equivalents of snake, hen, sheep and rhinoceros, also in that order. The word corresponding to the meaning in (8) is the Spanish equivalent of elephant. In spite of the success rates reported above, the data deserve to be analysed further because some of the definitions bring to mind a popular question: What came first, the chicken (i.e. the hen) or the egg? Is the feature ‘egg’ contained in the word hen, or is the feature ‘hen’ contained in the word egg? The case of the elephant and the trunk is probably even more illustrative of the problem, and of the difficulty of writing appropriate definitions: most English and Spanish dictionaries have definitions that are circular. Some of them try to solve the problem with indirect circularity: among English dictionaries, Collins and Longman use in their definition of the word elephant the feature ‘with a long nose called a trunk’ (italics added). From a cognitive point of view, people associate elephants with trunks, in both directions: elephants are animals with trunks, and a trunk is an elephant’s nose. From a lexicographical point of view, we cannot have it both ways, because we would end up with circular definitions. To solve the dilemma, I wrote a minimal and inverse definition for elephant without the word trunk:

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This definition is quite similar to those of Collins and Longman, but the indirect circularity was avoided by adding some of the functions of the trunk. The definition was validated by 95% of the informants, which allowed me to subsequently write a definition of trunk that relies on the word elephant: (10) the nose of an elephant

Should we also define mane in terms of lion, milk in terms of cow, crest in terms of rooster, wool in terms of sheep, and horn in terms of rhinoceros? A priori, this seems possible and it would add to the coherence of the lexicographic task. However, it may be best to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. Let us have a closer look at the words mane and lion. First consider definitions (11) to (13): (11) Part of the body of people that is above the other parts of the body, it is round. (12) Something that is over a part of the head, it may be long, it may be black, white, it may be some other colour. (13) Long hair of many women, some men and children, and some animals.

Definition (11) includes only primes and one molecule (‘round’); it corresponds to cabeza ‘head’ and was found acceptable (correct answer rate: 90.15%). Definition (12) is for the word pelo ‘hair’ and was also found acceptable (correct answer rate: 92.15%). Definition (13) corresponds to melena ‘mane’ (correct answer rate: 90%). Because all three are inverse and minimal definitions, and they pass the threshold, the Spanish molecule ‘león’, i.e. ‘lion’, is not required as a necessary feature of melena ‘mane’, which means that the corresponding Spanish word (i.e. león) could be defined as in (6a), as a ‘wild creature with a mane’. Returning now to the definitions of hen and egg, it seems that the circularity found in most dictionaries can be avoided by adopting the definition of egg given in (14):6 (14) Something round, white and yellow; some people eat it; when people do not eat it, after a long time, it can be a little creature. (94.6%)

The definitions of yellow, white and egg, which can be found in (4), (5) and (14), are based on primes and molecules, and since they all pass the threshold, there is strong evidence that definition (7b) of hen as a ‘female creature that lays eggs’ is on the right track. There are of course many other female creatures that lay eggs; however, for cultural and/or cognitive reasons, when Spanish speakers read this definition (or rather its Spanish counterpart), they think of hens, not of other birds, and not of reptiles, fish or insects either. The issue that remains is that of an appropriate minimal and inverse definition of the verb lay, but once that has been

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From example (14) onwards, the percentages at the end of definitions indicate the ratio of correct (i.e. expected) answers from informants.

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taken care of, we can say that, in our Spanish dictionary at least, the egg comes first and is followed by the hen.

10.5.3 Semantic Features and Collective Imagination The definitions in Sect. 5.2 involve creatures (animals) described in terms of a prototypical body part and/or a prototypical activity. So does the definition in (15). (15) Animal con caparazón. ‘Creature with a shell’

Most English speakers may not be able to associate this definition with just one word. In fact, caparazón and shell have slightly different meanings, as an image search on Google clearly indicates. While shell is used for snails, mollusks and some other words such as nuts and eggs, Spanish images exclusively show turtles (even if caparazón is correct also for snails). This may be a matter of ‘collective imagination’: caparazón is mostly associated with tortuga ‘turtle’, which is confirmed by the definition in (15), written to capture that very word, which was correctly guessed by 97% of informants. This raises an interesting question: should definitions take account of collective imagination? Is it appropriate to define mouse in terms of cheese, rabbit in terms of carrots and snake in terms of poison, as per the definitions in (6c), (6e) and (7a)? Should we define banana in terms of monkeys, or monkey in terms of bananas, or are they independent of each other? Should the definitions we are interested in not only be based on primes and molecules but also built around cultural knowledge? As I see it, dictionaries of any language should be built based on words, meanings and cultural knowledge (i.e. collective imagination). For most native speakers, the Spanish word for banana is more basic than its word for monkey. In fact, banana was used as an early defining word, and its definition was based on naming and pictorial information. No reference was made to monkeys (cf. Sect. 5.1). This leaves us with the option of building a minimal and inverse definition of monkey with or without reference to bananas. If the minimal definition does not need the feature ‘banana’, this feature could be added later in the expanded and detailed definition that is to be added subsequently (Sect. 10.6). However, if this feature is found to be a convenient part of the minimal and inverse definition of monkey, then it should be used. I tested the three minimal and inverse definitions for monkey shown in (16): (16) a. Creature that eats bananas. (94.64%) b. Creature that jumps from tree to tree. (58.92%) c. Creature most similar to people. (83.92%)

I expected definition (16c) to be the most efficient of the three, but was proven wrong by my informants, who also came up with the names of different types of

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monkeys, such as chimpanzee, orangutan, simian and gorilla. Surprisingly, the definition that returned the best results and was therefore easier for the informants than the others was the one associated with bananas in (16a), which proves that even if banana and monkey can be defined independently of each other, the feature ‘banana’ is relevant when writing a minimal and inverse definition of monkey for Spanish speakers, because of the mental image of some speakers (a monkey eating a banana). However, it should not be forgotten that the project described in this chapter relates to an e-dictionary that should be of use to native speakers and language learners alike. Is the feature (‘banana’) also relevant to the referent (monkeys) in other languages? As this is a question that cannot be answered in absolute terms, I will probably need to add a second feature, such as the one shown in (16c), thus assuring, by having two or more features, that the dictionary’s minimal and inverse definitions will also be useful for Spanish learners.

10.5.4 The Gap Between Concepts and Experience Thinking of the meaning of the word water, I realized that its referent is so well known, so universal and so necessary that I assumed without any hesitation that ‘water’ had to be a universal molecule (an assumption shared by Goddard 2018). I then decided to write a Spanish definition for this molecule and tried two different versions: one inspired by Wierzbicka’s (2018) proposal, and a second, simpler one, close to the style adopted by my students (but still based on primes and molecules), as shown in (17) and (18), respectively: (17) something, there is always a lot of it in many places of the Earth, it is good for the body of people, from time to time there is a little of it inside the mouth of people. (55.17%) (18) something that all people drink every day to stay alive. (100%)

For my informants, the second definition was clearer than the first. However, it is less intuitive from a lexicographical point of view—at least if the lexicographer cares about conceptual basicness. Indeed, how could drink be conceptually more basic than water? It took me a while to accept that a counter-intuitive definition could have a perfect response rate and would have to end up in the dictionary. It meant I had to find an alternative way to access the verb drink. I finally came up with the string of definitions shown in (19) to (22): (19) something white that some women give to very small children, it is inside one part of the body of some women and some creatures. (91%) (20) what we do with our teeth when we put something like an orange inside our mouths and we want this something to be small and to go into our body. (90%) (21) what we do after chewing something like an orange when we want this something to go into our body. (95.52%) (22) when we want to put something like milk in our mouths and swallow it, we say we want to … milk. (97%)

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These definitions, all of which were found to have appropriate response rates,7 correspond to the noun milk (20) and to the verbs chew (21), swallow (22) and drink (23). If they find their way into the dictionary, definition (18) for water can be adopted as well. But does it make sense for the meaning of water to depend on the meaning of milk? Is it reasonable to construct the meaning of water in such a roundabout way, with reference not only to the verb drink but also to the verbs chew and swallow? In my view, the answer to the first question could be affirmative, but the answer to the second one may not be. As Hanks (2013) points out, our use of words is more intuitive than logical. If we think of the first experience of most new-born human beings after breathing and crying, namely drinking breast milk, it is conceivable that, culturally, milk is at least as basic and universal as water. Why not resort to this word? Regarding the second question, lack of time has prevented a new questionnaire, but in the next months I will try to define swallow with the words child, women and milk, i.e. without relying on chew. It makes sense to define eat and drink based on swallow, but chew does not appear to be unavoidable for drink. In any case, if I could build a definition similar to Wierzbicka’s in (18) and get it past the threshold during testing, I would prefer it to a definition of water that depends on the verb drink.

10.5.5 Unsolved Problems A very common problem that I have come across is raised by instances of synonymy and quasi-synonymy, which are of course numerous. Consider, for instance, the definition of Tierra ‘Earth’ in (23): (23) A round and big place where all people live. (87%)

This definition, which did not meet my standards, also seems to fit the meaning of mundo ‘world’. The latter was the word produced by all informants who had not ventured the word Tierra. How can we possibly differentiate between the two words? Why is one of them overwhelmingly selected, but not often enough to make the definition as it stands acceptable? Regardless of the answer, prior definition of Earth is a prerequisite for the definitions of Sun, Moon and star, shown in (24): (24) a. A place, bigger than the Earth, round and yellow. (96.87%) b. A place, smaller than the Earth, round and white. (96.87%) c. Something that is far away from the Earth, people can see it at night and there are a lot of them in the sky. (93.75%)

7

The possible impact of data contamination—which may arise when a definition is placed too close to another one that contains the word it targets, such as the word chew in (21), targeted by the definition in (20), or the words milk and swallow in (22), targeted by the definitions in (19) and (21)—was minimized by dispersing the four definitions in the questionnaire, separating them from one another by intervening definitions relating to different semantic fields.

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Quasi-synonymy is also an issue in the case of a handful of verbs that contain in their meaning the meaning of an adverb. I am thinking more particularly of the following set of verbs: acercarse ‘move closer’ (related to cerca ‘close’); alejarse ‘move away’ (related to lejos ‘far’); venir ‘come’ (related to aquí ‘here’); ir ‘go’ (related to allí ‘there’); entrar ‘go into’ and meter ‘put into’ (related to dentro ‘inside’); salir ‘to go out’ and sacar ‘to take out’ (related to fuera ‘out’). Of the six definitions that I wrote, only one passed the threshold: (25) To move to be close to sth/so. (94%) (26) To move to be far away from sth/so. (71.87%) (27) If I want someone who is not here to move here, I want this someone to … here. (87.5%) (28) To move to be inside a place, for instance inside a house. (76.60%) (29) To move something to be out of some place, like when something that was inside a room now is out of the room. (85.07%) (30) To move something to be inside some place, like when something that was out of a room now is inside the room. (86.56%)

As in the case of Tierra and mundo, the problem with these verbs is that most of them have a quasi-synonym, once again less likely to be selected by my informants than the targeted verb. The situation, here, is however different: there may be no appreciable difference between, say, meter ‘put into’ and introducir ‘place into’, which share in all likelihood the same minimal and inverse definition. This is presumably not so for Tierra and mundo. Further manipulation, however subtle, of the definition of Tierra is required. If I fail to establish the difference between two quasi-synonyms at the level of the minimal and inverse definition, the only other option will be to display it elsewhere in the complete entry each will be allocated in the published dictionary (for further discussion, see Sect. 10.6). Complete entries will obviously need to refer explicitly to any quasi-synonym(s), presumably under the heading ‘Connected definition’. Dictionary users who wish to gain a better understanding of the exact difference between two quasi-synonyms will thus be prompted to engage with both lemmas. The relationship between quasi-synonyms is not the only problem that awaits resolution. Another significant hurdle I have not overcome yet is that some logical relations do not appear to lend themselves to an adequate use in minimal and inverse definitions. This is specifically the case with numbers. As one, two and like are primes, I wrote definition (31) for three: (31) If you have one thing and two things like this thing, you can say you have … of these things. (40%)

This definition proved to be highly inadequate, as indicated by the percentage between brackets. Defining numbers using a ‘Russian doll approach’ simply makes no sense. Not only does such an approach lack clarity but a definition of four similar to the one proposed for three would require knowledge of the word three (‘if you have one thing and three things like this thing, you can say you have … of these things’). A definition in terms of ‘two things and two things like this thing’ is harder to understand than the alternative. Similarly, for five, it would be necessary to know

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the word four, although it would be possible to come up with a definition relying on the word three (‘three things and two things like this thing’), and so on. The methodology, even if logical, is not practical: the number of previous definitions one needs to know (or look up in the dictionary) would increase as the number that is being defined grows higher, and it could potentially become infinite. A ‘Russian doll approach’ involving multiplication does not fare any better. I tried it out for the numbers one hundred and one million: (32) If you have ten groups of things like one thing, and in each group there are ten things like this thing, you can say you have … of this things. (42%) (33) If you have one thousand groups of things like one thing, and in each group there are one thousand things like this thing, you can say you have … of these things. (31%)

Numbers are probably a kind of abstract words with a particular function and may be better off being defined in terms of naming (together with a visual reference to the Arabic numeral). I am not entirely convinced, though, that this would be the best way to go. A third problem I have identified at this stage, and for which I have not found a satisfactory solution, relates to abstract words or words whose referents do not have a shape or limits. A case in point is the word sky. I translated Wierzbicka’s (2018) definition shown in (34) into Spanish and then wrote the minimal and inverse definition in (35): (34) A very big place, it is above all the places where people live; in all places where people live, people can see this very big place, they can see it far above the places where they live. (77.4%) (35) It is far away and it is above all the people and above all the places where people live. (62.06%)

Neither of the bracketed percentages was sufficient to endorse the corresponding definition. I still have to elaborate a workable methodology for this kind of definitions. However, a priori, I think that cultural values, prototypical situations, scenarios or some other indirect ways could be very helpful (Wierzbicka 1985; Fillmore et al. 2003).

