2020 Book StudiesInEthnopragmaticsCultur PDF

Kerry Mullan · Bert Peeters ·
Lauren Sadow Editors
Studies in
Ethnopragmatics,
Cultural Semantics,
and Intercultural
Communication
Ethnopragmatics and Semantic Analysis
Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics,
and Intercultural Communication
Kerry Mullan Bert Peeters Lauren Sadow
• •
Editors
Studies in Ethnopragmatics,
Cultural Semantics,
and Intercultural
Communication
Ethnopragmatics and Semantic Analysis
123
Editors
Kerry Mullan Bert Peeters
RMIT University Australian National University
Melbourne, VIC, Australia Canberra, ACT, Australia
Lauren Sadow
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT, Australia
ISBN 978-981-32-9982-5 ISBN 978-981-32-9983-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9983-2
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from
the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard
to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
Dedicated to our good friend and colleague
Cliff Goddard
Contents
1 Lift Your Game, Cliff! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Bert Peeters
2 A Brief Introduction to the Natural Semantic Metalanguage
Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Lauren Sadow and Kerry Mullan
Part I Ethnopragmatics
3 Condolences in Cantonese and English: What People Say
and Why . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
John C. Wakefield, Winnie Chor and Nikko Lai
4 The Ethnopragmatics of English Understatement and Italian
Exaggeration: Clashing Cultural Scripts for the Expression
of Personal Opinions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Gian Marco Farese
5 Ethnopragmatics of Hāzer Javābi, a Valued Speech Practice
in Persian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Reza Arab
6 “The Great Australian Pastime”: Pragmatic and Semantic
Perspectives on Taking the Piss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Michael Haugh and Lara Weinglass
7 Thứ-Bậc (‘Hierarchy’) in the Cultural Logic of Vietnamese
Interaction: An Ethnopragmatic Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Lien-Huong Vo
8 Pile of Dead Leaves Free to a Good Home: Humour
and Belonging in a Facebook Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Kerry Mullan
vii
viii Contents
Part II Semantic Analysis

9 The Semantics and Pragmatics of Three Potential
Slurring Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Keith Allan
10 Positive Appraisal in Online News Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Radoslava Trnavac and Maite Taboada
11 The Conceptual Semantics of Alienable Possession
in Amharic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Mengistu Amberber
12 The Meanings of List Constructions: Explicating Interactional
Polysemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Susanna Karlsson
Part III Cliff Goddard: List of Publications

Cliff Goddard: List of Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Compiled by Bert Peeters
Chapter 1
Lift Your Game, Cliff!
A Fun Tribute to Cliff Goddard
Bert Peeters
It must be around twenty years ago now, but the words “Lift your game, Cliff!” still
resonate loud and clear around the world-famous Armidale tennis courts that, every
month of January, host the New England Open tennis tournament. The event
attracts the world’s best players to country New South Wales, where they come to
face local talent such as Cliff Goddard, now retired—from tennis at least. That year,
Goddard was playing an early round match; he was in superb form and heading for
an easy win. Nevertheless, during a change of ends, a spectator called out the
infamous words that would inspire the champion, who also knows a thing or two
about linguistics, to pen one of his well-known papers (published as Chap. 3 of
Goddard 2006) misleadingly titled “Lift your game, Martina!”. Being the
non-assuming bloke we all know he is, Goddard cleverly extracted himself from the
account of what had occurred and made it look as though it had happened at the
Australian Open in Melbourne, to another champion known by the name of Martina
Hingis. We know better, don’t we?
Since the paper was written, many Australians have informally endorsed the
spectator’s comment as “a classic”, and as “so Australian”. In the absence of an
obvious, salient lexical label for the Australian English speech practice it illustrates,
Goddard called it “deadpan jocular irony”, which is quite a mouthful. So, what was
that spectator getting at when he admonished Cliff to “lift his game”? One possi-
bility that should be immediately rejected is that he was levelling some sort of
B. Peeters (&)
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
e-mail: Bert.Peeters@anu.edu.au
Universiteit Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium

e-mail: Bert.Peeters@uantwerpen.be
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 1

K. Mullan et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics,
and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9983-2_1
2 B. Peeters
“indirect criticism” at his idol. The spectator’s attitude was not critical in the least.
Instead, he was expressing something like admiration. The fan’s comment was
intended to be amusing and at the same time to express high praise.
Which is exactly what this “fun tribute”, which celebrates Goddard’s more than
forty years in academia, intends to be and to do as well. Granted, it has not
displayed the highest possible academic standards so far, plagiarizing as it does two
publications that are part of Goddard’s prolific output. The first is the
above-mentioned Chap. 3 of Goddard (2006); the second, a more recent paper titled
“Ethnopragmatic perspectives on conversational humour, with special reference to
Australian English” (Goddard 2017). Give or take a few minor (and not so minor)
adjustments, entire chunks of the first two paragraphs are lifted (that verb again!)
out of these two publications.
Not that Goddard never played tennis. He did, he really did. He must, however,
have grown tired of it, because he eventually gave up the sport and turned to squash
and badminton instead. Goddard was always too slight to play rougher sports like
rugby, and besides, he is a self-acknowledged “no contact” kind of person whose
favourite martial art is Tai Chi. According to reliable sources, even a hug makes
him uncomfortable. Many might, therefore, be surprised to learn of his once
sporting prowess. His preferred weapon while at the University of New England
was the racquet, and over his years in Armidale Goddard organized tennis games
and played matches with his colleagues in linguistics, matches that later morphed
into squash tournaments and, later again, into badminton competitions. Although he
cultivated the professorial look that some might call “unthreatening”, behind that
façade Goddard was surprisingly athletic—nimble and light on his feet, combining
a fine serve with a mean volley, an uncanny ability to dominate the centre of a
squash court, and the deft touch that turns a badminton smash into a float-n-drop
over the net. And while these competitions were fierce, they were also the source of
much hilarity among the participants and will be remembered fondly.
Anecdotes, according to Tridgell (2006: 286), “can be suggestive in indicating
the existence of particular cultural phenomena, and Cliff Goddard opens his lin-
guistic analysis of Australian irony with an anecdote”. The analysis she refers to is
Chap. 3 of Goddard (2006), which she had somehow laid her hands on before it was
available in print. Anecdotes can also be suggestive in indicating the existence of a
phenomenon tout court, and Cliff Goddard is one such phenomenon. Let us be
honest about it: there is absolutely no way Goddard could possibly “lift his
game”—even if he tried.
Baby Cliff was a bit of a latecomer, a fact of life that as a grown-up he has
consistently and valiantly tried to overcome by (mostly successfully) trying never to
run late. Goddard’s parents had tied the knot in the early 1940s and had decided
that, because of the war, this was not the right time to start a family. Horresco
referens: if they had not restrained themselves, Goddard would by now be almost
eighty. We all hope, of course, he will eventually get there and still be the bright
young man he is today, but that’s a different story. Back to Bill and Norma
Goddard, they waited for a whopping eleven years, before conceiving their first
child, early in the Australian autumn of 1953. Exactly nine months later, on a
1 Lift Your Game, Cliff! 3
Saturday, probably around 6 pm, it was delivery time. Baby Cliff came into the
world. It was 5 December 1953, and it would be another 23 months before
Goddard’s only sibling—a boy by the name of Alan—would join the family.
Goddard’s birthdate had not been planned to coincide with that of dancer
Elisabeth Clarke in Camden, New Jersey, nor with that of singer and voice actress
Sachiko Kobayashi in Niigata, Japan, or of journalist, publisher and activist Gwen
Lister in East London, South Africa. They would all shoot to fame—with Cliff
Goddard in hot pursuit. They would all be immortalized on the Take Me Back To
website (https://takemeback.to/05-December-1953)—with Cliff Goddard missing
out “by that much” (Maxwell Smart, personal communication). Goddard had one
insurmountable handicap: whereas the others were all born in places that, in
December 1953, had a six-figure population, Goddard’s birthplace was nothing
short of a small backwater. Sure, Canberra was Australia’s national capital, but it
had little else going for it. Population-wise, according to a short article on page 2 of
the Canberra Times of 31 December 1953, it was believed to have about 29,200
residents. Which only goes to show that, to adopt a way of saying things that
Goddard’s parents’ gifted son would in due course help popularize, “good things
happen in big places; at the same time, good things can happen in small places if
people want them to happen there”.
By the time Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, the Duke of
Edinburgh, arrived in Canberra on a Royal Australian Air Force plane that landed at
Fairbairn airfield on 13 February 1954 at 3 p.m. for their first visit ever to the
Australian capital, young Cliff was exactly ten weeks old. How did Mr. and Mrs.
Goddard get it so right? At ten weeks, he was just ready to follow his parents as
they ventured out of their Canberra suburb of Reid to welcome the Queen and her
Royal Consort. We cannot be sure that they were in the crowd of adoring
Australians lining the streets of Canberra. However, since there were more people
(around 40,000) welcoming the royal couple than there were residents in the
national capital at the time, there is a reasonable chance they were. As one would
expect, the royal visit was accompanied by a lot more fanfare than baby Cliff’s birth
ten weeks earlier. Not that he cared very much: he probably slept his way through
all the kerfuffle. The Queen and the Duke only stayed for five days; he stayed a lot
longer.
Canberra was home for Goddard until his early twenties. It is where he attended
preschool in Reid and later primary school at Our Lady of Mercy in Braddon and
Daramalan College in Dickson. The nuns at Our Lady of Mercy were relentless in
their efforts to stamp out Australia’s favourite b-word, which came naturally to most
young Australians, including the Goddard brothers. At age 7, Cliff was overheard
by his mother as he advised brother Alan, who was about to start school at age 5,
not to use the word bloody in the classroom (or in the schoolyard for that matter).
“Why, Cliffie?” asked trusting little brother. Cliff’s answer was an utterly sincere
“Because the bloody nuns don’t bloody like it!” At Daramalan College, the nuns
made way for teachers of a different kind, and Goddard became one of the top
students, not only in the remainder of primary school, but also later on—with a few
dips here and there. He stayed at Daramalan throughout high school and college
4 B. Peeters
and, while there, was reportedly bullied for being “brainy”. However, putting his
own spin on the school’s motto, “Fortes in fide” [“Strong in faith”], he proved over
and over again that he, at least, had a lot of faith in himself and was able to deal with
the taunts of the not-so-brainy who had nothing better to do than to have a go at
him.
By the time Goddard reached the age of 18, university beckoned. It had not all
been smooth sailing, though. For a moment, it looked as though Goddard was about
to throw it all away, even before passing his High School Certificate. To his credit,
he did not. Now living in Watson, a different suburb, closer to Daramalan but
further away from the university campus, he gained early entrance to what was at
the time Canberra’s only university, appropriately called the Australian National
University. He already knew that the so-called hard sciences were not his thing
(even though he had been awarded a medal for winning a science competition while
a student at Daramalan College). A few years before entering university, he had
managed to get his first summer job at the ANU. Asked to transport some large
flasks of liquid nitrogen, he had attempted to wheel them up a slope by himself. Not
only was he reprimanded quite quickly, but he also lost his job, which is almost
certain to have put him off the sciences. So, what would he be studying?
While at the university as an undergraduate student, Goddard soon discovered
that mathematics and psychology, which formed part of his degree, were not for
him either. The real love of his life, which he pursued with much more dedication
than the frantic social life he had engaged in earlier and the few girls he had started
to date and fallen in and out of love with, was linguistics—or so he thought,
because he had not set eyes on wife-to-be Mee Wun just yet. Linguistics, led by R.
M.W. (aka Bob) Dixon, was booming at ANU: 48 EFTSUs (Effective Full Time
Student Units) in 1973, 70 in 1974, 97 in 1975 (Dixon 2011: 112). Goddard took
classes with most of the staff in the department, but one of them would mark him
for life. Her name was Anna Wierzbicka, a Polish-born semanticist who had
migrated from the US to Australia in the early seventies. The author of a book
called Semantic primitives, published in (1972), she had already made a name for
herself but could not have known at the time that, in due course, Goddard and she
would develop into the most formidable tandem in Australian linguistics.
Not that university was all work and no play. Taking some time off between
semesters, Goddard went overseas with a friend. The idea was to see Europe and
Morocco, perhaps other places as well. They went for one year but the trip ended
after six months, when they ran out of money. Had Goddard not bought that
acoustic guitar while travelling through Spain, he might have been able to stay a
little longer. But the acoustic guitar, no doubt bought on a whim, has proven to be
an invaluable purchase: he still has it and, decades later, continues to turn to it when
he wants to take his mind off academia. Goddard would no doubt have made a
talented musician, but he realized he was no match for either Uncle Cliff, the
musician in the family after whom he had been named, or another Cliff, who had
already shot to stardom with a name uncomfortably close to Goddard’s. We have all
heard of Cliff RichAAArd, haven’t we—and he is not Goddard’s uncle. Goddard
might also have made a good salesman, according to some, as he can sell ideas very
well. Aren’t we lucky he preferred linguistics to linguini sticks, though, which he

would no doubt have successfully flogged to the most suspicious home cooks,
together with some ideas as to how to use these things in their recipes?
After graduating from ANU as a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours,
Goddard left Canberra. The year was 1976. He moved to Adelaide, where he spent
some time working for a community radio station. He also tried his hand at script
writing, producing a politically sensitive film script for which he dreamt up the title
“The gap between”. The setting was Alice Springs and surroundings, Australia’s
gateway into the Red Centre, the country’s interior desert region. The script had a
strong female protagonist. Why this is important I do not know, but it was put to me
in no uncertain terms that I might as well add this bit of information, because
Goddard would appreciate it. Unfortunately, the script was shelved after Goddard
fell out with the film director; the film itself never saw the light of day. Instead,
Goddard went on to bigger and better things, at least from a linguist’s point of view.
Answering the call to help document Aboriginal languages, which were disap-
pearing at an alarming rate, he returned to academia in 1980 and embarked on
extensive research into one of the dialects of the Western Desert Language, a cluster
of mutually intelligible dialects spoken in vast areas of Western Australia, South
Australia, and the Northern Territory. Goddard’s fieldwork in the northwest of
South Australia culminated in a 1983 ANU Ph.D., published two years later as A
grammar of Yankunytjatjara.
From 1985 to 1987, Goddard lived in Alice Springs, the town of his doomed
film script. He was a National Research Fellow at the Institute for Aboriginal
Development (IAD), an independent Aboriginal community-controlled language
resource and adult education centre serving the Aboriginal community of Central
Australia. While at the IAD, and for about ten years after that, he continued his
work on Yankunytjatjara and on the neighbouring dialect Pitjantjatjara, producing
several language resources for both communities, including wordlists and dic-
tionaries, mostly published by the IAD Press.
But Aboriginal linguistics was not the only thing on Goddard’s radar. As
mentioned earlier, one name was destined never to drop off it. Anna Wierzbicka’s
belief in the descriptive power of “semantic primitives” had left a lasting impression
on our Yankunytjatjara/Pitjantjatjara specialist. In 1986, together with David
Wilkins, Goddard organized a workshop on semantic primitives during the
Australian Linguistics Society’s annual conference held that year at the University
of Adelaide. Not content with merely publicizing the approach, he contributed a
paper provocatively titled “Wild ideas about the natural semantic metalanguage”.
As far as is known, this is where the term natural semantic metalanguage, later
abbreviated as NSM and often capitalized as Natural Semantic Metalanguage, was
born. The paper was published three years later (Goddard 1989), and its title
somewhat toned down. Wierzbicka knew that Goddard was on to something; it did
not take long for her to acknowledge that “the Workshop […] proved to be in some
ways a turning point in the search for the universal semantic primitives and in the
development of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage” (Wierzbicka 1992: 223).
6 B. Peeters
What would eventually become known as the “Natural Semantic Metalanguage (or
NSM) approach” effectively saw the light of day in the latter half of the 1980s.
In 1987, Goddard left the IAD to become a Senior Linguist for the South
Australian Education Department, which he served in an official capacity for the
next three years. At the beginning of 1990, he joined the linguistics team at the
University of New England as a lecturer and was soon to develop a reputation as
one of the most inspiring and engaging academic teachers on campus. There are
many ways of explaining to a LING100 class that the word tree does not always
correspond to the object “tree”; however, it takes something special to do so in a
way that gets your students hooked on semantics instead of distracted by a huge
huntsman spider crawling on the wall behind the lecturer.
1990 was the year the Department of Linguistics at UNE became an entity in its
own right. A full degree program in the discipline had only just been established
thanks to the unrelenting efforts of the late Steve Johnson, who had been appointed
to the University in 1986. Johnson’s tragic death in August 1990 was a devastating
blow for the team, from which it managed to recover only thanks to the moral
support of colleagues from around the country. A special issue of the Australian
Journal of Linguistics, in remembrance of Steve Johnson and co-edited by Goddard
and Nick Evans, was published in 1992.
In the following decade, a gradual shift occurred in Goddard’s research activity.
He initially remained faithful to his early focus on the dialects of the Western Desert
Language, but increasingly started to turn his attention away from Australia,
towards another language on the semantics and cultural pragmatics (later called
ethnopragmatics) of which he would soon produce a variety of studies. That lan-
guage was Malay, otherwise known as Bahasa Melayu. The fact that wife Mee
Wun, a native speaker of Cantonese born in Malaysia, had something to do with
this sudden interest is of course entirely fortuitous. The two had met in Alice
Springs, where they were introduced to one another by a mutual friend. They
married in Armidale on 7 January 1994, only weeks after Goddard had been pro-
moted to senior lecturer. Kwan, their only son, was born in Malaysia in 1996 and,
once back in country New South Wales, would for a short time become an object of
scientific observation. Goddard—noblesse oblige—wrote a paper for which, toge-
ther with Mee Wun, he followed Kwan around the family home, trying to ascertain
which semantic primes the toddler would produce as he learned to talk, when he
would produce them, and in which order. It is not entirely impossible that Kwan’s
dislike for linguistics using simple words goes back to that very period. The paper
was published in (2001).
Mee Wun has a vivid recollection of a conference at the University of New
South Wales, where her husband was one of the presenters. She was sitting in the
back row, holding two-year-old Kwan, and as soon as he started his talk, Kwan
called out: “Papa!” Everyone looked up and took notice, an unforgettable moment.
Equally unforgettable, from Kwan’s point of view, were the many times he was
asked by Papa whether he was a little fool or a big fool, to which he would
invariably respond “I’m a big fool”. Kwan obviously had some difficulties with
Papa’s sophisticated sense of humour. Aged 5, Kwan was well on his way to
become the competent native speaker of English he is today, but he had not yet
discovered what “deadpan jocular irony” was all about. One day, according to
Chap. 3 of Goddard (2006), a colleague dropped by to give father and son a lift into
town. As they got into the colleague’s car, it was clear that the vehicle was in an
advanced state of untidiness. “Just cleaned the car, have you Nick?” Goddard asked
matter-of-factly, without any audible sarcasm. Nick just smiled, but Kwan was
nonplussed. “Papa”, he said later, “that car was a big mess”.
Meanwhile, Goddard had once again risen through the ranks, becoming an
associate professor in 1999. DOIs were introduced the year after, and they ensured
Goddard was able to reach for unseen heights. How he does it is still under
investigation, but the fact of the matter is that, whenever DOIs are distributed,
Goddard is standing in the front row. An impressive number of his Digital Object
Identifiers end in the first three letters of his surname. Now, let us be honest about
it: how much fun is it to be referred to as “God”, time after time, when reference is
made to one of your publications? Especially when others, like the present author,
keep on being pushed towards the back row, where they end up with DOIs ending
in “pee”. And, while we are on that topic, I might as well mention that there is
another set of DOIs Goddard has been cunning enough to avoid. They are the ones
that adorn the numerous publications that he has co-authored with Anna
Wierzbicka. It’s always (or just about always) Goddard first and Wierzbicka sec-
ond: if you can choose between DOIs that end in “god” and DOIs that end in “wie”,
once again, you do not think twice, do you?
The noughties saw Goddard’s attention increasingly turn to his own native
language, Australian English. Unfortunately, Wierzbicka beat him at writing that
paper about bloody (Wierzbicka 2002) in which he, if he had authored it, could and
no doubt would have referred to the bloody nuns episode of his childhood. In 2003,
a year after receiving a UNE Vice-Chancellors Award for Research Excellence,
Goddard made it to full professor, effectively reviving UNE’s Chair of Linguistics,
which had been established in 1995 (upon the appointment of Anne Pauwels) but
had become vacant again in June 1998. It would not be until 4 October 2004,
though, that Goddard, in true university tradition, delivered his inaugural profes-
sorial lecture. No university venue was good enough for that solemn occasion,
which took place at the Armidale Town Hall. Meanwhile, Goddard had also been
elected as a Fellow of the Academy of the Humanities of Australia. He would
eventually (for three years, starting in November 2015) act as head of its Linguistics
Section.
While a professor at the University of New England, Goddard added semantic
molecules and semantic templates (both of which have historical precedents that
lacked adequate theoretical underpinnings) to the NSM toolkit and further con-
solidated the approach he and others refer to as ethnopragmatics, a take on prag-
matics inspired by NSM principles. Ethnopragmatics was the answer to the “Seven
Deadly Sins of Universalist Pragmatics” (Goddard 2006), a reference that ruffled
several feathers, including—it seems—those of a certain Roger. Being a bird (the
feathers were for real), Roger didn’t have a name, but it was clear why Goddard had
decided to call the winged monster Roger: he had feathers, in German Feder, and as
8 B. Peeters
a former tennis player Goddard still had nightmares of being at the receiving end of
Roger Feder-er’s unrelenting attacks. All of a sudden, the nightmares were
becoming a reality, albeit that Goddard’s nemesis had turned into a magpie which,
for quite some time, made a point of terrorizing the professor (and at times some of
his Ph.D. students as well) with its swooping behaviour and other intimidating tactics
whenever he (and they) approached the university campus on their bicycle(s).
Goddard liked cycling and for many years cycled to his office at the university. Bike
helmets with spikes proved no match for the vindictive bird, who eventually disap-
peared as unexpectedly as he had surfaced. After traumatizing the local NSM
community, he had perhaps found something better to do.
2010 was a watershed year for Goddard. It was the year when, as he would have
it, luck came knocking on his door. Armidale was not a bad place to be, not even
during the Roger years, but it was not entirely challenge-free. Goddard found
himself in the grip of that nagging feeling that many academics experience sooner
or later when they come to the realization that there are other opportunities to be
had. The classic case, in other words, of grass that tends to look greener on the other
side. Goddard certainly thought he had seen some very green and lush lawns some
distance away from country New South Wales, and consequently had applied for a
professorial position at Griffith University, Brisbane. He was shortlisted and
interviewed, only to find out that the position was eventually offered to the other
shortlisted candidate. Weird luck, some would say… But hang on, the story does
not end there.
A short time later, out of the blue, Goddard received a phone call from a highly
placed individual at Griffith University, who told him that the selection panel had
been so impressed with both candidates that the initial decision to appoint one
candidate only (as would happen just about everywhere else) was revised in favour
of a double appointment. Goddard, too, was offered the chance to move to
Brisbane. Faced with the prospect that a paper dream was suddenly a lot closer to
becoming reality, he thought it over long and hard, discussed the pros and cons with
wife Mee Wun and son Kwan, and finally decided that leaving Armidale was the
right thing to do. One of the main motivations was that husband and wife both
suspected Kwan would prefer to pursue university studies away from Armidale.
Moving the family to Brisbane would provide Kwan with a number of possibilities
without the obligation to leave home. For the record, Kwan has in the meantime
finished his undergraduate studies in physics and is working towards a Ph.D.
Goddard did not renounce his links with the University of New England, where
until today he remains an adjunct professor. Physically, though, he and his family
did leave land-locked Armidale and moved to Brisbane, which, for those not in the
know, is situated in South East Queensland. Yes: Queen’s Land. Goddard had
missed out on his private audience with the Queen in Canberra at the tender age of
ten weeks and would finally get a chance of actually meeting Her Majesty—or so
he thought. Unfortunately, the latest news from Buckingham Palace, Balmoral
Castle, and other such unpretentious hide-outs is that the Queen, now in her
nineties, is no longer prepared to travel all the way down under.
Fortunately, there is something to take Goddard’s mind off royal encounters—

apart from linguistics, wife Mee Wun and son Kwan (not necessarily in that order).
Goddard loves nature, and he is lucky that Mee Wun and Kwan do too. There was
plenty of it around Armidale, as far as the eye would reach, and the family often
spent time away from the daily humdrum by undertaking bushwalks in the sur-
rounding national parks, pitching their tent where they pleased and staying away
from civilization sometimes for days on end. The outings continue in and around
Brisbane, where nature has a different kind of appeal. There is no doubt, though,
that it provides as much of a distraction as it did back in country New South Wales.
Goddard has been Professor of Linguistics at Griffith University since 2011,
where he continues to rally his troops around the NSM canon—not the piece of
artillery, mind you, which is where troops are usually found; it is canon with one
“n” in the middle, not two. One of Goddard’s favourite hangouts at Griffith is Café
Rossa, on the Nathan campus, where some of his current Ph.D. students take time
off linguistics by playing a game called “Finding Cliff”. The rules are simple: the
first one to spot Goddard at a Café Rossa table wins, and if no one is successful,
players rub their eyes and wonder whether they are walking past the right café…
Café Rossa coffee seems to do miracles in terms of Goddard’s productivity and
intellectual insight. It is available in mugs as well, but ever since the publication of
Meaning and Universal Grammar (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002), MUG for
short, Goddard has formed the view that only cups will do for coffee. MUG is for
reading; cups are for drinking. It’s at Café Rossa that Goddard tends to meet with
students and colleagues alike; it is where the long blacks, Goddard’s preferred style
of coffee, always served in a cup, are even better than they were in Armidale, where
they were not bad at all.
It’s not just his love of coffee that keeps Goddard going. One thing he made sure
not to leave behind in Armidale was his bike. He may have bought one or two new
ones since the big move, but let’s not be too fussy about details. Now no longer
plagued by Roger, Goddard is occasionally seen cycling to work. He cycles even
when he is abroad. In Aarhus (Denmark), Goddard has been known, not only for
giving lectures where local students sit on the window sills, just to get a chance to
hear him talk, but for cycling the streets on a luminescent yellow bike. It is
rumoured that, on a sunny spring day, while buying himself an ice cream in
downtown Aarhus to cool down after several kilometres on the bike, the ice cream
vendor recognized him and roared in an almost biblical voice: “Oh my God, you are
the world-famous semanticist Cliff Goddard!!!”
World-famous, Goddard most certainly is. His fame extends well beyond
Canada and Scandinavia, the two regions for which, in recent years, he has
developed a special affinity and where some of his closest research associates are to
be found. His network of research associates includes colleagues and former stu-
dents within but also outside of NSM circles. Many of them, upon being asked,
immediately and enthusiastically agreed to contribute to the celebratory volume that
Kerry Mullan and Lauren Sadow, eventually joined by the present author, took it
upon themselves to publish in Goddard’s honour, to mark his 65th birthday. Such
was the response rate that one volume became two and that two became three.
10 B. Peeters
A handful of potential contributors, unfortunately, could not be reached. Others had

to reluctantly decline or bow out because of other commitments. If they had all said
yes, three might have become four… Of those who declined, many did kindly
agree, together with others, to undertake double-blind peer reviews of the work
submitted by their colleagues or to contribute savvy stories worked into this tribute.
As a general rule, all contributions were peer-reviewed by one NSM scholar and by
one other relevant expert. Non-NSM papers were peer-reviewed by non-NSM
scholars. The papers were divided into five broad themes. Like the title of this
tribute, all five hint at selected titles of Goddard’s published work. Together, they
reflect most if not all of Goddard’s research interests, which straddle language,
culture, and meaning.1
Volume 1 is titled Ethnopragmatics and Semantic Analysis; its main editor is
Kerry Mullan. Apart from the present tribute and a brief introduction to the Natural
Semantic Metalanguage approach by Lauren Sadow and Kerry Mullan, this volume
includes two parts. Part I, Ethnopragmatics (cf. Goddard 2006), comprises work by
Reza Arab, Gian Marco Farese, Michael Haugh and Lara Weinglass, Kerry Mullan,
Lien-Huong Vo, and John Wakefield, Winnie Chor and Nikko Lai. Part II, Semantic
Analysis (cf. Goddard 1998/2011), comprises work by Keith Allan, Mengistu
Amberber, Susanna Karlsson, and Radoslava Trnavac and Maite Taboada.
Volume 2, titled Meaning and Culture, also includes two parts; its main editor is
Bert Peeters. Part I, Words as Carriers of Cultural Meaning (cf. Goddard 2015),
comprises work by Yuko Asano-Cavanagh and Gian Marco Farese, Stella Butter
and Zuzanna Bułat Silva, Sandy Habib, Jan Hein, Bert Peeters and Margo
Lecompte-Van Poucke, Roslyn Rowen, and Rachel Thompson. Part II,
Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context (cf. the subtitle of Goddard 2006),
comprises work by Helen Leung and Carsten Levisen.
Volume 3, titled Minimal English (and Beyond), includes the fifth part; its main
editor is Lauren Sadow. The title of this volume refers to Goddard's edited col-
lection Minimal English for a global world (Goddard 2018) and comprises work by
María Auxiliadora Barrios Rodríguez, Deborah Hill, Susana S. Fernández, Alex
Forbes, Anna Gladkova, Lauren Sadow, Jiashu Tao, Ulla Vanhatalo and Camilla
Lindholm, Anna Wierzbicka, and Jock Wong.
The editors and contributors wish Cliff Goddard many more years of research
engagement and are delighted to offer him herewith a token of their appreciation for
what he has meant and continues to mean for them. An exhaustive list of Goddard’s
1
Adrian Tien sadly passed away on 30 April 2018, when planning was well underway. Did he
have a premonition he himself “was headed for the West, riding a crane” when he wrote about this
and other phrases used in Chinese in the wake of someone’s passing (Tien 2017)? We will never
know. The editors are convinced, though, that they could have counted on him as well, had he
lived.
publications, many of which are referred to throughout these volumes, is included at

the end of each of the three volumes—and DOIs have been added where available.
Just a matter of reminding everyone that there is a front row whenever DOIs are
being allocated and that Goddard knows where that front row is.
Acknowledgements This tribute could not have been written without the complicity of Mee Wun
Lee, Goddard’s wife; Kwan Goddard Lee, their son; and some of Goddard’s past and current
colleagues and Ph.D. students, including (in alphabetical order) Jan Hein, Vicki Knox, Carsten
Levisen, Nick Reid, Andrea Schalley, Jeff Siegel, and Sophia Waters. Special thanks to Vicki and
Nick, whose prose about Goddard’s prowess in tennis, squash, and badminton could not be
bettered and has been reproduced in this tribute almost verbatim.
References
Dixon, R. M. W. (2011). I am a linguist. Leiden: Brill.

