Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics)
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In this groundbreaking book, Wierzbicka demonstrates that every language has its «key concepts» and that these key concepts reflect the core values of the culture. Further, she argues that within a culture-independent analytical framework one can study, compare, and even explain cultures to outsiders through their key concepts. The framework Wierzbicka proposes is the well-known «natural semantic metalanguage» that she developed with her colleagues. For this study, Wierzbicka focuses on four languages and cultures:Japanese , Australian English, Polish, and Russian. She identifies «culture laden» words in each of these languages these words are, in a sense, «untranslatable. « She shows, however, that the words can be «explained» by meansof the semantic metalanguages hypothetical semantic primitives such as someone, something, do, happen, want, say, know, think, good, bad , etc.
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