Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics , No 8) | 
 enlarge | Author: Anna Wierzbicka
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $72.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 410660
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 328
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0195088360
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.44089
EAN: 9780195088366
ASIN: 0195088360
Publication Date: August 7, 1997
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| • | Hardcover - Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 8) | | • | Kindle Edition - Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese | | • | Digital - Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics , No 8) |
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Product 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Fascinating stuff. October 21, 1999
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
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.
 Wierzbicka's academic fluff chokes meanings. March 16, 1999
5 out of 17 found this review helpful
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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