10.6

From Minimal and Inverse Definitions to Expanded Definitions and Complete Entries

If I can successfully solve the problems that remain, and if it is accepted that minimal and inverse definitions are an adequate first step, the next step will be to list the features necessary to complete them. In other words, all minimal and inverse definitions need to be expanded with additional information. Table 10.1 shows what a complete entry of the dictionary would look like in the case of huevo ‘egg’, a minimal and inverse definition of which was given in (14). For the reader’s convenience, it is partly written in English. However, it goes without saying that the version in the dictionary would be entirely in Spanish.

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Table 10.1 Two types of definitions and an illustration of the complete entry huevo (egg) in the dictionary under development Complete entry of our dictionary

Expanded definition

Minimal and Something round, white and yellow; some inverse people eat it; when people do not eat it, after a definition long time, it can be a little creature Many female birds, reptiles, fish and insects lay eggs from which their young are produced. Many people eat eggs from hens, and also from quails. Eggs from some fish are called roes. Because of their shape, there are two parts of the body of a man and a boy that are colloquially called huevos (eggs) Connected Roes: Eggs from some fish that are very small, cluster in groups definition and in some cases can be eaten Collocations: huevo batido ‘beaten egg’, freír un huevo ‘to fry an egg’, etc. Compound: huevo de Pascua ‘Easter egg’, etc. Phraseology: poner a huevo ‘place something within your reach’, etc. Dialects: ‘stupid (people)’ (Uruguay), ‘easy task’ (Peru), etc. Morphological derivatives: huevón ‘too lazy’, etc.

The first part of the entry contains the original minimal and inverse definition. The second provides more information; it is some sort of an expanded definition. Unlike the former, the latter may be circular. The expanded definition gives an idea of which other words can be minimally and inversely defined with reference to huevo. In this instance, circularity at the level of the expanded definition means that when words such as bird, reptile, fish and insect (or rather their Spanish counterparts) are defined by means of a minimal and inverse definition, the word egg (huevo) can be used, if required, because that word’s minimal and inverse definition was written without it. Table10.1 shows room needs to be made for one or more connected definitions, such as the one for huevas ‘roes’, which are a ‘type’ of eggs. Semantic relations (such as ‘type of’) and collocations (mentioned further down) are collected and formalized within the framework of the Meaning-Text Theory (Mel’čuk 2012, 2013, 2015; Barrios Rodríguez 2006, 2010). Of course, for a complete entry of the dictionary, phraseology and compound nouns attached to the word huevo must be added, as well as dialect meanings, morphological derivatives, etc. All combinatorial phenomena are considered in the compilation of the full entry (Hanks 2012, 2013; Barrios Rodríguez and Goddard 2013; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014). Some relevant information is included in Table 10.1, which, however, makes no claim at exhaustivity. Suffice it to say here that, in the case of huevo, the majority of phraseologisms and compounds are related to gastronomy. The kind of entries that will find their place in the e-dictionary will eventually serve to build different types of dictionaries: a dictionary for Spanish learners containing only the minimal and inverse definitions; a dictionary for junior students including also the expanded definitions; and finally a dictionary meant for natural language processing purposes that has complete entries. The potential users of each of these dictionaries are different (Atkins and Rundell 2008); keeping in mind their specific needs, including the needs of machines (Dziemianko 2018), I have found

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that the tools of the NSM approach are extremely valuable for the minimal and expanded definitions, while those of the Meaning-Text Theory (see above) are the most suitable when completing the third and fourth parts of the proposed entries. It will be useful to point out that the definition of huevo in Table 10.1 does not include numbers reflecting polysemy because at the present time, the chosen approach to polysemy is different from what is traditionally done in most lexicographical works, where subscripts (eggs1, eggs2, etc.) are in common use. The intention is to reduce polysemy as much as possible, following the guidance of some experts (Wierzbicka 1985; Hanks 2013). However, it is recognized that, for now at least, the data used towards the dictionary are too widely scattered to make any firm claims in this respect. The work reported on in this section and the previous one is essentially part of a pilot experiment. The methodology of defining a minimal and inverse definition first and then allowing it to grow into an expanded definition and later a complete entry raises many unresolved problems. One of them is how many features are necessary to distinguish some types of natural objects from others. As Hanks (2013) claims, the feature ‘with yellow flowers’ is present in many spiny plants, such as gorse, dog roses, acacia and cactuses. I have no ready answer, but I am inclined to believe that the closer a word is to a (scientific) term, the bigger the set of semantic features in the minimal and inverse definition will be. Even the existence of words for which there are no minimal and inverse definitions but only complete definitions is not to be excluded.

10.7

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have presented the concept of a ‘minimal and inverse definition’, i.e. a definition, written essentially with primes and molecules, that reflects the minimal semantic features of a word and that has been tested in an inverse way (from meaning to word). I have summarized the results of two projects developed during the last two academic years and referred to some of the problems that have arisen. I have introduced the use I wish to make of the process of ‘naming’, and I have created chains of semantic dependency between words, such as some adjectives for colours, shape and touch associated with nouns defined by means of naming. I have reflected on the possibility of writing definitions, always avoiding circularity, with some relevant cognitive features (such as the trunk of elephants) as well as references to prototypical activities (such as the eating of bananas in the case of monkeys). I have presented what I call expanded definitions, connected definitions and complete entries, all of which will form the template of the entries of the e-dictionary to be developed during the next two years. I tested 145 definitions in three questionnaires but only accepted them for use if they had a success ratio of at least 90% (p < 0.005). This means that only sixty definitions were finally included in the pilot dictionary as it stands at this point in time. In the next few years, to get 4000 accepted definitions by the end of the

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project, I will probably need to test more than 7000 minimal and inverse definitions, i.e. an average of 320 each month. This is possible, provided I can maintain a sufficiently large network of informants motivated enough to answer two questionnaires with forty words each week. The idea is to build an e-dictionary with the 4000 most essential words of Spanish, proceeding as explained in this chapter. First, I will try to create minimal and inverse definitions. Expanded definitions will be written later. The experimental study is as yet too small to predict that all aspects of the project will translate into an unqualified success. Many problems remain to be solved, as indicated above. Some have been summarized here. One conclusion that appears to be beyond doubt is that it is possible to build a small dictionary based essentially on primes and molecules. On the other hand, it can be extremely positive to develop this kind of project alongside a collaborative project with students, not only because their motivation increases significantly while learning to investigate, but also because their data can further improve the research methodology. Acknowledgements This work was developed as part of two projects: DiRetEs (FFI2017-83293, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) and Piensapalabras (Innovative Project ref 125/2017, supported by the Fundación Complutense). I would like to thank the students involved in the Innovative Project for their enthusiasm and hard work, particularly Paula Hernández, Elena García, Ruth Mazón, Irene Martín, Alba Paredes, María Teresa Burguillo and Miriam Gómez, who helped me coordinate the project. I would like to express my special gratitude to the editors of this volume for their invitation, support, and final feedback, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. And last but not least, my sincere thanks and deep gratitude are due to Cliff Goddard, for his generosity in sharing his time and knowledge during my two research stays at the University of New England and Griffith University, respectively; to his wife, Mee Wun, for her warm welcome and her friendship; and to Anna Wierzbicka, for giving me the opportunity to learn from her, and for answering all my questions in two seminars and two personal meetings. I am grateful to both Cliff and Anna for their kind and inspiring help when I was writing my earliest definitions. All remaining errors in this chapter are my sole responsibility.

References Apresjan, J. (2000). Systematic lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Atkins, B. T. S., & Rundell, M. (2008). The Oxford guide to practical lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barrios Rodríguez, M. A. (2006). Macroestructura y microestructura de un Diccionario Explicativo y Combinatorio: Diferencias con respecto a un diccionario común. Revista Española de Lingüística, 36(1), 349–377. Barrios Rodríguez, M. A. (2010). El dominio de las funciones léxicas en el marco de la Teoría Sentido-Texto. Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Online at http://elies.rediris. es/elies.html. Barrios Rodríguez, M. A. (2013). Functional macrocategory and semiautomatic inheritance of semantic features: A methodology for defining nouns”. In V. Apresjan & B. Iomdin (Eds.), Meaning-text theory: Current developments (pp. 285–294). München: Peter Lang.

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Barrios Rodríguez, M. A. (2019) ¿Aún queda alguien para quien no exista un diccionario? Diretes, un diccionario electrónico apto para máquinas. In Cazorla Vivas, C., GarcÍa Aranda, M. Á., Nuño Álvarez, M. P. (eds): Lo que hablan las palabras. Estudios de Lexicología y Lexicografía en honor de Manuel Alvar Ezquerra. Lugo: Axac. Barrios Rodríguez, M. A., & Goddard, C. (2013). ‘Degrad verbs’ in Spanish and English: Collocations, lexical functions and contrastive NSM semantic analysis. Functions of Language, 20(2), 219–249. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.20.2.04bar. Barrios Rodríguez, M. A., Hernández, P., García, E., Martín, R., Burguillo, M. T., del Barrio, I., & Gómez, M. (2019). Aproximación al significado léxico con primitivos y moléculas: Trabajo experimental. Madrid: Universidad Complutense. https://eprints.ucm.es/54916/. Bullock, D. (2011). NSM + LDOCE: A non-circular dictionary of English. International Journal of Lexicography, 24(2), 226–240. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecq035. Carbaugh, D. (2005). Cultures in conversation. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cross, K. P., & Steadman, M. H. (1996). Classroom research: Implementing the scholarship of teaching. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Dziemianko, A. (2018). Electronic dictionaries. In P. A. Fuertes Olivera (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of lexicography (pp. 663–683). London: Routledge. Fillmore, C. J., Johnson, C. R., & Petruck, M. R. L. (2003). Background to framenet. International Journal of Lexicography, 16(3), 235–250. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/16.3.235. Folkman Curasi, C., & Norman Kennedy, K. (2002). From prisioners to apostles: A typology of repeat buyers and loyal customers in service businesses. Journal of Services Marketing, 16(4), 322–341. https://doi.org/10.1108/08876040210433220. Goddard, C. (2001). Conceptual primes in early language development. In M. Pütz, S. Niemeier, & R. Dirven (Eds.), Applied cognitive linguistics: Vol. 1. Theory and language acquisition (pp. 193–227). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110866247.193. Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goddard, C. (2016). Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de lexicologie, 109, 13–34. https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0013. Goddard, C. (2018). Minimal English: The science behind it. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 29–70). London: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_3. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/ 9780199668434.001.0001. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2018). Minimal English and how it can add to global English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 5–27). London: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-31962512-6_2. Hanks, P. (2012). Corpus evidence and electronic lexicography. In S. Granger, & M. Paquot (Eds.), Electronic lexicography (pp. 57–82). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/ 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654864.003.0004. Hanks, P. (2013). Lexical analysis: Norms and exploitations. Cambridge: The MIT Press. https:// doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262018579.001.0001. Krajcik, J. S., & Czerniak, C. M. (2018). Teaching science in elementary and middle school: A project-based learning approach (5th ed.). New York: Routledge. Leinonen, T., & Durall Gazulla, E. (2014). Pensamiento de diseño y aprendizaje colaborativo. Comunicar, 42, 107–116. https://doi.org/10.3916/C42-2014-10. Lévy, P. (1999). Collective intelligence: Mankind’s emerging world in cyberspace. New York: Basic Books. Marín-Juarros, V., Negre, F., & Pérez, A. (2014). Entornos y redes personales de aprendizaje (PLE-PLN) para el aprendizaje colaborativo. Comunicar, 42, 35–43. https://doi.org/10.3916/ C42-2014-03.

