Cultural Keywords in Discourse

Cultural Keywords in Discourse PDF Author: Carsten Levisen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902726547X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
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.

Cultural Keywords in Discourse

Cultural Keywords in Discourse PDF Author: Carsten Levisen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902726547X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Discourse Across Languages and Cultures

Discourse Across Languages and Cultures PDF Author: Carol Lynn Moder
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027230782
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
This volume seeks to answers such questions as: how is conscious experience translated into discourse? How are foregrounding and backgrounding accomplished? What is the function of features like lexical choice and referential choice? And many more.

Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words

Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words PDF Author: Anna Wierzbicka
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019535849X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
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.

Italian Discourse

Italian Discourse PDF Author: Gian Marco Farese
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1793603170
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
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.

Keywords

Keywords PDF Author: Raymond Williams
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195204698
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
"First published in 1976, Raymond Williams' highly acclaimed Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a collection of lively essays on words that are critical to understanding the modern world. In these essays, Williams, a renowned cultural critic, demonstrates how these key words take on new meanings and how these changes reflect the political bent and values of our past and current society. He chose words both essential and intangible--words like nature, underprivileged, industry, liberal, violence, to name a few--and, by tracing their etymology and evolution, grounds them in a wider political and cultural framework. The result is an illuminating account of the central vocabulary of ideological debate in English in the modern period. This edition features a new original foreword by Colin MacCabe, Distinguished Professor of English and Literature, University of Pittsburgh, that reflects on the significance of Williams' life and work. Keywords remains as relevant today as it was over thirty years ago, offering a provocative study of our language and an insightful look at the society in which we live"--

Cultural Semantics

Cultural Semantics PDF Author: Martin Jay
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN:
Category : Language and culture
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
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.

Chinese Discourse Studies

Chinese Discourse Studies PDF Author: S. xu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137365048
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Chinese Discourse Studies presents an innovative and systematic approach to discourse and communication in contemporary China. Incorporating Chinese philosophy and theory, it offers not only a distinct cultural paradigm in the field, but also a culturally sensitive and effective tool for studying Chinese discourses.

Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Second Edition

Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Second Edition PDF Author: Bruce Burgett
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814708013
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The latest vocabulary of key terms in American Studies Since its initial publication, scholars and students alike have turned to Keywords for American Cultural Studies as an invaluable resource for understanding key terms and debates in the fields of American studies and cultural studies. As scholarship has continued to evolve, this revised and expanded second edition offers indispensable meditations on new and developing concepts used in American studies, cultural studies, and beyond. It is equally useful for college students who are trying to understand what their teachers are talking about, for general readers who want to know what’s new in scholarly research, and for professors who just want to keep up. Designed as a print-digital hybrid publication, Keywords collects more than 90 essays30 of which are new to this edition—from interdisciplinary scholars, each on a single term such as “America,” “culture,” “law,” and “religion.” Alongside “community,” “prison,” "queer," “region,” and many others, these words are the nodal points in many of today’s most dynamic and vexed discussions of political and social life, both inside and outside of the academy. The Keywords website, which features 33 essays, provides pedagogical tools that engage the entirety of the book, both in print and online. The publication brings together essays by scholars working in literary studies and political economy, cultural anthropology and ethnic studies, African American history and performance studies, gender studies and political theory. Some entries are explicitly argumentative; others are more descriptive. All are clear, challenging, and critically engaged. As a whole, Keywords for American Cultural Studies provides an accessible A-to-Z survey of prevailing academic buzzwords and a flexible tool for carving out new areas of inquiry.

Keywords in Chinese Culture

Keywords in Chinese Culture PDF Author: Li Wai-yee
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN: 9882371191
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Like every major culture, Chinese has its set of keywords: pivotal terms of political, ethical, literary and philosophical discourse. Tracing the origins, development, polysemy, and usages of keywords is one of the best ways to chart cultural and historical changes. This volume analyzes some of these keywords from different disciplinary and temporal perspectives, offering a new integrative study of their semantic richness, development trajectory, and distinct usages in Chinese culture. The authors of the volume explore different keywords and focus on different periods and genres, ranging from philosophical and historical texts of the Warring States period (453-V221 BCE) to late imperial (ca. 6th?V18th centuries CE) literature and philosophy. They are guided by a similar set of questions: What elevates a mere word to the status of keyword? What sort of resonance and reverberations do we expect a keyword to have? How much does the semantic range of a keyword explain its significance? What kinds of arguments does it generate? What are the stories told to illustrate its meanings? What are political and intellectual implications of the keyword's reevaluation? What does it mean to translate a keyword and map its meaning against other languages? Throughout Chinese history, new ideas and new approaches often mean reinterpreting important words; rupture, continuities, and inflection points are inseparable from the linguistic history of specific terms. The premise of this book is that taking the long view and encompassing different disciplines yield new insights and unexpected connections. The authors, who come from the fields of history,

Meaning, Life and Culture

Meaning, Life and Culture PDF Author: Helen Bromhead
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760463930
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
This book is dedicated to Anna Wierzbicka, one of the most influential and innovative linguists of her generation. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies, as well as her home base of linguistics. She is best known for the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to meaning—a versatile tool for exploring ‘big questions’ concerning the diversity and universals of people’s experience in the world. In this volume, Anna Wierzbicka’s former students, old and current colleagues, ‘kindred spirits’ and ‘sparring partners’ engage with her ideas and diverse body of work. These authors cover topics from the grammar of action verbs to cross-cultural pragmatics, and over 30 languages from around the world are represented. The chapters in Part 1 focus on the NSM approach and cover four themes: lexico-grammatical semantics, cultural keywords, semantics of nouns, and emotion. In Part 2, the contributors connect with a meaning-based approach from their own intellectual perspectives, including syntax, anthropology, cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics. The deep humanistic perspective, wide-ranging themes and interdisciplinary nature of Wierzbicka’s research are reflected in the contributions. The common thread running through all chapters is the primacy of meaning to the understanding of language and culture.