Goddard, C. (1989). Issues in natural semantic metalanguage. Quaderni di semantica, 10(1),
51–64.
Goddard, C. (1998/2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Goddard, C. (2001). Conceptual primes in early language development. In M. Pütz & S. Niemeier
(Eds.), Applied cognitive linguistics: Theory and language acquisition (Vol. 1, pp. 193–227).
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110866247.193.
Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2006). Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.
Goddard, C. (2015). Words as carriers of cultural meaning. In J. R. Taylor (Ed.), The Oxford
handbook of the word (pp. 380–398). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.
1093/oxfordhb/9780199641604.013.027.
Goddard, C. (2017). Ethnopragmatic perspectives on conversational humour, with special
reference to Australian English. Language & Communication, 55, 55–68. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.langcom.2016.09.008.
Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2018). Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using
fewer words. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (Eds.). (2002). Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and
empirical findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60 (Vol. 1),
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.61 (Vol. 2).
Tien, A. (2017). To be headed for the West, riding a crane: Chinese pragmemes in the wake of
someone’s passing. In V. Parvaresh, & A. Capone (Eds.), The programme of accommodation:
The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 183–202). Berlin: Springer. https://doi.
org/10.1007/978-3-319-55759-5_11.
Tridgell, S. (2006). Communicative clashes in Australian culture and autobiography. Auto/
Biography, 14, 285–301.
Wierzbicka, A. (1972). Semantic primitives. Frankfurt: Athenäum.
12 B. Peeters
Wierzbicka, A. (1992). The search for universal semantic primitives. In M. Pütz (Ed.), Thirty years
of linguistic evolution (pp. 215–242). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.
61.20wie.
Wierzbicka, A. (2002). Australian cultural scripts—Bloody revisited. Journal of Pragmatics, 34
(9), 1167–1209. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(01)00023-6.
Bert Peeters is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University and a
Gastprofessor at the University of Antwerp. His main research interests are in French linguistics,
intercultural communication, and language and cultural values. His publications include Les
primitifs sémantiques (ed., 1993), The lexicon-encyclopedia interface (ed., 2000), Semantic primes
and universal grammar (ed., 2006), Tu ou vous: l’embarras du choix (ed. with N. Ramière, 2009),
Cross-culturally speaking, speaking cross-culturally (ed. with K. Mullan and C. Béal, 2013), and
Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (ed., 2019).
Chapter 2
A Brief Introduction to the Natural
Semantic Metalanguage Approach
Lauren Sadow and Kerry Mullan
Abstract This introductory chapter to the first of three volumes celebrating the
career of Griffith University academic Cliff Goddard recaps the fundamentals of the
Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, ethnopragmatics and cultural
scripts, and Minimal English (Sect. 2.1 to 2.7), then contextualizes and introduces
the individual papers (Sect. 2.8).

Keywords Meaning Culture Cultural Keywords Discourse

Natural Semantic Metalanguage Ethnopragmatics Cultural Scripts
Minimal English
2.1 Introduction
In 1972 the Polish-born linguist Anna Wierzbicka published a book—the first of

many she would go on to write in English—in which she introduced the idea of a
set of universal semantic primes (or primitives, as they were called at the time) that
could be used to paraphrase the meaning of more complex concepts. By the end of
the decade, in 1979, Cliff Goddard published his first ringing endorsement of it,
together with a set of paraphrases of his own. In 1986, the idea had caught on
sufficiently for Goddard to make the first use in print of the term ‘natural semantic
metalanguage’ (NSM) as a convenient label for the primitives and also to describe
the growing methodology and field of study relying on them. This volume is the
first of three to celebrate that naming and the extensive contribution Cliff Goddard
has made to the NSM approach and NSM itself in the last 40 years.
L. Sadow (&)
The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
e-mail: lauren.sadow@anu.edu.au
K. Mullan
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: kerry.mullan@rmit.edu.au

14 L. Sadow and K. Mullan
Volume 1, Ethnopragmatics and Semantic Analysis, presents a series of chapters

almost all of which use the NSM approach to describe pragmatic and semantic
meanings across a variety of languages. The chapters in Volume 2, Meaning and
Culture, focus on semantics rather than (ethno)pragmatics (although the latter is
never far away) and especially on (mostly lexical) meanings in a variety of cultural
settings. The final volume, Minimal English, takes the NSM approach, and the
NSM principles, and applies them not only to linguistic analyses, but to real-world
problems.
Together, these three volumes collect papers ranging across the ever-growing
domains of research in which NSM is currently applied; from cultural keywords to
pragmatics, and beyond into applications well outside of linguistics. Today’s NSM
research is far-reaching both in terms of languages studied and in terms of disci-
plines in which it is applied. As such, it may be of use to the reader to begin this set
with an introduction to the principles and practices of NSM research (cf. also
Peeters’ introductory chapter in Volume 2).
2.2 A Metalanguage for Comparing and Defining
Drawing on the philosophical ideas of such intellectual greats as Leibniz, Arnauld

and Locke, the natural semantic metalanguage approach has demonstrated like no
other theoretical framework before that human thought is in some way comparable
across languages (Goddard 2018a). Leibniz referred in this context to the ‘alphabet
of human thought’, and while Wierzbicka’s implementation of that ‘alphabet’ was
lexical rather than pictorial, the same concepts of reduction and paraphrase do
apply.
When examining other approaches to lexical definition, it is apparent that there
are some challenges that ought to be addressed in order to reach maximally accurate
definitions (Goddard 2011). First, the problem of circularity, observed whenever
words are defined in terms of one another, so much so that the search for a
definition presents the end-user with new words that, when defined in turn, lead
right back to the start; second, the problem of obscurity, which surfaces when a
word is defined in terms more complex than it is itself, thus further obscuring the
meaning rather than elucidating it; third, the problem of inaccuracy, which arises
when a definition does not accurately predict a word’s usage. It was with these
challenges in mind that Wierzbicka proposed semantic primes as a means to
negotiate the pitfalls of defining (Wierzbicka 1985). They are indefinable in the
sense that there are no simpler terms that can be used to define them. Relying on
indefinable words, and using nothing but indefinable words, resolves the issues of
circularity and obscurity. Including folk knowledge about words takes care of the
issue of inaccuracy. Furthermore, by using semantic primes that exist across all
languages, we can describe culturally specific words and beliefs without imposing
the values of another languaculture on the languaculture being described.
2 A Brief Introduction to the NSM Approach … 15
The term ‘natural semantic metalanguage’ (printed in lower case) was first used
by Cliff Goddard in his (1986) article ‘The natural semantics of too’. It reflects two
of the unique features of what eventually became known as ‘the natural semantic
metalanguage approach’. First, it is a highly constrained metalanguage. Not a
fully-fledged language similar to the thousands that are in use today, but a spe-
cialized language specifically designed to talk about other languages in a clear and
intelligible manner, i.e. without becoming recursive. This requires the use of words
that represent basic concepts, which cannot be reduced any further (as has already
been discussed). The second key idea is ‘natural’. ‘Natural’ in this sense means that
the terms employed to talk about the languages we speak and the concepts we use
are in fact existing words and existing concepts, directly derived from the languages
we speak. They are anything but abstract representations requiring in-depth
knowledge to be understood. As Goddard (2011: 65) states, ‘no technical terms,
“fancy words”, logical symbols, or abbreviations are allowed in explications, which
should contain only simple expressions from ordinary natural language’.
‘Explications’ are the paraphrases the NSM approach uses in its definitions; for
more information, see Sect. 2.4.
2.3 The Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach
As a way of ‘doing’ lexical semantics, the natural semantic metalanguage approach

has been steadily growing in popularity. As a method for deep semantic analysis, it
is unparalleled with respect to the breadth and depth of topics it can and has been
applied to. The NSM approach is an analytical framework that makes it possible to
produce semantic analyses using language that is cross-translatable, thereby
ensuring that it does not project the cultural and semantic implications of other
languages onto the resulting semantic descriptions of a particular language.
Ethnocentrism, and in particular Anglocentrism, has long been a challenge for
researchers across the world. English words have a tendency to be applied as
universal concepts that distort the conceptual complexity of the languages they seek
to describe (Wierzbicka 2014). Using complex English words to describe other
languages and/or concepts used in these languages, linguists (and other researchers)
have unintentionally used semantically and culturally complex terms in an attempt
to come up with faithful descriptions of infinitely different cultural realities.
Unwittingly, they have promoted the use of English as a ‘neutral’ language,
ignoring the fact that it has a cultural heritage of its own, which inevitably distorts
what is being described as it is approached through a culturally incompatible prism.
The NSM approach actively avoids this hazard by using only cross-translatable
language when describing concepts (and cultural norms, on which more later). It
thus produces explications that represent the cultural models of the target language,
regardless of the language of the explications.
2.3.1 Semantic Primes and Their Syntax
At its core, the NSM approach uses a limited set of concepts that are universal across
all languages and languacultures to describe the culturally specific semantic and
pragmatic content found in these languages and languacultures. The use of this
semantic core of all languages in our explications means that the explications can
then be compared and understood across cultural borders. At present, NSM is made
up of 65 universal concepts—known as ‘semantic primes’ (formerly ‘semantic
primitives’; cf. Sect. 2.1). To represent the primes, we use words, usually English
words. These words are known as the ‘exponents’ of the primes. However, the same
set of semantic primes can be identified as easily in French or Pitjantjatjara. Semantic
primes can be considered building blocks of complex concepts in all languages.
The ‘exponents’ of the primes are often presented in tabular form. Table 2.1 lists
the 65 semantic primes into categories based on the kind of meanings they
represent.
Table 2.1 Semantic primes (English exponents) grouped into related categories (Goddard and
Wierzbicka 2014)
I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING * THING, PEOPLE, BODY Substantives
KIND, PART Relational substantives
THIS, THE SAME, OTHER * ELSE Determiners
ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MUCH * MANY, LITTLE * FEW Quantifiers
GOOD, BAD Evaluators
BIG, SMALL Descriptors
KNOW, THINK, WANT, DON’T WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR Mental predicates
SAY, WORDS, TRUE Speech
DO, HAPPEN, MOVE Actions, events,
Movement
BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) Location, existence,
specification
(IS) MINE Possession
LIVE, DIE Life and death
WHEN * TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR Time
SOME TIME, MOMENT
WHERE * PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE, TOUCH
Place
NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF Logical concepts
VERY, MORE Intensifier, Augmentor
LIKE * AS Similarity
Notes • Exponents of primes can be polysemous, i.e. they can have other, additional meanings. •
Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes. • They can be formally, i.e.
morphologically, complex. • They can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with*).
• Each prime has well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties
Figure 2.1 presents an alternative visualization, grouping the primes into sets
based on the conceptual connections that hold them together.
In addition to their basic exponents, primes may have additional exponents
depending on their context of use (e.g. ‘SOMETHING’ and ‘THING’—indicated by ‘*’
in Table 2.1 and Fig. 2.1). This phenomenon is known as ‘allolexy’, and the
exponents of a single prime are its ‘allolexes’. Some languages have more than two
allolexes for a single prime: French, for instance, has three allolexes for WHEN
(QUAND * MOMENT * FOIS; Peeters 2006), where English only has two.
In some cases, primes can be combined into portmanteau expressions. For
example, the combination ‘at many times’ is usually rendered as ‘often’ in the
English version of the NSM. Similar portmanteaus may not exist in all languages,
but the meaning of a portmanteau is equal to the meaning of the combination of
primes it stands for. This makes it possible for portmanteaus to be used in expli-
cations (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2016a). The use of portmanteaus results in
explications that sound more idiomatic.
Not less importantly, the NSM approach proclaims (based on decades of
empirical research) that, alongside the universal semantic core, there is a syntactic
core that governs the syntax of the primes. The use of this syntax ensures expli-
cations are maximally cross-translatable. NSM syntax is expressed through ‘va-
lency options’ such as the following (for the prime HAPPEN):
Fig. 2.1 Semantic primes organized by conceptual category

(a) something happens

(b) something happens to someone
(c) something happens to something
(d) something happens somewhere (in a place)
(e) something happens in something
(Goddard 2011: 69).
While the grammatical words in the above valency options (i.e. to, in, a) are not
universal primes, they are nonetheless allowed: they are part of the English version
of the universal syntax and may have counterparts in other versions of the meta-
language. The basic idea is that all five valency options are expressible in all
languages of the world, using similar semantically simple concepts (‘primes’), held
together, as the case may be, by language-specific ‘glue’.
2.3.2 Semantic Molecules
Some concepts in need of explication are too complex to be described using only
semantic primes. They require the use of intermediary terms that help to build
layers of complexity. For example, the concept behind the English word women
contains the concept of ‘children’; and the word fun contains the concepts of
‘children’ and ‘laugh’ as an inherent part of its meaning (Goddard 2018c). Concepts
like ‘children’ and ‘laugh’ are not semantic primes, but they can be explicated by
means of them. NSM terms these concepts semantic molecules—complex concepts
that are expressible in semantic primes but are also building blocks for even more
complex meanings. Once a semantic molecule is explicated in primes, it can then be
used in further explications of more complex concepts—with the symbol [m] being
deployed to identify where a molecule has been used. The procedure is illustrated in
explications [A] and [B] below, taken from Goddard (2018c: 139, 141; emphasis
added):
[A] children
people of one kind

all people are people of this kind for some time
when someone is someone of this kind, it is like this:
this someone’s body is small
this someone can do some things, this someone can’t do many other things
because of this, if other people don’t often do good things for this someone, bad things can happen to
this someone
[B] women
people of one kind

people of this kind are not children [m]
people of this kind have bodies of one kind
the bodies of people of this kind are like this:
inside the body of someone of this kind, there can be for some time a living body of a child [m]
NSM research undertaken to date suggests that some semantic molecules could be
universal (e.g. man, woman, child, laugh) or near-universal (e.g. sleep, write,
hands, quickly). Other molecules are area-specific (e.g. God, money, tree) or lan-
guage and culture-specific (e.g. island, snow, plastic). Culture-specific molecules
are essential for defining terms in one particular culture but may not exist in other
languages.
2.4 Explications
The NSM approach uses semantic primes, and sometimes semantic molecules, as
well as NSM syntax, to create reductive paraphrases or ‘explications’ of concepts.
Because these explications rely on the conceptual building blocks of NSM, they are
cross-translatable and culture-neutral. Explications are instances of deep semantic
analysis and can be elaborated for almost any concept in any language, from words
for everyday objects to technical or even abstract terms (the primes themselves,
however, cannot be defined for reasons explained above).
Often NSM is used to define, or ‘explicate’, cultural keywords—words in a
languaculture that capture a significant concept pertaining to the everyday life of
that culture and are connected to or representative of a number of values, attitudes
and beliefs about the world (Levisen and Waters 2017). By fully understanding
these cultural keywords, whole worlds of cognition in a languaculture are opened;
or, as Wierzbicka (1997: 17) once said: ‘A key word […] is like one loose end
which we have managed to find in a tangled ball of wool: by pulling it, we may be
able to unravel a whole tangled “ball” of attitudes, values and expectations’.
Explications of keywords provide a particularly striking illustration of the
strength of the NSM approach when it comes to analysing culture-specific meaning,
because the explications describe the exact meaning as well as the attitudes of
cultural insiders built into the words and concepts. Happiness is a cultural keyword
of English; it is explicated in [C] (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2014: 118).
[C] happiness
it can be like this:

someone thinks like this:
‘some good things are happening to me now as I want
I can do many things now as I want
this is good’
because of this, this someone feels something good
like people feel at many times when they think like this
it is good for this someone if it is like this
This example of a cultural keyword in English is part of a body of research

spanning many years during which NSM researchers have investigated the
semantics of emotion terms across a range of cultures (see, e.g., Goddard and Ye
2016; Harkins and Wierzbicka 2001; Hasada 2008; Hārābor 2012; Levisen 2012;
Wierzbicka 1992, 1999, 2004; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014; Ye 2006) to com-
pare cultural attitudes to emotions and to challenge the previously perceived uni-
versality of emotion. That body of research illustrates the need to use
cross-translatable terms when defining concepts for non-native speakers. If even
terms previously thought to be universal such as happy and sad are not truly
cross-translatable, then surely more complex terms such as frustration must be even
further from cross-translatability. As NSM research has shown, emotion terms
reflect culture-specific cognitive scenarios that are key to understanding the prior-
ities and reactions of native speakers of a language.
Of course, cultural keywords and emotion terms barely scratch the surface of the
concepts that can be explicated. Extensive research over a number of decades has
resulted in explications being proposed across a wide spread of languages. NSM
researchers have explored a wide range of nouns (e.g. Wierzbicka 1985; Ye 2017;
Bromhead 2018), including kinship terms (e.g. Wierzbicka 2013, 2017; Xue 2016),
address forms (e.g. Farese 2018) and ethnopsychological personhood constructs
(e.g. Peeters 2019). Emotion terminology and cultural keywords have drawn a lot of
attention from within the NSM community (see above), as have speech act verbs
(e.g. Wierzbicka 1987; Kim 2008) and evaluational adjectives (e.g. Goddard et al.
2019). NSM researchers have also explored the semantics of grammar (Wierzbicka
1988) and various areas of syntactic variation (e.g. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2009,
2016a). The list is of course incomplete. As of 2018, there were over a thousand
publications using the approach (for a continually updated database of biblio-
graphical notices, which also allows to trace explications, scripts, and tables of
primes and molecules in the NSM literature, see https://www.nsm-approach.net).
2.5 Semantic Templates
Not every explication needs to be written from scratch. Many words are connected
via shared conceptual bases: they belong to the same word class, the same semantic
domain, or have otherwise overlapping meanings. Where they have the same
semantic structure, they can be said to share a semantic template (Goddard and
Wierzbicka 2014). Semantic templates can then be articulated within the NSM
approach and used to structure explications, providing the bones or the shape of the
meaning, to be filled with semantic content.
Semantic templates can include many different components depending on the
words being explicated, but often include Lexicosyntactic Frames, which provide
the general morphosyntactic context for verbs; Prototypical Scenarios, which
describe a typical way in which something happens; Manner or Effect, which
describes how something is achieved; and Potential Outcome, or what is expected
(including someone’s intentions). These four elements, in particular, describe the
semantic template for verbs of doing and happening (Goddard and Wierzbicka
2016a), an example of which is given in [D] (ibid.: 218).
[D] Someone X is crawling (at this time)
someone X is doing something somewhere for some time (at this time) LEXICOSYNTACTIC FRAME
because of this, this someone is moving in this place during this time as this someone wants
often when someone does this in a place, it is like this: PROTOTYPICAL SCENARIO
− this someone thinks like this:
‘I want to be somewhere else in this place after some time’
− this someone can’t move the legs [m] as people often do when they want to be in another place
not far from the place where they are at this time
when someone does this, something like this happens many times: MANNER + EFFECT
− this someone moves the legs [m] for a short time, at the same time this someone moves some
other parts of the body
− because of this, many parts of this someone’s body touch the ground [m] in many places during
this time
− because of this, after this, this someone’s body is not in the place where it was before, it is
somewhere near this place
if someone does this for some time, after this, this someone can be somewhere POTENTIAL OUTCOME
not near the place where he/she was before
2.6 NSM Versus the NSM Approach
In many NSM publications, there are two different things being referred to with the
term ‘NSM’. On one hand, ‘NSM’ refers to the metalanguage itself: a specific set of
words and grammar, which has been empirically tested for cross-translatability, and
which is used to create reductive paraphrases or explications. On the other hand,

‘NSM’ also refers to the NSM approach, i.e. the goals and the principles shared by
those who use NSM (the metalanguage) in their research. In this second sense,
NSM (the metalanguage) is a tool of researchers working within NSM (the
approach), but it is of course not their only tool. NSM researchers use a combi-
nation of methods and methodologies to conduct their semantic and pragmatic
research, including corpus studies, ethnopragmatic research, as well as a whole host
of other elicitation and data collection methods.
Throughout the three volumes in this set, the term ‘NSM’ will be used to refer to
the metalanguage itself, and we will talk about the NSM ‘approach’ when referring
to the principles and ideas that underpin the metalanguage, wherever and however
they may be applied.
2.7 Offshoots and Spinoffs
NSM has been fine-tuned over the decades, which has allowed its use in an
ever-increasing range of different settings. Wherever the principles of the approach
can be applied, researchers are currently working on producing NSM-based tools fit
for purpose. Some examples include narrative medicine (Peeters and Marini 2018),
language teaching (see volume 3), lexicography (Bullock 2011; Barrios Rodriguez
and Sadow in volume 3) and machine learning. Of particular importance in terms of
Cliff Goddard’s contribution to NSM are ‘ethnopragmatics’ and Minimal English;
they are commented on in this section, and figure prominently in these three volumes.
2.7.1 Ethnopragmatics and Cultural Scripts
As a label, ‘ethnopragmatics’ is nowadays mostly associated with work by Cliff

Goddard (see, e.g., Goddard 2006a, 2017; Goddard and Ye 2015; Goddard and
Cramer 2017). Ethnopragmatics is arguably the most prominent of the more spe-
cialized fields that have originated from within the NSM approach. Goddard
(2006a) has defined it in clear contrast to what he describes as the ‘universalist
paradigm’ (ibid.: 1) within linguistic pragmatics, exemplified for instance by
Grice’s maxims of communication, Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory, and
Brown and Levinson’s politeness framework. Goddard (ibid.: 18) maintained that
the universalist approach underestimates the cultural shaping of speech practices
and that its analyses are conducted in terms of alien to the speakers who engage in
these practices. To put it differently, while universalist approaches take a so-called
etic perspective, thereby failing to account for the unique understandings of cultural
insiders, ethnopragmatics adopts an ‘emic’ point of view: the idea is to ‘describe
and explain people’s ways of speaking in terms which make sense to the people
concerned, i.e. in terms of indigenous values, beliefs and attitudes, social cate-
gories, emotions, and so on’ (Goddard and Ye 2015: 66).
The most important tool within ethnopragmatics is the ‘cultural script’ (see, e.g.,
Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004, 2007). Cultural scripts had been introduced into the
NSM approach in the 1990s (see, for instance, Wierzbicka 1994), well before
Goddard introduced the term ‘ethnopragmatics’; he would eventually define cul-
tural scripts as ‘the main mode of representation in the theory of ethnopragmatics,
which is the pragmatic sister theory of the NSM approach to semantics’ (Goddard
2008: 18). Cultural scripts use NSM in a way that focuses on capturing the values,
attitudes, and behavioural norms shared by the members of a languaculture. In other
words, the focus is pragmatic rather than semantic. They provide valuable insights
into different cultural communities worldwide. They are able to project language
learners and cultural outsiders in general even further into the world of native
speakers in that they examine the latter’s internal processing of ‘good’ and ‘bad’
and the motivation behind phrase choice. That is, they permit researchers and
language learners to examine not only what is said and how it is said, but also why
it was said, and why speakers might choose those particular words to convey their
intended meaning (Wierzbicka 2006). They also operate on a generalizable level to
describe the values of speakers of a languaculture more broadly; however, they do
not describe hard and fast rules of interacting or immutable values that are held.
Rather, they describe information that members of a languaculture share, whether
those members agree and act on that knowledge or not. As Goddard (2013: 252)
noted a few years ago, ‘the content which can be captured in cultural scripts forms a
kind of interpretive backdrop to everyday interaction and is an essential part of
social cognition in the society being described’.
Cultural scripts can be used to illustrate the highest level of cultural values—in
which case they are often referred to as master scripts (Ye 2004). Such master
scripts influence innumerable aspects of the languaculture and represent the shared
implicit assumptions or knowledge of social cognition. In Australian English (and
other Anglo Englishes), an example of a master script (Goddard 2010: 109) is the
core value of ‘personal autonomy’—which can be explicated as follows:
[E] An Anglo master script for the core value of ‘personal autonomy’
many people in Australia think like this:

when someone wants to do something, it is good if this someone can think like this:
‘I am doing it because I want to do it’
This script guides how speakers of Australian English expect to interact with one
another. As a master script, it has a broad range of applications and it influences
many—if not all—types of interactions. For example, the script influences the
language and expressions used to give an invitation to lunch, or the kinds of phrases
and conventions used while arguing, but without wanting to give offence.
One of the benefits of cultural scripts is that they can illustrate multiple levels of
values and attitudes, right down to the fine-grained interactional details—captured
in interaction-level scripts (Sadow 2018). These types of cultural scripts are less
likely to be shared as individual modes of interaction. However, they exist in social

cognition as they are used to express consistent attitudes and are interpreted in the
same way across speakers. An example appears in [F].
[F] An Australian interactional script for softening disagreement with partial
agreement
[in Australia, many people think like this:]

when I want to say to another person about something:
‘I know what you think about it, I don’t think the same’
it is good to say something like this at the same time:
‘I know what you think about it,
I think the same about some of these things
I don’t think the same about all these things’
In between, master-level scripts and interaction-level scripts are mid-level scripts,

which have varying degrees of importance and spheres of influence.
Cultural scripts are often framed in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as in ‘it is good to
think like this’; or ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ as in ‘I can/can’t say…’. Interaction-level and
situation-level scripts are often framed in terms of ‘when’ or ‘if’ as in ‘when/if
someone says this’. In most cases, cultural scripts are preceded by elements that
capture the interpretive backdrop of the contained information, such as ‘many
people think like this’, reiterating that the cultural script is representative of shared
knowledge rather than an exceptionless rule for behaviour.
2.7.2 Minimal English
Recently (starting with Wierzbicka 2014), NSM researchers have recognized the
need for a cross-translatable metalanguage that is more suitable for use by
non-experts. This by-product of NSM is known as Minimal English. The goal of
Minimal English is to provide non-experts with a framework that assists in clear
expression and clear thinking, leading to communication that is truly
cross-translatable. This is particularly relevant for international organizations, for
anyone working with migrants, and indeed in many other fields.
Minimal English adheres to the same principles as NSM when it comes to
explicating, i.e. the use of simpler terms and cross-translatable language to express
ideas. One of the key differences between the two is that Minimal English makes a
more generous use of semantic molecules. Most commonly these are the universal
and near-universal molecules, but content-specific molecules that assist readers in
the overall comprehension of a text (or even a shorter explication) written in
Minimal English can also be used (see Fig. 2.2). For further discussion of Minimal
English, see Goddard (2018b) and the introduction to volume 3 in this set.
hungry, brain, heart Body

river, mountain, desert, sea, island, jungle/forest rain, wind, snow, ice, air
Environmental
flood, storm, drought, earthquake
east, west, north, south
bird, fish, tree, seeds, grass, mosquitoes, flies, snake dog, cat, horse, cow, Biological
pig (camel, buffalo, moose, etc.)
family Biosocial
month, week, clock, hour, second Times
house, village, city, school, hospital Places
teacher, doctor, nurse, soldier Professions
country, government, capital, border, flag, passport, vote ‘Country’
science, the law, health, education, sport ‘Fields’
meat, rice, wheat, corn (yams, etc.), flour, salt, sugar, sweet Food
knife, key, gun, bomb, medicines ‘Tools’

paper, iron, metal, glass, leather, wool, cloth Thread, gold, rubber, plastic, ‘Materials’
oil, coal, petrol
car, bicycle, plane, boat, train, road, wheel, wire, engine Transport
pipe, telephone, television, radio, phone Technology

Literacy and
read, write, book, photo, newspaper, film media
money, God, war, poison, music Other: nouns
go/went, eat, drink, take (someone somewhere), burn, buy/pay, learn Other: verbs
Other:
clean adjectives
Fig. 2.2 Examples of non-universal but useful words in Minimal English (Goddard and
Wierzbicka 2018: 17)
2.8 Introduction to Volume 1
As previously indicated, Ethnopragmatics and semantic analysis is the first of three

volumes collectively called Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and
intercultural communication published to celebrate Cliff Goddard’s career and
mark his contribution to the NSM approach. Apart from the present introductory
chapter, volume 1 consists of two parts that give the volume its name. Part I, called
Ethnopragmatics, consists of six chapters; Part II, Semantic analysis, contains
another four. Understandably, given the main thrust of Goddard’s work,
ethnopragmatics (Goddard 2006a) is also an important component of volume 2,

while volume 3 focuses on Minimal English (Goddard 2018b). All volumes contain
a list of Goddard’s publications to date.
2.8.1 Part I: Ethnopragmatics
In accordance with the principles underlying ethnopragmatics as defined by

