Download or read book Cultural Semantics written by Martin Jay and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading intellectual historian explores some of the reigning assumptions and imperatives of our age. By looking closely at what "words do and perform", Martin Jay makes us aware of the extent to which the language we use mediates and shapes our experience. Elegantly written and richly insightful, this is a work of cultural criticism and intellectual analysis of the first order.
Download or read book Cultural Semantics and Social Cognition written by Carsten Levisen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting original, detailed studies of keywords of Danish, this book breaks new ground for the study of language and cultural values. Based on evidence from the semantic categories of everyday language, such as the Danish concept of hygge (roughly meaning, ‘pleasant togetherness’), the book provides an integrative socio-cognitive framework for studying and understanding language-particular universes. It is argued that the worlds we live in are not linguistically and conceptually neutral, but rather that speakers who live by Danish concepts are likely to pay attention to their world in ways suggested by central Danish keywords and lexical grids. By means of a sophisticated semantic methodology, the author accounts for the meanings of even highly culture-specific and untranslatable linguistic concepts. The book offers new tools for comparative research into the diversity of semantic and cultural systems in contemporary Europe. Additionally, it contributes to the emerging discipline of cultural semantics, and to the ongoing debates of linguistic diversity, metalanguage, and the use of linguistic evidence in studies of culture and social cognition.
Download or read book Cross Cultural Pragmatics written by Anna Wierzbicka and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2009-09-04 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, which can be seen as both a research monograph and a text book, challenges the approaches to human interaction based on supposedly universal "maxims of conversation" and "principles of politeness", which fly in the face of reality as experienced by millions of people - refugees, immigrants, crosscultural families, and so on. By contrast to such approaches, which can be of no use in crosscultural communication and education, this book is both theoretical and practical: it shows that in different societies, norms of human interaction are different and reflect different cultural attitudes and values; and it offers a framework within which different cultural norms and different ways of speaking can be effectively explored, explained, and taught. The book discusses data from a wide range of languages, including English, Italian, Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Walmatjari (an Australian Aboriginal language), and it shows that the meanings expressed in human interaction and the different "cultural scripts" prevailing in different speech communities can be described and compared in a way that is clear, simple, rigorous, and free of ethnocentric bias by using a "natural semantic metalanguage", based on empirically established universal human concepts. As the book shows, this metalanguage can be used as a basis for teaching successful cross-cultural communication and education, including the teaching of languages in a cultural context.
Download or read book Spaces and Meanings written by Olga Lavrenova and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-25 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the problem of relationships between culture and space. Highlighting the use of semiotics of culture as a basic concept of research, it describes the power of the cultural landscape in the context of culture philosophical research. Opening with a discussion of the existence of culture in space, it establishes basic concepts such as noosphere and pneumatosphere. The author acknowledges the early contributions of thinkers like Vladimir Vernadsky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who first observed that human activity has become a geological force. Introducing time and space to the discussion, the author then describes the nature of mythological time, eternity versus timelessness, and the semantics of sacred landscapes, space and ritual. These concepts are further developed in discussions of the metaphorical nature of cultural landscape, and the city as metaphor. The book explores semiotics in the cultural landscape, examining the genesis of concepts from geographical images to signs and the axiological dimension of geographical images. In her approach to the idea of cultural landscape as text, she provides detailed examples, including the Russian landscape as agent provocateur of the text, and the culture philosophical aspects and semantics of travel. It establishes the cultural landscape as a phenomenon of culture that is fixed in geographical space with the help of semiotic mechanisms—a specific area of culture of life possessing functional and ontological self-sufficiency. This book appeals readers and researchers interested in the philosophy of culture, semiotics of space, and the philosophical dimensions of culture and geography.
Download or read book Cultural Semantics in the Lexicon of Modern Chinese written by Ming ZHAO and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-05-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is cultural semantics? How to define and analyze it in the lexicon of modern Chinese? This book outlines the development and research results of cultural semantic theory, and then proposes the distinction between two types of cultural semantics at the synchronic level: conceptual gap items and items with a cultural meaning. It provides criteria for identifying these items by using detailed examples from theory and application. Finally, the two types of cultural semantics are applied to the case of modern Chinese. The criteria proposed for determining the Chinese cultural semantics apply not only to this, but also to other languages. Therefore, this book offers an operational basis for further studies of cultural semantics in academia.
Download or read book Studies in Ethnopragmatics Cultural Semantics and Intercultural Communication written by Bert Peeters and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-23 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the second in a three-volume set that celebrates the career and achievements of Cliff Goddard, a pioneer of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach in linguistics. It focuses on meaning and culture, with sections on "Words as Carriers of Cultural Meaning" and "Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context". Often considered the most fully developed, comprehensive and practical approach to cross-linguistic and cross-cultural semantics, Natural Semantic Metalanguage is based on evidence that there is a small core of basic, universal meanings (semantic primes) that can be expressed in all languages. It has been used for linguistic and cultural analysis in such diverse fields as semantics, cross-cultural communication, language teaching, humour studies and applied linguistics, and has reached far beyond the boundaries of linguistics into ethnopsychology, anthropology, history, political science, the medical humanities and ethics.