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Mel’čuk, I. (2012). Semantics: From meaning to text. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi. org/10.1075/slcs.129. Mel’čuk, I. (2013). Semantics: From meaning to text (Vol. 2). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.135. Mel’čuk, I. (2015). Semantics: From meaning to text (Vol. 3). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.168. Pérez-Mateo, M., Romero, M., & Romeu, T. (2014). La construcción colaborativa de proyectos como metodología para adquirir competencias digitales. Comunicar, 42, 15–24. https://doi.org/ 10.3916/C42-2014-01. Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Lexicography and conceptual analysis. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Semantic complexity: Conceptual primitives and the principle of substitutability. Theoretical Linguistics, 17, 75–97. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.1991.17.1-3.75. Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (2008). Why there are no ‘colour universals’ in language and thought. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, (N.S.) 14, 407–425. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655. 2008.00509.x. Wierzbicka, A. (2018). Talking about the universe in minimal English: Teaching science through words that children can understand. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 169–200). London: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_8.

María Auxiliadora Barrios Rodríguez is Associate Professor in the Spanish Language Department at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her research interests are at the intersection between lexicology and lexicography, on the one hand, and natural language processing, on the other. Her scientific output includes over sixty publications in international conference proceedings and journals. She has participated in nine international and national research projects and is the founder of the Spanish as a second language website (http://www. masalladelespanol.com). She is also the head of the DiRetEs project (FFI2017-83293), which centres around the creation of a Spanish e-dictionary that focuses on collocations and semantic relations classified according to lexical functions within the meaning-text theory.

Chapter 11

Prevalence of NSM Primes in Easy-to-Read and Standard Finnish: Findings from Newspaper Text Corpora Ulla Vanhatalo and Camilla Lindholm

Abstract The relationship between natural semantic metalanguage and easy-to-read languages provides interest for both researchers and easy-to-read language practitioners. In our pilot study, we compare the prevalence of NSM primes in standard Finnish and easy-to-read Finnish newspaper texts. The most interesting finding in our study is that the relative frequency (hits per 1 M words) of NSM primes in easy-to-read Finnish texts is overall approximately twice that in the standard Finnish texts. Considering that the Finnish easy-to-read journalists most likely have been favouring NSM primes unconsciously, this is a remarkable finding. Our study is motivated by the current circumstances in easy-to-read language research in Finland. Easy-to-read Finnish has been actively used in practice since 1980s and plenty of writing instructions has been given. When it comes to vocabulary, the general advice has been to ‘avoid long, complicated and unfamiliar words’, while lists of suggested vocabulary has not been provided. The number of people using or needing easy Finnish is rapidly growing, the current estimate being 650,000 people. There is a high need for the simplest possible shared vocabulary. Even if there is need for further studies and some methodological questions need to get solved, the findings in this paper suggest that the NSM primes might have a special role in easy-to-read languages. Besides of practical aspects, our observations may also contribute to the NSM theory by giving corpus-based evidence for centricity of the semantic primes. Keywords NSM


Easy-to-read languages
Finnish
Text corpora
Vocabulary

U. Vanhatalo (&) University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: ulla.vanhatalo@helsinki.fi C. Lindholm University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: camilla.lindholm@helsinki.fi © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_11

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Introduction

Anyone who follows the literature of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) from its early days to the most recent publications will see how the investigations into semantic primes have constantly sought the simplest and smallest possible vocabulary. Starting with fourteen words in a standard language (Wierzbicka 1972) and adding up to around 65 over the course of more than four decades (e.g. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018), NSM researchers have developed a tool that is widely used today for breaking down complex meanings into simple components. At the same time, other people, often those who are not linguists, in various locations have been searching for the simplest possible vocabulary (e.g. Rajala 1990; Leskelä and Virtanen 2006; Kimble 2007; Wydick 2016). Because standard language lexicons often go beyond many people’s understanding, practitioners of easy-to-read and plain language varieties have been working on removing complex vocabulary from texts intended to be simple and easy to understand. Is there, could there be or should there be a meeting point for these two approaches? In this paper, we study this possibility by exploring the prevalence of NSM primes in standard Finnish and easy-to-read Finnish, a language modification used for communicating with people who have various kinds of difficulties in understanding standard Finnish. We use newspaper corpus data to determine if the relative frequency (hits per 1 M words) of NSM primes differs between standard Finnish and easy-to-read Finnish. Our study is motivated by the current circumstances in easy-to-read language research in Finland. Easy-to-read Finnish has been actively used in practice since the 1980s (Kulkki-Nieminen 2010), and many instructions for writing such texts have been given (Rajala 1990; Sainio 2000; Sainio and Rajala 2002; Leskelä and Virtanen 2006; Virtanen 2014; Leskelä 2019). When it comes to easy-to-read vocabulary, the general advice has been to avoid long, complicated and unfamiliar words, and use commonly known frequent words instead. However, lists of suggested vocabulary have not been provided. No studies have been reported on vocabulary that has actually been used in easy-to-read Finnish. According to the Finnish Centre for Easy to Read (Finn. Selkokeskus), the number of people needing easy-to-read Finnish is growing rapidly, the current estimate being around 650,000 (the total population of Finland is 5.5 million). The need for easy-to-read materials is connected with neurobiological causes (e.g. intellectual disability and dyslexia), reduced adult-onset language skills (memory disorders and aphasia) or using a language as a second or a foreign language (Leskelä and Lindholm 2012 for an overview; cf. also Bredel and Maaß 2016: 29–40). Among easy-to-read language users from diverse backgrounds, there is a great need for the simplest possible shared vocabulary. Research-based suggestions for vocabulary usage, including explicit word lists, are also needed in training new specialists in easy-to-read languages. In our paper, we will begin with a brief look at the concept of easy-to-read language (Sect. 11.1.1). We will focus on the easy-to-read lexicon (Sect. 11.1.2), and demonstrate how both NSM and easy-to-read languages ultimately approach

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similar objectives, albeit from different perspectives (Sect. 11.1.3). Based on statistical findings from newspaper text corpora (2), we will point out the strong prevalence of NSM primes in easy-to-read Finnish (3) and discuss the results and suggest that easy-to-read languages might benefit from consciously adding the NSM primes to their core lexicons (4). The ultimate objective of our study is to build bridges between natural semantic metalanguage and easy-to-read languages. Since this article constitutes only the first contribution to a new field, it can be described as a pilot study or even as proof of concept research (Kendig 2016).

11.1.1 Easy-to-Read: A Multicoloured Umbrella Rather Than a Uniform Concept As outlined in the previous section, this study compares the prevalence of NSM primes in standard Finnish with easy-to-read Finnish. The term easy-to-read refers to a language form modified from a standard language for the purpose of making the language easy-to-read and understand by people of various skills and abilities, ‘ranging from persons who only have minor problems with understanding complex texts to persons who cannot read at all’ (Nietzio et al. 2014: 344). The term ‘easy-to-read’ is used by the European Union in the context of inclusion and accessibility (e.g. the European Accessibility Act), and it is used relatively widely in European countries and languages (Finn. selkokieli, Germ. Leichte Sprache, Swed. lättläst, Est. arekeel).1 Yet, even if there is general agreement as to the overall content and definition of the easy-to-read concept, there is considerable variation in practical instructions and teaching practices. Because easy-to-read language can be considered as a concept fairly close to what is more commonly known as plain language, we will give a short overview of the notion of plain language and point out the main differences between these two concepts. Plain language refers to communication designed to ensure that the intended audience understands the message as quickly and easily as possible (Cutts 1995). The modern plain language movement arose in the 1970s with guidelines for making government regulations easier to understand (Mazur 2000: 205). Thus, the movement promoting plain language is closely related to official writing, and often has a particularly strong connection with the simplification of legal language (e.g. Kimble 2007; Wydick 2016). Today, writing plain language is a worldwide activity; in the European Union, there are directives that promote plain language in texts that are written and translated in the EU.

1 The English term easy-to-read language is a bit misleading, as spoken communication is a crucial part of the phenomenon. The Swedish term lättläst also emphasises reading, however, that does not mean that the practitioners would only focus on written language. Instead, Swedish publish service radio has a long-standing tradition of easy-to-understand news along the same principles as easy-to-read. In many other languages, the term does not emphasise the reading component.

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Whereas plain language is related to institutional documents with a preference for improving legal discourse, the related notions of easy-to-read and easily read texts are connected with making communication accessible to persons with language disabilities. Easy-to-read is defined as simpler than plain language and targets persons with special needs. The underlying ideology is tied to the rights of persons with learning disabilities and their right to have access to information, art and communication. Thus, the aim of easy-to-read information is to facilitate inclusion of and societal participation by persons whose language skills are not fluent. There are apparently no existing research-based comparisons of plain language with easy-to-read language, but the government of the United Kingdom2 provides the following examples: 1. Plain English: ‘Thank you for your letter asking for permission to put up posters in the library. Before we can give you an answer we will need to see a copy of the posters to make sure they won’t offend anyone’. 2. Easy-to-read: ‘Thank you for your letter about your poster. We need to see the poster before we put it up. This is because it must not offend anyone. Offend means upset people’.

As these examples illustrate, the easy-to-read version contains shorter sentences, each of which has just one idea and one verb. In addition, guidelines for easy-to-read texts suggest a regular visual formatting, such as always starting a new sentence on a new line (Nietzio et al. 2014: 347). The difference between plain and easy-to-read languages has been defined in the following way: ‘Plain Language’ aims at reaching the largest possible audience through clarity, brevity and avoidance of technical language. ‘Easy to Read’ language shares these aspects but starts with the individual and attempts to address the varying needs of any individual user, in particular those not able to use ‘Plain Language’ efficiently (Miesenberger and Pets 2014: 321). This study investigates newspaper texts written in easy-to-read Finnish. As outlined in previous studies, sets of guidelines for creating easy-to-read texts have been provided by international organizations, but there is little empirical research to support these guidelines. The few existing studies deal with reading comprehension of texts in a standard language compared to texts in an easy-to-read variant (Karreman et al. 2007; Fajardo et al. 2014). Thus, from a linguistic point of view, there appears to be a dearth of linguistic and scientific research on easy-to-read language. The aim of the current article is to contribute to the linguistic research of easy-to-read language by investigating the Finnish lexicon.

11.1.2 The Easy-to-Read Lexicon There are two ways to approach the lexicon of easy-to-read languages: one is the vocabulary recommendations set by various guidebooks or easy-to-read language

2

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inclusive-communication/accessible-communicationformats.

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specialists. Another is to study the actual vocabulary usage in written or oral easy-to-read language text corpora. In this section, we will first look at some recent instructions for writing easy-to-read texts, with special emphasis on easy-to-read Finnish. Second, we will examine studies that discuss vocabulary usage in easy-to-read languages. In Finland, there are fairly strict guidelines for writing easy-to-read language. Texts can be granted a SELKO symbol by the Finnish Centre for Easy to Read (Picture 11.1). This symbol indicates that the content meets the criteria for easy-to-read texts with regard to language, typography and illustrations. The first guidelines for writing easy-to-read Finnish were published in 1990 (Rajala 1990). They recommended frequent use of verbs and nouns, but sparing use of adjectives and adverbs. Further, they recommended avoiding long words and special vocabulary, dialectal and colloquial words and abstract expressions. Instead, writers of easy texts were to use standard and well-known words and always explain difficult terms. The following guidelines for writing easy-to-read Finnish were published in 2000 (Sainio 2000), and were based on international guidelines drafted by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. In comparison with the guidelines from 1990, these do not provide much new information with regard to vocabulary, but they do point out that even though difficult words should be avoided, writers should ‘write to an adult’ and thus avoid over-simplifying the texts. Another set of guidelines from 2002 (Sainio and Rajala 2002) instructs writers of easy texts to use many words from everyday spoken language as well as many words referring to person. In addition, these guidelines advise avoiding special vocabulary and words of foreign origin. Finally, Leskelä and Virtanen (2006: 13–14) summarise the instructions for easy-to-read texts in the following manner: use plain, well-known vocabulary, avoid long words and explain difficult and abstract expressions. International guidelines for writing easy-to-read texts have been criticised for promoting the point of view of Indo-European languages, visible, for example, in vocabulary guidelines (Leskelä and Virtanen 2006: 13). As illustrated above, the guidelines have often suggested avoiding long words, but in Finnish, even basic words can be long because of the morphological features of Finnish, a language constructed by adding endings and derivatives to word stems. While copious instructions and guidelines have been given, there is a dearth of research on vocabulary that is actually used in easy-to-read variants of languages. Below, we will make a few minor observations on vocabulary in easy-to-read variants of Finnish and Swedish.3 These observations come from a doctoral thesis (Kulkki-Nieminen 2010) and two master’s theses (Arle 2018; Nummi 2013), and focus on aspects with relevance to NSM. Nummi’s master’s thesis (2013) investigates the simplification of the easy-to-read lexicon in adapting newspaper texts for easy-to-read versions. Her

3

Besides of Finnish, Swedish is the other official language in Finland. Around 5% of people living in Finland have reported Swedish being their mother tongue.