Goddard, the six chapters in this section all approach interactional practices from an
emic perspective. Some are contrastive studies (Wakefield et al. on Cantonese vs.
English, Chap. 3; Farese on Italian and English, Chap. 4), while others describe a
single languaculture: Persian (Farsi) (Arab, Chap. 5); Australian English (Haugh
and Weinglass, Chap. 6; Mullan, Chap. 8); and Vietnamese (Vo, Chap. 7). Two
studies incorporate additional or alternative methodologies for analysis, namely
interactional pragmatics (Haugh and Weinglass, Chap. 6) and computer-mediated
discourse analysis (Mullan), showing how these can also be compatible with an
ethnopragmatics approach. One of the chapters (Mullan, Chap. 8) does not employ
NSM, but is still thoroughly aware of the usefulness of an ethnopragmatic approach.
Part I opens with Chap. 3 by John Wakefield, Winnie Chor and Nikko Lai, who
compare the sociopragmatic knowledge that guides Cantonese and Anglo-English
speakers when offering death-related condolences to a good friend who has lost
someone close. Basing their analysis on responses to a discourse-completion task
(DCT), cultural key phrases, and their native-speaker intuitions and experiences, the
authors propose contrasting cultural scripts for Cantonese versus English condo-
lence routines. A great amount of overlap was found between the two. However, a
key difference was identified in the purpose and focus of the two routines: for
Cantonese speakers, the focus is on expressing concern for the health and
well-being of the bereaved, while in English the focus is on expressing sorrow for
the bereaved’s loss. As Wakefield et al. point out, knowledge of this contrast would
help people to respond appropriately to speakers of these two languacultures in this
sensitive situation.
Chapter 4 is also a contrastive study with a practical application. Here, Gian
Marco Farese presents a cultural semantic analysis of the differences in the ways
that personal opinions tend to be expressed in English and Italian, namely through
understatement and exaggeration, respectively. Following a presentation of these
two highly valued concepts as practised in both cultures, Gian Marco Farese uses
cultural scripts to highlight these differences, arguing that such clashing commu-
nicative styles can lead to cases of miscommunication in cross-cultural interactions.
While keen to point out that these cultural scripts do not prescribe ways of
speaking, Farese shows how they are useful tools for cross-cultural training for
language learners, as well as in preparation for cross-cultural encounters between
people with different languacultural backgrounds.
Reza Arab examines the highly valued speech practice of hāzer javābi (literally,
‘ready response’) in Persian (Farsi) in Chap. 5. His is one of the few studies to
apply an ethnopragmatic approach to Persian. Arab illustrates the practice using a

number of classical and contemporary examples, showing how it is similar to—yet
sufficiently different from—a number of speech practices in other languages,
including English. The author presents a historical and cultural contextualization of
hāzer javābi, thereby explaining the concept and its cultural significance. Arab then
provides a cultural script for the practice, detailing the required three elements of
the ‘ready response’: (i) it must have been produced in a much smaller time span
than the average person would take to produce the same content; (ii) it should be
seen as the best possible response that could be produced in this context; (iii) others
must be in a position to appreciate the previous two points and feel good because of
it. All of these elements illustrate the importance of being hāzer javāb as well as the
ways in this speech practice is perceived.
In Chap. 6, Michael Haugh and Lara Weinglass combine semantic and prag-
matic approaches to help us understand how ‘taking the piss’ is accomplished in
everyday social interaction, and what accomplishing it might mean to (Anglo-)
Australians. They demonstrate that not only can semantic explications and cultural
scripts address the tendency in pragmatics to label phenomena without sufficient
consideration of what such terms actually mean, but they also provide tools for
analysing what is going on from the perspective of participants. In addition, the
authors propose that pragmatics can inform the formulation of cultural scripts by
providing a strong empirical foundation for interactional practices not always
accessible through a semantic analysis alone. They suggest that paying attention to
metapragmatic uses of expressions like taking the piss in interaction could help
reveal what is meant by the expression and what it is doing in that particular
situated interaction.
The following contribution (Chap. 7) applies ethnopragmatics to the Vietnamese
concept of thứ-bậc (‘hierarchy’) in interaction, a valuable contribution since
Vietnamese suffers from a lack of such research. Lien-Huong Vo shows how thứ-
bậc is different from its counterparts in other cultures, since it is commonly con-
ceived of in terms of relative age difference (divided into three levels). The author
uses proverbs and folk sayings as linguistic evidence for the normative values and
communicative virtues underpinning the cultural logic of interactions. She provides
cultural scripts for thứ-bậc, its culturally important constituent of politeness lễ-phép
(‘respectfulness’), and the norms and skills through which the latter is realized,
namely đúng-mực (‘propriety’), khiêm-nhường (‘humility’) and khôn-khéo (‘tact’).
Vo points out that, although the concepts presented in the study are not necessarily
exclusive to Vietnamese culture, the way Vietnamese people conceive of and enact
them in speech practice is specifically Vietnamese.
While Chap. 8 does not include cultural scripts or examine particular cultural
keywords, the ethnopragmatics approach is evidenced through the analysis of
discourse in a cultural context (Goddard 2006a). Here, Kerry Mullan examines the
humour in a somewhat subversive and irreverent episode of online joint fictional-
ization in a local community Facebook group, highlighting many features and
practices of humour previously identified as highly valued in (Anglo)Australian
culture: co-construction and escalation of absurd ‘fantasy’ humour, banter, mock
impoliteness, irreverence (cf. also Haugh & Weinglass, this volume), deadpan
delivery and jocular mockery (Goddard 2006b). While primarily resembling con-
versational humour, the online environment offers alternative opportunities for
creating humour. A small-scale survey administered to the participants of the thread
confirmed the importance of spontaneous humour for them, and how it actively
contributes to their sense of belonging in this online community.
2.8.2 Part II: Semantic Analysis
The four chapters in the second part of this volume all deal with ‘semantic analysis’
(Goddard 2011); all but one (Allan, Chap. 9) use the natural semantic metalanguage
approach. The authors engage with a varied range of datasets across three lan-
guages: three English potential slurring terms (Allan, Chap. 9); ten positive eval-
uative adjectives in English (Trnavac and Taboada, Chap. 10); a number of verbs of
alienable possession in Amharic (Amberber, Chap. 11); and lists in Swedish con-
versation between friends (Karlsson, Chap. 12).
Part II opens with Chap. 9 by Keith Allan, a primarily lexical-semantic analysis
(‘with interlaced pragmatic elements’) of three controversial and potential slurring
terms: bitch, cunt and nigger. Allan argues that, while the salient senses of these
terms are dysphemistic, they can all be used without being intended—or interpreted
—as a slur, since, like many similar slurs, they are sometimes adopted by people
who are potentially targeted in the insult and subverted to become markers of
ingroup solidarity. Therefore, according to Allan, the representation of the terms
bitch, cunt and nigger in a lexicon needs to be able to predict the probable intended
sense from among the potentially diverse interpretations according to the context of
use. Like the author of the preceding chapter, Allan chooses not to employ NSM,
but extends an invitation to Cliff Goddard to convert his model lexicon entries for
these three terms into NSM explications.
Chapter 10 by Radoslava Trnavac and Maite Taboada builds on their previous
work with Goddard (Taboada et al. 2017) which looked at the use of rhetorical
figures in the expression of negative evaluation. In contrast, this latest study
describes a preliminary typology of linguistic devices used for positive evaluation
in online news opinion articles and associated comments. Using corpus-assisted
analysis, the authors classify some of the resources that play a role in the expression
of positive evaluation into phenomena in the lexicogrammar and phenomena that
belong in discourse semantics, and compare those resources to the ones deployed
for negative evaluation, concluding that positive evaluations do not employ
rhetorical figures to the same extent as negative evaluations. Trnavac and Taboada
then use NSM to explicate ten evaluative adjectives that carry positive meaning,
which fit into the classification of adjectives previously described in Goddard et al.
(2019).
In Chap. 11, Mengistu Amberber examines the semantics of alienable posses-

sion in Amharic, responding to a recent proposal by Goddard and Wierzbicka
(2016b) that the primitive HAVE cannot capture the meaning of ‘true possession’
(‘ownership’) and that ‘true possession’ or ‘ownership’ is instead expressed by the
use of the semantic prime (IT) IS MINE. Amberber compares the (former) semantic
prime allə ‘have’ with English HAVE and with Amharic jəne nəw ‘it is mine’. He
shows how allə is more multifunctional than (IT) IS MINE, and how it cannot reliably
distinguish between true possession and other types of possessive relations, com-
pared with jəne nəw, which is consistently associated with true possession. The
chapter also examines the semantics of two sets of verbs that implicate alienable
possession: təbəddərə ‘borrow’/abəddərə ‘lend’, and wərrəsə ‘inherit’/awərrəsə
‘bequeath’.
The volume closes with Susanna Karlsson’s contribution (Chap. 12): a semantic
explication of three structurally different lists found in a corpus of naturally
occurring Swedish telephone conversations between friends. Karlsson combines
NSM and interactional linguistics to describe the different types of lists in Swedish
conversation. These differences are found in the position of the conjunction (one
precedes the listed item and one follows it), and in the prosody (one indicates a
closed set and one indicates an open set), resulting in three basic types. Karlsson’s
NSM explications illustrate how the list formats display the relationship between
the listed items differently, and how the speaker draws on these different formats to
display an interpersonal stance towards what the interlocutor can know or under-
stand about the list. It is fitting to end the volume with a chapter that demonstrates
how natural semantic metalanguage can in fact extend further than semantic
analysis: the author shows its clear applicability to interactional variation in syntax
and prosody.
2.9 Final Words
The editors would like to thank all the authors for their rich contributions to these
three volumes, all of which engage with various aspects of Cliff Goddard’s work (of
which there have been many over the years). Together, they advance scholarship
through their innovative engagement with natural semantic metalanguage and
ethnopragmatics, many incorporating additional methodologies and analytical tools.
The editors would also like to thank the authors for their discretion throughout the
duration of the project; we very much enjoyed working with them all and with each
other. Together we offer this collection of volumes to our good friend and col-
league, Cliff, in recognition of everything he has brought to the field, and to all of us
professionally and personally.
References
Bromhead, H. (2018). Landscape and culture—Cross-linguistic perspectives. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.9.
Bullock, D. (2011). NSM + LDOCE: A non-circular dictionary of English. International Journal
of Lexicography, 24(2), 226–240. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/ecq035.
Farese, G. M. (2018). The cultural semantics of address practices: A contrastive study between
English and Italian. Lanham: Lexington.
Goddard, C. (1979). Particles and illocutionary semantics. Paper in Linguistics, 12(1/2), 185–229.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08351817909370468.
Goddard, C. (1986). The natural semantics of too. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(5), 635–643. https://
doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(86)90018-4.
Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2006a). Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.
Goddard, C. (2006b). “Lift your game, Martina!”: Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics
of Australian English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in
cultural context (pp. 65–97). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/
9783110911114.65.
Goddard, C. (2008). Natural semantic metalanguage: The state of the art. In C. Goddard (Ed.),
Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 1–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/
slcs.102.05god.
Goddard, C. (2010). Cultural scripts: Applications to language teaching and intercultural
communication. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association), 3, 105–
119.
Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Goddard, C. (2013). The semantic roots and cultural grounding of ‘social cognition’. Australian
Journal of Linguistics, 33(3), 245–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2013.846454.
1016/j.langcom.2016.09.008.
Goddard, C. (2018a). Ten lectures on natural semantic metalanguage: Exploring language,
thought and culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/
9789004357723.
Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2018b). Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using
fewer words. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6.
Goddard, C. (2018c). Minimal English: The science behind it. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal
English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 29–70). Cham:
Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_3.
Goddard, C., & Cramer, R. (2017). “Laid back” and “irreverent”: An ethnopragmatic analysis of
two cultural themes in Australian English communication. In D. Carbaugh (Ed.), Handbook of
communication in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 89–103). London: Routledge.
Goddard, C., Taboada, M., & Trnavac, R. (2019). The semantics of evaluational adjectives:
Perspectives from Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Appraisal. Functions of Language, 26
(3) (in press).
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2004). Cultural scripts: What are they and what are they good for?
Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2), 153–166. https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.153.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2007). Semantic primes and cultural scripts in language learning
and intercultural communication. In F. Sharifian, & G. B. Palmer (Eds.), Applied cultural
linguistics: Implications for second language learning and intercultural communication
(pp. 105–124). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.7.08god.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2009). Contrastive semantics of physical activity verbs: ‘Cutting’
and ‘chopping’ in English, Polish, and Japanese. Language Sciences, 31(1), 60–96. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.langsci.2007.10.002.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains,
languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/
9780199668434.001.0001.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2016a). Explicating the English lexicon of “doing and
happening”. Functions of Language, 23(2), 214–256. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.23.2.03god.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2016b). ‘It’s mine!’: Rethinking the conceptual semantics of
“possession” through NSM. Language Sciences, 56, 93–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.
2016.03.002.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2018). Minimal English and how it can add to Global English.
In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using
fewer words (pp. 5–27). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-
6_2.
Goddard, C., & Ye, Z. (2015). Ethnopragmatics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of
language and culture (pp. 66–84). New York: Routledge.
Goddard, C., & Ye, Z. (Eds.). (2016). “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.84.
Hārābor, A. (2012). An enquiry into Romanian anger-like and happiness-like emotions. Master’s
thesis, Australian National University.
Harkins, J., & Wierzbicka, A. (Eds.). (2001). Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective. Berlin:
Hasada, R. (2008). Two virtuous emotions in Japanese: Nasake/joo and jihi. In C. Goddard (Ed.),
Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 331–347). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.
1075/slcs.102.20has.
Kim, H. (2008). The semantic and pragmatic analysis of South Korean and Australian English
apologetic speech acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(2), 257–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
pragma.2007.11.003.
Levisen, C. (2012). Cultural semantics and social cognition: A case study on the Danish universe
of meaning. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110294651.
Levisen, C., & Waters, S. (Eds.). (2017). Cultural keywords in discourse. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.277.
Peeters, B. (Ed.). (2006). Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical evidence from the
Romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.81.
Peeters, B. (Ed.). (2019). Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs.
New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315180670.
Peeters, B., & Marini, M. G. (2018). Narrative Medicine across languages and cultures: Using
Minimal English for increased comparability of patients’ narratives. In C. Goddard (Ed.),
Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 259–
286). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_11.
Sadow, L. (2018). Can cultural scripts be used for teaching interactional norms? Australian Review
of Applied Linguistics, 41(1), 91–116. https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.17030.sad.
Taboada, M., Trnavac, R., & Goddard, C. (2017). On being negative. Corpus Pragmatics, 1(1),
57–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-017-0006-y.
Wierzbicka, A. (1972). Semantic primitives. Frankfurt: Athenäum.
Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Lexicography and conceptual analysis. Ann Arbor: Karoma.
Wierzbicka, A. (1987). English speech act verbs. Sydney: Academic Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (1988). The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/
10.1075/slcs.18.
Wierzbicka, A. (1992). Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in
culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (1994). ‘Cultural scripts’: A new approach to the study of cross-cultural

communication. In M. Pütz (Ed.), Language contact and language conflict (pp. 69–87).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.71.04wei.
Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish,
German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (1999). Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (2004). ‘Happiness’ in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective. Daedalus,
133(2), 34–43. https://doi.org/10.1162/001152604323049370.
Wierzbicka, A. (2006). English: Meaning and culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195174748.001.0001.
Wierzbicka, A. (2013). Translatability and the scripting of other peoples’ souls. Australian Journal
of Anthropology, 24(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12018.
Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. New
York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199321490.001.0001.
Wierzbicka, A. (2017). The meaning of kinship terms: A developmental and cross-linguistic
perspective. In Z. Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 19–62). Oxford: Oxford University
Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0002.
Xue, W. (2016). The semantics of ‘uncle’-type kinship terms in Cantonese (Guangzhou) and
Teochew (Jieyang). Master’s thesis, Australian National University.
Ye, Z. (2004). Chinese categorization of interpersonal relationships and the cultural logic of
Chinese social interaction: An indigenous perspective. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2), 211–
230. https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.211.
Ye, Z. (2006). Why are there two ‘joy-like’ ‘basic’ emotions in Chinese? Semantic theory and
empirical findings. In P. Santangelo & D. Guida (Eds.), Love, hatred and other passions:
Questions and themes on emotions in Chinese civilisation (pp. 59–80). Leiden: Brill.
Ye, Z. (Ed.). (2017). The semantics of nouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.
1093/oso/9780198736721.001.0001.
Lauren Sadow is a sessional academic at the Australian National University, Canberra. Her main
research interests are teaching culture, interactional norms, cultural lexicography and cross-cultural
communication. Her Ph.D. thesis created an NSM-based dictionary titled The Australian
Dictionary of Invisible Culture for Teachers.
Kerry Mullan is Associate Professor and Convenor of Languages in the School of Global, Urban
and Social Studies at RMIT University. She teaches French language and culture, and
sociolinguistics. Her main research interests are cross-cultural communication and the differing
interactional styles of French and Australian English speakers. She also researches in the areas of
intercultural pragmatics, discourse analysis, language teaching and in humour in social
interactions. Her publications include Expressing opinions in French and Australian English
discourse: A semantic and interactional analysis (2010) and Cross-culturally speaking, speaking
cross-culturally (ed. with B. Peeters and C. Béal, 2013).
Part I
Ethnopragmatics
Chapter 3
Condolences in Cantonese and English:
What People Say and Why
John C. Wakefield, Winnie Chor and Nikko Lai
Abstract This study used the ethnopragmatics approach to examine the

cultural-based knowledge that guides Cantonese and Anglo-English speakers when
offering death-related condolences, or what we refer to here as ‘condolence routines’.
The data came from discourse completion tasks, the existence of cultural key phrases,
and the authors’ native-speaker intuitions. We examined condolences that are offered
to a good friend who has recently lost someone close to him or her. We present
cultural scripts that are proposed to account for the linguistic contrasts in Cantonese
versus English condolence routines. The Cantonese script is entirely new while the
English script is revised from a previous study. Based on our analysis, we conclude
that the primary contrast is that Anglo-English condolences typically focus on
expressing that the condoler feels sad because of the bereaved’s loss, while Cantonese
condolences typically focus on telling the bereaved not to be sad and to take care of
his-or herself. Knowledge of this contrast in sociopragmatics is not only a meaningful
contribution to the study of pragmatics; it is also of practical help to people in regular
contact with Cantonese and/or Anglo-English speakers. It can help one to understand
how to avoid saying something during a condolence routine that may sound inap-
propriate, or even insensitive, to speakers of these two languages.

Keywords Ethnopragmatics Condolences Condolence routines Cantonese

culture Cultural scripts Sociopragmatics
J. C. Wakefield (&)
Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
e-mail: johncw@hkbu.edu.hk
Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic

e-mail: john.wakefield@upol.cz
W. Chor
Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
e-mail: wowchor@hkbu.edu.hk
N. Lai
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong
e-mail: nikkolai@cuhk.edu.hk

36 J. C. Wakefield et al.
3.1 Introduction
The study reported in this chapter examined the sociopragmatic knowledge that guides
and influences the offering of death-related condolences in Cantonese and Anglo-English.
To do this we adopted the cultural scripts method (Wierzbicka 2003), or what is now
referred to as the ethnopragmatics approach (Goddard 2006; Goddard with Ye 2015). Our
study produced a cultural script written from the perspective of cultural insiders belonging
to the Cantonese languaculture. This was then contrasted with an Anglo-English coun-
terpart that is a revised version of the English script from Wakefield and Itakura (2017),
who contrasted English and Japanese condolences. The revisions to the English script are
based on our further analysis and on suggestions from the anonymous reviewers.
Death-related events are an inevitable part of life. At one time or another, we all
face the unfortunate experience of talking to someone whose friend or relative has
recently died. If both speaker and hearer belong to the same languaculture, the
language used in this situation is guided by a relatively fixed speech routine that has
developed over time within the speech community for the purpose of this specific
interaction. From here on, a ‘death-related condolence routine’ will be referred to as
a ‘condolence routine’.
The right words and actions do not come easily when carrying out the sensitive
speech act of condoling (Zunin and Zunin 1992; Elwood 2004; Williams 2006), but
this does not mean there are no cultural norms involved. People possess cultural
knowledge that informs what they should and should not say during a condolence
routine. With this in mind, our study is based on the following premises:
• There are (un)acceptable things to say when participating in a condolence
routine, and there are some things one ought to say;
• Different languacultures have different norms and beliefs regarding what is (un)
acceptable to say, and what one ought to say;
• These culture-specific differences can be captured and articulated in a way that is
speaker-oriented, and in terms that are culturally neutral.
Condolence routines differ from one speech community to the next. These differ-
ences stem from differing beliefs about death, about how people cope with the death of
another, and about the perceived role and responsibility of a condoler. As a result,
people who mourn someone’s death will expect and appreciate hearing different things
depending on their own cultural background and personal beliefs. Therefore, when we
are faced with the task of offering condolences to a bereaved from a different langua-
culture, we cannot assume that an appropriate condolence routine from our own lan-
guaculture will necessarily sound appropriate to the bereaved. If we get it wrong, it will
at best sound odd, and at worst insensitive or even offensive.
The number of studies examining condolence routines is small compared to what
has been written about other more commonly occurring speech acts such as com-
plimenting, requesting, refusing, etc. Many authors have looked at cross-cultural
contrasts in these speech acts in order to help language learners and cross-cultural
communicators perform them appropriately. The relative lack of studies on
3 Condolences in Cantonese and English … 37
condolences is understandable for several reasons, one of which is that it is com-

paratively difficult to collect linguistic data. Condolence routines are rare and,
because of their sensitive nature, naturally occurring data is difficult to record. In
some cultures, even discussing the topic may be taboo (Parkes 2015: 169), which
can make it difficult to collect data through interviews. In recent years, however, the
internet and social media have made it easier to collect written data, and the use of
such data to study condolences is growing. Del Campo Martínez (2012) looked at
online corpus data, Kongo and Gyasi (2015) analysed online portal posts, Murad
(2013) looked at emails, and Kuang (2015) studied SMS messages. As far as we
know, despite the increasing number of relevant studies, no study prior to this one
has examined condolences in Cantonese, and none besides Wakefield and Itakura
(2017) have examined condolences using the ethnopragmatics approach.
Since condoling is encountered less frequently than most other types of speech
acts, it may seem less important for language learners and cross-cultural commu-
nicators to learn. But its low frequency in real life means that it is harder to learn
through natural observation. Its delicate nature also means that it is riskier to learn
through trial and error; getting it wrong could have more serious consequences than
those related to other types of speech acts. Studies of condolence routines in dif-
ferent cultures are therefore worthwhile, not only for what they can tell us about
cultural differences, but also for their practical application.
The discussion proceeds as follows. The next section reviews previous studies
on offering condolences. Section 3.3 explains our methodology. Section 3.4 pre-
sents the data and discusses the key verbal elements included in Cantonese and
Anglo-English condolence routines. The cultural values and beliefs that we con-
clude to be behind this verbal behaviour are then articulated in the form of cultural
scripts. Finally, Sect. 3.5 offers a summary and conclusion about the key contrasts
between Anglo-English and Cantonese condolence routines.
3.2 Problems with Previous Studies
In our review of the literature on condolences, we noticed two recurring problems.

The first is that the ultimate goal of many studies was to describe condolence
routines in terms of a list of speech acts or strategies, or in terms of a list of
grammatical structures; while such list-like descriptions are helpful and informative,
we believe they are inadequate on their own for fully understanding the cultural
beliefs and values involved. The second problem we observed is that most authors
talk about culture-specific concepts, relationships, and/or scenarios as if they were
universal.
3.2.1 Condolence Routines as a List of Speech Acts

or Strategies
Condolences are typically described in terms of the frequency and order of speech
act types or strategies, often including a discussion of their functions. Williams
(2006), for example, divided the data she collected into three strategies that were
used by those who offered condolences to her: acknowledgement of sympathy (e.g.
‘I’m sorry’); question of concern (e.g. ‘Are you okay?’); and inquiry for infor-
mation (e.g. ‘Was it unexpected?’). Similarly, Elwood (2004) contrasted English
and Japanese condolences by listing and calculating the frequency of six different
speech acts: acknowledgement of the death; expression of sympathy; offer of
assistance; future-oriented remark; expression of concern; other. Lotfollahi and
Eslami-Rasekh (2011) later adopted Elwood’s method to analyse the differences
between English and Persian condolences. Kongo and Gyasi (2015) referred to their
unit of analysis as ‘moves’ rather than ‘speech acts’, but these were very similar to
the types of speech acts used by others, e.g. ‘acknowledging of [sic] the news’,
‘expression of sympathy’, etc.
Del Campo Martínez (2012) argued that the various speech acts used for con-
dolences can be accounted for by a ‘cognitive model of condolences’, which she
proposed as follows: (ibid.: 15):
• It is manifest to A that B is involved in a negative situation.
• A is unable to change the situation to B’s benefit.
• A feels sympathy about B’s misfortune.
• A makes this feeling manifest to B.
• B may accept A’s expression of sympathy.
Del Campo Martínez (2012) then discussed the pairing of linguistic construc-
tions (declarative, imperative, and interrogative) with expressions of this model’s
elements. We think that discussing condolences in terms of linguistic constructions
like this abstracts away from the culture-based values and beliefs that determine
what a condoler can and should say. Morady Moghaddam (2013) abstracted away
even further by collecting and analysing the use of interjections and intensifiers in
condolence routines, based on which she then contrasted English and Persian
condolences. It is hard for us to see how knowing the types and frequency of these
types of grammatical elements could help cultural outsiders understand condolences
from the perspective of cultural insiders. We think an analysis of speech acts is
more informative than an analysis of grammatical structures, but regardless, the
ultimate object of study should be the culture-specific beliefs that are the underlying
reason for the linguistic facts.
The speech acts used in condolence routines can be thought of as pragmemes in
the sense of Capone (2010: 5), who said that pragmemes are ‘speech acts in
context’ and are ‘utterance(s) associated with a goal’. We agree with Capone’s
assertion that pragmemes are ‘sensitive to social embedding’ (ibid.), and therefore
assume that the functions of speech acts are determined not only by the social
context of a give speech routine, but also by the languaculture at large within which
the routine is embedded. Analysing speech acts should therefore not be seen as a
research goal in its own right, but rather as a means of understanding the
culture-specific values and beliefs that lie behind the observed verbal behaviour.
Samavarchi and Allami’s (2012) stated goal of creating a taxonomy of the forms
used for offering condolences is therefore not, in our view, the correct approach.
Taxonomies provide examples of what to say, but they do not adequately (if at all)
explain why people say what they say, nor do they explain what sorts of things
would be inappropriate to say. Accurately describing the cultural values that guide
condolers’ verbal behaviour is the only way that cultural outsiders can truly
understand why condolers say what they do and is the only way that cross-cultural
comparisons can be meaningfully done. An important element of this approach is
the need to recognize which aspects of a given framework and analysis are
culture-specific, and then avoid treating them as if they are universal.
3.2.2 Mistaken Assumptions About Universality
Some authors examined condolence routines using theoretical frameworks that are
assumed by their creators and proponents to be universal in nature. Williams (2006)
and Meiners (2013, 2017), for example, adopted the theoretical framework of
linguistic politeness, which includes an independence-solidarity scale, and looks at
the variables of power- and social-distance between speakers and hearers. This
theory also considers whether statements support or threaten positive and negative
face, and the degrees of risk involved in performing specific speech acts in specific
contexts. We do not think this theory works for making valid cross-cultural com-
parisons because concepts such as independence-solidarity, power distance, and
social distance are not possible to discuss and analyse in ways that are universal.
Politeness theory is proposed to be a universal theory, but Goddard with Ye (2015:
81, note 1) explained that incorporating the concepts of positive and negative face
are problematic for contrastive studies: “Ironically ‘face’ started its career as a loan
translation from Chinese… but in Politeness Theory the concept of ‘negative face’
has morphed into a classically Anglo meme, ‘the desire to be free from imposi-
tion’”. In addition, it cannot be assumed that the degree (and type) of risk involved
with using a particular kind of utterance in a particular situation is the same across
cultures. The fact that Williams’ (2006) study involved a case of suicide also adds
another potential cross-cultural difference in what might be said to a bereaved by a
condoler.
The power- and-social distance variables that Williams (2006) looked at do of
course affect the verbal behaviour used in a condolence routine, but such variables
are hard to contrast cross-culturally because it is extremely difficult to manipulate
them in the same way across cultures. The parent–child and employer–employee
relationships, for example, are very different within different languacultures. We did
our best to control for this by using a similar relationship between the speaker and
hearer in both of our scenarios: ‘a good friend’ in English, and一個好朋友 (‘a good
friend’) in Cantonese. We recognize and readily admit that the concept of friendship
is different between these two cultures. However, this is true of all relationships, so
even with a speech routine like condoling, which exists in all cultures, it is probably
impossible to design a cross-cultural contrast with social variables that are identical
between two cultures. All that researchers can do is try to make the social variables
as similar as possible.
While we tried to control for any cross-cultural differences in the relationships
between the speaker/condoler and the hearer/bereaved, we did use different rela-
tionships between the bereaved and the deceased in an attempt to see how this will
affect what a condoler says. One scenario relates to the death of the bereaved’s
mother, and the other to the death of an uncle. One could talk about these different
relationships in terms of power- and social-distance, but that fails to account for the
unique ways in which Anglo-English and Cantonese culture view these relation-
ships. In addition, the Cantonese kinship term 叔叔 (‘uncle’ [lit.: father’s younger
brother]) was used, which is one of several different types of relations that have
been lexicalized in Cantonese to distinguish where an uncle lies with the family
social hierarchy, based on whether they are on the paternal or maternal side of the
family, and based on their age in relation to the parent. In addition, the scenario of
the mother states that the condoler knew her, while in the scenario of the uncle, he
is unknown to the condoler. Rather than seeing these as power- and social-distance
variables that can be contrasted between these two cultures, we see our study as a
test of if (and if so how) an Anglo-English condolence routine changes if the
deceased is a ‘known mother of the bereaved’ versus an ‘unknown uncle’.
Likewise, it was a test of if (and if so how) a Cantonese condolence routine changes
if the deceased is a ‘known mother of the bereaved’ versus an ‘unknown father’s
younger brother’.1 We do not assume that these relationships are seen in the same
way by members of both languacultures, and we do not see them in terms of the
abstract concept of ‘distance’, which we do not believe can be defined and con-
trolled for in a way that could be meaningfully contrasted cross-culturally.
Nevertheless, we do feel that there is something along the lines of psychological
closeness that is universal, and that a contrast in closeness exists in both cultures
between people and their mothers vs. their uncles.
The cognitive model shown above that was proposed by Del Campo Martínez
(2012: 22) was admittedly ‘preliminary’ and ‘incomplete’, but it appeared to be an
attempt at working towards a universal explanation for condolences, including
those that are not death-related. If that is indeed the case, we would argue that this is
an unachievable goal. Condolences can be given for a wide variety of
1
Even though there are five different lexical terms in Cantonese representing different types of
uncles, the second and third author do not believe that a different type of uncle would inherently
influence how the bereaved feels about an uncle’s death. They feel it is the psychological rela-
tionship that matters, and they would predict that under normal circumstances a Hong Kong
Cantonese condoler’s speech would not be influenced by which type of the condoler’s uncles has
died.
culture-specific reasons. Different types of ‘negative situations’ will be viewed

differently cross-culturally, and different cultures may or may not feel it is appro-
priate to express sympathy the same way for two different types of ‘negative
situations’. Meiners (2013, 2017), for example, found that her Spanish-speaking
and English-speaking participants offered similar forms of condolences about the
death of an uncle, but offered different types in relation to the hearer having a
headache. Another non-universal aspect of Del Campo Martínez’s (2012) cognitive
model is the phrase ‘expression of sympathy’, because the term sympathy is not
culturally neutral (Gladkova 2010), nor are the ways of expressing something along
the lines of sympathy. We therefore assume that cultural factors would influence the
second-to-last line of her model, i.e. the way in which someone from a given culture
‘makes this feeling manifest to’ the hearer. For example, Nakajima (2002) found
that her Japanese-speaking participants’ use of silence when expressing what she
referred to as empathy/sympathy was judged by her English-speaking participants
to be problematic and a source of misunderstanding. She also found that the English
speakers showed a positive correlation between the number of words used and the
seriousness of the situation, while there was a negative correlation for the Japanese
speakers.
To understand the expression of condolences within a given speech community,
we believe that carefully subdividing this speech routine into situation-based types
can work towards isolating the effects of different variables. Thus, condoling
someone who has lost a job will no doubt be different in all cultures from condoling
someone whose child has just died, but there may be fewer differences in some
cultures than in others. Even among death-related routines, there will be cultural
contrasts in how a condolence routine should be carried out for differing causes of
death, differing relationships, etc. We therefore argue that cross-cultural contrasts in
condoling should, to the extent possible, examine comparable types of death events
and interpersonal relationships among the deceased, the bereaved, and the condoler.
Morady Moghaddam (2013) collected condolence routines from 50 movies, half
English and half Persian. She said that using movies made ‘the comparison easier
and more similar’ (ibid.: 115). We agree that, because of the nature of condolence
routines, this way of collecting data is easier than collecting naturally occurring
data. However, we do not see this as producing data that is more similar across
cultures than data collected by other, more controlled means; there is no limit to the
types of contexts and situations that are created for movies.
According to Morady Moghaddam (2013: 109), the following four elements
affect what speakers and hearers say during a condolence routine:
1. The bereaved’s relationship to the deceased;
2. The speaker’s relationship with the bereaved;
3. The speaker’s relationship to the deceased;
4. What emotions the bereaved is experiencing.
While these elements do indeed affect what is said, the effect that each has on a
condolence routine will vary from culture to culture. In our own study, we include
elements one and three together (i.e. element one is mother vs uncle; element three
is known vs unknown), and our data shows that varying these relationships changes
how a condolence routine proceeds in both Cantonese and Anglo-English. We tried
to control for element two by stating a similar relationship (i.e. ‘a good friend’)
between the speaker and the bereaved for both of our scenarios in both English and
in Cantonese. We believe element four would be better worded as ‘emotions that
the bereaved is [perceived to be] experiencing’; again, there are innumerable cul-
turally based factors that will influence how a condoler perceives the experience of
a bereaved.
3.3 Methodology
3.3.1 The Ethnopragmatics Approach
Although Elwood’s (2004) focus was on exemplifying what is said rather than why,
she did speculate briefly on the cultural beliefs that may lie behind some of the
differences she found between English and Japanese condolence routines. In con-
trast, our study’s primary focus is on the cultural values and beliefs, and this is why
we adopted the ethnopragmatics approach (Goddard 2006; Goddard with Ye 2015),
which examines linguistic evidence in order to discover the culture-specific values
and beliefs of a given speech community, or languaculture. These values and beliefs
are then articulated in the form of speaker-oriented cultural scripts that are proposed
to be the cause of the speech community’s unique forms of verbal and non-verbal
behaviour—in our case, the verbal behaviour used in condolence routines. All types
of linguistic data relating to whichever culture-specific values one wishes to
examine can be used as a form of evidence for developing cultural scripts. For the
present study, we collected data from a discourse completion task (DCT), examined
cultural key phrases, and drew upon the native-speaker intuitions, and experiences
of the authors. Related to this final point, Goddard with Ye (2015: 66) said the
ethnopragmatics approach ‘also takes heed of the ‘soft data’ of anecdotal accounts,
life writing, etc. of cultural insiders themselves’.
It is worth noting that while linguistic data are used as evidence for developing
cultural scripts, the resulting scripts are then proposed to explain the existence of
the data used to create them. Any mismatch between data and scripts is dealt with
by modifying the scripts, which may be required after re-evaluation of the linguistic
data and/or collection of additional material. The scripts presented in this chapter
represent the current version of our proposal regarding the cultural values under
discussion. Other linguists and/or native speakers of English or Cantonese are
encouraged to propose amendments (additions, modifications) of the scripts.
Non-specialist native speakers are qualified to comment on the scripts because they
are written in simple terms, from the perspective of cultural insiders, using maxi-
mally universal, culturally neutral semantic primes. The semantic primes and their
combinatorial grammar are referred to as the natural semantic metalanguage (for

details, see Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard 2008, 2011).
3.3.2 Data and Analysis
The Cantonese DCT was distributed to 34 native-Cantonese speaking respondents