Download or read book Studies in Ethnopragmatics Cultural Semantics and Intercultural Communication written by Lauren Sadow and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-23 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the third in a three-volume set that celebrates the career and achievements of Cliff Goddard, a pioneer of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach in linguistics. This third volume explores the potential of Minimal English, a recent offshoot of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, with special reference to its use in Language Teaching and Intercultural Communication. Often considered the most fully developed, comprehensive and practical approach to cross-linguistic and cross-cultural semantics, Natural Semantic Metalanguage is based on evidence that there is a small core of basic, universal meanings (semantic primes) that can be expressed in all languages. It has been used for linguistic and cultural analysis in such diverse fields as semantics, cross-cultural communication, language teaching, humour studies and applied linguistics, and has reached far beyond the boundaries of linguistics into ethnopsychology, anthropology, history, political science, the medical humanities and ethics.
Download or read book The Cultural Semantics of Address Practices written by Gian Marco Farese and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-08-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a contrastive analysis of various forms of address used in English and Italian from the perspective of cultural semantics, the branch of linguistics which investigates the relationship between meaning and culture in discourse. The objects of the analysis are the interactional meanings expressed by different forms of address in these two languages, which are compared adopting the methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. The forms analyzed include greetings, titles and opening and closing salutations used in letters and e-mails in the two languages. Noticeably, the book presents the first complete categorization of Italian titles used as forms of address ever made on the basis of precise semantic criteria. The analysis also investigates the different cultural values and assumptions underlying address practices in English and Italian, and emphasizes the risks of miscommunication caused by different address practices in intercultural interactions. Every chapter presents numerous examples taken from language corpora, contemporary English and Italian literature and personal e-mails and letters. The book encourages a new, innovative approach to the analysis of forms of address: it proposes a new analytical method for the analysis of forms of address which can be applied to the study of other languages systematically. In addition, the book emphasizes the role of culture in address practices and takes meaning as the basis for understanding the differences in use across languages and the difficulties in translating forms of address of different languages. Combining semantics, ethnopragmatics, intercultural communication and translation theory, this book is aimed at a very broad readership which includes not only scholars in linguistics, second-language learners and students of cross-cultural communication, but virtually anyone interested in Italian and English linguistics as well as in cultural semantics. The approach taken is interdisciplinary and brings together various fields in the social sciences: linguistics, anthropology, cross-cultural studies and sociology.
Download or read book Studies in Ethnopragmatics Cultural Semantics and Intercultural Communication written by Kerry Mullan and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first in a three-volume set that celebrates the career and achievements of Cliff Goddard, a pioneer of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach in linguistics. In addition, it explores ethnopragmatics and conversational humour, with a further focus on semantic analysis more broadly. Often considered the most fully developed, comprehensive and practical approach to cross-linguistic and cross-cultural semantics, Natural Semantic Metalanguage is based on evidence that there is a small core of basic, universal meanings (semantic primes) that can be expressed in all languages. It has been used for linguistic and cultural analysis in such diverse fields as semantics, cross-cultural communication, language teaching, humour studies and applied linguistics, and has reached far beyond the boundaries of linguistics into ethnopsychology, anthropology, history, political science, the medical humanities and ethics.
Download or read book Words and Meanings written by Cliff Goddard and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents cross-linguistic and cross-cultural investigations of word meaning from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. The words they consider are complex, culturally important, and basic, in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri and Malay.
Download or read book Dharma written by Patrick Olivelle and published by Motilal Banarsidass. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first scholarly book devoted to the study of the term dharma with in the broad scope of Indian cultural and religious history. Most generalizations about Indian culture and religion upon close scrutiny turn out to be inaccurate. An exception undoubtedly is the term dharma. This term and the notions underlying it clearly constitute the most central feature of Indian civilization down the centuries, irrespective of linguistic, sectarian, or regional differences. The nineteen papers included in this collection deal with many significant historical manifestations of the term dharma. These studies by some of the leading scholars in the respective fields will both present a more nuanced picture of the semantic history of dharma by putting contours onto the flat landscape we have inherited and spur further studies of this concept so central for understanding the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent.