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Picture 11.1 SELKO symbol used by the Finnish Centre for easy-to-read. The Finnish word selko refers to understanding and clarity

results (2013: 62–66) indicate the following differences: the easy-to-read texts were shorter than the original texts, and compound words were slightly less frequent. Contrary to Nummi’s original hypothesis, the share of content words vis-à-vis that of functional words was approximately equal in both text types. According to Nummi (2013: 64), this result originated in patterns of frequent repetition in the easy-to-read texts, which increased the number of content words. From an NSM point of view, the most interesting result was Nummi’s classification of content words, following Lyons’ (1977) model of classifying nouns according levels of abstraction. According to Nummi (2013: 64), the easy-to-read texts contained significantly fewer nouns at the third level of abstraction compared to the original news texts, whereas the easy-to-read versions contained a prominent number of nouns at the first level of abstraction in comparison with the original texts. Kulkki-Nieminen’s doctoral thesis (2010) deals with news texts and their modification to easy-to-read language. Her comparison of the original news texts and their easy-to-read equivalents reveals differences on several levels. On the lexical level, there is frequent use of the Finnish noun ihminen (Eng. ‘human being, person’) in the easy-to-read texts (Kulkki-Nieminen 2010: 144–149). Whereas the original texts used pronouns to express the actor, the easy-to-read version often completed the pronoun with the noun ihminen (‘human being, person’) in order to express the actor more clearly. This finding is relevant for our study, because IHMINEN (the singular form of ‘human being, person’) is a semantic prime in the Finnish language (Vanhatalo and Tissari 2017). Further, there is also evidence of a high prevalence of semantic primes in easy-to-read texts in Swedish. In her study of three Swedish novels and their easy-to-read modifications, Arle (2018) classifies primary words into six groups based on their frequency. Her study involved a total of 67,849 standard Swedish words and 14,112 words in easy-to-read Swedish. The highest frequency group included the primes I, YOU, SAY, TO BE, THERE IS, whose occurrence was more than 16 times as frequent in the easy-to-read texts than in standard Swedish texts. The second highest group contained the primes THINK, WANT, SEE, HAVE, MAYBE. These occurred 11–15 times more often in easy-to-read texts than in standard language texts. On the other hand, there are primes that occur more frequently in the standard language than in easy-to-read versions, including DO,

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CAN, PEOPLE, THEN, HERE. In addition to the six groups, Arle offers a leftover group for primes that were not frequent enough in the particular (and fairly small) text corpora. Arle also points out some technical challenges in recognising different semantic primes that have similar forms. For example, the Swedish prime VARA represents both TO BE (‘somewhere’) and TO BE (‘something’), while the corpus tool does not differentiate between these meanings. Despite the challenges, the outcome is clear: during the modification process from standard text to easy-to-read text, the frequency of some semantic primes increases dramatically. Our current study has some similarities to Arle’s (2018) study, as we share the general aim of determining how semantic primes are used in easy-to-read texts. Unlike Arle, however, we are studying the Finnish language rather than Swedish, and instead of drawing our data from fiction novels, we are using newspaper text corpora. Furthermore, our corpora consist of independent newspaper texts. Thus, we do not compare standard texts and their easy-to-read modifications as Arle did.

11.1.3 Request for Simplicity: Two Approaches The relationship between natural semantic metalanguage and easy-to-read language is, and should be, of great interest to both linguistic researchers and easy-to-read language practitioners. Even though NSM and other approaches to creating simple language are clearly different phenomena, as noted by Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018: 21–23), NSM primes, having an indisputably central role in simple communication, could be beneficial for various easy-to-read and plain language contexts. In addition to this kind of practical value, observations on NSM primes functioning in non-traditional (non-NSM) contexts could also contribute to the NSM theory by giving new evidence of the centricity and universality of semantic primes.

11.2

Materials and Methods

In this section, we first briefly present our database and the general procedure of data sampling (Sect. 11.2.1). Thereafter, we present an overview of challenges faced and decisions made in the data sampling process (Sect. 11.2.2).

11.2.1 The Corpora The corpus used in this study comes from the Language Bank of Finland, specifically, from the sub-corpus Corpus of Finnish Magazines and Newspapers from the 1990s and 2000s. The Language Bank of Finland is a free and mostly publicly

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accessible service for researchers, and has a wide variety of texts and speech corpora and tools for studying them. The Language Bank is run by FIN-CLARIN, which is part of the international CLARIN ERIC research infrastructure (https:// www.kielipankki.fi/language-bank/). The easy-to-read text used in this study consists of the newspaper Selkosanomat (former Selkouutiset), published by the Finnish Centre for Easy to Read (Selkokeskus) and the Finnish Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, FAIDD (Kehitysvammaliitto). The newspaper has the SELKO symbol (Finn. selkotunnus; Picture 11.1), showing that the text has been accepted by proofreaders of the Finnish Centre for Easy to Read. At the time of our data collection from January to June 2018, the Selkosanomat part of the easy-to-read corpus had a total of 394,000 words published during the years 2006–2013 (urn: nbn:fi:lb-201711241). As to the standard language corpus, we used the KLK Suomi2000 corpus. It has a total of 18.5 million words, consisting of Finnish standard language newspaper texts from the year 2000 (urn:nbn:fi:lb-201405275).

11.2.2 Remarks on Sampling and Presenting the Data All the Finnish NSM primes and their known allolexes4 (Vanhatalo and Tissari 2017, as presented in Appendix) were searched. For the search, we used the command base form (Finn. perusmuoto), which resulted in all grammatical forms of the word in question. We made separate searches for each language corpora (easy-to-read and standard). The primary searches resulted in relative frequencies (hits per 1 M words) of all the NSM primes in both easy-to-read Finnish and in standard Finnish (Fig. 11.1). With the majority of the primes the corpus search was fairly straightforward, resulting in data that can be considered relatively reliable. In the course of sampling and analysing the data, however, some concerns arose. Below, we describe the challenges we faced and the decisions we made in the course of data processing. Most of the concerns were related to lexical relations, mainly polysemy, but also homonymy and synonymy, which we could not control with the corpus tools available. For example, we did not have tools for separating different primes containing the Finnish olla ‘to be’ verb. Instead, the search gave us one large ‘to be’ group, consisting of four separate NSM primes (BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) and BE (SOMEONE’S), along with some other possible to be meanings not related to the NSM primes at all. Even though this kind of combined result followed the general trend of other primes, surprisingly closely, and most likely would have given the correct impression of the relative frequency between the two text types (easy-to-read being two times higher than standard

4

The term allolex refers to words functioning as parallel forms of a certain prime, e.g. English I * ME, or Finnish ISO * SUURI (‘big’).

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Fig. 11.1 Relative frequencies (hits per one million words) of NSM primes in easy-to-read and standard newspaper text corpora

language, easy-to-read having 49,320 hits per one million words, standard language having 24,399 hits per one million words), we decided to leave these suspicious cases out of the study (for excluded primes, see Appendix). With some words the obvious polysemy or even homonymy (e.g. KOSKA/WHEN ‘because’ and ‘when’, VUOKSI/BECAUSE ‘because’ and ‘flow’, HYVIN/VERY ‘well’ and ‘very’) caused immediate exclusion. In addition to the obviously unclear cases (e.g. ‘to be’ related primes) and the obviously clear cases (e.g. the prime TWO/KAKSI, which has no polysemy or homonymy), we had a great number of primes with possibly blended meanings in Finnish. In order to make sure that our search results did not include unwanted components of meaning, we used not only our intuition but also the numbers of meaning groups in the dictionary of Standard Finnish (Kielitoimiston sanakirja). Interestingly, just eight of the words serving as primes were given just one meaning, while most of the words had several separate meanings (up to as many as 27). Even if we could not base our decision purely on the (sometimes fairly unsystematic) meaning groupings, the groupings helped us pay attention to meanings not covered in the canonical sentences of NSM. The numbers of meaning groups related in each semantic prime in Finnish are listed in Appendix. In some cases, we decided to take the word into account even if there was a slight possibility of non-NSM meaning; for example, LÄHELLÄ/NEAR may have not only a spatial but also a temporal meaning component. Furthermore, the intuitively slight possibility of metaphorical use did not automatically cause exclusion of the prime; thus, for instance KOSKEA/TOUCH was included. With many

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exponents5, some allolexes were polysemous while some were not, and these non-polysemous allolexes could be taken into account to stand for the semantic primes in question. While all the Finnish exponents and allolexes were searched individually in the beginning of the study, we combined the hits so that all related allolexes are presented as one exponent, translated into English, in Figs. 11.1 and 11.2. In the case of some individual primes, some of the allolexes may have been included, while some have been left out as being polysemous and uncontrollable (e.g. WHEN * TIME/MILLOIN * JOLLOIN * SILLOIN * AIKA * KUN). It must also be remembered that the list of Finnish exponents used in this study (Vanhatalo and Tissari 2017) may not have all the relevant allolexes included; e.g. the verb haluta6 ‘to want’ should be taken into account as an allolex of WANT/ TAHTOA.7 All the combinations of allolexes can be found in Appendix. These modifications of data, such as exclusions of some primes and combinations of some allolexes, did not as yet have a significant effect in our primary results. The focus of the current study was not on the prevalence of the entire NSM prime set in easy-to-read or standard language; instead, our goal was to compare the prevalence of NSM primes in easy-to-read and standard languages. We applied the same modifications, rules and restrictions to both text corpora. The challenges with data sampling and possible modifications naturally vary from one language to another. Because of the pilot nature of the current study, we have described the procedures in detail.

11.3

Findings

The most striking finding in our study was that the relative frequency (hits per 1 M words) of NSM primes in easy-to-read Finnish texts was overall approximately twice that in the standard Finnish texts. Furthermore, some primes were especially prevalent, possibly suggesting a special role in the easy-to-read language. In this section, we first examine the results overall and then focus on some interesting cases. In Fig. 11.1, we demonstrate the relative frequencies of NSM primes in easy-to-read and standard Finnish newspaper texts. As not all meanings of semantic

5

The term exponent refers to a linguistic form (word, compound, suffix) representing a semantic prime in some language. 6 In our easy-to-read data, the relative frequency (hits/million words) of haluta was 1431, while tahtoa was just 10. In the standard language data, the difference was also remarkable, haluta being 670 and tahtoa 51. These numbers underline the importance of corpus data in the process of identifying semantic primes in any language. Vanhatalo and Tissari (2017) mention the possibility of having haluta as an allolex for tahtoa in the Finnish set of primes, but they exclude it, apparently based on the dictionary description and their semantic intuition. 7 The same should be done with THIS WAY/TÄLLÄ TAVALLA.

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Prevalence of NSM Primes in Easy-to-Read …

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Fig. 11.2 Ratio of relative frequencies of NSM prime prevalence in easy-to-read and standard language texts. The light blue stippled line is added to depict the ratio 1:1 between frequencies of easy-to-read and standard Finnish

primes can be distinguished in the corpora search (see 2.2), this figure does not include all semantic primes (for excluded primes and allolexes, see Appendix). Despite the exclusions, the overall picture is clear: with the exception of the primes YOU and TOUCH, all the primes presented here are more prevalent in the easy-to-read language than in the standard language. Figure 11.2 is based on the statistics in Fig. 11.1. It shows the ratio of relative frequencies of NSM primes in easy-to-read and standard Finnish newspaper texts. As in Fig. 11.1, not all primes are presented. The figure illustrates how, with the majority of primes, the ratio of easy-to-read language and standard language is close to two. Special attention could be paid to the primes having particularly high frequency in easy-to-read language. The highest ratio in our current data—five times more in easy-to-read than in standard language—is the prime PEOPLE.8 The result correlates with earlier studies (Kulkki-Nieminen 2010: 144–149). The other primes in the top five are MANY, KIND, MUCH and BODY. This means that in our newspaper data, these primes occur at least three times more often in easy-to-read language texts than in the standard language. Further studies are needed to determine whether these NSM primes with especially high prevalence play some special

Including also the singular form, as ‘people’ in Finnish is just a grammatical plural of ‘human being, person’, both having the same stem ihminen.