(20 male; 14 female) aged between 18 and 23. All were university students in Hong
Kong. As far as we know, this study is the first to collect data relating to Cantonese
condolences. The English data, taken from Wakefield and Itakura (2017), are from a
group of 22 native speakers of Anglo-English. The English-speaking participants
were all university students (10 male; 12 female) who spoke some variety of stan-
dard Anglo-English as their first language. Their ages ranged between 19 and 25.
They were from Hong Kong (9); USA (6); UK (4); Australia (1); and New Zealand
(1). All had attended English-medium schools and used English as their main lan-
guage of communication among friends at least from primary school onward. In
Hong Kong, the university-aged native-English-speaking community includes
speakers of different varieties of Anglo-English, with American, British, and
Australian being the most common. It is worth noting that the results of the English
data collected by Wakefield and Itakura were very similar to the American English
data described in Elwood (2004) in relation to the death of a grandmother, indicating
that Anglo-English culture is quite similar worldwide regarding the pragmatic
knowledge that guides what people say when performing condolence routines.
The two DCT scenarios used for this study were taken from Wakefield and
Itakura (2017) and translated as directly as possible from English into Cantonese.
They are as follows:
Situation 1:—個好朋友同你講佢嘅叔叔兩日前死咗。你從未見過你朋友嘅叔
叔,而你朋友之前從來冇跟你提及過呢位叔叔。你會如何回應呢?請以廣東話
(粵語)回答。
‘A good friend tells you that his/her uncle died two days ago. You have never met
your friend’s uncle, and your friend has never said anything to you about this uncle
before. You then say: …’
Situation 2: 你見到一個幾日冇見嘅好朋友。你問起佢最近點,佢話:「唔係幾
好。我媽媽啱啱過咗身。」你同佢媽媽有傾過幾次計,佢亦對你好有善。你
會如何回應呢?請以廣東話(粵語)回答。
You see a good friend who you haven’t seen for a few days. You ask how he/she is
doing and he/she says, ‘Not very well. My mother just passed away.’ You had seen
and spoken to your friend’s mother a few times and she was very nice to you. You
say:
The contrasting variables between the two scenarios were explained in
Sect. 3.2.2.
3.4 Cultural Scripts for Death-Related Condolence

Routines
In this section, we first describe the data in terms of the use and frequency of a
number of speech acts, or pragmemes in the sense of Capone (2010: 5). The types
of pragmemes we chose for labelling the data come from Elwood (2004) and
Williams (2006), plus a new type that we call ‘speaking for the deceased’.
A cultural script related to Cantonese condolences is then proposed in Sect. 3.4.1,
based on our conclusions about the data and guided by the native-speaker intuitions
of the second and third author. Following that, Sect. 3.4.2 presents a revised version
of Wakefield and Itakura’s (2017) script related to Anglo-English condolence
routines.
Table 3.1 lists the seven types of pragmemes that were used for categorizing the
data. The four columns in the middle show the percentage of English and Cantonese
participants who used a given pragmeme in their condolence routines for both the
uncle scenario (U) and the mother scenario (M). The far-left column lists the
pragmemes in italics and provides English examples from the data in parentheses.
The far-right column gives examples from the Cantonese data, with English
translations in parentheses. The most obvious contrasts are seen in the much greater
use of expressions of sympathy by English speakers and in the exclusive use of
future-oriented remarks and speaking for the deceased by Cantonese speakers.
While these quantitative results are interesting and informative, a qualitative dis-
cussion and analysis of each pragmeme are essential for a correct understanding of
the values and beliefs that underpin these differences; the native-speaker intuition of
the authors contributes to this qualitative analysis, which immediately follows the
table.
• Pragmeme 1: Interjection of negative emotion
It is beyond the scope of this study to describe every interjection found in the data.
Something worth noting about them in general, however, is the similarity of their
use in both languages. Every time an interjection of negative emotion was used, it
initiated the act of condoling. We conclude that its function is to express the
condoler’s sense of surprise and of feeling bad about the news, as well as to set the
mood for expressing what the condoler says next. In line with this, Wierzbicka
(2003: 243) said that interjections:
typically combine with other utterances into larger wholes, and since their illocutionary
force must be compatible with that of the co-utterance, they often serve as important clues
identifying the illocutionary force of the combined utterance as a whole.
Wierzbicka also said interjections have ‘their own illocutionary force, which can be
described in terms of components such as “I feel X”…’ (ibid.). As such, the
interjections in the data are assumed to be meaningful expressions of emotion that
are uttered immediately after hearing about the death of the bereaved’s loved one.
Table 3.1 Percentage of participants who used a given type of pragmeme in their condolences
Speech act/pragmeme (English English Cantonese Cantonese examples
examples) U M U M
(%) (%) (%) (%)
Interjections of negative emotion 50 27 26 35 “哎啊!” (‘Oh no!’); “唉。” (‘Aw.’);
(‘Oh no.’; ‘Oh my God.’; ‘Wow.’) “吓?” (‘Huh?’)
Expression of sympathy 95 86 3 12 “我都替你感到傷心。” (‘I feel sad for
(‘I’m so sorry.’; ‘I’m very sorry to hear you.’); “佢走咗我都傷心。” (‘I’m
about your loss.’) also sad that she passed.’)
Offer of assistance 32 82 6 29 “你想可以同我傾下架!” (‘If you want
(‘Please let me know if there is to, you can talk to me!’); “有咩可以搵
anything I can do to help.’; ‘You know 我幫手。” (‘If there’s anything, you
where I am if you need to talk.’) can come to me for help.’)
Expression/question of concern 56 27 26 3 “你依家覺得點?” (‘How do you feel
(‘Are you okay?’; ‘How are you now?’); “依家心情點?” (‘How is your
feeling?’; ‘I hope you’re doing okay.’) mood?’)
Related question 18 5 18 21 “發生咩事?” (‘What happened?’); “去
(‘Were you close with your uncle?’; 得安唔安落?” (‘Did he pass
‘Were you close to him?’) peacefully?’); “啲身後事攪成點?”
(‘How are the post-death arrangements
going?’)
Future-oriented remark 0 0 65 44 “ 哀順變。” (fixed expression:
(no examples) ‘restrain your grief; accept the
change’); “唔好唔開心啦。” (‘Don’t
be sad.’)
Speaking for the deceased 0 0 9 12 “你叔叔都唔想你因為佢唔開心。”
(no examples) (‘Your uncle doesn’t want you to be
sad because of him.’); “你啊媽都唔想
你咁唔開心。” (‘Your mom doesn’t
want you to be so sad.’)
U uncle; M mother
Goddard (2014: 58) defined one of the interjections found in the Cantonese data
as in [A]:
[A] 哎啊!(Ai1jaa3!)
I think like this: ‘something is happening’
I didn’t think before that it will be like this
I don’t want it to be like this
I feel something bad because of this
If we take the ‘something is happening’ to refer to the act of the bereaved saying
someone has died, then the meaning expressed by this interjection is an appropriate
response to hearing the news of someone’s death. We believe this meaning is
related to what is expressed by English’s ‘Oh no!’, which was an interjection of
negative emotion found in our English data. Another pair of counterparts seen in the
data were English’s ‘What?!’ and the similarly meaning “吓!” of Cantonese. These
each express both a sense of surprise and a sense that this information is bad.
It is not the interjections themselves that show a distinction between English and
Cantonese condolences, but rather what follows them: in English, an interjection of
negative emotion is usually followed by an expression of sympathy (e.g. ‘I’m
(so) sorry’); in stark contrast, only one of the Cantonese participants followed an
interjection with an expression of sympathy. The most frequent type of pragmeme
to follow an interjection in Cantonese was future-oriented remarks, which are
discussed below. We conclude that this contrast between the expressions of sym-
pathy versus future-oriented remarks is the key difference between English and
Cantonese condolence routines.
• Pragmeme 2: Expression of sympathy
Few of the Cantonese participants used an expression of sympathy. This contrasts
with English condolences that virtually always included some version of ‘I’m
(so/very) sorry’, which expresses the older sense of the word sorry meaning ‘sor-
rowful’, rather than using it to apologize. Interestingly, Cantonese responses to
situation two included two tokens of “唔好意思啊” ‘I’m sorry’ and one of “對唔住
啊” ‘I’m sorry’, both of which translate into English as the apologetic version of
‘I’m sorry’. Two of these were followed by statements indicating that the speaker
was sorry for bringing up a sad topic, presumably because situation two states that
the speaker started the conversation by asking how the bereaved is doing.
Apparently, these three participants felt that this question caused the bereaved to
talk about his/her mother’s death and therefore warranted an apology. These
apologies did not seem very natural to the second and third author, and we therefore
did not judge such apologies to be a core component of Cantonese condolence
routines, and as such do not account for them in our cultural script.2
• Pragmeme 3: Offer of assistance
For both languages, there were more offers of assistance in the scenario related to
the deceased mother than the one related to the deceased uncle. We were not
surprised by this. Presumably, a condoler will assume that a bereaved person feels a
greater sense of loss and sadness when losing a mother than when losing an uncle
(under normal circumstances) and the bereaved will therefore be more likely to
need help. This is related to how close the bereaved is assumed to have been with
the deceased (see Sect. 3.4.1 for a discussion of closeness). Although this contrast
between the mother and uncle scenarios was seen in both the English and
Cantonese data, the overall number of offers of assistance was greater for English
than for Cantonese. Whether or not this is a meaningful contrast is left for future
research.
2
There has been a great deal of contact with English in Hong Kong. It is therefore possible that
these uses of ‘I’m sorry’ found in the Cantonese data are an influence from English condolences
based on a misinterpretation of it as an apology rather than an expression of sorrow.
• Pragmeme 4: Expression/question of concern

In the Cantonese data, all of these were questions, but in the English data they were
a mix of both questions and expressions (e.g. both ‘Are you okay?’ and ‘I hope
you’re doing okay’). Here again, the Cantonese data is somewhat comparable to the
English data. In both cases the expressions/questions of concern appeared more
often in the scenario related to the death of the uncle. At first, this may seem odd,
but it makes sense that a person’s relationship to an uncle will normally be less
clear, and this would therefore elicit an assessment of how the bereaved is doing.
This is presumably done to determine how the condolence routine should proceed.
• Pragmeme 5: Related question
A related question refers to any question about the deceased, about the death event,
or about funeral proceedings. We interpreted the asking of a related question as
having the function of eliciting information that is relevant to determining how the
condolence routine ought to proceed. One weakness of using a DCT to collect data
is that these questions are not answered and there is therefore no data to verify how
the answers to these questions influence how a condoler proceeds with the rest of
the routine. Nevertheless, the types of questions asked can be seen as an indicator of
what types of information are considered culturally important.
In the English data related to the death of the uncle (i.e. situation one), each
token of a related question related to whether the bereaved was close to the uncle.
No English participant asked this question about the mother; presumably this is
because a high degree of closeness can be assumed. The one token of a related
question in the English data in relation to the death of the mother asked what
happened. These questions seem to indicate that if the bereaved was closer to the
deceased, or if the death was unexpected, then the degree of one’s expression of
sorrow ought to increase.
In the Cantonese data, four of the seven questions about the death of the uncle
asked something along the lines of how close the bereaved was to him, indicating
that closeness is also important information for Cantonese condolence routines, but
we believe this is so that the speaker will know how strongly to offer future-oriented
remarks, rather than for knowing how strongly to express one’s sorrow. As in the
English data, and assumedly for the same reason, nobody asked about the
bereaved’s closeness to the mother.
A fully representative sampling of the questions about the uncle and mother that
were not about closeness is as follows: “幾時嘅事?” ‘When did this happen?’,
“點解咁突然嘅?” ‘Why so sudden?’, “發生咗咩事?” ‘What happened?’, “去得安
唔安樂?” ‘Did he go peacefully?’, and “啲身後事攪成點?” ‘How are the funeral
[lit.: post-life] arrangements coming along?’. This indicates that the nature of the
death is important in Cantonese culture, as is knowing whether the often very
elaborate Cantonese funeral arrangements are going smoothly (see Sect. 3.4.2).
A violent or unexpected death, or problems in making sure the deceased passes
smoothly on to the next phase of existence would likely cause the bereaved to be
especially sad and troubled and would indicate that more emphatic future-oriented
remarks would be appropriate in the offering of condolences.
• Pragmeme 6: Future-oriented remark
There is a stark contrast here between English and Cantonese, with none of the
English speakers using a future-oriented remark for either situation.
A future-oriented remark is typically an imperative that tells the bereaved not to be
sad, or to take care of him-or herself. This is referred to as a future-oriented remark
because it expresses a desired change of state from how the bereaved is now to how
the bereaved should become in the future (i.e. after now). One participant wrote:
“你唔好咁傷心。最緊要你要好好生活。” ‘Don’t be so heartbroken. The
most important thing is for you to be [lit.: live] well’. It is worth noting here also
that none of Elwood’s (2004) 25 American English-speaking university student
participants included any future-oriented remarks. In contrast, 44% of her 25
Japanese participants did include this pragmeme, causing Elwood to conclude that
this is one of the key differences between English and Japanese condolences. She
said (ibid.: 68) that it ‘is likely that Americans feel that [it] is callous to ask a
bereaved person to put aside their sorrow while Japanese may feel that it’s kind to
encourage those who are grieving to look ahead’. We conclude something similar
about the contrast between English and Cantonese condolences.
• Pragmeme 7: Speaking for the deceased
In each case where the pragmeme speaking for the deceased appeared, it was used
as an indirect way of expressing a future-oriented remark. We therefore conclude
that this pragmeme has the same function as a future-oriented remark. As such, it is
not surprising that this pragmeme also did not appear in the English data. More is
said about speaking for the deceased in Sect. 3.4.2.
3.4.1 A Close Person
Based on the data, we concluded that the bereaved’s degree of closeness to the
deceased influences condolence routines in both English and Cantonese. To represent
this concept, we adopt the term close and use the explication in [B] of close person,
some of which is adapted from a portion of Wierzbicka’s (1996: 50–52) explication of
friend and some of which was suggested by an anonymous reviewer. See Goddard
(2016) for details of the semantic molecule know included in the explication.
[B] close person
I know [m] this someone well
this someone knows [m] me well
when I am with this someone, I feel something good
when I think about this someone, I feel something good
I think this someone feels the same
We tentatively propose that ‘close person’ is a concept that works for both
Cantonese and English speakers. The Cantonese adjective 親 ‘close’ is used to
describe the relationship between two people and has a meaning that is closely
related the meaning of the English word close. We think that the Cantonese phrase
同一個人親 ‘to be close with someone’ entails the meaning of ‘close person’ as
defined above. Traditionally 親 only referred to kin relations and was always
considered to be an integral part of the relationship, regardless of how the two kin
felt about each other. However, its meaning appears to have changed for most Hong
Kong Cantonese speakers, and a sentence like this seems to be acceptable for most
people: 佢雖然係我大佬, 但係其實大家都唔係好親嘅啫 ‘Even though he’s my
(older) brother, we actually aren’t very close (親)’. In the data, one participant
asked the question同你親唔親? ‘Was (your uncle) close (親) with you?’. Again,
this implies an understanding that it is possible to be (or not to be) 親 with an uncle.
In addition to this, 親is starting to be used to describe non-kin relations.
The four Cantonese questions that asked about the bereaved’s relationship with
the uncle included the following: 好感情 ‘good feelings’ towards each other; 好關
係 ‘good relationship’ with each other; 親 ‘close’ with each other; and a borrowing
of the English word close. These either entail the meaning of ‘close’ or they refer to
the good feelings that are part of the definition given for close person above. We
think that 親 is the most direct counterpart to close and therefore use close and 親 as
semantic molecules in our cultural scripts in the following two sections. We do not
mean to imply that they are equivalents, but rather that they have an overlapping
semantic component as explicated for ‘close’ above, and that this component is
what is referred to in condolence routines. The concept ‘close’/親 can be modified
as ‘very close’/好親 by changing well and good to very well and very good in the
first four lines of the explication of close person above.
3.4.2 Cantonese
The fixed Chinese expression 哀順變 ‘restrain your grief; accept the change’ is a
cultural key phrase used in Cantonese condolence routines (as well as other Chinese
dialects). If a Cantonese speaker is asked what one should say when offering
death-related condolences, this expression would always be considered appropriate,
and the most readily recommended. It is important to note that it is not an
expression of sympathy. In essence, it tells the bereaved not to be too sad and to
accept the death of the loved one. Other common future-oriented remarks are in the
form of imperatives that tell the bereaved: “唔好唔開心啦!” ‘Don’t be sad!’; “你唔
好咁傷心” ‘Don’t be so broken-hearted’. These types of suggestions are sometimes
indirectly conveyed to the bereaved on behalf of the deceased: “你阿媽都唔想你
咁唔開心” ‘Your mom doesn’t want you to be so sad’. The implication of this is
that the primary role of a condoler is to encourage the bereaved not to be so

