This book develops the dual themes that languages can differ widely in their vocabularies, and are also sensitive indices to the cultures to which they belong. Wierzbicka seeks to demonstrate that every language has "key concepts," expressed in "key words," which reflect the core values of a given culture. She shows that cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key concepts, and that the analytical framework necessary for this purpose is provided by the "natural semantic metalanguage," based on lexical universals, that the author and colleagues have developed on the basis of wide-ranging cross-linguistic investigations. Appealing to anthropologists, psychologists, and philosophers as well as linguists, this book demonstrates that cultural patterns can be studied in a verifiable, rigorous, and non-speculative way, on the basis of empirical evidence and in a coherent theoretical framework.
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Editorial Reviews
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"There is a lot to be gleaned from just about anything produced by Wierzbicka-the "key words book"...is no exception...The observations are plentiful and fascinating...[Wierzbicka] has done more than anyone else to really "understand cultures through their key words."--Word
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--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating stuff.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Paperback)
Contrary to the previous reviewer's opinion, I found this book fascinating. I don't have a Ph.D. in linguistics either.Her claim is *not* that one cannot understand the key words of a culture without being immersed in the culture, only that one cannot understnad the key words of a culture by means of simplistic translations or definitions. She attempts to provide careful and precise definitions, given in what she calls the "Natural Semantic Metalanguage" -- an extremely restricted vocabulary consisting of words that, as far as she has been able to tell via research, have equivalents in every natural language. I don't buy all of her "Natural Semantic Metalanguage" theories (for which see her other book _Semantics: Primes and Universals_) but it sure is a useful tool for the job she's doing here.
5 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Wierzbicka's academic fluff chokes meanings.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Paperback)
I read this book for an athropology class at a western private university. I have to say that while Wierzbicka's domination of different languages is impressive, her "fluffy" explanations of the key words in the book tend to bore the reader, thus leaving him/her more confused about the meanings of the key words than before. Furthermore, her findings tend to undermine her own premise that a culture's key words cannot be understood except by understanding the culture itself. No one person can claim to explain--as she does--what certain words mean within their cultural realm without having been immmersed totally in that culture (usually born and raised). Thus, one is lead to believe that even she doesn't understand the "key words" totally, and her credibility is therefore undermined. I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone with less than a Ph.D. in Linguistics.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
In his introduction to Vocabularies of Public Life (1992) the well-known sociologist of culture Robert Wuthnow observes: "Perhaps more than at any other time in the present century, cultural analysis lies at the center of human sciences." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
good things for this person, good things about this person, valency options, expression close friend, word svoboda, word rodina, lexical universals, natural semantic metalanguage, drug druga, common collocations, universal human concepts, following explication, word mate, semantic invariant, speech act verbs, dictionary glosses, conceptual universals, concept encoded, fixed contours, semantic formula, semantic primitives, older usage Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Australian English, World War, German Fatherland, United States, Australian Aboriginal, Ruth Benedict, American English, Benjamin Franklin, Russel Ward, Soviet Union, Colin Bowles, Donald Horne, Norman Davies, Sydney Morning Herald, Adam Mickiewicz, Bob Hawke, Dictionary of the Russian, Eva Hoffman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Barnfield New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
In his introduction to Vocabularies of Public Life (1992) the well-known sociologist of culture Robert Wuthnow observes: "Perhaps more than at any other time in the present century, cultural analysis lies at the center of human sciences." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
good things for this person, good things about this person, valency options, expression close friend, word svoboda, word rodina, lexical universals, natural semantic metalanguage, drug druga, common collocations, universal human concepts, following explication, word mate, semantic invariant, speech act verbs, dictionary glosses, conceptual universals, concept encoded, fixed contours, semantic formula, semantic primitives, older usage Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Australian English, World War, German Fatherland, United States, Australian Aboriginal, Ruth Benedict, American English, Benjamin Franklin, Russel Ward, Soviet Union, Colin Bowles, Donald Horne, Norman Davies, Sydney Morning Herald, Adam Mickiewicz, Bob Hawke, Dictionary of the Russian, Eva Hoffman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Barnfield New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 41
books:
See all 41 books this book cites
3
books
cite this book:
- Eugene Onegin (Everyman's Library Pocket Poet) by Aleksandr Pushkin on 5 pages
- Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, Vol. 2 by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin on 5 pages
- Eugene Onegin (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) by A.S. Pushkin on 5 pages
- Eugene Onegin (Penguin Classics) by Alexander Pushkin on 5 pages
- Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics) by Alexander Pushkin on 5 pages
See all 41 books this book cites
- On Reconstructing Grammar: Comparative Cariban Morphosyntax (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics) by Spike Gildea in Front Matter
- Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics) by Bambi B. Schieffelin in Front Matter
- Reflections on Anthropology: A Four-Field Reader by Katherine Dettwyler on page 224
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