Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: The Semantics of Human Interaction / Edition 2

by Anna Wierzbicka

Overview

This 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 crossing language boundaries (refugees, immigrants, etc.) and which cannot help in the practical tasks of cross-cultural communication and education. In contrast to such approaches, 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 and it shows that the meanings expressed in human interaction and the different 'cultural scripts' prevailing in different speech communities can be clearly and intelligibly described and compared 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, including the teaching of languages in a cultural context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110177695
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	03/19/2003
Series:	Mouton Textbook
Edition description:	2nd ed. [with an new preface]
Pages:	539
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.04(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Anna Wierzbicka is Professor at Australian National University, Canberra.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: semantics and pragmatics

1. Language as a tool of human interaction
2. Different cultures and different modes of interaction
3. Pragmatics - the study of human interaction
4. The natural semantic metalanguage
5. The need for a universal perspective on meaning
6. The uniqueness of every linguistic system
7. The problem of polysemy
8. Semantic equivalence vs. pragmatic equivalence
9. Universal grammatical patterns
10. Semantics vs. pragmatics: different approaches
11. Description of contents

Chapter 2 Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts

1. Preliminary examples and discussion
2. Interpretative hypothesis
3. Case studies
4. Cultural values reflected in speech acts
5. Theoretical implications
6. Practical implications

Chapter 3 Cross-cultural pragmatics and different cultural values

1. 'Self-Assertion'
2. 'Directness'
3. Further illustrations: same labels, different values
4. Different attitudes to emotions
5. Conclusion

Chapter 4 Describing conversational routines

1. Conversational analysis: linguistic or non-linguistic pragmatics?
2. 'Compliment response' routines
3. 'Compliment responses' in different cultures

Chapter 5 Speech acts and speech genres across languages and cultures

1. A framework for analysing a culture's 'forms of talk'
2. Some Australian speech-act verbs
3. Some examples of complex speech genres
4. Conclusion

Chapter 6 The semantics of illocutionary forces

1. Are illocutionary forces indeterminate?
2. More whimperative constructions
3. Additional remarks on the explication of illocutionary forces
4. Selected conversational strategies
5. Tag questions
6. Personal abuse or praise: You X!
7. Illocutionary forces of grammatical and other categories
8. Comparing illocutionary forces across languages
9. Conclusion

Chapter 7 Italian reduplications: its meaning and its cultural significance

1. Italian reduplication: preliminary discussion
2. Discourse and illocutionary grammar
3. The illocutionary force of clausal repetition
4. The illocutionary force of Italian reduplication
5. Clausal repetition as a means of 'intensification'
6. The absolute superlative in Italian and in English
7. Illocutionary grammar and cultural style
8. Conclusion

Chapter 8 Interjections across cultures

1. Preliminary discussion
2. Volitive interjections
3. Emotive interjections
4. Cognitive interjections
5. Conclusion

Chapter 9 Particles and illocutionary meanings

1. English quantitative particles
2. English temporal particles
3. Polish temporal particles
4. Polish quantitative particles
5. Conclusion

Chapter 10 Boys will be boys: even 'truisms' are culture-specific

1. The meaning of tautologies
2. English nominal tautologies: semantic representations
3. Some comparisons from Chinese and Japanese
4. Verbal tautologies
5. Is there a semantic invariant?
6. The deceptive form of English tautological constructions
7. The culture-specific content of tautological patterns
8. Conclusion

Chapter 11 Conclusion: semantics as a key to cross-cultural pragmatics

Editorial Reviews

"The book can be regarded as a recapitulation of results obtained in all former scholarly projects carried by its author. [It] is one if the best manuals of widely understood pragmatics and ethnolinguistics of human speech, the more so as the traditoinal grammars and handbooks of linguistics usually leave the ethnography of speech in the background of linguistics analyses."
Tomasz Wicherkiewicz in: Linguistics and Oriental Studies from Poznan

From the Publisher