overwhelmed by grief that he or she cannot function or take care of his-or herself.
In Cantonese culture, telling the bereaved not to be sad is interpreted as an
expression of concern. In Anglo-English culture, in contrast, it would likely seem
insensitive to imply that one should (and could) so quickly work towards not
feeling grieved about the death. However, when people grieve too much for too
long a period of time, it would be considered acceptable in Anglo-English culture
for very close friends or relatives to tell mourners that they should now work to get
over their grief and take care of themselves, and it would be common to speak on
behalf of the dead in such cases, though this would normally be done in the
conditional: e.g. ‘Your mom would want you to get on with your life’. It appears
that a key contrast is that in Cantonese culture, it is assumed that mourners will
immediately be overwhelmed with grief to the point that condolers believe they
should use these kinds of future-oriented remarks directly after the death event. The
contrast discussed in this chapter is therefore one that relates only to what is said a
very short time after the death event has occurred. At this time, future-oriented
remarks are appropriate in Cantonese, but not in English.
Evidence for the assumption that mourners are overwhelmed with grief comes
from the traditional methods of mourning in Cantonese culture. The first and third
authors have attended several traditional funerals where the surviving family
members participate in professionally conducted, elaborate funeral rites that last
three days and two nights, during which they eat limited amounts of food, get
limited amounts of sleep, and cry and wail repeatedly (cf. Watson 2004). Most
funerals are not this rigorous today, and even what we have described here is less so
than funerals of the past. Nevertheless, it is understandable based on this back-
ground that Cantonese culture assumes the health of surviving family members will
inevitably suffer tremendously, and that one should, therefore, exhort a bereaved
person not to be so sad and to take care of one’s self. We believe this historical
background is the source of the future-oriented remarks.
Speaking for the deceased is often used as a means of making these
future-oriented remarks. These remarks are worded in a way that implies the
deceased is still alive—something that is understandable in Cantonese culture. Tien
(2017: 187) proposed the cultural script in [C] to express what he referred to as a
Chinese folk attitude of people continuing to live after they die:
[C] People go on living when they pass away
many people think like this when someone dies
it can be like this:
this someone is alive
this someone is not in this place
Related to this, Tseng (2017: 260) referred to the Chinese saying 往生, which is
said to refer to someone having died, but it literally means ‘to head towards rebirth’.
Tseng said that ‘[a]lthough death is universally regarded as the end of a life journey,
it is conceptualized in Chinese culture as the beginning of a new journey as well’
(ibid.), and thus Chinese believe, or are culturally guided to speak as if, the
deceased is still living.
Based on the data and our analysis, we conclude that a typical Cantonese speaker
will be guided by the following beliefs when offering condolences:
1. A condoler should assume that the bereaved is overwhelmed with grief and that
this can be bad for his or her wellbeing and health.
2. Because of 1, a condoler ought to tell the bereaved not to be sad and to accept
what has happened. These things are said to a greater or lesser degree in relation
to the amount of grief.
3. The amount of grief is assumed to be positively correlated with: the bereaved’s
degree of closeness to the deceased; the degree to which the death was unex-
pected or unnatural; the degree to which funeral proceedings are not proceeding
smoothly. A condoler can, therefore, ask questions about these things (as nec-
essary and as appropriate) to assess the degree of grief.
4. If the condoler knew the deceased, it is good to say something nice about them.
5. If the condoler is close with the bereaved, and if the bereaved is assumed to be
especially sad, it is good to offer to help the bereaved, to accompany the
bereaved, or to speak with the bereaved.
The script in [D] is our proposal for a cultural script, written from the perspective
of a condoler, that guides the offering of death-related condolences in Cantonese.
We did not discuss item 4 as a pragmeme above, but examples of complimenting
the deceased were seen in both Cantonese and English. Tien (2017: 184) quoted the
Chinese saying 死者為大 ‘The deceased are held in high esteem’, and said it
implies that deceased relatives in Chinese culture have an elevated status in the
family social hierarchy. This, in addition to having known them in life, can make a
condoler feel they should say good things about the deceased. The well-known
English expression Don’t speak ill of the dead also likely represents a cultural
artefact that combines with a condoler having known the deceased and causes them
to make complimentary remarks. Because we saw compliments directed towards
the deceased in both sets of data, and because we believe this is a natural and
common component of condolence routines based on our own experiences, we
include this as a component of both scripts.
The portions not shown in italics are common between the Cantonese script and
its English counterpart shown in [E] in Sect. 3.4.3; the portions shown in italics are
unique to each script, illustrating how the two languacultures contrast.
[D] Cantonese script on offering condolences:
Most of this script overlaps with the script for English condolences in [E]. This may
seem like a strong claim, but it should not be too surprising that similar beliefs and
speech acts exist in relation to the universal experience of death, even for unrelated
languages. The unique part of the Cantonese script is seen in (b) and in the last
portion of (c). (b) expresses a Cantonese speaker’s focus on the health and well-
being of the bereaved, and on what the condoler feels he or she ought to say
accordingly. (c) represents the types of things that may increase the degree of grief,
and that would therefore cause a condoler to emphasize the key element of the
condolence routine, which in the case of Cantonese culture would be an increased
expression of concern for the bereaved, i.e. (b). Factors that may increase the degree
of grief are: closeness to the deceased; the degree to which the death was expected;
and how the funeral arrangements are proceeding. English speakers consider the
first two of these to correlate with the degree of grief, but under normal
circumstances do not typically express concern for how funeral arrangements are
proceeding. This is therefore not included in component (c) of script [E] below. We
believe it should be included as part of component (c) in [D] because, in traditional
Cantonese culture, proper, smooth, and complete post-death arrangements are seen
as essential to helping deceased people move on to the next stage of their existence.
If these things are not done properly, it can result in an unhappy and angry spirit
that can potentially cause serious problems for the surviving family members.
Watson (2004: 326) said the following about this:
During the funeral there is a preoccupation with complex ritual forms, with performing the
rites properly so that the spirit of the recently dead will not become a threat to the living.
Everyone dies and every death produces a potentially dangerous spirit. Funeral rites are
concerned with converting this volatile spirit into a tamed and domesticated ancestor.
Many Hong Kong Cantonese no longer hold these beliefs strongly, if at all, but the
offering of condolences within the speech community at large still appears to
include an implicit expression of a concern for how the ‘funeral rites’ are pro-
ceeding, even among those who do not believe this can potentially cause great harm
to the surviving family members.
The contrasting script for English is now shown in the following section.
3.4.3 English
An English speaker will be guided by the following beliefs when offering condo-
lences (see Wakefield and Itakura (2017) for a detailed explanation of this list):
1. A condoler must make the bereaved know that he or she (the condoler) feels bad
—it is bad if the bereaved does not believe that the condoler truly feels bad.
2. The degree of sorrow that ought to be expressed increases with the amount of
grief felt by the bereaved. The amount of grief is assumed to be positively
correlated with: the bereaved’s degree of closeness to the deceased, and the
degree to which the death was unexpected. The condoler can, therefore, ask
questions about these things to assess the degree of grief.
3. If the condoler knew the deceased, it is good if he or she says something good
about the deceased. The closer the condoler was to the deceased, or the more he
or she knew about the deceased, the more he or she will feel that he or she
should say something good about the deceased.
4. It is good if a condoler offers to help the bereaved, especially if the degree of
grief is great.
The script in [E] is our proposal for a cultural script, written from the perspective
of a condoler that guides the offering of death-related condolences in English.
[E] Anglo-English script on offering condolences
The two scripts are discussed and contrasted in the following section.
3.5 Summary and Conclusions
Based on the data and on our native-speaker intuitions, we conclude that the key
difference between condolence routines in Cantonese versus English is a contrast in
the purpose and focus of the routine. For Cantonese, the focus is on expressing concern
for the health and wellbeing of the bereaved (see component (b) in script [D]), while in
English, the focus is on expressing sorrow for the bereaved’s loss (see component
(b) in script [E]). In both languacultures, it is acceptable to ask about the things that are
considered to have an influence on the bereaved’s degree of grief. The degree of the
bereaved’s closeness to the deceased and the degree of unexpectedness of the death are
considered to positively correlate with the degree of grief in both English and
Cantonese. The Cantonese script includes in its component (c) an additional element
related to the funeral arrangements. Although difficulty with post-death arrangements
would presumably affect the degree of grief in both languacultures, this is a much more
typical concern among Cantonese speakers because of the traditional complications
involved with ensuring that all the funeral arrangements are done properly, and the
potential for negative consequences (at least historically) if they are not. Our con-
clusion is that the only differences between the two culture’s scripts on condolence
routines are in component (b) of scripts [D] and [E], and in the last portion of com-
ponent (c) of script [D].3
Perhaps the strongest claim is that there is so much in common between two
scripts that represent such different languacultures. Evidence for this comes from the
similarities in the data. It appears that the things that were written in the DCTs in
relation to those portions of the scripts that overlap (i.e. the portions not shown in
italics) could virtually be exchanged for each other. The similarity of the data related
to ‘close’ and its Cantonese counterpart 親was illustrated above. Two examples of
Cantonese data relating to the expectedness of the death were “發生咩事?” ‘What
happened? and “你叔叔因咩嘢事過身呀?” ‘Why did your Uncle pass away?’. The
translation of the first question was included in the English data and the translation of
the second would be appropriate to ask. Moving on to compliments, represented in
both scripts by component (d), Cantonese participants wrote “伯母咁好人都” ‘Your
mom (lit.: Auntie) was such a good person’ and “阿姨佢咁好人, 點解係佢離開架?
真係太唔公平啦” ‘Your mom (lit.: Auntie), she was such a good person. Why did
she go? That’s so unfair’. The translations of these would be appropriate to say in
English, and the English data included ‘She was a wonderful woman’ and ‘I loved
your mom, she was so nice’. While certain aspects of the compliments do not readily
translate, such as referring to one’s mother as ‘Auntie’ or saying ‘I loved your mom’,
the script says ‘it is good if I say something good about him/her’; the ‘something
good’ that is said will of course include culture-specific elements.
Related to the offering of assistance, represented in both scripts by component
(e), Cantonese participants wrote “你有咩需要幫手,即管出聲” ‘If you need any-
thing, don’t hesitate to say so’ and “有冇啲咩可以幫到你?” ‘Is there anything I
can help you with?’. Again, the translations of these would be perfectly acceptable
things to say in English, and these examples from the English data would be
perfectly acceptable if translated directly into Cantonese: ‘Is there anything I can do
to help?’ and ‘Let me know if there’s anything you need’. The final similarity
relates to component (f) in both scripts, and again the data is interchangeable
between the two languages. The Cantonese data included “要人陪你就搵我啦”
‘Come find me if you need someone to be with’ and 如果你想分享多啲,我願意聽
你嘅 ‘If you want to share, I’m willing to listen’, and these are very similar to this
typical example from the English data: ‘Let me know if you ever need to talk or if
you want some company’.
Unlike all these similarities, the Cantonese data related to component (b) and the
third part of component (c) in script [D] does not have counterparts in the English
data. This is what one would predict since these are the portions of the Cantonese
script that are not shared with English script. The portion of the English script that
3
We recognize that our scripts do not represent a comprehensive contrast: cultural scripts that
addressed all possible contexts and socio-cultural variables would no doubt include much more
than what we show in [D] and [E], but we do believe that these scripts capture what are arguably
the most prominent cultural differences.
is different from the Cantonese is in component (b). In this case, there is some
Cantonese data that relates to it. For example, one participant wrote “聽到呢個消
息我都好難過” ‘I am very sad to hear this news’. The difference in this case is not
that it is inappropriate for the condoler to express that he or she feels something
bad, rather it is that in the case of Anglo-English culture, it is important to the point
of virtually being essential. This is why the script says the condoler ‘cannot not say
I feel something (very) bad’, and this is why Table 3.1 shows a large discrepancy
between the percentage of expressions of sympathy between the English and
Cantonese sets of data.
Our hypothesized scripts indicate that a large number of death-related beliefs and
values are shared between these two very different cultures. At the same time,
however, the role of the condoler is quite different, causing condolers to say sig-
nificantly different things. The script in [D] can help English speakers understand
why saying ‘Don’t be sad’ is an appropriate offering of condolences in Cantonese,
even though it would likely sound inappropriate in English. This relates to
Samavarchi and Allami (2012: 74), who collected condolence data from
Persian EFL learners and said that a ‘non-native English teacher’s response was
“It’s life. Today is her turn, tomorrow mine, and after that yours.”…’ They said
‘native-English speakers [concluded that] these responses were quite insensitive’
(ibid.). This illustrates the practical need for understanding the cultural values that
lie behind condolence routines, and perhaps if the native-English-speaking partic-
ipants of that study had first read a Persian cultural script related to condolences,
they would not have considered this kind of response to be insensitive.
While sociopragmatic knowledge does not determine precisely what must be
said in every context, it works as a guideline for knowing what kinds of things are
(in)appropriate to say. Rather than reciting memorized examples of things people
often say when condoling another, which may or may not come across as natural,4
understanding the values and beliefs behind offering condolences can allow cultural
outsiders to be more authentic and to use their own ways of expressing condolences
in a way that does not conflict with the host culture’s practices and values. In the
words of Morady Moghaddam (2013: 108), ‘by understanding the cultural back-
ground and the belief system of the bereaved, one can express condolences in an
appropriate way’.
Acknowledgements We thank Angie Wakefield for distributing the English DCTs, as well as all
the participants who filled out the DCTs. We appreciate the helpful comments from Mona Law and
Maurice Kong on the Cantonese word 親 ‘close’. We are very grateful for comments from the
anonymous reviewers. Any faults that remain are our own. This work was supported by the
European Regional Development Fund Sinophone Borderlands—Interaction at the
Edges CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000791.
4
Elwood (2004: 55), for example, said that some of her English-speaking Japanese informants
used a response that was inappropriately formal for a verbal offering of condolences: ‘Please
accept my condolences’. She speculated that it is a phrase they had learned from the classroom or a
textbook.
References
Capone, A. (2010). On pragmemes again: Dealing with death. La Linguistique, 46(2), 3–21.
https://doi.org/10.3917/ling.462.0003.
Del Campo, Martínez N. (2012). A constructional approach to condolences. Journal of English
Studies, 10, 7–24. https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.178.
Elwood, K. (2004). “I’m so sorry”: A cross-cultural analysis of expressions of condolence. 文化論
集 [The Cultural Review], 24, 49–74.
Gladkova, A. (2010). Sympathy, compassion, and empathy in English and Russian: A linguistic
and cultural analysis. Culture and Psychology, 16(2), 267–285. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1354067X10361396.
Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2006). Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Goddard, C. (2008). Natural semantic metalanguage: The state of the art. In C. Goddard (Ed.),
Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 1–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/
slcs.102.05god.
Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Goddard, C. (2014). Interjections and emotion (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”).
Emotion Review, 6(1), 53–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073913491843.
Goddard, C. (2016). Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de
lexicologie, 109(2), 13–34. https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0013.
language and culture (pp. 66–83). London: Routledge.
Kongo, A. E., & Gyasi, K. W. (2015). Expressing grief through messages of condolence: A genre
analysis. African Journal of Applied Research, 2(2), 61–71.
Kuang, C. H. (2015). Functions of malaysian condolences written in text messages. Pertanika
Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 23(2), 479–493.
Lotfollahi, B., & Eslami-Rasekh, A. (2011). Speech act of condolence in Persian and English: A
cross-cultural study. Studies in Literature and Language, 3(3), 139–145. https://doi.org/10.
3968/j.sll.1923156320110303.091.
Meiners, J. G. (2013). Sympathy and compassion in Spanish and English: Cross-cultural and
interlanguage perspectives on emotional expression. Ph.D. thesis, University of Texas, Austin.
Meiners, J. G. (2017). Cross-cultural and interlanguage perspectives on the emotional and
pragmatic expression of sympathy in Spanish and English. In V. Parvaresh & A. Capone
(Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation: The case of interaction around the event of death
(pp. 319–348). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55759-5_17.
Morady Moghaddam, M. (2013). Discourse structures of condolence speech act. Journal of
English Language Teaching and Learning, 4(10), 105–125.
Murad, T. M. (2013). “May Allah not let you experience another sorrow”: Condolence strategies
used by lecturers who are native speakers of Arabic L1 toward their colleague who is native
speaker of Hebrew in Hebrew L2. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(1), 17–22.
https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.3.1.17-22.
Nakajima, K. (2002). The key to intercultural communication: A comparative study of speech act
realization of sympathy/empathy. Ph.D. thesis, University of Mississippi.
Parkes, C. M. (2015). Help for the dying and the bereaved. In C. M. Parkes, P. Laungani, & B.
Young (Eds.), Death and bereavement across cultures (2nd ed., pp. 166–177). New York:
Routledge.
Samavarchi, L., & Allami, H. (2012). Giving condolences by Persian EFL learners: A contrastive
sociopragmatic study. International Journal of English Linguistics, 2(1), 71–78.
Tien, A. (2017). To be headed for the West, riding a crane: Chinese pragmemes in the wake of
someone’s passing. In V. Parvaresh & A. Capone (Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation:
The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 183–202). Cham: Springer. https://doi.
org/10.1007/978-3-319-55759-5_11.
Tseng, M.-Y. (2017). Toward a pragmatic study of funeral discourses in Taiwan: Voice, shared
situation knowledge, and metaphor. In V. Parvaresh & A. Capone (Eds.), The pragmeme of
accommodation: The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 259–276). Cham:
Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55759-5_14.
Wakefield, J. C., & Itakura, H. (2017). English verus Japanese condolences: What people say and
why. In V. Parvaresh & A. Capone (Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation: The case of
interaction around the event of death (pp. 203–231). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/
978-3-319-55759-5_12.
Watson, J. L. (2004a). Of flesh and bones: The management of death pollution in Cantonese
Society. In J. L. Watson & R. S. Watson (Eds.), Village life in Hong Kong: Politics, gender,
and ritual in the new territories (pp. 355–389). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.
Watson, R. S. (2004b). Remembering the dead: Graves and politics in Southeastern China.
In J. L. Watson & R. S. Watson (Eds.), Village life in Hong Kong: Politics, gender, and ritual
in the new territories (pp. 325–354). Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction (2nd ed.).
Williams, T. R. (2006). Linguistic politeness in expressing condolences: A case study. RASK, 23,
45–62.
Zunin, L. M., & Zunin, H. S. (1992). The art of condolence: What to write, what to say, what to do
at a time of loss. New York: Harper Perennial.
John C. Wakefield is an Associate Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University and a Key
Researcher at Palacký University, Olomouc. His main areas of research are in Cantonese
linguistics, discourse particles, intonation, and cultural values. His publications include Cantonese
as a second language: Issues, experiences and suggestions for teaching and learning (ed.,
Routledge, 2019), Intonational morphology (Springer, forthcoming), and Loanwords in
Cantonese: How their meanings have changed (HKU Press, forthcoming).
Winnie Chor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, the Hong Kong Baptist
University. She received her Ph.D. (in Linguistics) on two research scholarships from the
University of Sydney, Australia. Winnie’s research interests include cognitive semantics, discourse
analysis, stance-marking, language change (from the grammaticalization perspective), and
Cantonese linguistics (with a focus on particles). She is the author of Directional particles in
Cantonese: Form, function, and grammaticalization (John Benjamins, 2018). She has published
articles in journals such as Journal of Historical Pragmatics, Language and Linguistics, and
Journal of Pragmatics.
Nikko Lai is a Lecturer in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, the Chinese
University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. (in Linguistics) from City University of Hong
Kong. Her research interests include Cantonese Linguistics, (Mandarin) Chinese Linguistics and
Semantics.
Chapter 4
The Ethnopragmatics of English
Understatement and Italian
Exaggeration: Clashing Cultural Scripts
for the Expression of Personal Opinions
Gian Marco Farese
Abstract This chapter presents a cultural semantic analysis of the differences in the
expression of personal opinions between English and Italian. In English, personal
opinions are generally understated, whereas speakers of Italian tend to purposely
exaggerate when making a statement. As one might expect, opposite communica-
tive styles can lead to cases of miscommunication in cross-cultural interactions.
Such cases can be avoided if language learners are provided with efficient tools,
which can help them improve their cross-cultural awareness and competence.
Adopting the approach of ethnopragmatics (Goddard (Ed.) in Ethnopragmatics.
Understanding discourse in cultural context. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2006;
Goddard and Ye in The Routledge handbook of language and culture. Routledge,
London, pp. 66–83, 2015), this chapter proposes the theory of cultural scripts as the
optimal pedagogical tool to pinpoint the differences in the expression of personal
opinions between English and Italian and show how scripts can be used effectively
for cross-cultural training.

Keywords Understatement Exaggeration Expressing opinions Cultural

scripts Intercultural pragmatics
4.1 Introduction
Numerous comparative studies on speech acts have shown that cross-linguistic

differences in speech act performance are due to different cultural values which
inform people’s linguistic behaviour (notably Gass and Neu 1996; Capone and Mey
2015; Martìnez-Flor and Usò-Juan 2010; Wierzbicka 1985, 2003). Among others,
Meier (2010: 76) pointed out that:
G. M. Farese (&)
Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA
e-mail: farese@chapman.edu

60 G. M. Farese
Differences in choices regarding speech act performance cannot be analysed without an

awareness of the role of culture in informing these choices […] The goal is to understand
what is meant by what is said, and an awareness of how underlying cultural values and
beliefs may affect speech act performance is critical in facilitating this understanding.
In line with these scholars and with the principles of ethnopragmatics (next section),
the view endorsed in this chapter is that linguistic practices are both
meaning-oriented and culturally shaped, i.e. aimed at the expression of certain
meanings which are encouraged by the cultural values of a community of practice.
Different societies have different cultural values; therefore, the meanings expressed
by speakers of different languages are different too. This chapter discusses an
example of striking difference in speech act performance, the way in which personal
opinions are expressed in English and in Italian. More specifically, the chapter
highlights the differences in stance between these two languages, “the way speakers
present themselves and convey their judgements, opinions and commitments”
(Hyland 2005: 176). In Hyland’s view, “personal judgements are only convincing,
or even meaningful, when they contribute to and connect with a communal ide-
ology or value system” (2005: 174). This chapter draws on this view and shows that
the expression of personal opinions in English and in Italian is informed by different
cultural values, which encourage opposite communicative styles: understatement in
English and exaggeration in Italian.
Other contrastive studies between English and Italian have highlighted signifi-
cant differences in speech act performance between these two languages (Lipson
1994; Maher 2002, Wierzbicka 2003; Farese 2018, in press), but so far, no study
has focused specifically on the differences in the expression of personal opinions.
The practices of understatement in English and of exaggeration in Italian are
captured in two different cultural scripts. In the first section, ethnopragmatics and
the theory of cultural scripts are introduced; in the following two sections, under-
statement in English and then exaggeration in Italian are discussed separately. The
final section discusses how the proposed scripts can be used effectively for
cross-cultural training.
4.2 Ethnopragmatics and the Theory of Cultural Scripts
The discipline of ethnopragmatics (Goddard 2006; Goddard and Ye 2015) inves-

tigates the connections between speech practices and cultural values in
cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective. Starting from the assumption that
“people speak differently because they think differently, feel differently and relate
differently to other people” (Goddard 2006: 3), this approach aims at pinpointing
the different cultural values of different societies in order to make sense of the
cross-linguistic differences in speech practices. The connections are captured in
semantic representations called cultural scripts (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004,
2007). As Goddard and Ye (2015: 66) have written, “a key goal of ethnopragmatics
is to access ‘insider perspectives’, i.e. to formulate descriptions of speech practices
4 The Ethnopragmatics of English Understatement … 61
phrased in terms which are recognizable as indigenous by the speakers of the

language(s) being investigated. This is possible for two reasons: (i) because cultural
scripts are formulated in the simple and cross-translatable terms of the natural
semantic metalanguage; (ii) because cultural scripts are strictly based on linguistic
evidence such as frequent collocations, language-specific constructions, proverbs
and idiomatic expressions, and “linguistic usage functions as an index of routine
ways of thinking, and, appropriately analysed, allows us to stay close to an insider
perspective” (Goddard and Ye ibid.).
Cultural scripts have a precise structure; they all begin with a component ‘in
country X, many people think like this’, which presents the value or speech practice
as widely shared or at least recognized as salient in a specific linguaculture. The
following components capture the shared way of thinking, and the phrasing is
typically that of moral evaluation (‘it is good/bad if someone does/says this’) or of
(im)possibility of doing something (‘when it is like this, people can/can not do
this’). Scripts are distinguished in two different levels of generality: ‘high-level’ or
‘master’ scripts capture the main value or way of thinking of a society, whereas
‘low-level’ scripts capture the implications of that value on how people speak. The
two scripts proposed in this chapter are both ‘low-level’ scripts, as they are both
about ways of speaking; each script derives from a ‘master’ script which encour-
ages (Italian culture) or discourages (Anglo cultures) the expression of feelings in
discourse.
Cultural scripts are not intended as prescriptions of linguistic behaviour, but as
attempts at capturing tacit rules of linguistic practices, which, to a certain extent, are
ritualised and encouraged in a community of practice. The idea is that “even those
who do not personally identify with the content of a script are familiar with it, i.e.
that it forms part of the interpretive backdrop to discourse and social behaviour in a
particular cultural context” (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004:157). In line with this
view, the scripts presented in this chapter are not proposed as “rules for speaking”,
but as semantic representations of culturally salient ways of speaking which could
be effectively used for cross-cultural training.
There are four main reasons why cultural scripts are particularly helpful for
cross-cultural training. The first is that scripts do not just describe speech practices,
but also capture the reasons why people speak in a particular way, which can help
understand the practice itself. The second is that scripts are phrased in NSM terms,
and therefore they can be directly translated and phrased in the learner’s language;
undoubtedly, the possibility of acquiring information in one’s language is a con-
siderable advantage for language learners, because they can access the information
from an insider’s perspective. The third is that the scripts for two different lan-
guages are easily comparable because contrastive information is easily identifiable
in single semantic components. The fourth is that when reading a script for a
foreign language learners become more aware of their own cultural scripts; they can
understand the differences and appreciate the similarities between the cultural world
that they are studying and their own.
62 G. M. Farese
4.3 Anglo Understatement
The speech practice of understatement consists in saying less than what is meant by
attenuating, minimizing or belittling a statement. From a pragmatic point of view,
understatement can be considered as a prototypical example of conversational
implicature because an understated statement has two key properties: (i) because it
is not explicitly asserted, it is more easily deniable; (ii) because it is not explicitly
asserted, it makes the interlocutor reflect on the statement to grasp the intended
meaning, and therefore it is a way of securing conversational engagement from the
interlocutor.
Understatement has been defined by English anthropologist Kate Fox (2004: 66)
as a quintessentially English linguistic practice:
The English are rightly renowned for their use if understatement, not because we invented it
or because we do it better than anyone else, but because we do it so much. […] The reasons
for our prolific understating are not hard to discover: our strict prohibitions on earnestness,
gushing, emoting, and boasting require almost constant use of understatement.
The same comment was made by Hübler (1983: 1), who wrote that “anyone pro-
gressing beyond the rudiments of learning English, certainly in Germany, soon
finds that understatements are typically English”. Indeed, understatement is a
unique English word with no exact equivalents in other languages (there is no
equivalent, for example, in Italian), and the untranslatability of a word is the
unmistakeable sign that it is a cultural keyword (Wierzbicka 1997; Levisen and
Waters 2017; Tien 2015; Farese in press).
There are various linguistic realizations of understatement in English discourse.
Prototypically, speakers understate by negating the converse of a statement to imply
the opposite1:
(1) Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart, by
any means waggish then. (Charles Dickens, A Christmas carol, 1843)
(2) I imagined him doing well enough to begin with and then, almost imperceptibly, not so
well. (Barnes, The sense of an ending, 2011)
(3) “What do you think of that girl?” “She’s not bad at all.” (Wordbanks, brspoken)
(4) “Did you enjoy the show last night?” “Yeah, it wasn’t too bad” (Wordbanks,
brspoken)
(5) “What can we do for you?” “Well I’m just erm ringing into say that erm I collect I Spy
books.” “Do you?” “Well that’s not quite right because” “Mm.” “erm I have
twenty-nine books now but… in nineteen-fifty-six when I was thirteen that gives my
age away… (Wordbanks, brspoken).
1
Corpus examples identified as Wordbanks are from Collins Wordbanks Online (http://wordbanks.
harpercollins.co.uk/auth/?), accessed March 2019.
In all these cases, the speaker means the opposite of what he or she says: not bad at
all should be read as ‘I like her’; it wasn’t too bad should be read as ‘it was good, I
liked it, but could have been better’; not quite right should be read as ‘that’s
actually not right’ or ‘not exactly right’. In English discourse, understatement is also
realized through a series of adverbs and complex adverb phrases performing the
function of hedges, diminishers and downtoners, such as a bit, just, quite, rather
and sort of/kind of:
(6) a. ‘A bit of a hypocrite?’ Mr. Banks suggested, looking, too, at Mr. Ramsay’s
back…
b. Minta, Andrew observed, was rather a good walker.
(Virginia Woolf, To the lighthouse, 1927)
(7) Now that’s what I would call a rather brave, if not foolhardy, decision. (Wordbanks,
ukpress)
(8) “His English is quite good for a foreigner,” he admitted. (wordbanks, brspoken)
(9) In pure rugby terms, it was a slightly sloppy performance and we functioned at only
70%. (Wordbanks, ukpress)
In these examples, the hedges are specifically used by speakers not to say more than
what they mean when in fact they do mean more than what they say (e.g. quite
good = ‘surprisingly/remarkably good’). It is the speaker, who needs to interpret
the understatement correctly in order to grasp the implied meaning. The same
applies to examples (10)–(13), where the speakers’ statements are expressed with
words, which say less than they really mean:
(10) That’s something that everyone needs to know. (read: ‘everyone must know’)
(11) There’s an immense amount of reading, and lectures take up quite a lot of your time.
(read: ‘an immense amount of studying’).
(12) Please, call us at your earliest convenience. (read: ‘now’)
(13) “Shall we have an ice-cream?” “Yeah, I don’t mind ice-cream.” (read: ‘I love it, great
idea’).
Some excellent examples of Anglo understatement realized through hedges and by

negating the converse are given by Fox (2004: 66–67):
The understatement rule means that a debilitating and painful chronic illness must be
described as ‘a bit of a nuisance’; a truly horrific experience is ‘well, not exactly what I
would have chosen’; a sight of breathtaking beauty is ‘quite pretty’; an outstanding per-
formance or achievement is ‘not bad’; and act of abominable cruelty is ‘not very friendly’,
and an unforgivably stupid judgement is ‘not very clever’; the Antarctic is ‘rather cold’ and
the Sahara is ‘a bit too hot for my taste’; and any exceptionally delightful object, person or
event, which in other cultures would warrant streams of superlatives, is pretty much cov-
ered by ‘nice’, or, if we wish to express more ardent approval, ‘very nice’.
64 G. M. Farese
Understatement can also be realized through a euphemism, which attenuates the

seriousness of a situation or a statement:
(14) BENVOLIO: What, art thou hurt?

MERCUTIO: Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. Marry,’tis enough.
(William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

(15) “Have you ever let her choose?” she flashed out. “I’m afraid that’s rude,” she added,
trying to calm herself.
“Let us rather say unhappily expressed,” said Philip, who always adopted a dry satirical
manner when he was puzzled.
(E.M. Forster, Where angels fear to tread, 1905)
Expressions of epistemic caution, too, can be considered as ways of not saying

more than what one means. In English discourse, various speech act verbs and
adverbs are used to present a statement as a possible case, and not as a fact. The list
compiled by Wierzbicka (2006: Chap. 7) includes I suppose, I assume, I guess, I
gather, I presume, I believe, and above all I think. Some of the adverbs expressing
epistemic caution are presumably, conceivably, supposedly, allegedly and possibly.
These speech act verbs and adverbs are used to express the meaning ‘I think like
this, I don’t want to say: ‘it is like this, I know it’.
The use of nice in evaluations is another culturally salient way of understating in
English discourse. Nice is used to evaluate virtually everything; its collocational
range includes words for things one sees (view, dress, film), personal experiences
(day, time, holiday), people (girl, guy, bloke), feelings (meal, drink, sensation), and
to a lesser extent things one hears (sound, music). This broad collocational range is
reflected in its very high frequency in Wordbanks: there are about 50,000 hits for
nice and 4,000 for very nice, whereas for its closest competitor, beautiful, there are
only about 35,000 hits and only about 800 for very beautiful.
The reason for this difference in frequency between nice and beautiful is
semantic. As argued by Waters (2017), the meaning of nice is based on the
semantic primes I, GOOD, THINK and FEEL expressed in two semantic components: ‘I
think about it like this: this is good’ and ‘when I think about it, I feel something
good’. By contrast, Gladkova and Romero-Trillo (2014) have argued that the
meaning of beautiful is based on I, VERY GOOD, THINK and FEEL expressed in the
components ‘I think about it like this: this is very good’ and ‘when I think about it, I
feel something very good’. The higher frequency of nice compared to that of
beautiful suggests that when evaluating something speakers of English prefer to say
that something is ‘good’ rather than ‘very good’. This suggests, in turn, that there is
a cultural assumption in English whereby ‘it is not good to say more’ (than ‘good’,
in this case) than what one wants to say.
This is not to say, however, that the idea ‘very good’ is never expressed in
English when speakers make evaluations. In the language of reviews and
commercials, which are aimed at convincing people to buy something or go to a

show, adjectives like outstanding, brilliant, extraordinary, marvellous and won-
derful, as well as adverbs like absolutely, utterly and incredibly abound, as the
following posters illustrate:
Likewise, speakers of English seem to have no problems using ‘big words’ when
commenting on publicly known or objective facts:
(16) Air-faced cheek by Ryanair, Nick Bramhill 05 December 2001

Staff forced to buy uniforms RYANAIR was blasted last night for making its new cabin
crew members fork out £450 for uniforms. Labour TD Liz McManus said it was
“exceptionally mean-spirited” of the budget airline to make staff pay the hefty charge.
“This is completely outrageous,” she stormed. “It’s just incredible that Ryanair asks
cabin crew members, who would be on fairly low salaries, to splash out such a huge
amount of money. (Wordbanks, sunnow)
(17) <F0X/> Well Naples was really cold <M01/> Mm. <F0X/> when we went there for
New Year I was surprised it was absolutely freezing. Had a ghastly trip round Pompei
absolutely dying of hypothermia the whole time. (Wordbanks, brspok)
However, cases like (16) and (17) are different from personal opinions; when it
comes to expressing what I think, the examples previously adduced suggest that
personal opinions are typically understated in English discourse. To be used
effectively for cross-cultural training, cultural scripts need to be maximally infor-
mative and easily intelligible, apart from being cross-translatable. For English
understatement, I propose the script in [A]:
66 G. M. Farese
[A] An Anglo cultural script encouraging understatement in the expression of

personal opinions
[many people think like this:]

at many times,
when I want to say something like this to someone about something:
“I think about it like this: ‘this is good’”
it is good if I say something like this to this someone:
“I think about it like this: ‘this is not bad’”
it is good if I don’t say more
I know that if I say this, this someone can think like this about me because of this:
“I know what this someone wants to say to me at this moment
this someone wants to say: “I think about it like this: ‘this is good’”
I want this
it is good if people can say things to other people in this way when they want to say about something:
“I think about it like this: ‘…’”
The practice of understatement is set in the prototypical scenario of someone who wants
to express a personal opinion. The script is phrased in the first person to capture the idea
that understatement is applied to personal opinions, less commonly to publicly known,
objective facts. Secondly, the script states that in this situation, it is good to present an
opinion in an understated way and that it is good not to say more. By specifying that it is
good to say ‘this is not bad’ instead of ‘this is good’, the script also gives precise
indications on the linguistic means of understating. Obviously, this is only one of the
ways in which understatement is realized in English; similar phrasings could be pro-
posed for other linguistic realizations of understatement. The most important part of the
script is the mention of the interlocutor’s interpretation of understatement; it is essential
to mention that the interlocutor will know what the speaker actually wants to say. The
last component of the script captures the cultural assumption that in English it is good to
speak in this way when expressing a personal opinion.
4.4 Italian Exaggeration
When Italian speakers say to someone what they think about something in different
contexts, they tend to purposely exaggerate their statements by expressing the
meanings ‘I want to say more, much more’ and ‘I think about it like this: this is
something very good/very bad/very big/very small’. The variety of linguistic
resources available in Italian to express these meanings and the high frequency with
which these meanings are expressed in discourse by speakers suggest that in the
Italian linguaculture exaggeration is salient and strongly encouraged in specific
contexts of interaction. The wide use of exaggeration, in turn, is related to the more
general cultural assumption that it is good to express one’s feelings in discourse
freely and unrestrainedly (Farese in press).
Contrary to understatement, exaggeration consists in saying more than what is

meant, either by amplifying or reducing a statement to make it, paradoxically, more
credible. Just like understatement, the correct interpretation of a hyperbolic state-
ment is based on implicature and on the interlocutor’s ability to arrive at the implied
meaning. In Italian discourse, exaggeration is used in everyday discourse and is
expressed both morphologically and lexically. The morphological realizations of
exaggeration are two: the absolute superlative -issimo of gradable adjectives and
adverbs, and the derivational morphemes expressing the meanings ‘big’ and ‘very
big’. Examples of absolute superlatives include bellissima (‘very pretty/beautiful’),
grandissima (‘very big’), the opening salutations Carissimo/a (‘Dearest’) and
Gentilissimo/a (‘Kindest’) used in letters and e-mails (Farese 2018), and the
adverbs pianissimo, fortissimo, prestissimo used as musical terms. Apart from
adjectives and adverbs, some nouns which include in their meaning a salient
gradable property can be used in the -issimo form, too, for example, offertissima
(‘super discount’), amicissimi (‘super friends’). From the pragmatic point of view,
exaggeration expressed with the absolute superlative can perform two functions:
(i) to purposely emphasize a statement and the speaker’s feelings; (ii) to confirm or
correct a previous statement by making it more precise and/or more emphatic. Both
functions are illustrated in examples (18) and (19):
(18) “È contenta?” “Altro che! Contentissima!”

“Is she happy?” “I’ll say! Happy as a lark!”
(Morante, La Storia, 1974, Morante 1977 translated by William Weaver)
(19) “Io sono pronto. Tu sei pronto?” “Prontissimo”.
“I’m ready, are you?’ “Biting at the bit.”
(example taken from Dressler and Barbaresi 1994: 504)
It should be noted that the expression Altro che! in (18) is itself a way of ‘saying
more’; in the context of (18), Altro che! means ‘not just happy, but more, very
happy’, and the meaning expressed can be explicated in NSM terms as follows:
[B] (È contenta?)—Altro che! Contentissima!

you say something to me now about someone
I say to you about this someone:
“I can say ‘contenta’
I want to say more, much more”
when I say this, I feel something
From the semantic point of view, the Italian absolute superlative expresses not only
the meanings ‘very’ and ‘nothing else is like this’, but also the speaker’s feelings
accompanying the statement. As pointed out by Wierzbicka (2003: 275), “the
68 G. M. Farese
Italian absolute superlative constitutes a grammatical device which enables the

speakers of Italian to perform a kind of expressive overstatement any time”. When
using the superlativo assoluto, Italian speakers deliberately exaggerate their feel-
ings by presenting them not only as very intense, but also as unrestrainable. This is
reflected in explication [C]:
[C] Sei bellissima!
I want to say something to you about you now
I want to sayit with the word ‘bella’
at the same time, I want to say more, much more
I want to say something like this:
“no-one else is like you
when I think about you, I can’t not feel something very good
I can’t not say it to you”
The derivational morphemes expressing the meanings ‘big’ or ‘very big’ include the
prefixes stra-, maxi-, mega-, iper-, super- and the previously discussed suffix -one.
These morphemes can be attached to adjectives, nouns and sometimes to verbs:
(20) Casoria. Scoppia maxirissa tra parenti: nove arrestati per l’eredità.
Casoria. A maxi-fight among relatives: nine arrested for the inheritance.
(Il Mattino newspaper, 17 August 2016)
(21) Fa discutere la stravittoria di Tony Blair.
The stra-victory of Tony Blair is a source of debate.
(example taken from Napoli 2017: 99)
(22) Parla e straparla di sé, di quello che vuole e non vuole, come se il carcere intorno
fosse un’illusione.
He talks and talks about himself, of what he wants and doesn’t want, as if the prison
around him were an illusion.
(CORIS-CODIS corpus, narrativa)2
Napoli (2017: 95) shows that, in certain contexts, the prefix stra- can compete with
the suffix -issimo, as the following minimal pair illustrates:
(23) a. Il cinema Capranica è pienissimo.