Download or read book Political Correctness written by Geoffrey Hughes and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Correctness “Geoffrey Hughes has brought together with great panache the very many manifestations of political correctness, both absurd and vicious, and shown how they express a single collective mind-set. His book establishes beyond doubt that there is such a phenomenon, that it has become dominant in our culture, and that it represents a growing tendency to censor public debate and to prevent people from questioning orthodoxies which we all know to be false.” Roger Scruton, American Enterprise Institute “What a joy this book is! Hughes’ study traces, with unflagging zest, the modern history of PC. Sumptuous in data, in judgment precise, this is the latest and fullest of Hughes’ series on the social history of language.” Walter Nash, Professor Emeritus, University of Nottingham Political Correctness is now an everyday phrase and part of the modern mindset. Everyone thinks they know what it means, but its own meaning constantly shifts. Its surprising origins have led to it becoming integrated into contemporary culture in ways that are both idealistic and ridiculous. Originally grounded in respect for difference and sensitivity to suffering, it has often become a distraction and even a silencer of genuine issues, provoking satire and parody. In this carefully researched, thought-provoking book, Geoffrey Hughes examines the trajectory of political correctness and its impact on public life. Exploring the origins, progress, content, and style of PC, Hughes’ journey leads us through authors as diverse as Chaucer, Shakespeare and Swift; Philip Larkin, David Mamet, and J.M. Coetzee; from nursery rhymes to Spike Lee films. Focusing on the historical, semantic, and cultural aspects of political correctness, this outstanding and unique work will intrigue anyone interested in this ongoing debate.
Download or read book Italian Discourse written by Gian Marco Farese and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-21 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage methodology, Gian Marco Farese presents a comprehensive analysis of the most important Italian cultural keywords and cultural scripts that foreign learners and cultural outsiders need to know to become linguistically and culturally proficient in Italian. Farese focuses on the words and speech practices that are used most frequently in Italian discourse and that are uniquely Italian: both untranslatable into other languages and reflective of salient aspects of Italian culture and society. Italian Discourse: A Cultural Semantic Analysis sheds light on ways in which the Italian language is related to Italians’ character, values, and way of thinking, and it does so in contrastive perspective with English. Each chapter focuses on a cultural keyword, tracing the term through novels, plays, poems, and songs. Italian Discourse will be an important resource for anyone interested in Italian studies and Italian linguistics, as well as in semantics, cultural studies, linguistic anthropology, cognitive linguistics, intercultural communication, and translation.
Download or read book Semantics and Cultural Change in the British Enlightenment New Words and Old written by Carey McIntosh and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Obsolete old words from seventeenth-century English villages reflect the realities of working-class life, exhausting labor, dirt, bizarre foods, magic, horses, outrageous sexism, feudal duties. New words, first appearing in print 1650–1800, reflect a middle-class culture very different from an earlier courtly culture, interested in money, coffee-houses, and self-fulfillment. The book contains chapters on pre-industrial and middle-class culture, the scientific revolution, and semantic change. They give strong evidence that new words and the new senses of old words played a key role in the British Enlightenment, its links with quantification and natural science, its tendencies towards reorganization and democracy, its redefinitions and revitalizations of women’s roles, social stereotypes, the public sphere, and the very concepts of individualism, sociability, and civilization itself.
Download or read book Semantics Culture and Cognition written by Anna Wierzbicka and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study ranges across a wide variety of languages and cultures in an attempt to identify concepts which are truly universal and to explore whether certain words are culture-specific.
Download or read book From Etymology to Pragmatics written by Eve Sweetser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-07-26 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a distinct approach to the analysis of the multiple meanings of English modals, conjunctions, conditionals and perception verbs. Although such ambiguities cannot easily be accounted for by feature-analyses of word meaning, Eve Sweetser's argument shows that they can be analysed both readily and systematically. Meaning relationships in general cannot be understood independently of human cognitive structure, including the metaphorical and cultural aspects of that structure. Sweetser shows that both lexical polysemy and pragmatic ambiguity are shaped by our metaphorical folk understanding of epistemic processes and of speech interaction. Similar regularities can be shown to structure the contrast between root, epistemic and 'speech-act' uses of modal verbs, multiple uses of conjunctions and conditionals, and certain processes of historical change observed in Indo-European languages. Since polysemy is typically the intermediate step in semantic change, the same regularities observable in polysemy can be extended to an analysis of semantic change. This book will attract students and researchers in linguistics, philosophy, the cognitive sciences, and all those interested in metaphor.
Download or read book Cultural Keywords in Discourse written by Carsten Levisen and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-10-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural keywords are words around which whole discourses are organised. They are culturally revealing, difficult to translate and semantically diverse. They capture how speakers have paid attention to the worlds they live in and embody socially recognised ways of thinking and feeling. The book contributes to a global turn in cultural keyword studies by exploring keywords from discourse communities in Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, Melanesia, Mexico and Scandinavia. Providing new case studies, the volume showcases the diversity of ways in which cultural logics form and shape discourse. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach is used as a unifying framework for the studies. This approach offers an attractive methodology for doing explorative discourse analysis on emic and culturally-sensitive grounds. Cultural Keywords in Discourse will be of interest to researchers and students of semantics, pragmatics, cultural discourse studies, linguistic ethnography and intercultural communication.
