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50Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2018.This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on th…Read more
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Pain and "suffering" in cross-linguistic perspectiveIn Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (eds.), "Happiness" and "pain" across languages and cultures, John Benjamins. 2016.
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10Right and wrong: from philosophy to everyday discourseDiscourse Studies 4 (2): 225-252. 2002.One of the most interesting phenomena in the history of the English language is the remarkable rise of the word right, in its many interrelated senses and uses. This article tries to trace the changes in the meaning and use of this word, as well as the rise of new conversational routines based on right, and raises questions about the cultural underpinnings of these semantic and pragmatic developments. It explores the hypothesis that the `discourse of truth' declined in English over the centuries…Read more
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10The concept of ‘dialogue’ in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectiveDiscourse Studies 8 (5): 675-703. 2006.‘Dialogue’ is an important concept in the contemporary world. It plays a very significant role in English public discourse, and through English, or mainly through English, it has spread throughout the world. For example, the dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi calls for ‘reconciliation and dialogue’ in Burma, the Russian pro-democracy groups ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to ‘begin a dialogue’ with them, and Popes Paul VI and John Paul II are praised for opening the Catholic Church to a ‘dia…Read more
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13Direct and indirect speech revisited: Semantic universals and semantic diversityIn Alessandro Capone, Una Stojnic, Ernie Lepore, Denis Delfitto, Anne Reboul, Gaetano Fiorin, Kenneth A. Taylor, Jonathan Berg, Herbert L. Colston, Sanford C. Goldberg, Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri, Cliff Goddard, Anna Wierzbicka, Magdalena Sztencel, Sarah E. Duffy, Alessandra Falzone, Paola Pennisi, Péter Furkó, András Kertész, Ágnes Abuczki, Alessandra Giorgi, Sona Haroutyunian, Marina Folescu, Hiroko Itakura, John C. Wakefield, Hung Yuk Lee, Sumiyo Nishiguchi, Brian E. Butler, Douglas Robinson, Kobie van Krieken, José Sanders, Grazia Basile, Antonino Bucca, Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri & Kobie van Krieken (eds.), Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages, Springer Verlag. pp. 173-199. 2018.We present new interpretations of “direct” and “indirect” speech, framed entirely using simple and cross-translatable words and phrases, i.e. framed in language which can be transparent both to linguists and to the speakers whose ways of speaking we are trying to understand. In relation to “direct speech”, we present linguistic generalisations about two forms of quoted speech, which, we claim, are very likely to be found in all languages of the world. We next examine the semantics of logophoric …Read more
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37From 'Consciousness' to 'I Think, I Feel, I Know': A Commentary on David ChalmersJournal of Consciousness Studies 26 (9-10): 257-269. 2019.David Chalmers appears to assume that we can meaningfully discuss what goes on in human heads without paying any attention to the words in which we couch our statements. This paper challenges this assumption and argues that the initial problem is that of metalanguage: if we want to say something clear and valid about us humans, we must think about ourselves outside conceptual English created by one particular history and culture and try to think from a global, panhuman point of view. This means …Read more
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10On Folk Conceptions of Mind, Agency and MoralityJournal of Cognition and Culture 6 (1-2): 165-179. 2006.
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71The semantics of grammarJohn Benjamins. 1988.Introduction 1. Language and meaning Nothing is as easily overlooked, or as easily forgotten, as the most obvious truths. The tenet that language is a tool ...
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20Reading human faces: Emotion components and universal semanticsPragmatics and Cognition 1 (1): 1-23. 1993.It is widely believed that there are some emotions which are universally associated with distinctive facial expressions and that one can recognize, universally, an angry face, a happy face, a sad face, and so on. The "basic emotions " are believed to be part of the biological makeup of human species and to be therefore "hardwired". In contrast to this view, Or tony and Turner have suggested that it is not emotions but some components of emotions which are universally linked with certain facial e…Read more
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11Non-Aboriginal; semantics of concrete objects in English e.g. household objects, cars and bicycles, animals, fruit and vegetables.
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24Pragmatics and Cognition: The meaning of the particlePragmatics and Cognition 11 (1): 3-38. 2003.In this paper we try to crack one of the hardest and most intriguing chestnuts in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics and to identify the meaning of the celebrated Singaporean particle lah — the hallmark of Singapore English. In pursuing this goal, we investigate the use of lah and seek to identify its meaning by trying to find a paraphrase in ordinary language which would be substitutable for lah in any context. In doing so, we try to enter the speakers' minds, and as John Locke urged in his…Read more
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104“Universals of colour” from a linguistic point of viewBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (4): 724-725. 1999.Saunders and van Brakel's observation that “linguistic evidence provides no grounds for the universality of basic color categories” also applies to the concept of “colour” itself. The language of “seeing” is rooted in human experience, and its basic frame of reference is provided by the universal rhythm of “light” days and “dark” nights and by the fundamental and visually salient features of human environment: the sky, the sun, vegetation, fire, the sea, the naked earth.