The Capranica cinema is very full of people.
b. Il cinema Raffaello martedì sera era strapieno.
On Tuesday night the Raffaello cinema was very full of people.
Napoli takes for granted that the two competing forms in this pair are semantically
equivalent, but in fact, this is not the case. If the two forms were identical in
meaning, one or the other could be used interchangeably in the same contexts.
However, there are cases in which stra- cannot be used, whereas -issimo can. For
2
The CORIS-CODIS corpus of written Italian (http://corpora.dslo.unibo.it/coris_ita.html) was accessed
in March 2019.
example, while it is possible to say gentilissimo, bellissimo and amicissimi, it is

imposible to say *stra-gentile, *stra-bello and *stra-amici. Moroever, in the pairs
pulitissimo-strapulito (‘super clean’), facilissimo-strafacile (‘super easy’) and
prestissimo-strapresto (‘super early’), stra- expresses a higher degree of ‘excess’
than -issimo. This difference can be captured positing a component ‘nothing else
can be like this’ for the meaning of stra-, as opposed to ‘nothing else is like this’
posited for the meaning of -issimo.
There is another semantic difference between stra- and -issimo: there is no
expression of feelings in the meaning of stra-. This hypothesis is based on the fact
that stra- is only attached to words which denote objectively verifiable facts, not to
evaluative adjectives like bello which also include an expression of feelings in their
meanings. It is possible to form derived words like strapotere (‘very big power’),
stravittora (‘very big victory’), la stragrande maggioranza (‘the very big majority’)
and strafamoso (‘super-famous’) because the fact someone has a ‘very big power’
or is ‘super-famous’ is objectively verifiable, whereas *stra-bello expresses the
feelings and ways of thinking of individual speakers. It is true that in Italian it is
possible to say stramaledetto (literally ‘bloody damned’), which does include in its
meaning a component ‘when I think about it, I feel something very bad’. However,
considering the collocational range of stra- it seems justified to hypothesize that the
bad feelings derive from the meaning of the adjective maledetto and from the angry
tone in which the word is uttered, not from stra-. Thus, strapieno in (23b) is a mere
acknowledgement of the objectively verifiable fact that the cinema was full to the
limit, whereas pienissimo in (23a) also expresses the speaker’s feelings of surprise
or amazement at seeing the cinema so full. The meaning of the prefix stra-, as used
in the example sentence Il cinema era strapieno ‘The cinema was full to the limit’,
can be explicated as in [D]:
[D] Il cinema era strapieno
I want to say something about it [the cinema] with the word pieno
at the same time, I want to say more, much more
I want to say something like this:
“this is like something very big, nothing else can be like this”
Among the lexical ways of expressing exaggeration in Italian, there is a series of

adjectives such as orrendo (‘horrendous’), schifoso (‘loathsome’) and stupendo
(‘marvellous’) which already express the idea ‘very’ or ‘very very’ without the semantic
contribution of derivational morphemes. There is also a series of intensifying adverbs
expressing exaggeration, e.g. molto (‘very’), assolutamente (‘absolutely’), decisa-
mente (‘definitely’), eccessivamente (‘excessively’), estremamente (‘extremely’), in-
credibilmente (‘incredibly’) and completamente/del tutto (‘completely’).
Another lexical expression of exaggeration is the use of a symbolic number to
indicate a very large or very small quantity, for example, dire un milione di volte
(‘say a million times’ = ‘repeat something many times’), fare due chiacchiere/
quattro passi (‘have two chats/walk four steps’ = ‘have a short chat/walk’),
aspettare un secondo (‘wait a second’), volerci tre ore (‘it takes three hours’ = ‘it
70 G. M. Farese
takes an awfully big amount of time’), costare una vita (‘cost a life’ = ‘it costs very
much’), è una vita che ti aspetto (‘I’ve been waiting for you for a lifetime’). There
are also fixed expressions used to indicate very large quantities, for example c’era
un casino di gente, (‘there was a chaos of people’ = ‘there were very many peo-
ple’), pagare una cifra (‘to pay an amount’ = ‘to pay a lot’), un sacco di soldi (‘a
lot of money’). All these expressions mean, in slightly different ways, ‘very very’
and are uttered with an emphatic tone which expresses both the speaker’s feelings
and the idea ‘I can’t not say it’.
Metaphors are also used a lot to exaggerate. Expressions like è una tragedia
(‘it’s a tragedy’) or è la fine del mondo (‘it’s the end of the world’ = ‘it’s so good’/
‘it’s very bad’) is very common in Italian. Many of the metaphoric hyperboles are
directly borrowed from Dante’s Commedia, which perhaps more than any other
literary work has contributed to the development of current Italian language. Two of
the most frequent hyperbolic metaphors created by Dante are salire alle stelle (‘to
ascend to the stars’ = ‘to be very high’, said of prices) and essere al settimo cielo
(‘to be in seventh heaven’ of Paradise, the closest circle to God where men can get
the highest level of beatitude = ‘to be extremely happy’). A very common meta-
phoric hyperbole in Italian is based on the idea of ‘death’. It is not hard to
understand why death is used in exaggerations; there is nothing more “extreme”
than death, the end of all things, the irreversible state, therefore the idea of death
lends itself very well to expressive exaggeration in discourse. Expressions like da
morire (literally to die for, but different in use and in meaning from the English
expression) as in ti amo da morire (‘I love you to die for’ = ‘I love you very very
much’) and morire di/da as in oggi si muore di freddo/caldo (‘today one could die
from cold/heat’ = ‘it’s freezing/so hot today’), sto morendo di fame/sete (‘I’m
dying from anger/thirst’ = ‘I’m so hungry/thirsty’) and morire dal ridere (‘to die
from laughing’ = ‘to be extremely hilarious’) are used very frequently in Italian
discourse. So is the phrase essere stanco morto (‘to be dead tired’ = ‘to be worn
out’).
All the exaggeration devices, both morphological and lexical, used in Italian
discourse indicate that the expression of the meanings ‘very much’, ‘very big’,
‘very very’, ‘nothing else is like this’ and ‘nothing else can be like this’ are strongly
encouraged when it comes to expressing feelings and personal opinions. All these
linguistic resources indicate that in Italy there is a specific cultural assumption
whereby ‘it is good to say more’ or ‘much more’ than what is meant as a specific
strategy to improve the credibility of a statement and to express feelings in dis-
course. This assumption is captured in the cultural script in [E]:
[E] An Italian cultural script encouraging the use of exaggeration in discourse
[in Italy, many people think like this:]

at many times,
when I want to say something like this to someone about something:
“I think about it like this: ‘this is something big’”
it is good if I say much more
it is good if I say something like this to this someone:
“I think about it like this: this is something very big, nothing else is like this”
I know that if I say this, this someone can think about it like this:
“this is not true, it is not something very big, I know this”
at the same time, this someone can know that when I say this I feel something
this is good, I want this
it is good if people can say things to other people in this way
4.5 Conclusion: Using Cultural Scripts in Cross-Cultural

Training
Evidently, the script of exaggeration in Italian discourse clashes with the script for
understatement in English discourse; the two scripts encourage opposite speech
practices and are informed by opposite cultural assumptions. In cross-cultural
interactions, such striking differences can easily pave the way for miscommuni-
cation, which can be avoided if learners are taught what kind of linguistic behaviour
is encouraged in the linguaculture that they are studying and what cultural values
underlie that behaviour.
Foreign learners of English and of Italian who read scripts [A] and [B] receive
both linguistic information on how to speak in a precise context and cultural
information on why it is good to speak in this way in that context. Obviously, the
scripts do not account for diversity in language use across varieties of English and
in Italian, as well as for idiosyncratic variation. However, they are ideal starting
points for foreign learners to become aware of how to speak in a culturally
appropriate way in English and in Italian when expressing personal opinions.
There are three main ways in which the two cultural scripts presented here can
be used effectively for cross-cultural training. First, the scripts could be translated
into the various languages of the students enroled in an English or Italian class, so
that they can receive information on how native speakers talk in their own language
and compare it directly with their own linguaculture. Second, some additional lines
could be added to scripts [A] and [B] in which contrastive information about
specific languages is provided. Third, the language in which the scripts are
72 G. M. Farese
formulated could be slightly adjusted to make it sound more idiomatic in a given

language; for example, in the case of English ‘this someone’ could be changed with
‘he’ or ‘she’.
Much could be said about the possible implications for cross-cultural commu-
nication of clashing cultural scripts. However, the scope of the present chapter was
to present a case of evident clash between different ways of speaking and propose
cultural scripts as the ideal tools for cross-cultural training. Potentially, cultural
scripts can be seen ‘in action’ not only in foreign language teaching contexts, but in
all the contexts which involve cross-cultural communication and encounters
between people with different linguacultural backgrounds.
References
Barnes, J. (2011). The sense of an ending. London: Vintage.

Capone, A., & Mey, J. (Eds.). (2015). Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society.
Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6.
Dressler, W., & Barbaresi, L. M. (1994). Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and intensifiers in
Italian, German and other languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Farese, G. M. (2018). The cultural semantics of address practices: A contrastive study between
English and Italian. Lanham: Lexington.
Farese, G. M. (2019, in press). Italian discourse. A cultural semantic analysis. Lanham:
Lexington.
Fox, K. (2004). Watching the English: The hidden rules of English behaviour. London: Hodder &
Stoughton.
Gass, S., & Neu, J. (Eds.). (1996). Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communication in a
second language. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Gladkova, A., & Romero-Trillo, J. (2014). Ain’t it beautiful? The conceptualization of beauty from
an ethnopragmatic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 140–159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
pragma.2013.11.005.
Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2006). Ethnopragmatics. Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin:
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2007). Semantic primes and cultural scripts in language learning
and intercultural communication. In F. Sharifian, & G.B. Palmer (Eds.), Applied Cultural
Linguistics: Implications for second language learning and intercultural communication
(pp. 105–124). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.7.08god.
Hübler, A. (1983). Understatements and hedges in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://
doi.org/10.1075/pb.iv.6.
Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse.
Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445605050365.
Lipson, M. (1994). Apologizing in Italian and English. IRAL, 32(1), 19–40. https://doi.org/10.
1515/iral.1994.32.1.19.
Maher, B. (2002). Natural semantic metalanguage theory and some Italian speech act verbs.
Studies in Pragmatics, 4, 33–48.
Martìnez-Flor, A., & Usò-Juan, E. (Eds.). (2010). Speech act performance: Theoretical, empirical
and methodological issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.26.
Meier, A.J. (2010). Culture and its effect on speech act performance. In A. Martìnez-Flor, & E.
Usò-Juan (Eds.), Speech act performance: Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues
(pp. 75–90). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.26.05mei.
Morante, E. (1974). La storia. Torino: Einaudi.
Morante, E. (1977). History: A novel. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Alfred Knopf.
Napoli, M. (2017). Nomi in stra- in italiano. Intensificazione tra semantica e pragmatica. In A.
Lemaréchal, P. Koch, & P. Swiggers (Eds.), Actes du XXVIIe Congrès International de
Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes: Section 1. Linguistique générale/linguistique romane
(pp. 95–105). Nancy: ATILF.
Tien, A. (2015). The semantics of Chinese music. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Waters, S. (2017). Nice as a cultural keyword: The semantics behind Australian discourses on
sociality. In C. Levisen, & S. Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 25–54).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.277.02wat.
Wierzbicka, A. (1985). Different cultures, different languages, different speech acts: Polish vs
English. Journal of Pragmatics, 9(2/3), 145–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(85)
90023-2.
Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish,
German, Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction (2nd ed.).
Wierzbicka, A. (2006). English: Meaning and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gian Marco Farese is Research Associate in Linguistics at the Smith Institute for Political
Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and Honorary Lecturer in Linguistics at the
ANU. Researcher and Honorary Lecturer in linguistics at the Australian National University. His
research interests include the relationship between language and culture, cultural semantics,
cross-linguistic semantics, cognitive semantics, translation studies, cross-cultural communication
and the relationship between language and music. He is Author of The cultural semantics of
address practices (2018), Italian discourse. A cultural semantic analysis (2019, in press) and of
the first translation and semantic analysis of the Fundamental Principles of the Italian Constitution
in English.
Chapter 5
Ethnopragmatics of Hāzer Javābi,
a Valued Speech Practice in Persian
Reza Arab
Abstract This study examines the speech practice designated as hāzer javābi
(literally, ‘ready response’ in Persian (Farsi) using an ethnopragmatic approach; that
is, it attempts to capture the ‘insider’ understandings of the practice by making use
of semantic explications and cultural scripts. It is one of only a few papers about the
Persian language that employ the ethnopragmatic approach. Section 5.1 introduces
the practice, offers some classical and contemporary examples, and draws attention
to differences in similar-but-different speech practices in English and some other
languages. Section 5.2 describes the analytical framework, i.e. ethnopragmatics.
Section 5.3 provides historical and cultural contextualization, aiming both to
scaffold a more precise understanding of the concept and to explain its cultural
prominence. Section 5.4 presents a script for hāzer javābi. Section 5.5 discusses
broader issues and provides concluding remarks.
Keywords Hāzer javābi Ethnopragmatics Persian Farsi Speech practices
5.1 Hāzer Javābi: A First Look
This paper examines hāzer javābi, a valued speech practice in Persian (Farsi),
primarily with reference to Iran, although the practice exists in other varieties of the
language. The term hāzer javābi is a meta-pragmatic label for situations in which a
person responds to the previous utterance—or sometimes the previous incident—
quickly (as perceived by others present) and with the best possible words in the
context at hand (as it seems to observers).
Unlike similar labels in English (such as retort or repartee), hāzer javābi is not
necessarily, or even usually, a quick comeback to an insult; rather it can happen
(and be valued) in response to any form of utterance. Furthermore, the definitions of
R. Arab (&)
Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
e-mail: reza.arab@griffithuni.edu.au

76 R. Arab
quick and best possible words distinguish hāzer javābi from any other kinds of
response. This will be explored in more detail in Sect. 5.1.2.
The lexeme hāzer.javābi consists of two lexical units: hāzer, which can be
glossed as ‘present’, and javāb ‘response’, with a bound morpheme -i, which is a
nominaliser affix, added to the latter. Overall, it can be glossed as ‘ready response’.
The common related forms are hāzer.javābi (noun), hāzer.javāb (adjective),
hāzer.javābi-kardan (verb, only in the form of a ‘light verb construction’ with
kardan ‘do’ as the light verb).
It is important to note that cognate forms are used in other neighbouring lan-
guages in a similar sense. They include Urdu (which uses the exact same phrase:
hāzer.javābi), Hindi (where there is a small phonological difference: hājer.javābi),
and Turkish (which displays Turkish morphological features: hazırcevaplık).
Hāzer javābi is usually translated by means of a wide range of English equiv-
alents, such as back talk, wisecrack, repartee, waggery, and wordplay.1 Other
translations could include a wide range of English expressions from responding
without thinking, answering quickly, riposting, and improvising, to adroitness and
cleverness in reply, witticism, and ready wit. The concept of hāzer javābi, which
governs the pragmatics of the practice, contains some elements of each of the above
English concepts, but it is accurate to claim it is not an equivalent of any single one.
In Sect. 5.1.1, I will present some examples from classical literature and two
contemporary conversations to make the conceptualization of the practice as clear
as possible. Section 5.1.2 discerns the differences with similar concepts and prac-
tices in other languages.
5.1.1 Classical and Contemporary Examples
A search for hāzer javābi on the Internet allows us to identify different aspects of
the meaning of being hāzer javāb. Translations of some of these examples are given
in (1):
(1) a. A counselling centre in our town has held a hāzer javābi training course.2
b. You can succeed in the critical moments of life by learning the skill of hāzer
javābi.3
c. Apart from the benefits of hāzer javābi in daily life, this art is a part of
rhetoric.4
1
Based on a search on http://www.vajehyab.com/.
2
Original source URL: http://www.cloob.com/timeline/answer_124707_1421948.
3
Original source URL: http://gizmiz.com/‫ﻫﺎ‬-‫ﺟﻮﺍﺑﻲ‬-‫ﺣﺎﺿﺮ‬-‫ﺍﺯ‬-‫ﺷﻤﺎ‬-‫ﺧﺎﻃﺮﺍﺕ‬/.
4
Original source URL: http://daneshgahezendegi.com/‫ﺑﺮﺍﯼ‬-‫ﺧﺎﺹ‬-‫ﺳﺨﻨﺮﺍﻧﯽ‬-‫ﻓﻦ‬-‫ﯾﮏ‬-‫؛‬-‫ﺑﻮﺩﻥ‬-‫ﺟﻮﺍﺏ‬-‫ﺣﺎﺿﺮ‬/.
5 Ethnopragmatics of Hāzer Javābi, a Valued Speech … 77
d. There is a thin line between being hāzer javāb and being impolite.5
e. Some children do hāzer javābi to attract more of their parents’ attention.6
To find the above examples, I used the WebBootCat function on the original
interface of Sketch Engine.7 Based on the seeds (hāzer javābi in different spelling
forms) fed into the system, a search was conducted in the Persian content of the
Internet. While I did not intend to carry out an extended corpus study, this minimal
use of Sketch Engine provided wider and more neutral results compared to the
algorithm-driven results offered by Google, Facebook, and other platforms.
Example (a) shows that hāzer javābi, as a practice, is so highly valued among
speakers that training courses are run for the public. Examples (b) and (c) point to
the benefits of hāzer javābi in social life, as well as to its aesthetic significance.
Examples (d) and (e), on the other hand, show the delicacy required of this practice
in social interactions. For example, children being hāzer javāb is a generally
amusing event for members of the community, and videos of such incidents are
popular on social media.
As a ‘rule of thumb’, a person who can pass such effortless and witty remarks in
response to others is considered a more pleasing speaker of the language. This
status seems partly due to characters in folk literature who are famed for their quick
and funny responses. The tales of such figures, as known by the people, are filled
with stories of hāzer javābi and in-time responses. Like many classical genres in
literature, there is often a didactic aspect. The folk figure Nasreddin (more widely
known as Molla Nasreddin in Persian and Nasreddin Hodja in Turkish) is familiar
to peoples of the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia. Nasreddin is involved
in similar stories in different cultures, but the character might refer to more than one
personality in the [hi]story (cf. Javadi 2009; Marzolph and Baldauf 1990). The
stories related to Nasreddin are “generally humorous, but in the subtle humour there
is always a lesson to be learned” (Javadi 2009). In European terms, Nasreddin was a
practitioner of Socratic irony. The stories in which he features are recited by people
in situations that remind them of the theme of these stories or of Nasreddin’s
situational humour. It is often difficult for readers to ascertain if Nasreddin is stupid
or clever in such situations, but what he does or says makes points about the nature
of human life and social interactions.
In one example (Hariyanto 1995: 11–12), among tens of such, Nasreddin takes a
few baskets of grapes on his donkey to the local market. He sees a few other
farmers, also with baskets of grapes for the market, sleeping by the road. He starts
to take grapes from their baskets and puts them into his. One of the farmers wakes
up and the following dialogue ensues:
5
Original source URL: http://telegram-channels.blog.ir/1396/08/04/‫ﺟﻮﺍﺑﯽ‬-‫ﺣﺎﺿﺮ‬-‫ﮐﺎﻧﺎﻝ‬.
6
Original source URL: http://sahebkhabar.ir/news/26308515/‫ﮐﻨﯿﻢ‬-‫ﻣﻘﺎﺑﻠﻪ‬-‫ﻣﺎﻥ‬-‫ﮐﻮﺩﮎ‬-‫ﺣﺎﺿﺮﺟﻮﺍﺑﯽ‬-‫ﺑﺎ‬-‫ﭼﮕﻮﻧﻪ‬.
7
https://the.sketchengine.co.uk/.
78 R. Arab
Man: What are you doing?

Nasreddin: Oh, I’m half mad. Sometimes I do strange things and do not know what
I am doing.
Man: Really? Then why don’t you sometimes take grapes from your baskets and
put them into our baskets?
Nasreddin: You don’t understand me, I said I am half mad, not totally mad.
This story provides a good example of the difficulty one may have in deciding if
Nasreddin is acting cleverly or stupidly. Regardless, he reacts with hāzer javābi;
that is, he finds the contextually best possible response in a short time. This talent is
the cornerstone of his wit and presents a genealogy of his praised humour. In the
above example, his quick reply in that situation, where he is under pressure and in
danger, makes the anecdote humorous and memorable.
In more recent times, numerous stories have emerged of the first cross-cultural
communications and visits of Iranians to the West, or of Westerners to Iran, con-
taining different understanding and practices of humour.8 Gail (2011) discusses
various versions of the events surrounding an Iranian envoy’s visit to the UK in the
nineteenth century. She recounts the encounter of Mirza Hasan (a member of the
delegation) with the British host who seemingly lionized him for his wit, a type of
wit (called ‘bons mots’ in the source) that could have occurred in this cross-cultural
encounter (Gail 2011: 67):
Mirza Hasan was asked in London if it is true that Iranians worship the sun.
He replied, “Oh yes, Madame, and so would you in England too, if you ever saw him!”
What is described in these stories of bons mots and jokes was also observed by
other Westerners who studied Persian literature and culture. Kuka (1923: xiv) was
among the first scholars to suggest that in Persian, “we may not come across good
specimens of sustained irony like that of Swift”, but in “Repartees and Epigrams,
and in the display of fine Fancy, the Persians can stand comparison with any
nation”. It was probably difficult for him to contrast the differences between the
Persian form of quick responses and repartee, but this paper will do so in
Sect. 5.1.2.
Apart from the numerous examples from the written literature, I present two
recent examples of conversations to show the characteristics of the practice. Both
examples were identified as cases of hāzer javābi; at the time, they were posted on
the Internet and have been widely viewed. They indicate that a response should
have three elements to qualify for hāzer javābi. First, it must be quick, but this does
not mean it must be produced in less than 200 ms, and the gap between turns in
most languages (see Sect. 5.1). Rather, the response must be produced in a smaller
time span than a person would normally take to produce the same content. Second,
it is phrased in ‘good words’, in the sense that it is the best response (or at least one
8
The most notable and influential one was J. J. Morier’s The adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan
(1824).
of the best) that could be produced in this context. Third, other people acknowledge
and appreciate the previous two points and feel good because of it.
The first example9 is taken from a televised interview where a little girl answers
questions. The interviewer asks, “What are your favourite dishes?” She quickly
names her favourite dishes: “Ooh, I mean like tuna can, I mean like chicken, kebab,
I mean like chicken kebab, pickle kebab.” The interviewer interrupts her and asks,
“What is a pickle kebab?” The girl’s face shows that she understands she has made
a mistake, but quickly (roughly less than 200 ms) replies with “Oh, well, I mean
any food that is better if it has pickles with it” (for the Persian transcript, see
Appendix 1). This video has been uploaded with the title “hāzer javāb girl” on a
popular content website.
The second example is a short conversation extracted from the talk show
Dorehami (literally, a ‘get-together’), which is hosted by a comedian (Mehran
Modiri). The show was aired from March 2016 to April 2018. An audience of
around 300 sits in front of the show host, who might interact with them or ask them
to walk up onto the set and respond to questions.
In one episode of this television show,10 Modiri invites two members of the
audience on stage in order to ask them some humorous questions. While Modiri’s
questions are probably prepared, the participants’ responses are not. The
on-the-spot and quick responses of one of the participants present two examples of
hāzer javābi (printed in bold). The translation below shows an extract of the
exchange (for the Persian transcript, see Appendix 2). The host (M in the transcript)
asks for the meanings of some idioms in Persian. One of the two participants (P in
the transcript) quickly answers the questions while referring to how (poorly) the
host is dressed.
M: Somebody is šambe-yešambe,11 what does it mean?
P: It means they were wearing different pieces of outfit, one on top of the other,
then one item of clothing is showing underneath the other; for example, an
outfit that is not matching—like this (he goes towards M and points at and
touches his clothes). This is šambe (Saturday); this is yešambe (Sunday)
[Audience are laughing loudly]
[P puts his hands on his chest (to show respect)]
[M looks at the audience bewildered and surprised]
[The audience applauds]
M [surprised]: He used me as an example?
9
https://www.aparat.com/v/IbB9F/‫ﺩﺧﺘﺮ_ﺣﺎﺿﺮ_ﺟﻮﺍﺏ‬.
10
http://nodud.com/entertainment/joke/1502605141.408156.
11
Literally Saturday–Sunday; means ‘dishevelled, not matching’.
80 R. Arab
[Everybody laughs]
M [pointing at his clothes]: So this is šambe? This is yešambe?
P: Exactly. Yes.
M: OK. I’ll talk to you later. Someone šiš mizane12: what does this mean?
P: šiš mizane? It means he can’t match his clothes.
M: Hmm.
P: For example, he wears cotton trousers with a T-shirt [referring to M’s
outfit again] Everyone laughing] No offence to you.
Both of these examples qualify as hāzer javābi, and both have been labelled as such
by Internet users. The example of the girl more fully satisfies the first and the third
elements (i.e. quickness and positive perception), while the latter examples from the
TV show satisfy the second and third elements (i.e. good words and positive
perception). It is necessary to emphasize that in neither case is the speed (quickness)
a pre-determined gap between the two parties’ exchanges, but a perception of
quickness in relation to the linguistic content produced.
5.1.2 Distinguishing Hāzer Javābi from Similar Concepts

in Other Languages
Prior to looking at hāzer javābi in more detail, it is helpful to distinguish hāzer

javābi from similar-but-different concepts in other languages and cultures. Quick
replies are common in many languages, whether they are specifically valued in
them or not; however, in most cases, they are. Several languages and cultures
appreciate speakers who quickly and effortlessly use a verbal response in a com-
municative setting. Some examples below show that this quickness does not
essentially mean a response right after someone says something or even right after
something happens, but it is often perceived as ‘a response in time’. A satisfactory
definition of the concept ‘in time’ depends on a perceptual consensus among
speakers that hinges on the dynamics of how people interact (see Sect. 5.1).
Hence, some of the most important similar concepts of hāzer javābi are enu-
merated in this section, and their differences clarified. The main challenge here is an
inadequacy of definitions offered for such concepts. The definitions are mostly
vague, based on etymology, and fall into the trap of semantic circularity.
There seems to be a rhetorical inclination to readiness and quickness in
responding that can be traced back, at least in the Western world, to one of the
earliest intellectual groups who attempted to articulate the art of speaking: the
Sophists. As orators, the Sophists used rhetoric more than any other art and so are
Literally hitting six; means ‘being nuts’.