8

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role in easy-to-read Finnish. In addition to the relative frequencies presented in this study, absolute hits in the data should also be taken into consideration. Note that only two primes (TOUCH and YOU) were slightly more frequent in standard language. Reasons for low frequency with YOU may possibly be found in the easy-to-read guidebook suggestions to be careful with pronomilisation (while this should possibly apply to other pronouns, too). With KOSKEA/TOUCH, some explanation could possibly be found in parallel form koskettaa ‘touch’ (not included or even mentioned in Vanhatalo and Tissari 2017), which may sometimes be used instead of KOSKEA. In the easy-to-read corpus, koskettaa would give 46 additional hits (per million words) to the KOSKEA 167 hits. The combined hits of KOSKEA and koskettaa (214 in easy-to-read and 199 in standard language) would change the category of TOUCH from ‘less frequent in easy-to-read’ to ‘more frequent in easy-to-read’. It should be remembered here that some likely frequent primes, such as all primes including the ‘to be’ element, were excluded from the study for technical reasons (for the entire list of primes included and excluded, see Appendix 1). As mentioned earlier in this paper, our impression is that the excluded primes would have roughly followed the ‘doubling’ trend. Our impression is based on extra searches we made with combined ‘fussy’ categories. Even if the searches were similarly made in the both corpora, and could thus be somehow compared to each other, this notion remains naturally speculative, and would need further studying. Also, as noted with the case of WANT in Finnish (Nt 5), allolexes of exponents in each language may sometimes be an open group. Close examination of each of the 65 primes (the exponents plus all possible allolexes) would naturally give deeper insight into the behaviour of each individual prime. Furthermore, including all the primes would give us a more holistic view of the entire prime set. Yet, regardless of disclaimers presented earlier (in Sects. 11.2 and 11.3), we dare to claim that the ratios based on our pilot data give fairly strong proof of the concept of the phenomenon: NSM primes seem to play a special role in Finnish easy-to-read newspaper texts.

11.4

Discussion

In this pilot study, we have shown how NSM primes in easy-to-read Finnish are about twice as prevalent as in standard Finnish texts. The tendency seems to be clear: Finnish journalists writing easy-to-read newspaper texts have intuitively9 been using NSM primes significantly more than journalists writing newspaper articles in standard Finnish.

9

By saying intuitively we mean that as far as we know, the easy-to-read authors have been using NSM primes without being aware of the theoretical concept as such. There is naturally plenty of general instruction on avoiding complex and favouring simple vocabulary (see Sect. 11.1.2).

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Our results led us to three main points of discussion: the relation between NSM and easy-to-read languages deserves more in-depth exploration (Sect. 4.1); the NSM primes could possibly be consciously added into the vocabulary of easy-to-read languages (Sect. 4.2) and finally, the NSM-based minimal languages may help constructing the easiest level of the easy-to-read languages (Sect. 4.3).

11.4.1 Suggestions for Future Studies on NSM and Current Easy-to-Read Languages In our pilot study, we found fairly strong evidence of NSM primes having some kind of role in easy-to-read Finnish. Due to the relatively small easy-to-read corpus and some technical limitations of our corpus tool, our results should be taken primarily as proof of a concept. Further studies are needed with larger corpora and more sophisticated statistical methods. The studies should be expanded to other languages, and to different kinds of text types, including parallel corpora with the same contents in standard language originals and easy-to-read modifications. Relevant sampling and analytical methods should be used in order to cover all primes reliably. We should also learn more about the possible special roles of certain semantic primes. Do some primes play a specific role from the point of view of easy-to-read texts? If so, how should this be taken into account in practical instructions? Further studies and deeper understanding of the relationship between NSM and easy-to-read variants would result in both theoretical insights and practical value. The practical values of developing the easy-to-read variants are clear and indisputable: simple vocabulary is a crucial element of accessible language, which, in turn, is one of the key factors in involvement and belonging in a society. Yet, there are some theoretically intriguing aspects as well. The practitioners of easy-to-read Finnish have been using semantic primes intuitively; at least we have no reason to believe that they would have been aware of the NSM approach. This is a remarkable corpus-based observation, correlating to anecdotal observations of discussions with teachers of a second language, speech therapists and supervisors of persons with intellectual disabilities when they hear about NSM for the first time. ‘This is exactly how I speak with my students/patients/clients’, they often report. This kind of intuitive knowledge or skill is quite encouraging from the perspective of NSM theory, possibly indicating a new view of the universal nature of semantic primes. However, as it is known that self-reported behaviour does not necessarily give an accurate picture, practitioners’ speak and its relation to NSM primes deserves to be carefully studied. Furthermore, it is not only that easy-to-read languages can benefit from NSM, but NSM could also benefit from easy-to-read language practices. One of the main easy-to-read principles is clear and simple syntax. One way to measure syntactical clarity is how quickly the text can be read. While many of the NSM explications are syntactically clear and quickly readable, some have fairly obscure syntax, requiring

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multiple readings before they can be understood. It would be interesting to find the possible overlap between the syntactic rules (and practices) of NSM (as presented, e.g., in the so-called ‘Chart of NSM Semantic Primes’ available from the downloads section of the NSM homepage at Griffith University)10 and current easy-to-read varieties. Fortunately, there seems to be increasing interest in linguistic studies combining NSM and easy-to-read languages. These two approaches to simple and understandable communication were discussed in two workshops in Helsinki in the spring of 2018, one focusing on easy-to-read11 language and one on NSM12 (Arle 2018; Goddard 2018; Hoffrén 2018b;13 Leskelä 2018). A growing number of researchers and easy-to-read practitioners are becoming involved, and new ways of co-operating are being considered. Some ideas developed in the context of Finnish are also reaching international easy-to-read and NSM communities.

11.4.2 NSM Primes as the Possible Core Concepts of Easy-to-Read Languages As pointed out in the introduction, this study is closely related to the current situation in the development of easy-to-read Finnish. While systematic studies on the overlapping vocabulary of NSM and easy-to-read languages or reading comprehension are still in progress, the Finnish Centre for Easy to Read acknowledges the potential of NSM in enhancing easy-to-read vocabulary (Leskelä 2019, 129–130). The Finnish Centre for Easy to Read is currently preparing a new classification of the three levels of easy-to-read Finnish, giving guidelines to future easy-to-read authors for more precise targeting of their audiences.14 The recommendations will also be intended to help officials and others using easy-to-read texts to communicate with specific groups of people. The easiest level in the classification is meant to be the introduction to Finnish for immigrants and other second-language learners, as well as the core language for communication with people having cognitive disabilities or memory disorders. The new guidelines may also include lists of suggested or recommended words, provided for authors who are writing easy-to-read texts or modifying standard texts to easy-to-read language. NSM primes are now considered being a possible core of the vocabulary at the easiest level of the three-level classification system.

10

Short URL: http://bit.ly/1XUoRRV. Accessed on 12 May 2019. Klaara workshop in the Finnish Conference of Linguistics, Helsinki, May 8, 2018. 12 Natural Semantic Metalanguage Workshop, University of Helsinki, June 13, 2018. 13 See also Hoffrén (2018a). 14 Besides of this, in October 2018 the Finnish Centre of Easy to Read has introduced an assessing tool (Selkomittari), consisting a set of more than 100 parameters meant to be used for assessing texts applying for the easy-to-read symbol. 11

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The situation can be seen as an exciting and encouraging proving ground, but the need for research in areas such as reading comprehension is now more urgent than ever. Do the NSM primes (and molecules; see Sect. 4.3 below) really function in easy-to-read contexts as expected? A pilot study focusing on easy-to-read authors working with texts within minimal Finnish was carried out in early 2019 (Vanhatalo and Leskelä, forthcoming), but more studies are needed. Even if there are many open questions regarding the actual use of NSM primes in the easy-to-read language(s), the steps taken in the context of Finnish may provide an example for other easy-to-read language variants to follow.

11.4.3 The Concept of NSM-Based Minimal Languages: A Way to Expand the Easiest Level of Easy-to-Read Languages? The current paper has focused on the NSM primes, approximately 65 universal concepts that exist in all or most languages. According to NSM theory and an extensive range of exercises, these primes can be used to express almost everything. As explained in this paper, the primes seem to have considerable importance in easy-to-read languages. Over the past years, the theory of semantic molecules has been developed in the NSM context (Goddard 2016; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2018). Semantic molecules are building blocks made up of semantic primitives, used to build complex meanings from simpler units. The recent studies on semantic molecules are closely related to the so-called minimal languages, consisting of both semantic primitives and semantic molecules. From the viewpoint of easy-to-read languages, the concept of minimal languages provides an especially valuable perspective. Could the minimal languages, consisting of 200–300 words altogether, function as the basic core of easy-to-read languages? In the case of easy-to-read Finnish, for example, Minimal Finnish would possibly be the equivalent of the easiest level of easy-to-read Finnish, forming a fairly regulated and closed system of language variant with an explicit word list and limited grammar and enabling basic communication. When it comes to the easiest level of an easy-to-read language, a number of fundamental questions arise. Among the first is the size of the vocabulary: how many words could be included in a minimal language? Another question is related to the areas to be covered. Could there be or should there be separate optional clusters of words (molecules), dealing with areas such as ‘health’ or ‘money’ or ‘values’ or ‘food’, to be combined with the core minimal language? Questions related to new approaches should be studied besides of the old questions regarding the current (or past) practices on easy-to-read lexicon. We don’t know, for example, how well the easy-to-read texts actually follow the current instructions given on vocabulary.

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The primary goal of employing minimal languages as the core of easy-to-read languages would be to serve those needing a language simpler than the standard tongue. Even if many people would need easy-to-read Finnish because of their immigrant background, the majority of these people would need simple language usage in a monolingual environment. Along with the use of NSM-based minimal language, however, would come a universal or near-universal aspect. Most likely, this would increase mutual international co-operation between easy-to-read language practitioners and researchers, eventually enhancing the easy-to-read practices in all language environments.

11.5

Conclusion

The goal our paper was to contribute to the linguistic research of easy-to-read lexicon by exploring the prevalence of NSM primes in standard Finnish and easy-to-read Finnish. According to our pilot study, NSM primes in easy-to-read Finnish are about twice as prevalent as in standard Finnish texts. The primes seem to be doing something in the easy-to-read texts—what this something exactly is, needs more exploration. As there are also some methodological problems that need to be solved, it is still too early to make strong or far-reaching recommendations. Thinking over the lack of lexical semantic theory in the current easy-to-read practices, however, we dare to suggest easy-to-read authors to open-mindedly consider the usability of NSM primes in easy-to-read texts. Acknowledgements We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for insightful, constructive and critical comments on the first version of the manuscript.

Appendix: Selection of Semantic Primes Included in This Study (as in Vanhatalo and Tissari 2017) Meaning groups refer to the number or meaning groups of each word as presented in the Dictionary of Standard Finnish.

