Pain is a biological and subjective phenomenon. Clear understanding of its features is essential. Wierzbicka’s analysis accomplishes this. This comment discusses the relevance of her approach for the study of early evolution of medicine. The comment has six parts: (a) Wierzbicka’s theory and method; (b) its application to pain; (c) relevance of pain for the study of ethnomedicine, the cultural understanding of sickness and healing; (d) significance of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) for understanding the evolution of human thought (...) and behavior; (e) relevance of NSM for studying biological and cultural evolution of early medicine; and (f) summary and conclusion. (shrink)

When it comes to communication of pain, Anna Wierzbicka (2012) takes issue with the scientific definition of pain and turns to natural semantic metalanguage (NSM). However, “pain” is not one of the 64 semantic primes in NSM, and therefore Wierzbicka suggests words such as “body,” “bad,” and “don’t want.” This blurs the boundaries between pain and other aversive sensations and it also challenges certain clinical features of the pain experience.

As Wierzbicka suggests in her recent review, language is powerful in emotion. Wierzbicka's solution is to remove the linguistically relative aspects of emotion concepts, like icing from a cake, to reveal the universal meanings below. In the present commentary, I suggest that language is a more fundamental ingredient in emotion than Wierzbicka's solution assumes; language can be no more removed from emotion, than flour can be removed from an already baked cake. As an alternate solution, I present (...) a constructionist view of emotion, which not only recognizes the role of language in emotion, but also predicts and models its impact as language constitutes emotion experience. (shrink)

According to Wierzbicka, one of the core values of Polish culture is sincerity and emotional frankness, in this study we tested this assumption analyzing display rules operating between friends. 100 respondents completed modified version of the Display Rule Assessment Inventory. Results show that Polish participants endorse more expression with close friends than with acquaintances and strangers. The obtained differences between those groups were quite large and similar to a pattern typical for collectivistic cultures. On the other hand, we reported (...) high level of overall expressivity, typical of individualism. Such a high expressivity was found for all studied emotions, but pride, which is consistent with previous research on self-presentational modesty in Polish culture. (shrink)

From Leibniz to Wierzbicka: The history and philosophy of nsm -- Semantic primes and their grammar -- Explicating emotion concepts across languages and cultures -- Wonderful, terrific, fabulous: English evaluational adjectives -- Semantic molecules and semantic complexity -- Words as carriers of cultural meaning -- English verb semantics: verbs of doing and saying -- English verb alternations and constructions -- Applications of NSM: minimal English, cultural scripts and language -- Teaching retrospect: nsm compared with other approaches to semantic analysis.

In reply to Wierzbicka's advocacy of semantic primitives we argue that talk of the semantic primitives repeats the fallacies addressed in the target article at a higher level. In reply to Malcolm's plea for a Wittgensteinian grammar of colour words, we argue that he uses words like “we” and “us” too easily, falling into the trap of “silly relativism.” In reply to McManus's science of word counts, we reiterate the nineteenth-century criticism that this method is based on an illegitimate (...) application of seemingly rigorous statistical methods. (shrink)

I discuss the role of translatability in philosophical justification. I begin by discussing and defending Thomas Reid’s account of the role that facts about comparative linguistics can play in philosophical justification. Reid believes that common sense offers a reliable but defeasible form of justification. We cannot know by introspection, however, which of our judgments belong to common sense. Judgments of common sense are universal, and so he argues that the strongest evidence that a judgment is a part of common sense (...) is that it is to be found in all languages. For Reid, then, evidence that a certain distinction is to be found in all languages is evidence that the distinction is part of common sense rather than being a common local prejudice. From such a perspective, empirical work in comparative linguistics can play a defeasible justificatory role in philosophical arguments. I contrast Reid’s position with the more radical position of defenders of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, such as Anna Wierzbicka, who argues that only judgments that are translatable into all natural languages are justifiable. I show how such a position is rooted in an implausible view, although one common among cognitive scientists and linguistics, about the nature of concepts, which does not allow for novel concepts. (shrink)

In a series of cross-cultural investigations of word meaning, Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka examine key expressions from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. They focus on complex and culturally important words in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri and Malay."--Publishers website.