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23Overcoming Anglocentrism in Emotion ResearchEmotion Review 1 (1): 21-23. 2009.Since English is not a neutral scientific language for the description of emotions (or anything else), then the key question is what (meta)language other than English can be used instead. I draw a distinction between “experiential meaning” which can only be acquired through lived experience, and “compositional meaning” which can be adequately portrayed in the mini-language of universal human concepts (NSM) developed through wide-ranging cross-linguistic investigations. The article rejects both t…Read more
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3Is Pain a Human Universal? Conceptualisation of ‘pain’ in English, French and PolishColloquia Communia 92 29-53. 2012.
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34The semantics of human facial expressionsPragmatics and Cognition 8 (1): 147-184. 2000.This paper points out that a major shift of paradigm is currently going on in the study of the human face and it seeks to articulate and to develop the fundamental assumptions underlying this shift. The main theses of the paper are: 1) Facial expressions can convey meanings comparable to the meanings of verbal utterances. 2) Semantic analysis (whether of verbal utterances or of facial expressions) must distinguish between the context-independent invariant and its contextual interpretations. 3) C…Read more
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59Language and Metalanguage: Key Issues in Emotion ResearchEmotion Review 1 (1): 3-14. 2009.Building on the author's earlier work, this paper argues that language is a key issue in understanding human emotions and that treating English emotion terms as valid analytical tools continues to be a roadblock in the study of emotions. Further, it shows how the methodology developed by the author and colleagues, known as NSM (from Natural Semantic Metalanguage), allows us to break free of the “shackles” (Barrett, 2006) of English psychological terms and explore human emotions from a culture-in…Read more
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25Empirical Universals of Language as a Basis for the Study of Other Human Universals and as a Tool for Exploring Cross‐Cultural DifferencesEthos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 33 (2): 256-291. 2005.
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60Introduction: the body in description of emotionPragmatics and Cognition 10 (1): 1-26. 2002.Anthropologists and linguists have long been aware that the body is explicitly referred to in conventional description of emotion in languages around the world. There is abundant linguistic data showing expression of emotions in terms of their imagined ¿locus¿ in the physical body. The most important methodological issue in the study of emotions is language, for the ways people talk give us access to ¿folk descriptions¿ of the emotions. ¿Technical terminology¿, whether based on English or otherw…Read more
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57Understanding others requires shared conceptsPragmatics and Cognition 20 (2): 356-379. 2012.“It is a noble task to try to understand others, and to have them understand you but it is never an easy one”, says Everett. This paper argues that a basic prerequisite for understanding others is to have some shared concepts on which this understanding can build. If speakers of different languages didn’t share some concepts to begin with then cross-cultural understanding would not be possible even with the best of will on all sides. Current Anthropology For example, Everett claims that Pirahã h…Read more
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42The “History of Emotions” and the Future of Emotion ResearchEmotion Review 2 (3): 269-273. 2010.This article focuses on the emergence of a new subfield of emotion research known as “history of emotions.” People’s emotional lives depend on the construals which they impose on events, situations, and human actions. Different cultures and different languages suggest different habitual construals, and since habitual construals change over time, as a result, habitual feelings change, too. But to study construals we need a suitable methodology. The article assumes that such a methodology is provi…Read more
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81On Emotions and on Definitions: A Response to IzardEmotion Review 2 (4): 379-380. 2010.This commentary argues that the question of metalanguage is a key issue in emotion research. Izard (2010) ignores this issue (and all the earlier literature relating to it, including the debate in Emotion Review, 2009, 1[1]), and thus falls into the old traps of circularity, obscurity, and ethnocentrism. This commentary rejects Izard’s claim that “emotion” defies definition, and it offers a viable definition of “emotion” formulated in simple and universal human concepts, using the English versio…Read more
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29Japanese Cultural Scripts: Cultural Psychology and “Cultural Grammar”Ethos: Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology 24 (3): 527-555. 1996.
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25Can there be common knowledge without a common language?Common Knowledge 21 (1): 141-171. 2015.This essay argues that, since Kant wrote in German and since German has no word for “right” corresponding in meaning to the English word, it is a case of conceptual anglocentrism to say, as many anglophone philosophers do, that Kant reformulated the foundations of ethics by formulating them in terms of the “right” rather than the “good.” Further, the essay shows how the German word Pflicht, central to Kant's ethics, does not correspond in meaning to the English word duty, whose cultural roots li…Read more
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Australian National UniversityRegular Faculty
Acton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Meta-Ethics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
European Philosophy |