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

MINÄ SINÄ JOKU * IHMINEN * HÄN IHMISET JOKIN * ASIA RUUMIS * KEHO -LAINEN * -LÄINEN * LAJI OSA TÄMÄ * SE SAMA TOINEN * MUU

YKSI * ERÄS KAKSI JOKIN * JOKU * MUUTAMA KAIKKI PALJON * MONI VÄHÄN * HARVA HYVÄ PAHA ISO * SUURI PIENI AJATELLA TIETÄÄ

I * ME YOU SOMEONE PEOPLE SOMETHING * THING BODY KIND PART THIS THE SAME OTHER * ELSE

ONE TWO SOME ALL MUCH * MANY LITTLE * FEW GOOD BAD BIG SMALL THINK KNOW

Included in our data

Finnish

English

6* 1 2* 3 2* 4* 11 8 4* 5 6 6

3 2 2* 4 2* 2* 2* 6 6* 6 6*

SE ‘it’ excluded, see IT TOINEN/OTHER excluded

9 2

(continued)

FEW/HARVA excluded

2 2

5

JOKIN/SOME excluded

2*1

3

Suffixes excluded

HÄN ‘s/he’ excluded Including singular only

Other comments

6 1 2

2*2

Number of meaning groups

11 Prevalence of NSM Primes in Easy-to-Read … 229

– – – X X X

OLLA (OLEMASSA) OLLA (JOKU/JOKIN)

OLLA (JONKUN) ELÄÄ KUOLLA MILLOIN * JOLLOIN * SILLOIN * AIKA * KUN

THERE IS BE (SOMEONE/ SOMETHING) BE (SOMEONE’S) LIVE DIE WHEN * TIME

7 3 4*2*3*4*8

4 7 3 7 7 4 12 2 2 5 27

– X X X X – – X X X –

TUNTUA NÄHDÄ KUULLA SANOA SANAT TOSI * TOTTA TEHDÄ TAPAHTUA LIIKKUA KOSKEA OLLA (JOSSAIN)

FEEL SEE HEAR SAY WORDS TRUE DO HAPPEN MOVE TOUCH BE (SOMEWHERE)

5

Number of meaning groups

X –

TAHTOA EI TAHTOA

WANT DON’T WANT

Included in our data

Finnish

English

(continued)

TIME/AIKA excluded (continued)

Excluded

All primes including the ‘to be’ component excluded Excluded Excluded

Singular included Excluded Excluded

haluta (3) added Included in WANT/ TAHTOA Excluded

Other comments

230 U. Vanhatalo and C. Lindholm

– X

PÄÄLLÄ * YLÄPUOLELLA ALLA * ALAPUOLELLA

KAUKANA LÄHELLÄ PUOLI SISÄEI * OLLA ..MATTA EHKÄ VOIDA

ABOVE BELOW

FAR NEAR SIDE INSIDE NOT MAYBE CAN

X X – – – X X

X

6 * N/A 1 3

3 3 12

3 * N/A 3 * N/A

N/A * 3

included included included included included

TÄSSÄ * TÄÄLLÄ

not not not not not

Excluded Excluded Excluded

(continued)

JOSSA and MISSÄ included in JOKA and MIKÄ; suffixes not included TÄSSÄ excluded, included in TÄMÄ Excluded ALAPUOLELLA excluded

Compounds Compounds Compounds Compounds Compounds

HERE

2 2 * N/A * 1 4 * N/A 1 * N/A N/A N/A 3 N/A * N/ A * 10 * N/A

X X X X – – X X

NYT ENNEN * AIKAA SITTEN * AIKAISEMMIN JÄLKEEN * AJAN KULUTTUA KAUAN (AIKAA) * PITKÄN AJAN VÄHÄN AIKAA * LYHYEN AJAN JONKIN AIKAA HETKI MISSÄ * JOSSA * PAIKKA * -SSA

NOW BEFORE AFTER A LONG TIME A SHORT TIME FOR SOME TIME MOMENT WHERE * PLACE

Other comments

Finnish

English

Number of meaning groups

Prevalence of NSM Primes in Easy-to-Read …

(continued) Included in our data

11 231

X

KOSKA * VUOKSI * TAKIA

JOS HYVIN * ERITTÄIN ENEMMÄN * LISÄÄ ( * ENÄÄ) NÄIN * KUTEN * TÄLLÄ TAVALLA

BECAUSE

IF VERY MORE LIKE * AS * WAY

X X X X

Included in our data

Finnish

English

(continued)

9 4*2 2 * 1(2) 4 * 2 * N/A

2*2*1

Number of meaning groups

HYVIN/VERY excluded ENÄÄ excluded NÄIN and TÄLLÄ TAVALLA excluded

KOSKA/BECAUSE excluded; VUOKSI/ BECAUSE excluded

Other comments

232 U. Vanhatalo and C. Lindholm

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Prevalence of NSM Primes in Easy-to-Read …

233

References Arle, S. (2018, June 13). Semantic primes in easy-to-read novels. NSM Workshop, University of Helsinki. Bredel, U., & Maaß, C. (2016). Ratgeber Leichte Sprache. Berlin: Duden. Cutts, M. (1995). The plain English guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fajardo, I., Avila, V., Ferrer, A., Tavares, G., Gómez, M., & Hernández, A. (2014). Easy-to-read texts for students with intellectual disability: Linguistic factors affecting comprehension. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 27(3), 212–225. https://doi.org/10. 1111/jar.12065. Goddard, C. (2016). Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de Lexicologie, 109, 13–34. https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0013. Goddard, C. (2018, 13 June). Semantic molecules in language and thought. NSM Workshop, University of Helsinki. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2018). Minimal English and how it can add to Global English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 5–27). Cham: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-31962512-6_2. Hoffrén, T. (2018a). Minä haluan tehdä näin. Minä ajattelen: tämä on hyvä - Natural Semantic Metalanguage suomenkielisessä S2-kirjallisuudessa [I want to do this. I think: this is good – Natural Semantic Metalanguage in Finnish L2-literature]. MA Thesis, University of Tampere. Hoffrén, T. (2018b). Natural semantic metalanguage in Finnish L2-literature. NSM Workshop, University of Helsinki, 13 June 2018. Karreman, J., Van der Geest, T., & Buursink, E. (2007). Accessible website content guidelines for users with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 20 (6), 5105–5118. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-3148.2006.00353.x. Kendig, C. E. (2016). What is proof of concept research and how does it generate epistemic and ethical categories for future scientific practice? Science and Engineering Ethics, 22(3), 735– 753. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9654-0. Kimble, J. (2007). Lifting the fog of legalese. Essays on plain language. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. Kulkki-Nieminen, A. (2010). Selkoistettu uutinen: Lingvistinen analyysi selkotekstin erityispiirteistä [Plain language news: A linguistic analysis of the special features of simplified text]. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Leskelä, L. (2018). Vocabulary at the easiest level of easy-to-read Finnish. NSM Workshop, University of Helsinki, 13 June. Leskelä, L. (2019). Selkokieli. Saavutettavan kielen opas. [Easy-to-read language. A guide to an accessible language]. Helsinki: Kehitysvammaliitto, Opike. Leskelä, L., & Lindholm, C. (Eds.). (2012). Haavoittuva keskustelu: Keskustelunanalyyttisia tutkimuksia kielellisesti epäsymmetrisestä vuorovaikutuksesta [Vulnerable conversations. Conversation analysis studies of linguistically asymmetric interaction]. Helsinki: Opike. Leskelä, L., & Virtanen, H. (Eds.). (2006). Toisin sanoen: Selkokielen teoriaa ja käytäntöä. [In other words. Theory and pratice of easy-to-read language.] Helsinki: Kehitysvammaliitto, Opike. Lindholm, C., & Wray, A. (2011). Proverbs and formulaic sequences in the language of elderly people with dementia. Dementia, 10(4), 604–624. https://doi.org/10.1177/1471301211413338. Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics (Vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mazur, B. (2000). Revisiting plain language. Technical Communication, 47(2), 205–211. Miesenberger, K., & Petz, A. (2014). Easy to read on the web: State of the art and research directions. Procedia Computer Science, 27, 318–326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2014.02. 035. Nietzio, A., Naber, D., & Buhler, C. (2014). Towards techniques for easy-to-read web content. Procedia Computer Science, 27, 343–349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2014.02.038.

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Nummi, C. (2013). Sanastotason selkeys selkokielisessä tekstissä: Vertaileva tutkimus Selkosanomien ja Helsingin Sanomien uutisartikkeleista [Clarity of lexicon in easy-to-read texts: A comparative study of newspaper articles in Selkosanomat and Helsingin Sanomat]. Master’s thesis, University of Vaasa. Rajala, P. (Ed.). (1990). Selkokirjoittajan opas [A guide for easy-to-read writers]. Helsinki: Kirjastopalvelu. Sainio, A. (Ed.). (2000). Teksti, joka rakastaa lukijaansa [A text that loves its reader]. BTJ Kirjastopalvelu: Helsinki. Sainio, A., & Rajala, P. (2002). Ohjeita selkokirjoittajille [Guidelines for easy-to-read writers] In: H. Virtanen (Ed.), Selko-opas [Easy-to-read guide] (pp. 23–32). Helsinki: Kehitysvammaliitto. University of Helsinki. (2017). Corpus of Finnish magazines and newspapers from the 1990s and 2000s: Version 2 [text corpus]. Kielipankki. http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:lb-2017091901. Vanhatalo, U., & Leskelä, L. (forthcoming). Minimal languages meet easy-to-read. Hunt for the simplest possible vocabulary. Vanhatalo, U., & Tissari, H. (2017). Esittelyssä alkusanakieli [Presenting Natural Semantic Metalanguage]. Virittäjä, 121(2), 244–263. Virtanen, H. (2014). Selkokielen käsikirja [Handbook of easy-to-read language] (4th ed.). Helsinki: Kehitysvammaliitto, Opike. Wierzbicka, A. (1972). Semantic Primitives. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum. Wydick, R.C. (2016). Plain English for lawyers (5th ed.). Durham: Carolina Academic Press.

Ulla Vanhatalo is Docent in general linguistics at the University of Helsinki, Department of Languages. Her main research interests are in lexical semantic methodology, synonymy, Finnish language and vocabulary of easy-to-read languages. Vanhatalo has been applying NSM outside of linguistics and popularising lexical semantics. Vanhatalo’s mission is to find the simplest possible shared vocabulary, reduce language-related misunderstandings and help people to communicate with each other in everyday life. Camilla Lindholm is Professor of Scandinavian languages at the University of Helsinki. Her main research areas are interaction in institutional settings and asymmetric interaction involving participants with communication impairments. She uses the methodological approaches of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, and takes an interest in applying her research findings and creating a dialogue with society

Part II

Cliff Goddard: List of Publications

Cliff Goddard: List of Publications Compiled by Bert Peeters

1976 (Book review) The Speculative Grammar by C. S. Peirce. International Review of Slavic Linguistics, 1(2/3), 427–440. (Book review) The Tractatus Syncategorematum of Peter of Spain by J. Mullally. Reviewed with reference to modern linguistic theory. International Review of Slavic Linguistics, 1(2/3), 441–458. 1979 Particles and illocutionary semantics. Papers in Linguistics, 12(1/2), 185–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351817909370468. 1982 Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara picture vocabulary. Illustrations by J. Carter. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. 113 pp. Case systems and case marking in Australian languages: A new interpretation. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 2(2), 167–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07268608208599290.

B. Peeters (&) Australian National University, Canberra, Australia e-mail: [email protected] Universiteit Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 L. Sadow et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9979-5_12

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1984 Cohesion and switch-reference in Yankunytjatjara. Language in Central Australia, 1, 35–42. When to use that apostrophe? Language in Central Australia, 3, 11–13. 1985 A grammar of Yankunytjatjara. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. 207 pp. (Co-edited; second editor: A. Kalotas) Punu: Yankunytjatjara plant use. Traditional methods of preparing foods, medicines, utensils and weapons from native plants. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. 166 pp. Reprinted 1995 (Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press), 2002 (Alice Springs: Jukurrpa Books). 1986 The natural semantics of too. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(5), 635–643. https://doi. org/10.1016/0378-2166(86)90018-4. 1987 A basic Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatara to English dictionary. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. vi + 195 pp. See also 1992, 1996. 1988 Verb serialisation and the circumstantial construction in Yankunytjatjara. In P. Austin (Ed.), Complex sentence constructions in Australian languages (pp. 177–192). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.15.08god. (Book review) K. Liberman, Understanding interaction in Central Australia: An ethnomethodological study of Australian Aboriginal people. Language in Society, 17(1), 113–118. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500012641. (Book review) Z. Kövecses, Metaphors of anger, pride and love: A lexical approach to the structure of concepts. Lingua, 77(1), 90–98. https://doi.org/10. 1016/0024-3841(89)90041-7. 1989 Issues in Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Quaderni di semantica, 10(1), 51–64. The goals and limits of semantic representation. Quaderni di semantica, 10(2), 297–308. 1990 Emergent genres of reportage and advocacy in the Pitjantjatjara print media. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1990(2), 27–47. The lexical semantics of “good feelings” in Yankunytjatjara. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 10(2), 257–292. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268609008599444.

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1991 Testing the translatability of semantic primitives into an Australian Aboriginal Language. Anthropological Linguistics, 33(1): 31–56. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 30028013. Anger in the Western Desert: A case study in the cross-cultural semantics of emotion. Man, (N.S.) 26(2), 265–279. (Book review) C. Lutz, Unnatural emotions: Everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll and their challenge to Western theory. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 11(1), 120–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268609108599454. 1992 Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatara to English dictionary. 2nd ed. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. 260 pp. See also 1987, 1996. (Co-edited; first editor: N. Evans) Aboriginal linguistics. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 12(1) (special issue dedicated to the memory of Steve Johnson). Traditional Yankunytjatjara ways of speaking—A semantic perspective. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 12(1), 93–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268609208599472. 1993 A learner’s guide to Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. 48 pp. (Book review) J. Green (comp.), Alyawarr to English dictionary. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 13(2), 265–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07268609308599497. 1994 (Co-edited; second editor: A. Wierzbicka) Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. vii + 510 pp. https://doi.org/ 10.1075/slcs.25. Semantic theory and semantic universals. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 7–29). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.25.04god. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Introducing lexical primitives. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 31–54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10. 1075/slcs.25.05god. Lexical primitives in Yankunytjatjara. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 229–262). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.25.13god. The meaning of lah: Understanding “emphasis” in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Oceanic Linguistics, 33(1): 145–165. https://doi.org/10.2307/3623004.