Distinctive aspects of a culture are often reflected in the meaning and usage of words in the language spoken by bearers of that culture. Keywords such as душа (soul) in Russian, hati (heart) in Indonesian and Malay, and gezellig (convivial/cosy/fun) in Dutch are held to be especially culturally revealing, and scholars have identified a number of such keywords using careful linguistic analyses (Peeters, 2020b; Wierzbicka, 1990). Because keywords are expected to have different statistical properties than related words in other (...) languages, we argue that a quantitative comparison of word usage across languages can help to identify cultural keywords. To support this claim, we describe a computational method that compares word frequencies across languages, and apply it to both linguistic corpora and word association data. The method identifies culturally specific words that range from “obvious” examples, such as Amsterdam in Dutch, to non‐obvious yet independently proposed examples, such as hati (heart) in Indonesian. We show in addition that linguistic corpora and word association data provide converging evidence about culturally specific words. Our results therefore show how computational analyses and behavioral experiments can supplement the methods previously used by linguists to identify culturally salient words across languages. (shrink)

The linguistic studies written by Anna Wierzbicka have been an occasion for the remarks on the relationship between linguistics and philosophy and for the question whether linguistic enquiries entitle us to put forward philosophical theses. In particular, whether and to what extent we indeed learn something philosophically significant about the world (of culture) and the nature man and his mind by examining language. Defining here position as interdisciplinary, Wierzbicka draws on the studies of the relationship between language and (...) culture, language and mind (language is a mirror of the mind - Leibniz). She claims that philosophy can be made a reliable science, provided it is based on linguistics, and the results of linguistic analyses can be found at the grounds of philosophical theses. Such philosophical references are A. Wierzbicka\'s attempts to combine semantics with generativism (Chomsky). Her intention to bring about a holistic description of language through defining elementary expressions (concepts, meanings), the so-called indefinibilia (\"primitives\") can also be called philosophical in character. They suffice to define all the remaining expressions, and basic universal syntactic constructs in the form of a grammar of elementary units, i.e. the ways of combining elementary units into greater wholes. We think that Wierzbicka\'s procedure, her quest after primary elements (of language) are reducing. A. Wierzbicka\'s main idea, with regard to the relationship between language and mind, may be understood as follows: this is a Janus-faced relationship - one face (empirically accessible) is language, the other one is the mind accessible through investigations on language. Both \"faces\" (spheres) are somehow functionally \"glued together\". In fact, however, Wierzbicka speaks little about the philosophically comprehended nature of man, whereas she speaks much about linguistic varieties and similarities among people. Generally speaking, while she declares herself to be a linguist, she has a philosophical temper and ambitions to generalise, i.e. she conducts linguistic studies with an intention to arrive at philosophical theses (by examining language she wants to obtain knowledge about the world and man). She issues statements which go beyond a purely linguistic knowledge and strictly linguistic data, hence they are not made legitimate by the linguistic material itself. A. Wierzbicka does not explain in more detail her way of understanding philosophy, assuming its intuitive comprehension. From some contexts it can be deduced that she takes it to mean a worldview. Should we call some parts of her reasoning a philosophy, it is then not a realistic philosophy but subject-oriented (first-person philosophising), such that touches upon the problems of the borderline between linguistics and philosophy, more concerned with the axis language-user than language-the world. Simultaneously, it is a non-demarcated and non-autonomic philosophising, exactly within the context of science, for it takes advantage of the results of empirical sciences to pose philosophical theses. The belief that philosophy can be pursued within a linguistic context coincides with the approach of analytical philosophy with its linguistic turn. Despite her declarations to make philosophy more scientific, Wierzbicka\'s arguments on behalf of the generalised (philosophical) theses are more their illustration and explication than a decisive legitimacy. Her belief that one can find some common, primitive linguistic units (simplicia) in the form of a complete set of independent concepts for all languages of the world seems Utopian. It is difficult to do it even in deductive systems, constructed by way of the axiomatic method and with a finite set of initial expressions. (shrink)

: This article presents a new approach to considering the categories and concepts necessary for praxeology based on the theoretical framework proposed by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard. Natural semantic metalanguage theory can be a comprehensive method for defining the conceptual foundations of human action and of rational discussion in general. Behind the very premise of ….

How can pain complaints be elicited and analyzed so as to increase the empathic bond between patient and clinician? I will argue that though Wierzbicka’s approach to this question is useful—an exploration of certain abstract dimensions of pain’s meaning—it fails to examine key aspects that are the most useful and crucial for cultural analysis and for building empathic bonds between the clinician and patient. Not just a grammar of pain is needed; rather a biological philology of pain.