12
deemed to be the “master rhetoricians” (Paul 2014: 44) in history. In order to be the
masters of rhetoric, they needed to be interested in “the problem of time in relation
to speaking” and in “the temporal dimension of the situation [that speech]
addresses” (Poulakos 1983: 38–39). The Sophists, more specifically Gorgias and
Protagoras, discussed the power of the opportune moment because “if what is said
is timely, its timeliness renders it more sensible, more rightful, and ultimately more
persuasive” (ibid.: 40). Speaking, for a rhetor, is a temporal choice, and “unless
they [the ideas spoken, R.A.] are voiced at the precise moment they are called upon,
they miss their chance to satisfy situationally shared voids within a particular
audience” (ibid.: 39).
The Sophists insisted on the importance of the temporal dimension of speaking,
that is, the notion of kairos. Kairos is defined as “the opportune moment” (Poulakos
1983: 36), “the uniquely timely, the spontaneous, the radically particular” (Miller
2002: xiii), and “the right or opportune time to do something, or right measure in
doing something” (Kinneavy 1986: 80).13 Kairos, in short, governs the correct time
at which the speech could be most effective.
In addition to this concept, a few other concepts and tropes in Western literature
refer to quick comebacks and responses, such as retort, repartee, quip, riposte, bons
mots, and so on. It is interesting that different cultures share the fact that the
anecdotal examples of such tropes and techniques are told with admiration (cf.
Grothe 2005).
Consultation of dictionaries and previous literature establishes that retort,
repartee, bons mots, and riposte evolved from Latin into English, while rejoinder is
a French legal term. Retort is defined as “turn back, twist back, throwback, say, or
utter sharply and aggressively in reply” (Etymonline 2018), and it usually refers to
an aggressive, short reply. Bon mot denotes “witticism, clever or witty saying”; it
originates from French and literally means ‘good word’; mot itself is a borrowing of
Vulgar Latin muttum, from Latin muttire ‘to mutter, mumble, murmur’ (ibid.).
Riposte means “a quick thrust after parrying a lunge”; it is a fencing term from the
French riposte and originates in the Latin respondere (ibid.). Rejoinder originates
from the Middle French noun use of rejoindre, “to answer to a legal charge” (ibid.).
As for repartee, which comes from the French repartie and is mostly defined as
‘quick remark’, it refers to a rapid and witty response in conversation, “especially
one that turns an insult back on its originator; […] The term may also be applied to
a person’s talent for making witty replies” (Baldick 2008).
Many times, a repartee fails, or a speaker cannot find the appropriate response in
time. The French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784) coined a phrase for the
latter situation, l’esprit de l’escalier, which literally translates in English as
‘staircase wit’. It is used to refer to the fact that “a witty remark or retort often
comes to mind after the opportunity to make it has passed […] i.e., a witty remark
coming to mind on the stairs leading away from a gathering” (Knowles 2005).
13
For other senses of kairos, see Paul (2014), and also Sipiora and Baumlin (2002).
82 R. Arab
The above-mentioned concepts are helpful in showing that quick replies are not
unique to one or two languages. Nonetheless, the definitions are inadequate and
similar as they all seem to be quick responses designed to turn an insult back to the
speaker. Bon mot, a rare concept in use (see below), is the only term that probably
has unambiguously positive connotations in English.
The other concept that appears to be used more in conversational English and
has been under the scrutiny of some linguists is quip. Haugh and Weinglass (2018:
534) explored quips in two varieties of English (American and Australian) and
maintained that “quips can be broadly defined as witty, one-liners”. They further
defined jocular quips as playful or light-hearted comments on, or responses to,
another speaker’s just-prior serious talk, which are designed to initiate a non-serious
side sequence (ibid.; after Jefferson 1972). Norrick (1984: 199) also defined a quip
as a reaction to “a situation, but not directly to any other utterance”. “Quips are
short, sometimes witty, and often ironic comments about the on-going action, or the
topic under discussion” (Holmes and Marra 2002: 75), and they often involve
exaggeration (ibid.).
These definitions seem unsatisfactory. Defining concepts of this kind is a
challenging semantic task because of their high cultural significance and the rare
appearances of the term itself in natural discourse. Unlike hāzer javābi in Persian,
the above terms are seldom used in daily conversations in English. As an example,
the British National Corpus (BNC) displays 191 hits if the lemma is quip (2 per
million); with only one exception, they are all found in printed books and peri-
odicals. The frequency of bon mot in BNC is 0.01 per million (19 times in the
whole dataset; all from written sources). Repartee (0.01 per million) shows only 39
hits, all from books, and there are 788 hits for retort (7 per million), all in written
materials except for five, four of which were used in a documentary (probably
based on a written script) and one educational radio program (again, probably
written).14 Other less common concepts, practices, or meta-pragmatic labels are in
use in English, such as comebacks, afterwit, sally, and so on; I will not review them
here.
To sum up this section, I have initially examined hāzer javābi and have tried to
define it in a conventional, dictionary-style way. I have also offered classical
examples from literature, as well as two modern conversational examples. In the
last section, I have enumerated three distinguishing elements of hāzer javābi and
compared it with other similar concepts in other languages. Hence, I will argue that,
to avoid the semantic challenges that I have mentioned, the ethnopragmatic
approach to speech practices provides us with more precise definitions and a clear
picture of distributed conceptualizations. I will explain this approach in the fol-
lowing section.
14
All corpus examples from BNC have been accessed using https://sketchengine.co.uk from May
to June 2018.
5.2 The Ethnopragmatic Approach
As defined by Goddard and colleagues, ethnopragmatics (Goddard 2006; Goddard

and Mullan 2019; Goddard and Ye 2015; Levisen and Waters 2017) explores
indigenous cultural categories and qualities that are salient in a given language. It
does so from a so-called insider or emic perspective.15 Goddard (2006: 2) enumerated
a few questions that one could ask to begin an ethnopragmatic study, such as “what is
distinctive about these particular ways of speaking?”, “why—from their own point of
view—do the people concerned speak in these particular ways?”, and “what sense
does it make to them?”. Goddard maintains that the strength of ethnopragmatics
resides in its endeavour to overcome ethnocentrism, in general, and Anglocentrism
(Wierzbicka 2014) in particular. In the last few decades, English has been elevated to
play the role of impartial language of science, but what has been generally over-
looked is that, like every language, English, too, has its own cultural baggage. At a
recent international conference on ethno-epistemology, for instance, Goddard
(forthcoming) pointed out that “contemporary Anglo culture […] has a folk episte-
mology of its own, and it seems indisputable […] that Anglo English folk notions
have left their imprint on theoretical thinking in epistemology”. It follows that pro-
jects lacking epistemological sensitivity result in some “inadequacies, exclusions,
and marginalization”, and while they present attempts at “producing knowledge of
non-European experiences”, they impose their own epistemological categories
(Savransky 2017: 12). This is a clear example of ethnological ethnocentrism. With
reference to similar attempts, Course (2010: 248) referred to an increasing awareness
that “even the foundational assumptions of Western epistemology are neither as
transparent nor as self-evident as was previously assumed, but rather pertain to a
highly specific naturalist ontology” (cf. Descola 1996; Keane 2007).
Goddard does not create an independent case for ethnopragmatics but, to justify
the robustness of ethnopragmatic analysis, prefer to return to its foundational base,
i.e. the NSM approach. Commenting on the latter, Goddard (2007: 145) writes:
The methodological attractions of this approach can be itemised as follows: (i) Any system
of semantic representation has to be interpreted in terms of some previously known system
and since the only such system shared by all language users is natural language itself, it
makes sense to keep the system of semantic representation as close as possible to natural
language. (ii) Clear and accessible semantic representations enhance the predictiveness and
testability of hypotheses. Most other systems of semantic analysis are hampered by the
obscurity and artificiality of the terms of description. (iii) To the extent that the system is
15
To the best of my knowledge, the label ethnopragmatics was used by Alessandro Duranti as
early as the 1990s as an approach to blend ethnography of communication and pragmatics (cf.
Duranti 1993, 1994, 2015). Peeters (2016) lists different approaches with an ethno-perspective and
the ‘ethno-prefix’ at the beginning of their names (such as ethnolinguistics, ethnolexicology,
ethnosyntax). He defines ethnopragmatics as “the study of culturally salient communicative
behaviours [that] relies on linguistic as well as non-linguistic evidence, with a view to discovering
whether any cultural values, previously known or newly discovered, underpin these behaviours”
(Peeters 2016: 151).
84 R. Arab
intended to represent the cognitive reality of ordinary language users, it would seem
problematical to employ symbols whose meanings are completely opaque to language users
themselves.
What Goddard explains in (i) is the distinctive strength of NSM in general and
ethnopragmatics in particular. Points (ii) and (iii) are contested claims to pinpoint
how far an NSM analysis is accessible, understandable and preferable by language
users themselves. The answer, it appears, depends on what other methods and
approaches it is compared against. In the context of pragmatics, and in comparison
with the so-called ‘universalist paradigm’ (Goddard 2006: 1) within it, all three are
advantages of the NSM approach, which allows to explicate indigenous categories
and qualities by means of reductive paraphrases relying on semantic primes and
molecules (see, e.g., Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014; Wierzbicka 2014). The
paraphrases are called ‘semantic explications’ and aim to present “an attempt to say
in other, simpler words (the metalanguage of semantic primes and molecules) what
a speaker is saying when he or she utters the expression being explicated” (Goddard
2013: 250). Explications offer the insiders’ understanding of an expression, while
being based on universal concepts shared among all languages. According to
Goddard (2013: 250–251), a good explication will satisfy at least three conditions:
(1) it should make intuitive sense to the native speakers; (2) it has to be framed
entirely in semantic primes (and molecules); and (3) it has to make sense as a
whole.
I will present the explication for the Persian speech practice known as hāzer
javābi in Sect. 5.4. One requirement for an ethnopragmatic study of a speech
practice is to put it into its cultural and linguistic context. This entails providing
linguistic and non-linguistic evidence. Section 5.3 aims at providing a context for
the prominence of hāzer javābi in Persian and, by extension, in some neighbouring
languages.16
5.3 Historical and Cultural Context
Hāzer javābi has a long history in Persian classical literature, manifested in a

variety of genres. The author of a notable paper on hāzer javābi in Persian goes as
far as claiming that “we see very often, in the history of Persian literature and
poetry, that an in-time word and hāzer javābi by a poet has changed the destiny of a
nation or ethnicity, it has saved them from enormous bloodshed and plunder, and it
has turned darkness into light” (Bagherzadeh 1973: 951; my translation).
Reference is made here to the many examples of hāzer javābi before a king (or
other persons in authority) by a courageous individual. Mostly told as anecdotes,
16
The online resource https://nsm-approach.net/ shows that Persian has been previously studied
using ethnopragmatic techniques. See, e.g., Sahragard (2000), Karimnia (2012), and Hashemi
(2013).
the hāzer javāb speaker is the protagonist and the eloquent hero in such narratives.
The courage needed to be hāzer javāb and to say something after the king has
spoken commands admiration for ‘standing up to’ authority. However, kings are
often softened by the charm of ‘the right answer’ and the intelligence of such wit at
‘the right time’. Bagherzadeh (1973) offers some examples of these incidents, such
as Rudaki (858–941 AD) speaking before a Samanid army general, which resulted
in the general withdrawing his army, or Hafez (1315–1390) speaking before
Tamerlane, an incident that saved the poet’s life.
Ontologies of Persian literature contain other anecdotal evidence of hāzer javāb
people finding a quick response. Kuka (1923) presented several in a collection on
Persian humour. One of the short stories features Khusro Parwiz, king of the
Sasanian Empire, who reigned from 590 to 628, sitting in audience with Sheereen
(his wife) (Kuka 1923: 225–226):
Khusro Parwiz once ordered 8000 direms to be paid to a fisherman, as a reward for bringing
to him a very large fish. When the fisherman rose to depart, one of the direms fell from his
hand and rolled on the ground; and he stooped to pick it up. Sheereen, who was with the
king, whispered to him, “Look at the meanness of the fellow! How [he] does not let go even
a single direm.” Khusro accordingly recalled the fisherman, and said to him, “Were not those
8000 direms sufficient for you, that you stooped low to pick up even a single direm, that had
rolled away from your hands?” “The reward of your Majesty has made me rich,” replied the
fisherman, “but I was afraid that if the coin remained on the ground, the auspicious name of
your Majesty on the coin might get trampled upon.” Khusrow was surprised at this ready wit
and ordered that 4000 direms more should be given to the fisherman.
Kuka, who collected these stories in the early twentieth century, probably preferred
to use a phrase such as ready wit instead of the original hāzer javābi, which is
justifiable in translation. Regardless of the authenticity of this seventh-century
story, this is one of the examples of the long tradition and significance of being
‘ready to respond’ in Persian. The punchline of such stories is the unexpected
response that one character (mostly the inferior) finds, often in front of a superior
person. Beeman (1981) reported in his fieldwork in central Iran in the 1970s on
some folk improvisatory performances he witnessed, where a clown figure performs
in front of his boss, a traditional merchant. The performances were based on
improvisation of actors, and most of the humour comes from the quick responses of
the clown figure to the superior person, the merchant.
Another setting where hāzer javābi seems to play an important role in Persian is
poetry. Monāzere, a genre of verbal battle (cf. Abdullaeva 2014), is a longstanding
poetic form in Persian. The prototype of this poetic form is as follows:
He1 said. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .: ðSÞhe2 said. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .

He1 said. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .: ðSÞhe2 said. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .
This is the simplest form possible, and more complicated versions are seen in
serious works of poetry. It is based on sequences of ‘the right response’ with the
correct prosody and rhymes between two parties in a debate. Abdullaeva (2014:
254) argues that “evidence from antiquity in almost all languages of the Near and
Middle East (Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Aramaic, Syriac, Middle Persian or
Pahlavi, and Arabic) represent the debate between two sides” (cf. Reinink and
86 R. Arab
Vanstiphout 1991). He points out the ancient origin of this literary genre, which is
reflected “for example in the Sanskrit Animal Fables, [and] continued in the
Arabo-Persian Kalīla and Dimna” (Abdullaeva 2014: 254).
Abdullaeva (2014: 255) describes the role of verbal battles prior to real battles
between two armies:
their weaponry was their skill in eloquence, their audience was their soldiers, and the result of
their verbal combat could be treated not simply as a rehearsal, inspiring soldiers and their
generals to victory, but might itself have half decided the outcome of the battle for both armies.
One additional cultural phenomenon that probably adds to the value of hāzer javābi
is mošā’ere. The word refers to a poetry game known as bait bāzi in Hindi and
Urdu. Bait bāzi is a game that “starts with the first player reciting a stanza of a poem
off the top of their head, and the next player must recite another stanza of any poem
which starts with the last letter of the verse used by the previous player” (Wikipedia
2018). Mošā’ere is Arabic for the same game in Persian. Contestants have played
the game in television shows, where the person who cannot find a stanza with the
correct first letter within a certain time loses the game. The winners of this game are
known as hāzer javāb people. The frequency and significance of reciting poetry in
various conversational settings in the Persian-speaking community is a possible
topic for further study.
To conclude, I have tried in this section to illustrate the historical context in
which hāzer javābi as a speech practice has developed. It would not be possible to
fully understand the practice without knowing the culture. It is now time in the
following section to explicate the pragmatics of hāzer javābi, as well as the shared
understanding of the concept in Persian.
5.4 Hāzer Javābi: The Conceptualization
This section presents the script for the conceptualization of the practice of hāzer
javābi in Persian, following the ethnopragmatic approach in the study of speech
practices and categories. This type of explication was called ethnopragmatic script
by Goddard (2004: 1215). “Ethnopragmatic scripts are a specialized kind of cultural
script—specialized in that they concern culture-specific ‘ways with words’ rather
than other aspects of speaking or thinking” (Goddard 2004: 1216).
The script below represents the insiders’ understanding and depicts the shared
conceptualization of a valued speech practice; in addition, it functions as an
explication for the meta-pragmatic label as used by native speakers. Scripts such as
this are useful to show the social cognition of culture-specific concepts, practices,
and values (cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004). This one, in particular, shows that
hāzer javābi is conceptualized around three core components: first, a state of
readiness (as though a person has prepared) to respond whenever possible; second,
a notion of quickness, which is more of a surprising quality; and third, a positive
evaluation in relation to the second component; that is, it is surprising and unex-
pected that a person can find such appropriate words in a short span of time. The
proposed explication runs as follows:
[A] Ethnopragmatic script for hāzer javābi
a. often when someone is with other people, it is good if this someone thinks like this:
b. “when someone here says something at one moment,
it is good if I can say something to this someone a moment after, not like people say
at many times
it is good if I say it with very good words
c. if I say it well, people here can think about me like this:
d. ‘this someone can think quickly [m], this someone says things well with words’
e. at the same time, they can feel something good because of it
as people often feel when they want to laugh [m]
f. I want this”
Each of the six constituents, (a) to (f), represents one aspect of the semantic dynamics
of the concept and the pragmatics of the valued practice. Line (a) illustrates the setting
in which this speech practice occurs and accounts for the mental state of readiness.
The second line reveals the culturally distributed mental state. It hinges on the
readiness for coming up with a response unlike other responses. The distinguishing
elements of a good response are that it is well articulated, or it contains high-quality
tropes or unexpected inferences; in addition, this quality response has to be produced
in a relatively short time. Other people would need much more time to come up with
such pithy words, such appropriate tropes, or such unexpected inferences.
Lines (c) and (d) try to illustrate the perception of this speech practice, in terms
of admiration for the speaker’s mental ability or cleverness in conversation. Line
(d), moreover, represents the quality of being hāzer javāb among speakers of
Persian. Line (e) points to the social implication and perlocutionary effect of the
speech practice that leads to the last line, (f), the attitude of speakers towards hāzer
javābi in general (discussed with examples in Sects. 5.1 and 5.3).
Appendix 3 presents the same script as a window to the collective conceptual-
ization of hāzer javābi using Persian primes.17 It is an attempt to show that there is
a form of conceptualization distributed heterogeneously (cf. Sharifian 2011) among
speakers of Persian that is valued if a person responds well and quickly. The
diachronic evidence and contemporary conversations show that there is an incli-
nation to be ready to respond quick and well. Both concepts of ‘quick’ and ‘well’
are relative and have been discussed earlier.
5.5 Broader Issues and Concluding Remarks
The final part of this chapter consists of two subsections. The first aims at wedding
this study with other linguistic studies on responses in different languages. The
second makes some concluding remarks.
17
In addition, Appendix 4 offers the list of Persian exponents of semantic primes.
88 R. Arab
5.5.1 Broader Issues
It seems to be a convention of human knowledge that a response to an utterance

needs to be produced in a certain span of time. If speaker B, in a communicative
context, fails to produce a response to speaker A’s previous utterance in time t, both
parties, and even other observers, feel unsettled. Experiments on turn taking have
shown that the “language production system has latencies of around 600 ms and up
for encoding a new word but the gaps between turns average around 200 ms”
(Levinson and Torreira 2015: 1–2). Some studies show that “the most frequent turn
transitions occur with only a slight gap or overlap, regardless of the language”
(Bögels and Torreira 2015: 46). This has at least two implications: first, people start
planning their response before the other speaker has finished, and second, the gaps
between turns by two parties of a conversation are relatively very small.
Studies in conversation analysis have supported the general intuition that answers
are the most common form of response (cf. Lee 2013: 416). Moreover, some studies
show that the question–response sequence is “a universal unit of conversational
organization and a pervasive type of sequence in all communities” (Stivers et al. 2010:
2616). These findings support my initial claim that there is an expectation to receive a
response and this expectation seems to be a part of the perlocutionary aspect of the
speech act. Particularly in the case of the question–response sequence, if we take it as a
universal unit, the addressee expects to respond and the speaker expects to be
responded to. This expectation might be satisfied with the semiotic of a smile in other
cases; nonetheless, it is expected and performed on a daily basis in every language.
The focus of this study, more specifically, went beyond the expectation of
giving/getting a response in a certain time span. It tried to investigate ‘two sides of
the same coin’ in the case of the speech practice hāzer javābi in Persian; one ‘side’
being a perception and the other a tendency. There is a perception in a conversa-
tional setting that a speaker has satisfied the expectation of providing a response in a
shorter span of time, as opposed to the expected time t. In most cases, however, the
turn-taking gaps in these cases are as usual (see the example of the child in
Sect. 5.1.2), but the verbal content that has been produced in time t is deemed to be
of a higher quality than the one that other, ‘normal’ speakers produce in time t,
which in turn indicates the mental ability of the speaker.
The other ‘side of the coin’ is a shared tendency among speakers of Persian to
come up with a response to an utterance or an event more quickly. Researchers aware
of the state of the art in conversation studies stand a lot to gain from investigating this
further, especially given the fact that studies of language production show that
pre-articulation processes run three or four times faster than actual articulation
(Levinson and Torreira 2015; after Wheeldon and Levelt 1995) and also because of
the suggestion that production begins as soon as possible, that is, as soon as the
speech act content of the incoming turn is clear (Bögels and Torreira 2015).
This salient tendency in speakers might be studied from a diachronic and also an
ontogenetic perspective. The diachronic perspective would confirm the numerous
examples of such a tendency in the history of a language, in its literature, and its art
of rhetoric. Grothe (2005: 1) began his survey of repartee in English by noting that
the stories of (humorous) comebacks and quick replies are almost always told with
a tone of admiration in folk literature, mostly to “pay homage to great wit, espe-
cially when that wit is exhibited under pressure”. The ontogenetic perspective, on
the other hand, would show how and why someone develops this tendency to
master quick comebacks over time.
In practical terms of human talk, it is impossible to have a repartee of confab-
ulations.18 However, a good speaker, in this case, is perceived as someone who is
good at contingencies of human interactions and who has good words to say at the
right time, that is, in quicker than the usual time t.
5.5.2 Concluding Remarks
This paper applied an ethnopragmatic approach to study a Persian speech practice.

A number of examples and contextualizations were leveraged to clearly show the
conceptualization of the practice. They demonstrated that a response should have
three elements to qualify for hāzer javābi; first, it must be quick; that is, it must
have been produced in a much smaller time span than the average person would
take to produce the same content. Second, it must be formed in good words; that is,
it can be seen as the best possible response that could be produced in a given
context. Third, others must be in a position to appreciate the previous two points
and feel good because of it. The explication in Sect. 5.4 covered all these com-
ponents and elements in a cross-translatable metalanguage. It tried to depict the
tendency to be hāzer javāb as well as the ways being hāzer javāb is perceived.
Acknowledgements An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Australian Linguistic
Society (ASL) conference in December 2017 at University of Sydney. Part of the examples and
arguments presented in this paper was used in another presentation at the Australasian Humour
Studies Network (AHSN) conference at CQ University in February 2018. I am indebted to Cliff
Goddard for encouraging me to write this paper and also for his helpful comments on the first
draft. I also appreciate insightful notes and enlightening comments by Parvin Delshad, Jan Hein,
Kerry Mullan, Michael Haugh, Jessica Milner Davis, and Gizem Milonas. I would like to thank
two anonymous reviewers for their critic and the editors of the Festschrift for the opportunity. Any
inadequacy and errors in the current version of this paper are entirely my own.
18
The expression repartee of confabulations has been used by Lie (2012) while discussing Hegel’s
idea “Philosophy is always late”, i.e. every thought is an after-thought.
‫‪90‬‬ ‫‪R. Arab‬‬
‫‪Appendix 1—Persian Transcript of the Interview‬‬

‫‪with the Little Girl‬‬
‫ﺷﻤﺎ ﭼﮫ ﻏﺬاھﺎﯾﯽ دوﺳﺖ داری؟‬

‫اووو‪ ،‬ﯾﻌﻨﯽ ﻣﺜﻞ ﺗﻦ ﻣﺎھﯿﯿﯿﯽ‪ ،‬ﯾﻌﻨﯽ ﻣﺜﻞ ﺟﻮﺟﮫ‪ ،‬ﮐﺒﺎااااب‪ ،‬ﯾﻌﻨﯽ ﻣﺜﻞ ﺟﻮﺟﮫ ﮐﺒﺎب‪ ،‬ﺗﺮﺷﯽ ﮐﺒﺎب‬
‫ﺗﺮﺷﯽ ﮐﺒﺎب دﯾﮕﮫ ﭼﯿﮫ؟‬
‫ﺧﻮب ﯾﻌﻨﯽ ﻏﺬاﯾﯽ ﮐﮫ ﺗﻮش ﺑﮭﺘﺮه ﺑﺎ ﺗﺮﺷﯽ ﺑﯿﺎرن ﺑﺨﻮرن‬
‫‪Appendix 2—Persian Transcript of the Dorehami‬‬

‫‪Television Show‬‬
‫ﻣﺪﯾﺮی– ﻣﯿﮕﻦ ﻓﻼﻧﯽ ﺷﻨﺒﮫ ﯾﺸﻨﺒﮫ ﺳﺖ ﯾﻌﻨﯽ ﭼﯽ؟‬
‫ش‪ -‬ﯾﻌﻨﯽ ﻟﺒﺎﺳﺶ ﭼﻦ ﺗﯿﮑﮫ ﺑﻮده‪ ،‬ﺑﻌﺪ ﺗﯿﮑﮫ ھﺎش زده ﺑﯿﺮون از زﯾﺮ‪ ،‬ﻣﺜﻼ ﯾﮫ ﻟﺒﺎﺳﯽ ﮐﮫ ﻧﺎﻓﺮﻣﮫ ﻣﺜﻼ اﯾﻨﺠﻮری )ﺑﮫ ﺳﻤﺖ‬
‫ﻣﺪﯾﺮی ﻣﯽ رود و ﺑﮫ ﻟﺒﺎﺳﺶ اﺷﺎره و دﺳﺖ ﻣﯽ زﻧﺪ( ﮐﮫ اﯾﻦ ﺷﻨﺒﮫ و اﯾﻦ ﯾﮑﺸﻨﺒﮫ‬
‫)ھﻤﮫ ﻣﯽ ﺧﻨﺪﻧﺪ(‬
‫ش‪) -‬دﺳﺖ روی ﺳﯿﻨﮫ اش ﻣﯽ ﮔﺬارد(‬
‫م‪) -‬ﻣﺪﯾﺮی ﺑﺎ ﺗﻌﺠﺐ و ﻏﺎﻓﻠﮕﯿﺮی ﺑﮫ ﺣﻀﺎر ﻧﮕﺎه ﻣﯽ ﮐﻨﺪ(‬
‫)ﺣﻀﺎر دﺳﺖ ﻣﯽ زﻧﻨﺪ(‬
‫م‪) -‬ﺑﺎ ﺗﻌﺠﺐ( ﻣﻨﻮ ﻣﺜﺎل زد؟‬
‫)ﺧﻨﺪه(‬
‫م – اﯾﻦ ﺷﻨﺒﮫ اﺳﺖ اﯾﻦ ﯾﺸﻨﺒﮫ ﺳﺖ؟‬
‫ش‪ -‬دﻗﯿﻘﺎْ‪ .‬ﺑﻠﮫ‬
‫ﺣﺎﻻ ﺑﺖ ﻣﯿﮕﻢ ﻣﯿﮕﻦ ﻓﻼﻧﯽ ﺷﯿﺶ ﻣﯿﺰﻧﮫ‬ ‫م – ﺧﻮب‬
‫ﯾﻌﻨﯽ ﺗﻮ اﻧﺘﺨﺎب ﻟﺒﺎﺳﮭﺎش ﺑﺎ ھﻤﺪﯾﮕﮫ ﻣﺜﻼ اﺻﻦ ﺗﻨﺎﺳﺐ ﻧﺪاره‬ ‫ش‪ -‬ﺷﯿﺶ ﻣﯿﺰﻧﮫ؟‬
‫م – اھﮭﻢ‬
‫ش‪ -‬ﻣﺜﻼ ﺷﻠﻮار ﭘﺎرﭼﮫ ای رو ﺑﺎ ﺗﯽ ﺷﺮت ﻣﺜﻼ آﺳﺘﯿﻦ ﮐﻮﺗﺎه )ﺧﻨﺪه( ﻣﯽ ﭘﻮﺷﮫ ﺑﻼﻧﺴﺒﺖ ﺷﻤﺎ‬
‫‪Appendix 3—Ethnopragmatic Script for Hāzer Javābi‬‬

‫)‪(Persian Version‬‬
‫ﺣﺎﺿﺮﺟﻮاﺑﯽ‬
‫اﻟﻒ‪ .‬اﻏﻠﺐ وﻗﺘﯽ ﮐﮫ ﻓﺮدی ﺑﺎ دﯾﮕﺮان اﺳﺖ‪ ،‬ﺧﻮب اﺳﺖ ﮐﮫ اﯾﻦ ﻓﺮد ﭼﻨﯿﻦ ﻓﮑﺮ ﮐﻨﺪ‪:‬‬
‫ب‪» .‬وﻗﺘﯽ ﻓﺮدی در ﯾﮏ ﻟﺤﻈﮫ ﭼﯿﺰی ﻣﯽ ﮔﻮﯾﺪ‪،‬‬
‫ﺧﻮب اﺳﺖ اﮔﺮ ﻣﻦ ﺑﺘﻮاﻧﻢ ﻟﺤﻈﮫ ای ﺑﻌﺪ ﭼﯿﺰی ﺑﮫ اﯾﻦ ﻓﺮد ﺑﮕﻮﯾﻢ‬
‫ﻧﮫ ﻣﺜﻞ ﭼﯿﺰھﺎی ﮐﮫ ﻣﺮدم در ﺑﯿﺸﺘﺮ ﻣﻮاﻗﻊ ﻣﯽ ﮔﻮﯾﻨﺪ‬
‫ﺧﻮب اﺳﺖ اﮔﺮ ﻣﻦ ﻟﺤﻈﮫ ای ﺑﻌﺪ ﺣﺮف ﺧﯿﻠﯽ ﺧﻮﺑﯽ ﺑﮕﻮﯾﻢ‬
‫ج‪ .‬اﮔﺮ اﯾﻦ را ﺑﺨﻮﺑﯽ ﺑﮕﻮﯾﻢ‪ ،‬دﯾﮕﺮان در ﻣﻮرد ﻣﻦ اﯾﻦ طﻮر ﻓﮑﺮ ﺧﻮاھﻨﺪ ﮐﺮد‪:‬‬
‫د‪» .‬اﯾﻦ ﻓﺮد ﻣﯽ ﺗﻮاﻧﺪ ﺳﺮﯾﻊ ]م[ ﻓﮑﺮ ﮐﻨﺪ‪ ،‬اﯾﻦ ﻓﺮد ﺧﻮب ﺣﺮف ﻣﯽ زﻧﺪ«‬
‫ه‪ .‬در ھﻤﺎن ﻣﻮﻗﻊ‪ ،‬آﻧﮭﺎ ﺣﺲ ﺧﻮﺑﯽ ﺑﮫ اﯾﻦ ﺧﺎطﺮ ﺧﻮاھﻨﺪ داﺷﺖ‬
‫ﻣﺜﻞ ﻣﻮﻗﻌﯽ ﮐﮫ ﻣﯽ ﺧﻮاھﻨﺪ ﺑﺨﻨﺪﻧﺪ ]م[‬
‫ی‪ .‬ﻣﻦ اﯾﻦ را ﻣﯽ ﺧﻮاھﻢ«‬
Appendix 4—Persian (Farsi) Exponents of Semantic Primes
‫ﻣﻦ‬, ‫ﺗﻮ‬, (‫ﻓﺮد)ی(~ﮐﺲ)ی‬, (‫ﭼﯿﺰ)ی‬, ‫آدم)ھﺎ(~اﻓﺮاد‬, ‫ﺑﺪن‬ Substantives

