Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words

Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 328
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780195358490
ISBN-13 : 019535849X
Rating : 4/5 (90 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words by : Anna Wierzbicka

Download or read book Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words written by Anna Wierzbicka and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-08-07 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.


Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words Related Books