The goal of the present paper is to examine Wierzbicka¿s (1992, 1998a, 1999) claims that the connection between emotions and the body is encoded and emphasized in Russian to a higher degree than it is in English, and that English favors the adjectival pattern in emotion discourse, while Russian prefers the verbal one. The study analyzes oral narratives elicited through the same visual stimuli from 40 monolingual Russians and 40 monolingual Americans. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses (...) of the narrative corpus support Wierzbicka¿s claims, suggesting that ¿the reading of the body¿ is not a culture- and language-free experience, but is shaped by cultural, social, and linguistic forces, as well as by individual differences. At the same time, neither quantitative nor qualitative differences have been identified with regard to gendered use of emotion discourse. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo expone los principios de la teoría de la Metalengua Semántica Natural (NSM por sus siglas en inglés), originalmente propuesta por Wierzbicka (1972. Semantic primitives. Frankfurt: Athenaeum) y luego desarrollada en una serie de trabajos por Anna Wierzbicka y Cliff Goddard, además de otros académicos que trabajan en el campo. El objetivo es presentar cómo esta teoría se ha aplicado al estudio de la semántica y de la pragmática para analizar distintos aspectos de los hábitos lingüísticos (...) de un determinado grupo cultural sin recurrir a modelos de universalidad, sino más bien trabajando desde dentro de la lengua estudiada para reconocer conceptos claves y estilos comunicativos que le son propios. El artículo presenta los conceptos de explicaciones semánticas y guiones culturales, que son explicaciones redactadas con la metodología de paráfrasis reductora a través de la herramienta de la NSM. La NSM es un minilengua compuesta por una serie de conceptos muy básicos y traducibles a todas las lenguas que sirven como punto de partida para explicar conceptos más complejos. Esta teoría ha sido complementada por Cliff Goddard con el concepto de lengua mínima, que también se presentará en el artículo. El artículo concluye con una exposición de las similitudes y diferencias que existen entre esta forma de hacer pragmática intercultural y la propuesta por otras teorías de la pragmática, incluida la teoría de la Pragmática Sociocultural de Diana Bravo y sus colegas. (shrink)

Human emotional experience is organized at multiple levels, only some of which are easily penetrable by or dependent on language. Affects connected with mammalian parental care seem involved in Anna Wierzbicka's example of the experience of Jesus in Gethsemane. However, such affects are not characterizable as she requires, using only NSM's short list of linguistic semantic universals. Following her methodology, even using an enriched NSM really exhaustive of linguistic semantic universals, may involve serious losses of cognitive opportunity. Specifically, it (...) forecloses any possibility of linking language with other cognitive resources to construct novel concepts, as may be needed to understand the deep biologically-based structure of emotion—which, after all, goes far deeper in us than language does. (shrink)

This paper examines the different ways in which the body is linguistically codified in the Chinese language of emotions. The three general modes of emotion description under examination are via (a) externally observable (involuntary) bodily changes, (b) sensation, and (c) figurative bodily images. While an attempt is made to introduce a typology of sub-categories within each mode of emotion description, the paper focuses on the meaning of different iconic descriptions through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). On one hand, the linguistic (...) evidence, from a Chinese perspective, attests to the emotional universals proposed by Wierzbicka (1999). On the other, it points to cultural diversity in bodily conceptualisation and interpretation in emotional experiences, which are crystallised in linguistic conventions of Chinese emotion talk, including certain syntactic constructions. This paper also demonstrates the importance of examining the language of emotions in emotion studies, and concludes that a full account of emotions must include the examination of the language of emotions. (shrink)

This paper examines the use and meaning of the body-part terms or quasi-body part terms associated with Japanese emotions. The terms analyzed are kokoro, mune, hara, ki, and mushi. In Japanese kokoro is regarded as the seat of emotions. Mune (roughly, ‘chest’) is the place where Japanese believe kokoro is located. Hara (roughly, ‘belly’) can be used to refer to the seat of ‘thinking’, for example in expression of anger-like feelings which entail a prior cognitive appraisal. The term ki (roughly, (...) ‘breath’) is also used for expressions dealing with emotions, temperament, and behaviour; among these, ki is mostly frequently used for referring to mental activity. Mushi — literally, a ‘worm’ which exists in the hara ‘belly’ — is also used for referring to specific emotion expressions. The tool for semantic analysis employed in this paper is the “Natural Semantic Metalanguage” method developed by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues. This metalanguage enables us to explicate concepts by means of simple words and grammar (easily translated across languages), and clarifies the similarities and dissimilarities between the components involved in semantically similar terms. The data used for analysis are from various sources; published literature both in Japanese and English, newspaper/magazine articles, film scripts, comic books, advertisements, dictionaries, and popular songs. (shrink)