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The Pitjantjatjara story-writing contest, 1988. In D. Hartman, & J. Henderson (Eds.), Aboriginal languages in education (pp. 316–323). Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. Semantics. In V.S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior: Vol. 4 (pp. 109–120). New York: Academic Press. 1995 Conceptual and cultural issues in emotion research. Culture & Psychology, 1(2), 289–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X9512009. Who are we? The natural semantics of pronouns. Language Sciences, 17(1), 99– 121. https://doi.org/10.1016/0388-0001(95)00011-J. ‘Cognitive mapping’ or ‘verbal explication’? Understanding love on the Malay Archipelago. Semiotica, 106(3/4): 323–354. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1995.106. 3-4.301. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Key words, culture and cognition. Philosophica, 55(1), 37–67. Componential analysis. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, & J. Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics: Manual (pp. 147–153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 2005, 2009.https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.m. (Book review) J.A. Lucy, Grammatical categories and cognition: A case study of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. American Ethnologist, 22(3), 617–621. https:// doi.org/10.1525/ae.1995.22.3.02a00160. (Book review) B. Levin, & S. Pinker (Eds.), Lexical and conceptual analysis. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 15(1), 95–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07268609508599518. 1996 Aboriginal bird names of the Yankunytjatjara people of Central Australia. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. v + 41 pp. Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatara to English dictionary. Revised 2nd ed. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. 306 pp. See also 1987, 1992. The “social emotions” of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Ethos, 24(3), 426–464. https:// doi.org/10.1525/eth.1996.24.3.02a00020. Can linguists help judges know what they mean? Linguistic semantics in the court-room. Forensic Linguistics, 3(2), 250–272. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.v3i2. 250. Cross-linguistic research on metaphor. Language & Communication, 16(2), 145– 151. https://doi.org/10.1016/0271-5309(96)00003-1. 1997 (Edited; consultant editors: E. Ellis, & L. Cook) Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara pocket dictionary. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. 269 pp. (Edited) Studies in the syntax of universal semantic primitives. Language Sciences, 19(3) (special issue).

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The universal syntax of semantic primitives. Language Sciences, 19(3), 197–207. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00059-9. (Co-authored; first author: M. Tong, second author: M. Yell) Semantic primitives of time and space in Hong Kong Cantonese. Language Sciences, 19(3), 245–261. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00063-0. (Co-authored; first author: D. Hill). Spatial terms, polysemy and possession in Longgu (Solomon Islands). Language Sciences, 19(3), 263–275. https://doi.org/10. 1016/S0388-0001(96)00064-2. Semantic primes and grammatical categories. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 17 (1), 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268609708599543. Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: ‘Surprise’ in Malay and English. Culture & Psychology, 3(2), 153–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X970030 0204. Cultural values and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Journal of Pragmatics, 27(2), 183–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(96)00032-X. The semantics of coming and going. Pragmatics, 7(2), 147–162. https://doi.org/10. 1075/prag.7.2.02god. (Co-authored; second author: N. Thieberger) Lexicographic research on Australian Aboriginal languages 1968–1993. In D. Tryon, & M. Walsh (Eds.), Boundary rider: Essays in honour of Geoffrey O’Grady (pp. 175–208). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Discourse and culture. In T.A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 231–257). London: Sage. (Book review) U. Eco, The search for the perfect language. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 17(2), 245–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268609708599553. 1998 Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xv + 411 pp. See also 2011. Universal semantic primes of space—A lost cause? LAUD Series A: General & theoretical papers, 434. Reprinted in 2007 with divergent page numbering. Bad arguments against semantic primitives. Theoretical Linguistics, 24(2/3), 129– 156. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.1998.24.2-3.129. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Language, culture and meaning: Cross-cultural semantics. In R. Dirven, & M. Verspoor (Eds.), Cognitive exploration of language and linguistics (pp. 137–159). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 2004. 1999 Building a universal semantic metalanguage: The semantic theory of Anna Wierzbicka. RASK, 9/10, 3–35. (Book review) D.L. Shaul, & N.L. Furbee, Language and culture. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3(4), 570–573.

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(Book review) C.L. Hardin, & L. Maffi (Eds.), Color categories in thought and language. Linguistic Typology, 3(2), 259–269. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.1999.3. 2.259. 2000 “Cultural scripts” and communicative style in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Anthropological Linguistics, 42(1), 81–106. Polysemy: A problem of definition. In Y. Ravin, & C. Leacock (Eds.), Polysemy: Theoretical and computational approaches (pp. 129–151). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001 Sabar, ikhlas, setia—patient, sincere, loyal? Contrastive semantics of some ‘virtues’ in Malay and English. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(5), 653–681. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00028-X. Lexico-semantic universals: A critical overview. Linguistic Typology, 5(1), 1–65. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.5.1.1. The polyfunctional Malay focus particle pun. Multilingua, 20(1), 27–59. https://doi. org/10.1515/multi.2001.002. Conceptual primes in early language development. In M. Pütz, & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Applied Cognitive Linguistics: Vol. 1. Theory and language acquisition (pp. 193–227). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/978311086 6247.193. Hati: A key word in the Malay vocabulary of emotion. In J. Harkins, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 167–195). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110880168.167. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Language and society: Cultural concerns. In Neil J. Smelser, & P.B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences: Vol. 12 (pp. 8315–8320). Oxford: Pergamon. Universal units in the lexicon. In M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher, & W. Raible (Eds.), Language typology and language universals. An international handbook: Vol. 2 (pp. 1190–1203). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10. 1515/9783110171549.2.11.1190. Cultural semantics and intercultural communication. In D. Killick, M. Perry, & A. Phipps (Eds.), Poetics and praxis of languages and intercultural communication: Vol. 2 (pp. 33–44). Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German Publications. (Book review) R. Jackendoff, P. Bloom, & K. Wynn (Eds.), Language, logic and concepts: Essays in memory of John Macnamara. Journal of Linguistics, 37(1), 205–210. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226701268765. 2002 (Co-edited; second editor: A. Wierzbicka) Meaning and universal grammar. Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xvi + 334 pp. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60.

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(Co-edited; second editor: A. Wierzbicka) Meaning and universal grammar. Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xv + 334 pp. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.61. The search for the shared semantic core of all languages. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar. Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1 (pp. 5–41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs. 60.07god. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantic primes and universal grammar. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar. Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1 (pp. 41–85). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60.08god. Semantic primes and universal grammar in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar. Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1 (pp. 87–172). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10. 1075/slcs.60.10god. The on-going development of the NSM research program. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar. Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 2 (pp. 301–321). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ slcs.61.11god. Directive speech acts in Malay (Bahasa Melayu): An ethnopragmatic perspective. Cahiers de praxématique, 38, 113–143. https://doi.org/10.4000/praxematique.582. On and on: Verbal explications for a polysemic network. Cognitive Linguistics, 13 (3), 277–294. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2002.019. Overcoming terminological ethnocentrism. IIAS Newsletter 27: 28. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantics and cognition. In L. Nadel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of cognitive science (pp. 1096–1102). New York: John Wiley. Ethnosyntax, ethnopragmatics, sign-functions, and culture. In N.J. Enfield (Ed.), Ethnosyntax: Explorations in grammar and culture (pp. 52–73). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266500.003.0003. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka). Lexical decomposition II: Conceptual axiology. In D.A. Cruse, F. Hundsnurscher, M. Job, & P.R. Lutzeier (Eds.), Lexicology. An international handbook on the nature and structure of words and vocabularies: Vol. 1 (pp. 256–268). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. (Co-authored; second author: J. Harkins) Posture, location, existence, and states of being in two Central Australian languages. In J. Newman (Ed.), The linguistics of sitting, standing and lying (pp. 213–238). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi. org/10.1075/tsl.51.10god. Explicating emotions across languages and cultures: A semantic approach. In S.R. Fussell (Ed.), The verbal communication of emotions: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 19–53). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 2003 (Co-edited; second editor: G. Palmer; third editor: P. Lee) Talking about “thinking”. Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2/3) (special issue).

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Thinking across languages and cultures: Six dimensions of variation. Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2/3), 109–140. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2003.005. Whorf meets Wierzbicka: Variation and universals in language and thinking. Language Sciences, 25(4), 393–432. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(03) 00002-0. Dynamic ter- in Malay (Bahasa Melayu): A study in grammatical polysemy. Studies in Language, 27(2), 287–322. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.27.2.04god. Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Latest perspectives. Theoretical Linguistics, 29 (3), 227–236. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.29.3.227. Semantic primes within and across languages. In D. Willems, B. Defrancq, T. Colleman, & D. Noël (Eds.), Contrastive analysis in language: Identifying linguistic units of comparison (pp. 13–43). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https:// doi.org/10.1057/9780230524637_2. Yes or no? The complex semantics of a simple question. In P. Collins, & M. Amberber (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2002/Goddard.pdf. 2004 (Co-edited; second editor: A. Wierzbicka) Cultural scripts. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2) (special issue). (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) 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. The atoms of meaning. IIAS Newsletter, 33, 17. The ethnopragmatics and semantics of ‘active metaphors’. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(7), 1211–1230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2003.10.011. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Language, culture and meaning: Cross-cultural semantics. In R. Dirven, & M. Verspoor (Eds.), Cognitive exploration of language and linguistics. Second revised edition (pp. 127–148). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 1998. “Cultural scripts”: A new medium for ethnopragmatic instruction. In M. Achard, & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Cognitive Linguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language teaching (pp. 143–163). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10. 1515/9783110199857.143. (Co-authored; second author: S. Karlsson) Re-thinking THINK: Contrastive semantics of Swedish and English. In C. Moskovsky (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/ als2003/goddard.pdf. See also 2008. Speech-acts, values and cultural scripts: A study in Malay ethnopragmatics. In R. Cribb (Ed.), Asia examined: Proceedings of the 15th biennial conference of the ASAA. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/124461/20110211-1446/coombs.anu.edu.au/ SpecialProj/ASAA/biennial-conference/2004/Goddard-C-ASAA2004.pdf.

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2005 The languages of East and Southeast Asia: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xvi + 315 pp. The quest for meaning… Communication, culture and cognition. Armidale: University of New England (inaugural public lecture). 20 pp. The lexical semantics of culture. Language Sciences, 27(1), 51–73. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.langsci.2004.05.001. Componential analysis. In J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics: 2003–2005 installment. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 1995, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.m.comm1. 2006 (Edited) Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. vii + 278 pp. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114. Ethnopragmatics: A new paradigm. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 1–30). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.1. “Lift your game Martina!”: Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics of Australian English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 65–97). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. See also 2007. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.65. Verbal explication and the place of NSM semantics in Cognitive Linguistics. In J. Luchjenbroers (Ed.), Cognitive Linguistics investigations: Across languages, fields and philosophical boundaries (pp. 189–218). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.15.14god. Natural Semantic Metalanguage. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2nd edition (pp. 544–551). Oxford: Elsevier. Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2nd edition (pp. 609–612). Oxford: Elsevier. Cultural scripts. In J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics: Vol. 10. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 2009. doi: https://doi.org/ 10.1075/hop.10.cul2. (Co-authored; second author: B. Peeters) The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach: An overview with reference to the most important Romance languages. In B. Peeters (Ed.), Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical evidence from the Romance languages (pp. 13–38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.81.07god. (Book review) M. Stubbs, Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 16(1), 143–144. 2007 (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) NSM analyses of the semantics of physical qualities: sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp in cross-linguistic

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perspective. Studies in Language, 31(4), 765–800. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.31.4. 03god. A “lexicographic portrait” of forgetting. In M. Amberber (Ed.), The language of memory in a crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 119–137). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.21.08god. A culture-neutral metalanguage for mental state concepts. In A.C. Schalley, & D. Khlentzos (Eds.), Mental states: Vol. 2. Language and cognitive structure (pp. 11– 35). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.93.04god. Semantic primes and conceptual ontology. In A.C. Schalley, & D. Zaefferer (Eds.), Ontolinguistics: How ontological status shapes the linguistic coding of concepts (pp. 145–173). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9783110197792.2.145. Semantic molecules. In I. Mushin, & M. Laughren (Eds.), Selected papers from the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society. https://espace.library.uq. edu.au/view/UQ:12798/. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantic primes and cultural scripts in language learning and intercultural communication. In F. Sharifian, & G.B. Palmer (Eds.), Applied Cultural Linguistics: Implications for second language learning and intercultural communication (pp. 105–124). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.7.08god. «Игpaй лyчшe, Mapтинa!» (иpoния «c кaмeнным лицoм» и этнoпpaгмaтикa aвcтpaлийcкoгo вapиaнтa aнглийcкoгo языкa). Жaнpы peчи [Zhanry rechi/ Speech genres], 5, 159–183. Russian translation of “Lift your game Martina!”: Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics of Australian English (2006). (Book review) R. Pustet, Copulas: Universals in the categorization of the lexicon. Language, 83(2), 446–449. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2007.0070. A response to N.J. Enfield’s review of Ethnopragmatics (Goddard, Ed., 2006). Intercultural Pragmatics, 4(4), 531–538. https://doi.org/10.1515/IP.2007.027. 2008 (Edited) Cross-linguistic semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xvi + 356 pp. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.102. Natural Semantic Metalanguage: The state of the art. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Crosslinguistic semantics (pp. 1–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10. 1075/slcs.102.05god. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) New semantic primes and new syntactic frames: “Specificational BE” and “abstract THIS/IT”. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 35–57). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi. org/10.1075/slcs.102.06god. Towards a systematic table of semantic elements. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Crosslinguistic semantics (pp. 59–81). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10. 1075/slcs.102.07god.

