How words do things with people
‘Cultural Keywords in Discourse’ studies culturally-specific words around which whole discourses are organised. The book utilises insights from recent work in cultural semantics and ethnopragmatics, and applies these to the study of cultural discourses. The volume presents original, empirical case studies in cultural keywords across speech communities in seven different geographical areas: Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, Melanesia, Mexico and Scandinavia. The introduction outlines our approach and its basic principles. The analytical concepts and lenses offered by our approach are explained and exemplified. The final chapter of the book provides practical guidance for future keyword research and summarises the findings and new directions resulting from the new case studies. We have called our introductory chapter How Words Do Things with People. This, of course, is a play on How People Do Things with Words, the signature phrase of modern speech act theory. The subversion signals both our perspective as well as our disenchantment with the universalist-but-Anglophone tradition in pragmatics. In the Anglo pragmatics paradigm, invented by Austin, Grice, Searle and their followers,1 speakers were rational individuals who used English words, spoke coherently and lived in a world of “brevity”, “truth”, “politeness”, “cooperation”, “relevance” and similar Anglo values. Semantic diversity and cultural differences were not considered to be important, partly because words were subjugated to the purpose of what the speaker “did with them”, and partly because the assumption was that there was a fixed set of universal speech acts which could be “done” by any speaker in any place at any time.
An invitation to keyword studies: Guidance for future research
Throughout the book our contributors have demonstrated how “words do things with people” in different discourse communities. Each study in the volume has presented an original case study, and an in-depth analysis of a particular keyword in discourse. Utilising the natural semantic metalanguage as a shared tool for keyword analysis, all contributors have explored discursive logics and values that are guided and governed by such keywords. In this final chapter, we would like to extend an invitation to cultural keyword studies, which provides some guidance for researchers and research students who want to take up the explorative keyword-driven discourse study as showcased in this book. The invitation will at same time reflect on the findings, insights and experience that were gained during the process of analysis and writing.
Lige, a Danish 'magic word'? An ethnopragmatic analysis
The Danish word lige [ˈliːə] is a highly culture-specific discourse particle. English translations sometimes render it as “please,” but this kind of functional translation is motivated solely by the expectation that, in English, one has to ‘say please’. In the Danish universe of meaning, there is in fact no direct equivalent of anything like English please, German bitte, or similar constructs in other European languages. Consequently, Danish speakers cannot ‘say please’, and Danish children cannot ‘say the magic word’. However, lige is in its own way a magic word, performing a different kind of pragmatic magic that has almost been left unstudied because it does not correlate well with any of the major Anglo-international research questions such as “how to express politeness” or “how to make a request.” This paper analyzes the semantics of lige in order to shed light on the peculiarities of Danish ethnopragmatics. It is demonstrated not only that Danish lige does a different semantic job than English please, but also that please-based and lige-based interactions are bound to different interpretations of social life and interpersonal relations, and reflect differing cultural values.
Cultural Keywords in Discourse
This book took shape at the International Pragmatics Conference in New Delhi, 2013. The contributors of the book were panellists at the ‘Cultural Keywords in Discourse’ panel organised by the editors. Our panel consisted of Australia- and Scandinavia-based researchers and research students of different cultural backgrounds, and we presented to an audience of mainly Indian researchers. The scene was set for an extraordinarily fruitful and lucid discussion. The day before the conference, fate would have it that half of the book’s authors were hired as extras in a Bollywood movie. All were given roles as Russian diplomats and the scenes were shot at the Imperial Hotel. Becoming Russians in India added to our sense of curiosity and to the mystery of meaning-making that forms our fascination with language and culture.