This paper examines the use and meaning of the body-part terms or quasi-body part terms associated with Japanese emotions. The terms analyzed are kokoro, mune, hara, ki, and mushi. In Japanese kokoro is regarded as the seat of emotions. Mune (roughly, ¿chest¿) is the place where Japanese believe kokoro is located. Hara (roughly, ¿belly¿) can be used to refer to the seat of ¿thinking¿, for example in expression of anger-like feelings which entail a prior cognitive appraisal. The term ki (roughly, (...) ¿breath¿) is also used for expressions dealing with emotions, temperament, and behaviour; among these, ki is mostly frequently used for referring to mental activity. Mushi ¿ literally, a ¿worm¿ which exists in the hara ¿belly¿ ¿ is also used for referring to specific emotion expressions. The tool for semantic analysis employed in this paper is the ¿Natural Semantic Metalanguage¿ method developed by Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues. This metalanguage enables us to explicate concepts by means of simple words and grammar (easily translated across languages), and clarifies the similarities and dissimilarities between the components involved in semantically similar terms. The data used for analysis are from various sources; published literature both in Japanese and English, newspaper/magazine articles, film scripts, comic books, advertisements, dictionaries, and popular songs. (shrink)

My commentary poses two questions for Wierzbicka: one about her semantic theory, the other about her theory of emotions.

HAPPEN is a member of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) inventory of primes (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka (eds) 1994, 2002). Its English exponent ‘happen’ has been popularly expounded as fa1sheng1 in Mandarin Chinese (e.g. Chappell 2002). This article argues that fa1sheng1 is not the correct exponent of HAPPEN as it is marked for ‘adversity’ as well as what I call ‘serious mention’ or ‘noteworthiness’ of the event, i.e., that an event is sufficiently serious or noteworthy to fare a mention. (...) This article puts forward you3 lit. ‘have, exist, happen’ and zen3(me)yang4/zhe4(me)yang4 lit. ‘like how/like this’ instead, as allolexic exponents of HAPPEN in Mandarin Chinese. Though highly polysemous each in its own way, the HAPPEN sense of you3 and zen3(me)yang4/zhe4(me)yang4 can, respectively, be shown to be semantically irreducible and pragmatically neutral. This article delineates some of the syntactic and contextual distribution attesting to the viability of you3 and zen3(me)yang4/zhe4(me)yang4 as expounding HAPPEN. (shrink)

This article explores some fundamental issues of definition-based lexical semantic research through a critique of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory of semantic and grammatical description (Wierzbicka 1996, Semantics. Primes and Universals, Oxford University Press, Oxford). NSM is criticized for attaching excessive importance to explanatory definition, for its adoption of the reductive requirement that a definiens be simpler than a definiendum, and for its use of ‘canonical contexts’ to disambiguate meaning. The principle of substitutability, according to which a definition (...) of a term is accepted if it can be substituted for the term itself, is also critically examined, and the theory’s use of syntactic phenomena as evidence for polysemy is shown to be inconsistent. Finally, suggestions that NSM may be a valid analytical method for only a subpart of the lexicon are rejected. (shrink)

In an article entitled "Is BAD a semantic primitive?", John Myhill suggested that the concept 'bad' should be removed from the list of semantic primitives put forward by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard. Myhill argued that 'bad' is semantically decomposable, that there is no word in Biblical Hebrew that corresponds to the English word bad and, thus, no linguistic form that represents the primitive BAD in this language, and that 'bad' is dispensable in the semantic analysis and can be (...) replaced with other components without any loss or change of meaning. Discussing and illustrating some fundamental questions in the search for universal semantic primitives, the present author reconsiders these findings and finds a different answer to John Myhill's question. (shrink)

Este estudio emprende, desde el marco del Metalenguaje Semántico Natural desarrollado por Wierzbicka y algunos colegas, un detallado análisis semántico contrastivo y comparativo de dos conceptos de emoción: bei y ai , que son considerados como emociones básicas en los textos filosóficos chinos tradicionales. En él se demuestra que: a) de ninguna manera son intercambiables, ni equivalentes a la idea occidental de tristeza, b) son artefactos de la cultura china, conformados por las experiencias morales y sociales del pueblo chino (...) y su visión de la vida y del universo. En esencia, bei comporta una visión fatalista y ai es una emoción moral. Esto lleva a la autora a poner en duda el postulado de universalidad basado en la visión arraigada en la lengua inglesa, y llama a los investigadores a prestar atención al marco analítico empleado en la búsqueda de aspectos universales de las emociones humanas. (shrink)