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(Co-authored; second author: S. Karlsson) Re-thinking THINK in contrastive perspective: Swedish vs. English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 225–240). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.102. 14god. Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: English heart vs. Malay hati. In F. Sharifian, R. Dirven, N. Yu, & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Culture, body, and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 75– 102). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199109.2.75. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Universal human concepts as a basis for contrastive linguistic semantics. In M.Á. Gómez González, J.L. Mackenzie, & E.M. González Álvarez (Eds.), Current trends in contrastive linguistics: Functional and cognitive perspectives (pp. 205–226). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi. org/10.1075/sfsl.60.13god. (Book review) H. Wiese, Numbers, language and the human mind. Language, 84 (3), 672–675. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0051. 2009 The ‘communication concept’ and the ‘language concept’ in everyday English. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 29(1), 11–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07268600802516350. The conceptual semantics of numbers and counting: An NSM analysis. Functions of Language, 16(2), 193–224. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.16.2.02god. Not taking yourself too seriously in Australian English: Semantic explications, cultural scripts, corpus evidence. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(1), 29–53. https://doi. org/10.1515/IPRG.2009.002. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Contrastive semantics of physical activity verbs: ‘Cutting’ and ‘chopping’ in English, Polish, and Japanese. Language Sciences, 31, 60–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2007.10.002. “Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight”: Proverbiality, semantics, and indexicality in English and Malay. In G. Senft, & E.B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual communication (pp. 103–125). New York: Berg. Componential analysis. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and language use (pp. 58–67). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 1995, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1075/hoph.2.06god. Cultural scripts. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and language use (pp. 68–80). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 2006. https://doi. org/10.1075/hoph.2.07god. “Cлeдyй пyтeм pиcoвoгo пoля”: ceмaнтикa пocлoвиц в aнглийcкoм и мaлaйcкoм языкax [“Follow the way of the rice plant”: The semantics of proverbs in English and Malay (Bahasa Melayu)]. Жaнpы peчи [Speech genres], 6, 184– 207. Russian translation of a paper presented at the Wenner-Gren Foundation Symposium on Ritual Communication, Portugal, 17-23 March 2007. Updated and

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published in English as chapter 8 of Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures (2014). Culture. In L. Cummings (Ed.), The Routledge pragmatics encyclopedia (pp. 121– 122). London: Routledge. 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. Cultural scripts: Applications to language teaching and intercultural communication. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association), 3, 105– 119. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) ‘Want’ is a lexical and conceptual universal: Reply to Khanina. Studies in Language, 34(1): 108–123. https://doi.org/ 10.1075/sl.34.1.04god. A piece of cheese, a grain of sand: The semantics of mass nouns and unitizers. In F. J. Pelletier (Ed.), Kinds, things and stuff: Mass terms and generics (pp. 132–165). New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/ 9780195382891.003.0008. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In B. Heine, & H. Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 459–484). Oxford: Oxford University Press. See also 2015. Universals and variation in the lexicon of mental state concepts. In B.C. Malt, & P. Wolff (Eds.), Words and the mind: How words capture human experience (pp. 72–92). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/ 9780195311129.003.0005. (Co-authored; second author: A.C. Schalley) Semantic analysis. In N. Indurkhya, & F.J. Damerau (Eds.), Handbook of natural language processing: Second edition (pp. 93–120). Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC. 2011 Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Revised and expanded second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xix + 490 pp. See also 1998. The lexical semantics of language (with special reference to words). Language Sciences, 33(1), 40–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.03.003. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantics and cognition. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews: Cognitive science, 2(2): 125–135. https://doi.org/10. 1002/wcs.101. Semantic primitives (primes). In P.C. Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of the language sciences (pp. 740–742). New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012 ‘Early interactions’ in Australian English, American English, and English English: Cultural differences and cultural scripts. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1038–1050. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.04.010.

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Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology. Linguistics, 50(3): 711–743. https://doi.org/10. 1515/ling-2012-0022. Cultural scripts and communication style differences in three Anglo Englishes (English English, American English and Australian English). In B. Kryk-Kastovsky (Ed.), Intercultural miscommunication past and present (pp. 101–120). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-653-01353-5. 2013 (Edited) Semantics and/in social cognition. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3) (special issue). The semantic roots and cultural grounding of ‘social cognition’. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3): 245–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2013.846454. On the river, on an island, on the street: The semantics of English on-constructions involving “laterality”. International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics [China], 3(2), 153–167. (Co-authored; first author: M.A. Barrios Rodríguez) ‘Degrad verbs’ in Spanish and English: Collocations, lexical functions and contrastive NSM semantic analysis. Functions of Language, 20(2), 219–249. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.20.2.04bar. Comparatives without scales: An NSM analysis of English comparative constructions. In J. Henderson, M.-È. Ritz, & C. Rodríguez Louro (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. https://sites.google.com/ site/als2012uwa/proceedings/Goddard_Comparatives.pdf. English valency patterns. In I. Hartmann, M. Haspelmath, & B. Taylor (Eds.), Valency patterns Leipzig. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://valpal.info/languages/english. 2014 (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. viii + 314 pp. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668434.001.0001. (Co-edited; second editor: Z. Ye) “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2) (special issue). See also 2016. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.1.2. (Co-authored; second author: Z. Ye) Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 131– 148. See also 2016. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.1.2.01god. Interjections and emotion (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”). Emotion Review, 6(1): 53–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073913491843. Author reply [to respondents of the previous entry]. Emotion Review, 6(1), 66–67. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka, third author: H. Fabréga Jr) Evolutionary semantics: Using NSM to model stages in human cognitive evolution. Language Sciences, 42, 60–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.11.003. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantic fieldwork and lexical universals. Studies in Language, 38(1): 80–126. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.38.1.03god.

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On “disgust”. In F. Baider, & G. Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions in context (pp. 73–97). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns. 241.06god. Have to, have got to, and must: NSM analyses of English modal verbs of ‘necessity’. In M. Taboada, & R. Trnavac (Eds.), Nonveridicality and evaluation: Theoretical, computational and corpus approaches (pp. 50–75). Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004258174_004. Jesus! vs. Christ! in Australian English: Semantics, secondary interjections and corpus analysis. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of corpus linguistics and pragmatics 2014: New empirical and theoretical paradigms (pp. 55–77). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06007-1_4. 2015 “Swear words” and “curse words” in Australian (and American) English: At the crossroads of pragmatics, semantics and sociolinguistics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 12(2), 189–218. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2015-0010. The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 13(2), 291–313. See also 2017. https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.13.2.02god. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) What does Jukurrpa (‘Dreamtime’, ‘the Dreaming’) mean? A semantic and conceptual journey of discovery. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2015(1): 43–65. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In B. Heine, & H. Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis, 2nd edition (pp. 817–841). Oxford: Oxford University Press. See also 2010. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/ 9780199677078.013.0018. Words as carriers of cultural meaning. In J.R. Taylor (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the word (pp. 380–398). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ oxfordhb/9780199641604.013.027. Verb classes and valency alternations (NSM approach), with special reference to English physical activity verbs. In A. Malchukov, & B. Comrie (Eds.), Valency classes in the world’s languages: Vol. 2 (pp. 1671–1701). Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110429343-020. (Co-authored; contributor: Z. Ye) Ethnopragmatics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 66–83). London: Routledge. 2016 (Co-edited; second editor: Z. Ye) “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. vi + 145 pp. See also 2014..https://doi.org/ 10.1075/bct.84. (Co-authored; second author: Z. Ye) Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. In C. Goddard, & Z. Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 1–18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 2014. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.84.01god. (Co-authored; second author: M. Taboada, third author: R. Trnavac) Semantic descriptions of 24 evaluational adjectives, for application in sentiment analysis

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(Technical report SFU-CMPT TR 2016-42-1). Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, School of Computing Science. Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de lexicologie, 109, 13–34. https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0013. (Co-authored; first author: A. Gladkova, second author: U. Vanhatalo) The semantics of interjections: An experimental study with natural semantic metalanguage. Applied Psycholinguistics 37(4): 841–865. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0142716415000260. (Co-authored; second author: Anna Wierzbicka) Explicating the English lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. Functions of Language, 23(2), 214–256. https://doi.org/10. 1075/fol.23.2.03god. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) ‘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. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka, third author: J. Wong) “Walking” and “running” in English and German: The conceptual semantics of verbs of human locomotion. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2): 303–336. https://doi.org/10. 1075/rcl.14.2.03god. (Co-authored; second author: R. Cramer) “Laid back” and “irreverent”: An ethnopragmatic analysis of two cultural themes in Australian English communication. In D. Carbaugh (Ed.), The handbook of communication in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 89–103). New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/ 9781315709321.ch8. Comment: Lakoff on metaphor—More heat than light. Emotion Review, 8(3), 277– 278. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073915595099. 2017 Ethnopragmatic perspectives on conversational humour, with special reference to Australian English. Language & Communication, 55, 55–68. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.langcom.2016.09.008. (Co-authored; first author: M. Taboada, second author: R. Trnavac) On being negative. Corpus Pragmatics, 1(1): 57–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-0170006-y. The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. In A. Celle, & L. Lansari (Eds.), Expressing and describing surprise (pp. 27–49). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 2015. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.92.02god. Natural Semantic Metalanguage and lexicography. In P. Hanks, & G.-M. de Schryver (Eds.), International handbook of modern lexis and lexicography. Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45369-4_14-1. Furniture, vegetables, weapons: Functional collective superordinates in the English lexicon. In Z. Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 246–281). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0010.

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2018 Ten lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring language, thought and culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill. xi + 356 pp. https://doi.org/ 10.1163/9789004357723. (Edited) Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. xiii + 292 pp. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3319-62512-6. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Minimal English and how it can add to Global English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 5–27). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_2. Minimal English: The science behind it. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 29–70). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_3. “Joking, kidding, teasing”: Slippery categories for cross-cultural comparison but key words for understanding Anglo conversational humor. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(4), 487–514. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2018-0017. A semantic menagerie: The conceptual semantics of ethnozoological categories. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 539-559. https://doi.org/10.22363/23129182-2018-22-3-539-559. (Co-authored; first author: A. Wierzbicka) Talking about our bodies and their parts in Warlpiri. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 38(1), 31–62. https://doi.org/10. 1080/07268602.2018.1393862. 2019 (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Direct and indirect speech revisited: Semantic universals and semantic diversity. In A. Capone, M. García-Carpintero, & A. Falzone (Eds.), Indirect reports and pragmatics in the world languages (pp. 173–199). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78771-8_9. (Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Reported speech as a pivotal human phenomenon: Response to Spronck and Nikitina. Linguistic Typology, 23(1), 167– 175. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2019-0006. In Press and Forthcoming (Co-edited; first editor: M. Mizumoto, second editor: J. Ganeri) Ethno-epistemology: Global perspectives on the study of knowledge. Overcoming the linguistic challenges for ethno-epistemology: NSM perspectives. In M. Mizumoto, J. Ganeri, & C. Goddard (Eds.), Ethno-epistemology: Global perspectives on the study of knowledge.

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‘Country’, ‘land’, ‘nation’: Key Anglo English words for talking and thinking about people in places. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 1(2). (Co-authored; second author: M. Taboada, third author: R. Trnavac) The semantics of evaluational adjectives: Perspectives from Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Appraisal. Functions of Language, 26(3). (Co-authored; second author: K. Mullan) Explicating verbs for “laughing with other people” in French and English (and why it matters for humor studies). Humor, 33(1). Vocabulary of emotions and its development in English, German and other languages. In G.L. Schiewer, J. Altarriba, & B.C. Ng (Eds.), Handbook of language and emotion. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Cognitive Linguistics. In J. Stanlaw (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of linguistic anthropology. New York: Wiley Blackwell.