MAN, TO, KAS(I)~FARD(I), ČIZ(I), AFRĀD~ĀDAM(HĀ), BADAN
I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING~THING, PEOPLE, BODY
‫ﻧﻮﻉ‬, ‫ﺑﺨﺶ‬ Relational
NO', BAXŠ substantives
KIND, PART
‫اﯾﻦ‬, ‫ھﻤﺎن‬, (‫دﯾﮕﺮ)ی‬ Determiners
IN, HAMĀN, DIGAR(I)
THIS, THE SAME, OTHER~ELSE
‫ﯾﮏ‬, ‫دو‬, ‫زﯾﺎد‬/‫ﺧﯿﻠﯽ‬, ‫ﮐﻢ‬, ‫ﻣﻘﺪاری‬/‫ﺑﻌﻀﯽ‬, ‫ھﻤﮫ‬ Quantifiers
YEK, DO, XEYLI~ZIYĀD, KAM, BA’ZI~MEQDĀRI, HAME
ONE, TWO, MUCH~MANY, LITTLE~FEW, SOME, ALL
‫ﺧﻮب‬, ‫ﺑﺪ‬ Evaluators
XUB, BAD
GOOD, BAD
‫ﺑﺰرگ‬, ‫ﮐﻮﭼﮏ‬ Descriptors
BOZORG, KUČAK
BIG, SMALL
‫ﻓﮑﺮ ﮐﺮدن‬, ‫داﻧﺴﺘﻦ‬, ‫ﺧﻮاﺳﺘﻦ‬, ‫ﻧﺨﻮاﺳﺘﻦ‬, ‫اﺣﺴﺎﺱ ﮐﺮدن‬/‫ﺣﺲ‬, ‫دﯾﺪن‬, ‫ﺷﻨﯿﺪن‬ Mental predicates
FEKR-KARDAN, DĀNESTAN, XĀSTAN, NAXĀSTAN, HES/EHSĀS-
KARDAN, DIDAN, ŠENIDAN
KNOW, THINK, WANT, DON’T WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
‫ﮔﻔﺘﻦ‬, ‫ﺣﺮف~ﮐﻠﻤﺎت‬, ‫درﺳﺖ‬ Speech
GOFTAN, KALAMĀT~HARF, DOROST
SAY, WORDS, TRUE
‫اﻧﺠﺎم دادن‬/‫)ﮐﺎری( ﮐﺮدن‬, ‫اﺗﻔﺎﻕ اﻓﺘﺎدن‬, ‫ﺣﺮﮐﺖ ﮐﺮدن‬ Actions, events,
(KĀRI) KARDAN~ANJĀM-DĀDAN, ETTEFAQ-OFTĀDAN, HARKAT- movement
KARDAN
DO, HAPPEN, MOVE
‫)در ﺟﺎﯾﯽ( ﺑﻮدن‬, ‫وﺟﻮد دارد‬, ‫ﭼﯿﺰی( ﺑﻮدن‬/‫)ﮐﺴﯽ‬ Location,
(DAR JA’I) BUDAN, VOJUD-DĀRAD, (KASI/ČIZI) BUDAN existence,
BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) specification
(‫ﻣﺎل ﻣﻦ )ﺑﻮدن‬ Possession
MĀL-E MAN (BUDAN)
(IS) MINE
‫زﻧﺪﮔﯽ ﮐﺮدن‬, ‫ُﻣﺮدن‬ Life and death
ZENDEGI-KARDAN, MORDAN
LIVE, DIE
‫ ﮐﯽ~)ﭼﮫ( وﻗﺘﯽ‬, ‫اﻻن‬, ‫ﻗﺒﻞ‬, ‫ﺑﻌﺪ‬, ‫ﻣﺪت زﯾﺎدی‬, ‫ﻣﺪت ﮐﻮﺗﺎھﯽ‬, ‫ﺑﺮای ﻣﺪﺗﯽ‬, ‫ﻟﺤﻈﮫ‬ Time
(ČE) VAQTI~KEY, AL'ĀN, QABL, BA’D, MODDAT-E ZIĀDI, MODDAT-E
KUTĀHI, BARĀY-E MODDATI, LAHZE
WHEN~TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME,
FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT
92 R. Arab
‫ﺟﺎﻳﯽ ﮐﻪ‬, ‫ﺍﻳﻨﺠﺎ‬, ‫ﺑﺎﻻ‬, ‫ﺯﻳﺮ‬, ‫ﺩﻭﺭ‬, ‫ﻧﺰﺩﻳﮏ‬, ‫ﺳﻤﺖ‬, ‫ﺩﺍﺧﻞ‬, ‫ﻟﻤﺲ ﮐﺮﺩﻥ‬ Place
JA'I KE, INJĀ, BĀLĀ, ZIR, DUR, NAZDIK, SAMT, DĀXEL, LAMS-KARDAN
WHERE~PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE,
TOUCH
‫~ﻧﻪ‬-‫ ﻥ‬, ‫ﺷﺎﻳﺪ‬, (‫ﺗﻮﺍﻥ)ﺳﺘﻦ‬, ‫ﺑﺨﺎﻁﺮ ﺍﻳﻦ~ﭼﻮﻥ‬, ‫ﺍﮔﺮ‬ Logical concepts
NA, ŠĀYAD, TAVĀN(ESTAN),ČON~BE XĀTER(E), AGAR
NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF
‫ﺧﻴﻠﯽ‬, ‫)ﺑﻴﺶ(ﺗﺮ‬ Intensifier,
XEYLI, (BIŠ)TAR augmentor
VERY, MORE
‫ِﻣﺜﻞ‬ Similarity
MESL
LIKE~AS
Notes: • Exponents of primes can be polysemous; i.e., they can have other, additional meanings. •
Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes. • They can be formally, i.e.
morphologically, complex. • They can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with ~).
• Each prime has well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties
References
Abdullaeva, F. (2014). The origins of the munazara genre in New Persian literature. In A.
Seyed-Gohrab (Ed.), Metaphor and imagery in Persian poetry (pp. 249–273). Leiden: Brill.
Bagherzadeh, A. (1973). Hāzer javābi-hāye adabi va tanz dar še’r fārsi va bayāne nemune-hāyi az
ān (Literary hāzer javābi and humour in Persian poetry and some examples). Vahid, 120, 950–
967.
Baldick, C. (2008). The Oxford dictionary of literary terms (3rd ed.) Oxford: Oxford University
Press. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199208272.001.0001/acref-
9780199208272. Accessed April 18, 2018.
Beeman, W. O. (1981). Why do they laugh? An interactional approach to humor in traditional
Iranian improvisatory theatre. Journal of American Folklore, 94(374), 506–526.
Bögels, S., & Torreira, F. (2015). Listeners use intonational phrase boundaries to project turn ends
in spoken interaction. Journal of Phonetics, 52, 46–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2015.
04.004.
Course, M. (2010). Of words and fog: Linguistic relativity and Amerindian ontology.
Anthropological Theory, 10(3), 247–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499610372177.
Descola, P. (1996). Constructing natures: Symbolic ecology and social practice. In P. Descola &
G. Pàlsson (Eds.), Nature and society: Anthropological perspectives (pp. 82–102). London:
Routledge.
Duranti, A. (1993). Intentions, self, and responsibility: An essay in Samoan ethnopragmatics.
In J. H. Hill & J. T. Irvine (Eds.), Responsibility and evidence in oral discourse (pp. 24–47).
Duranti, A. (1994). From grammar to politics: Linguistic anthropology in a Western Samoan
village. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Duranti, A. (2015). The anthropology of intentions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Etymonline. (2018). Online etymology dictionary. http://etymonline.com. Accessed April 24,
2018.
Gail, M. (2011). Persia and the Victorians. New York: Routledge (Originally published in 1951).
Goddard, C. (forthcoming). Overcoming the linguistic challenges for ethno-epistemology: NSM

perspectives. In M. Mizumoto, J. Ganeri & C. Goddard (Eds.), Ethno-epistemology: Global
perspectives on the study of knowledge.
Goddard, C. (2004). The ethnopragmatics and semantics of ‘active metaphors’. Journal of
Pragmatics, 36(7), 1211–1230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2003.10.011.
Goddard, C. (2006). Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin:
Goddard, C. (2007). Semantic primes and conceptual ontology. In A. C. Schalley & D. Zaefferer
(Eds.), Ontolinguistics: How ontological status shapes the linguistic coding of concepts
(pp. 145–174). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110197792.2.145.
Goddard, C. (2013). The semantic roots and cultural grounding of ‘social cognition’. Australian
Journal of Linguistics, 33(3), 245–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2013.846454.
Goddard, C., & Mullan, K. (2019). Explicating verbs for “laughing with other people” in French
and English (and why it matters for humor studies). Humor, 32(2).
languages and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/
9780199668434.001.0001.
Goddard, C., & Ye, Z. (2015). Ethnopragmatics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The routledge handbook of
language and culture (pp. 66–85). United Kingdom: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/
9781315793993.
Grothe, M. (2005). Viva la repartee: Clever comebacks and witty retorts from history’s great wits
and wordsmiths. New York: Harper Collins.
Hariyanto, S. (1995). The humorous stories of Nasreddin: Nasreddin, the clever man. Yogyakarta:
Penerbit Kanisius.
Hashemi, S. Z. (2013). Analysis of cultural scripts of objections and responses to objections in
Persian and English within Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework. Modern Journal of
Language Teaching Methods, 3(1), 17–25.
Haugh, M., & Weinglass, L. (2018). Divided by a common language? Jocular quips and (non-)
affiliative responses in initial interactions amongst American and Australian speakers of
English. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(4), 533–562. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2018-0019.
Holmes, J., & Marra, M. (2002). Over the edge? Subversive humor between colleagues and
friends. Humor, 15(1), 65–87. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.2002.006.
Javadi, H. (2009). Molla Nasreddin i. the person. In Encyclopedia Iranica. http://www.
iranicaonline.org/articles/molla-nasreddin-i-the-person. Accessed June 14, 2018.
Jefferson, G. (1972). Side sequences. In D. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in social interaction (pp. 294–
338). New York: The free Press.
Karimnia, A. (2012). A cross-cultural approach to contrasting offers in English and Persian. World
Applied Sciences Journal, 16(2), 280–289.
Keane, W. (2007). Christian moderns: Freedom and fetish in the mission encounter. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Kinneavy, J. L. (1986). Kairos: A neglected concept in classical rhetoric. In J. D. Moss (Ed.),
Rhetoric and praxis: The contribution of classical rhetoric to practical reasoning (pp. 79–
105). Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.
Knowles, E. (2005). Esprit de l’escalier. In E. Knowles (Ed.), The Oxford dictionary of phrase and
fable. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780198609810.001.
0001.
Kuka, M. N. (1923). Wit, humour and fancy of Persia. Bombay: New Impression.
Lee, S.-H. (2013). Response design in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The
handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 415–432). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.
org/10.1002/9781118325001.ch20.
94 R. Arab
Levinson, S. C., & Torreira, F. (2015). Timing in turn-taking and its implications for processing
models of language. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(731). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.
00731.
Lie, J. (2012). The structure of afterthought. Identities, 19(4), 544–555. https://doi.org/10.1080/
1070289X.2012.710549.
Marzolph, U., & Baldauf, I. (1990). Nasreddin Hodscha. In Enzyklopädie des Märchens, Bd. 6.,
Lief. 4/5, 1127–1151. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Miller, C. R. (2002). Foreword. In P. Sippiora & J. S. Baumlin (Eds.), Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays
in history, theory, and praxis (pp. xi–xiii). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Norrick, N. (1984). Stock conversational witticisms. Journal of Pragmatics, 8(2), 195–209.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(84)90049-3.
Paul, J. (2014). The use of Kairos in Renaissance political philosophy. Renaissance Quarterly, 67
(1), 43–78. https://doi.org/10.1086/676152.
Peeters, B. (2016). Applied ethnolinguisticS is cultural linguistics, but is it cultural linguistics?
International Journal of Language and Culture, 3(2), 137–160. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.3.
2.01pee.
Poulakos, J. (1983). Toward a sophistic definition of rhetoric. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 16(1), 35–
48.
Savransky, M. (2017). A decolonial imagination: Sociology, anthropology and the politics of
reality. Sociology, 51(1), 11–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038516656983.
Reinink, G. J., & Vanstiphout, H. L. J. (1991). Dispute poems and dialogues in the ancient and
medieval Near East: Forms and types of literary debates in Semitic and related literatures.
Leuven: Departement Oriëntalistiek.
Sahragard, R. (2000). Politeness in Persian: A cultural pragmatic analysis (Ph.D. thesis).
University of Leicester
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and language: Theoretical framework and
applications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.1.
Sipiora, P., & Baumlin, J. S. (2002). Rhetoric and kairos: Essays in history, theory, and praxis.
New York: SUNY Press.
Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, S. C. (2010). Question-response sequences in conversation
across ten Languages: An introduction. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(10), 2615–2619. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.04.001.
Wheeldon, L. R., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1995). Monitoring the time-course of phonological
encoding. Journal of Memory and Language, 34(3), 311–334. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.
1995.1014.
Wierzbicka, A. (2014). Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. New
York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199321490.001.0001.
Wikipedia. (2018). Bait Bazi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_bazi. Accessed July 1, 2018.
Reza Arab is Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at Griffith University in Brisbane. He is writing his
thesis on some Persian valued speech practices under Cliff Goddard’s supervision. His main
research interest is philosophical linguistics with special attention to speech practices and acts,
perception and intentions.
Chapter 6
“The Great Australian Pastime”:
Pragmatic and Semantic Perspectives
on Taking the Piss
Michael Haugh and Lara Weinglass
Abstract The claim that Australians place considerable value on not taking oneself
too seriously lies at the heart of discourses on Anglo-Australian identity. While
laughter and playful talk are ubiquitous across languages and cultures, Australians
are claimed to pride themselves on being able to joke and laugh at themselves (and
others) in almost any context, no matter how dire or serious the circumstances
appear to be. One of the key practices that has often been noted is that of ‘taking the
piss’, where the pretensions of others are (gleefully) punctured through cutting,
mocking remarks. Yet despite its apparent importance for Australians, there has
been surprisingly little empirical study of actual instances of it. This lacuna is
arguably a consequence of the complexity of studying a phenomenon that is
simultaneously semantic and pragmatic in character. Ethnopragmatics is one of the
few extant approaches that is specifically designed to directly tackle this problem.
In this approach, ‘semantic explications’, which address what a word or phrase
means, provide the basis for proposing ‘cultural scripts’, which address what
members of a culture are held to (normatively) do in social interaction and the
cultural value placed on doing things in that way. In this chapter, we analyse data
drawn from spoken corpora to address the question of whether “taking the piss”
might be best approached as a kind of ‘semantic explication’ or as a ‘cultural
script’, and what the consequences of framing it as one or other might be for
research on the role of ‘humour’ more generally in social interaction amongst
Australian speakers of English.
Keywords Teasing Joking Australian English Ethnopragmatics

Interactional pragmatics
M. Haugh (&)
The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
e-mail: michael.haugh@uq.edu.au
L. Weinglass
The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
e-mail: l.weinglass@uq.edu.au

96 M. Haugh and L. Weinglass
6.1 Introduction
The claim that Australians place considerable value on not taking themselves too
seriously lies at the heart of discourses on Anglo-Australian identity. While laughter
and various forms of ‘non-serious’ or ‘playful’ talk are pervasive across languages
and cultures, Australians pride themselves on being able to joke and laugh at others
and themselves in almost any context, no matter how dire or serious the circum-
stances appear to be (Davis 2009; Goddard 2006b, 2009). Australians are claimed,
for instance, to delight in baiting others (Davis 2009: 38), puncturing pretensions
(Goddard 2009: 31; Olivieri 2003: 66), or knocking authority and mocking pom-
posity (Bellanta 2012: xii), or what is colloquially known as taking the piss (or
taking the mickey in more polite circles). The seeming ubiquity of taking the piss is
frequently cited as a prime example of this predilection for irreverence in both
public life and private life in Australia (Davis 2009: 38; see also Bellanta 2012: xii,
2013: 1; Davis and Foyle 2017: 2; Davis and Crofts 1988: 24; De Groen and
Kirkpatrick 2009: xxiiii; Goddard 2009: 47; Goddard and Cramer 2016: 98; Morton
2008: 219; Ryan 2000: 88). While it is acknowledged that taking the piss occurs in
other Anglo varieties of English, including amongst British (Davis 2009: 38) and
New Zealand (De Groen and Kirkpatrick 2017: xxiii; Plester and Sayers 2007: 158;
Plester 2016: 42) speakers of English, it is claimed that not only does Australian
culture license its equal application to “friends or strangers, equals or superiors”
(Davis 2007: 24), but that amongst Australians “hidden rules decree that when the
victim rejects the baiting or ‘doesn’t get it’, by definition the joke has succeeded”
and so “the only effective response is to accept, appreciate, and reply in kind”
(Davis 2009: 38). Yet despite its apparent importance in Australian life, there have
been surprisingly few empirical studies of actual occurrences of it.
This lacuna is arguably a consequence of the complexity of studying what is
simultaneously semantic in character (being a common idiomatic phrase that is used
by speakers with a particular meaning in interaction), and pragmatic in character
(being a form of ‘mockery’ or ‘teasing’ that is used by speakers to accomplish
particular actions in interaction). The ethnopragmatics paradigm (Goddard 2006a)
is one of the few extant approaches that is specifically designed to directly tackle
this problem. In this approach, ‘semantic explications’, which address what a word
or phrase means through explanatory paraphrases (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014),
provide the basis for proposing ‘cultural scripts’, which address shared under-
standings and expectations, including cultural norms, attitudes, and assumptions
about what members of a culture are normatively held to do in social interaction,
and the cultural value placed on doing things in that way (Goddard 2006a: 5;
Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004: 153; Wierzbicka 2002: 401). While ethnoprag-
matics has traditionally relied heavily on corpora or data sourced from the media or
online to evidence such claims (e.g. Goddard 2006b, 2009), more recently such
work has begun to draw from conversational data as well (e.g. Goddard 2017,
2018). It therefore seems timely to consider what semantic and pragmatic
perspectives might together bring to understanding how ‘taking the piss’ is
6 “The Great Australian Pastime”: Pragmatic … 97
accomplished in everyday social interaction, and what accomplishing it is taken to

mean by (Anglo-)Australians.
We begin this chapter by first discussing broadly semantic perspectives on
taking the piss that focus on what the phrase is taken to mean. After briefly
reviewing extant definitions, we consider the question of whether taking the piss
might be best approached in terms of it being a ‘semantic explication’ or a ‘cultural
script’, and what the consequences of either or both moves might be for studying
instances of it in social interaction. We then consider, in Sect. 6.3, what an (in-
teractional) pragmatics approach to taking the piss might bring to the table. We
analyse candidate instances of taking the piss taken from conversational interactions
to examine what is being accomplished through it. We compare our analysis of
these interactions with the preceding discussion of potentially relevant semantic
explications and cultural scripts and discuss the analytical problems that framing
taking the piss as a speech practice potentially engender. We conclude by drawing
attention to the way in which the expression taking the piss can be treated as both a
reflexive object of talk as well as a discursive resource in interaction, and the
implications of this for research on the role of ‘humour’ more generally.
6.2 Semantic Perspectives on Taking the Piss
While taking the piss—and the related expression taking the mickey—is frequently
referenced in both every day and academic discussions of Australian identity, and the
importance placed on irreverence, anti-authoritarianism and levelling humour therein
(Bellanta 2012; Davis 2009; Davis and Crofts 1988; Goddard 2006b; Goddard and
Cramer 2016), there is considerable variation in how it is defined in English.1
For instance, in the Oxford English Dictionary Online (Simpson 2018 [2006]),
taking the piss is defined as “to make fun (of), to mock, deride, satirise”. Consulting
dictionaries of idioms or slang throws up further variation in its definition. In the
eighth edition of Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of slang and unconventional English
(ed. P. Beale), taking the piss is defined as “to pull someone’s leg” or “to jeer at,
deride” (Beale 1984: 1199), while in Dalzell and Victor’s Concise new Partridge
dictionary of slang and unconventional English it is defined as “to make a fool of
someone; to pull someone’s leg” (Dalzell and Victor 2013: 765). Green’s
Dictionary of slang online offers perhaps the most nuanced set of definitions in
proposing four (presumably interrelated) senses of taking the piss: (1) “to tease,
especially aggressively”, (2) “to attack verbally, to sneer or jeer at”, (3) “to make
1
The expressions taking the mickey and related taking the mick are generally defined as ‘politer’
versions of taking the piss. As we shall see, analysis of contemporary usage across Australian and
British English suggests the former is used more frequently, especially in the case of Australian
English. The earliest attested printed examples of both take the piss and take the mickey are
post-World War Two according to the Oxford English Dictionary Online (Simpson 2018 [2006]).
Folk etymologies suggest these two expressions were used earlier than this in speech (e.g. Ritchie
2014), but which emerged first has not yet been definitively established.
something up, to say something ludicrous, to make grand claims, to joke”, and
(4) “(of a person) to act absurdly, to play the fool” (Green 2011). Yet another sense
of taking the piss is referenced in the Cambridge international dictionary of idioms,
where it is proposed that it means “to treat someone badly in order to get what you
want”, as well as “to make a joke about someone or to make someone look silly”
(McCarthy 1998: 301). In the Australian Oxford Dictionary, taking the piss is
defined as to “ridicule” or to “humble, puncture the pretensions of” (Moore 2004:
984), with the second sense also being attested in The Dinkum Dictionary, where it
is defined not only as to “make a fool of, tease (someone)” but also to “humble,
degrade, belittle (someone)” (Johansen 1988: 412).
The closely related expression piss-take adds yet further senses to what we might
understand by taking the piss. According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online
(Simpson 2018 [2006]), the former is “a parody, a send-up; an instance of mock-
ery”, a definition that is also attested in Macquarie Dictionary Online (Yallop et al.
2004) as “a satire or parody” and broadened to include “a tease, a hoax, a practical
joke” in Green’s Dictionary of Slang Online (Green 2011). Notably, definitions of
the phrase taking the mickey do not attribute any other senses to it that are distinct
from those attributed to taking the piss. The former is generally identified as a
‘politer’ version of the latter, if at all.
There is no way to settle on what taking the piss (or taking the mickey) means
from such definitions, and one might be inclined to dispute their aptness in some
cases (Goddard 2009: 31), but loosely grouping them certainly gives one a sense of
the considerable variation therein2:
• ridiculing (variously construed as teasing, mocking, making fun of, deriding,
jeering at)
• humbling (variously construed as puncturing pretensions, making a fool of,
making someone look silly, degrading, belittling, debunking)
• kidding3 (variously construed as making something up, making grand claims,
playing the fool, pulling someone’s leg; cf. hoax, practical joke)
• satirizing (variously construed as sending up, parody)
• exploiting (variously construed as taking advantage of, being taken advantage of).
In short, taking the piss can apparently be taken to mean a lot of different things.
NSM scholars have, of course, repeatedly drawn attention to the problem of cir-
cularity and lack of clarity in dictionary definitions (Goddard and Wierzbicka
2014). One could not hope to have a clearer exemplification of this problem than
what we have just seen.
2
There are arguably many different ways in which one might attempt to categorize such expres-
sions. Olivieri (2003: 16–17), for instance, divides ‘teasing-related’ expressions into four evalu-
ative categories: antagonistic, anti-pretentious, aggressive, and artful. Our categorization of senses
attested in dictionary definitions is only for rhetorical purposes.
3
The term kidding is not used in any of the definitions of taking the piss that we have examined,
but it would appear what broadly underlies these various expressions is the notion of ‘kidding’ as
recently defined by Goddard (2018).
This raises an interesting puzzle. Given taking the piss figures so prominently in
accounts of Anglo-Australian identity why do definitions of it vary so widely? One
obvious possibility is that what taking the piss is taken to mean depends on the
target. When used with reference to television shows or films, for instance, taking
the piss may well be readily understood as ‘sending up’ or ‘satirizing’ (the
Australian comedy, Kath & Kim, is a well-known example of this), but this sense of
taking the piss may be less applicable when the target is a co-present participant in
interaction. Another possibility is that the expression may well have a different
meaning (or sets of meanings) in different varieties of English, given we see its use
attested, including not only in Australian English, but in British English and New
Zealand English as well. For example, while the etymology of taking the piss is
often traced to the earlier expression to be piss-proud (Grose 1788), which lends
itself to construals of it as ‘ridiculing’ or ‘humbling’, Ritchie (2014) claims that its
etymology can also be traced to use on barges in London where taking the piss or
taking the Mickey Bliss was taken to mean “getting one over authority” (ibid.: 33),
hence the sense of it as “being exploited” or “taken advantage of” (ibid.: 35). The
latter usages have been attested in British English, but it is unclear whether they
have currency amongst speakers of Australian (or New Zealand) English.
If we take a view of meaning as residing in use (Wittgenstein 1953), one way in
which to begin to address such questions is to analyse attested examples of the
expression in question in large corpora, such as the Oxford English Corpus (OEC).
The OEC contains approximately two billion tokens of a range of different national
varieties of English (including from the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, the
Caribbean, Canada, India, Singapore, and South Africa) sampled across different
genres of contemporary written discourse on the Internet (including academic and
scientific publications, novels and short stories, news and magazines, blogs,
discussion boards, as well as corporate and personal websites) from 2000 to 2012.4
We began our analysis by first examining the relative frequency of the expres-
sions taking the piss, takes the piss, and take the piss across the Australian
(89.3 million words), British (502.2 million words), and American (804.5 million
words) components of the OEC.5 The results of this search are reported in
4
One of the reviewers suggested that the meaning of taking the piss may have evolved over time.
This is certainly a distinct possibility that is well worth further investigation. Our focus here,
however, is on contemporary usage of the phrase.
5
We have elected to focus solely on the phrase taking the piss in this section, as it is the one that is
arguably more relevant to speakers of contemporary Australian English, and also the phrase that
has garnered attention in NSM. Just for the record, however, we found only 16 occurrences of
taking the mickey/mick and 11 occurrences of take(s) the mickey/mick in the Australian component
of the OEC (0.18 and 0.12 normalized frequencies, respectively; cf. Table 6.1). Notably, the
expressions taking the mickey/mick (166 occurrences) and take(s) the mickey/mick (134 occur-
rences) are found more frequently in British English (0.33 and 0.27 normalized frequencies,
respectively; cf. Table 6.1). These differences are well worth investigating in future research.
Table 6.1 Raw and normalized (per million words) frequency of take(s)/taking the piss in the
American, Australian, and British components of the Oxford English Corpus (OEC)
OEC-AUS OEC-UK OEC-US
taking the piss 65 (0.73) 562 (1.12) 43 (0.05)
take(s) the piss 67 (0.75) 354 (0.70) 32 (0.04)
Table 6.1.6 The raw frequency is reported along with the normalized frequency (per
million word) in brackets. We assessed whether differences in the attested fre-
quency were statistically significant using the Likelihood-ratio test (Rayson 2008).
Cursory analysis indicates that taking/take(s) the piss is used, perhaps not sur-
prisingly, very infrequently in American English compared to both Australian and
British English (the log-likelihood ratios are 352.79 and 1294.97, respectively, a
difference that is statistically significant at p < 0.05). However, while the frequency
of occurrence of take(s) the piss is similar across Australian and British English
(log-likelihood ratio = 0.21, not significant at p < 0.05), taking the piss was used
more frequently in British English, a difference that was found to be statistically
significant (log-likelihood ratio = 12.09, significant at p < 0.05). Notably, if we
adopt the multiplier factor of four proposed by Goddard (2009: 47), these results
confirm Goddard’s (2009: 46) earlier examination of their frequency of occurrence
attested through Google searches of usage on Webpages in the Australian and
British Web domains, respectively.7 At a gross level, then, there is little evidence to
suggest that taking the piss is somehow specific to Australian English. This seems a
somewhat counter-intuitive result in light of claims that taking the piss is a specific
feature of public life and private life in Australia (see references in Sect. 6.1).
What, then, might be specific to the expression taking the piss in Australian
English? Goddard (2009) suggests that what marks take(s)/taking the piss out as
different in the Australian context is that it takes a reflexive object (i.e. yourself,
himself, themselves) more frequently in Australian as opposed to British English
(as attested on the Web). Given this is central to his claim that “taking the piss out
of yourself [is] more frequently spoken about in Australia than in the UK” (Goddard
2009: 47, emphasis added), we first coded the number of instances where the
expression took a (syntactic) object through various combinations of out of, out, of,
6
One slight complication with using raw frequencies was that we found a (relatively small) number
of concordances were repeated through searches. These repetitions were discarded through manual
inspection to avoid distortion of our results arising through the practice of re-posting and the like
on the Web, as our interest was primarily in the range of contexts in which this expression appears.
7
We note that it is no longer possible to repeat Google searches and obtain reliable frequencies, as
Google now uses search algorithms that are tailored to the search history of individual users (and
likely unspecified communities of users). There remains, of course, the possibility of using or
building Web-based corpora. One of the largest English-language Web corpora for use by
researchers is the enTenTen15 Corpus (approximately 15.7 billion words) made available through
Sketch Engine (see Haugh 2019), although this corpus does not yet allow for English
variety-specific searches.
Table 6.2 Raw and normalized (per million words) frequency of take(s)/taking the piss with
syntactic objects in the Australian and British components of the OECa
OEC-AUS OEC-UK
take(s) the piss [out of] 53 (0.59) 198 (0.34)
taking the piss [out of] 34 (0.38) 186 (0.37)
a
We have combined the counts for take the piss [out of] and takes the piss [out of] as the latter
yielded very low frequencies (6 and 25, respectively)
outta, and from following the expression in question across the 132 tokens returned
from the Australian component of the OEC and the 916 tokens returned from the
British component of the OEC. The results are reported in Table 6.2.
An interesting difference emerged from this analysis. While the relative fre-
quency of occurrences of take(s) the piss [out of] is higher in Australian English
than British English, a difference that was found to be statistically significant
(log-likelihood ratio = 6.44, p < 0.05), in the case of taking the piss [out of], no
statistically significant difference emerged (log-likelihood ratio = 0.02, not signif-
icant at p < 0.05).
Given identifying occurrences of take(s)/taking the piss out of did not clarify the
target of the piss-taking, we also coded for whether it targeted: (1) self, (2) other,
(3) some other kind of ‘person’ category (e.g. ‘people’), (4) some kind of
‘non-person’ category (e.g. ‘Aussie culture’), or (5) the target was not specified. To
give a flavour of these targets, we have reproduced examples from each of the
categories we coded across the Australian and British datasets.
(1) Self as target

a. As Australian sportsmen we don’t mind taking the piss out of ourselves [OEC-AUS:
doc#758]
b. Not to mention his ability to deftly turn a flat audience reaction into gales of laughter
by taking the piss out of himself for telling an unfunny joke. [OEC-UK: doc#330]
(2) Other as target
a. I had trouble working out who was who’s relatives, because everyone was so com-
fortable and taking the piss out of each other. [OEC-Aus: doc#925]
b. “We spent the best part of six months just taking the piss out of Jenna, so she would
feel at home,” 2D laughs—as if to underline the sharp and dry humour that contin-
ually flows. [OEC-UK: doc#304]
(3) Person category as target
a. Ali G has been taking the piss out of some yanks—and they couldn’t tell. Ali G, the
fake hip hop artist and interviewer, is set to storm the US [OEC- AUS: doc#794]
b. So is that the scouser in you taking the piss out of poshies? [OEC-UK: doc#193]
(4) Non-person as target

a. Disgraceland is an amusing topical rant over a throbbing, hypnotic Daft Punk-esque
beat, taking the piss out of the superficial new “electro-clash” scene [OEC-AUS:
doc#385]
b. Kitano’s style does not imitate others and can look ragged at the edges, as if delib-
erately taking the piss out of comicbook Hollywood violence. [OEC-UK: doc#82]
(5) Non-specified target
a. There are two great Australian pastimes: watching sport and taking the piss, and I
stumbled across the magic combination of putting them together. [OEC-AUS:
doc#756]
b. she is sarcastic and has a particularly British habit of taking the piss to cover up
being embarrassed. [OEC-UK: doc#8352]
The results of our coding are reported in Table 6.3.

It appears that in Australian English, take(s)/taking the piss are more likely to
involve targeting either ‘other’ or ‘something’ (including abstract categories and
events), while in British English the target more often remains unspecified. The
difference in overall distribution across the five categories was found to be statis-
tically significant on a two-tailed chi-square test (v2: 31.52, p < 0.05).
We also coded the expressions take(s) the piss and taking the piss separately
with respect to whether the target was specified or remained unspecified in the
Australian and British components of the OEC. These results are reported in
Table 6.4.
Table 6.3 Frequency (and percentage) of different targets of take(s)/taking the piss in the
Australian and British components of the OEC
OEC-AUS OEC-UK
Self 9 (6.8%) 31 (3.4%)
Other 39 (29.5%) 172 (18.8%)
Person category 8 (6.1%) 54 (5.9%)
Non-person 30 (22.7%) 114 (12.4%)
Not specified 46 (34.8%) 545 (59.5%)
Total 132 916
Table 6.4 Frequency (and percentage) of specified or unspecified targets of take(s)/taking the piss
in the Australian and British components of the OEC
OEC-AUS OEC-UK
taking the piss Specified target 35 (53.9%) 177 (31.5%)
Unspecified target 30 (46.1%) 385 (68.5%)
take(s) the piss Specified target 51 (76.1%) 194 (54.8%)
Unspecified target 16 (23.9%) 160 (45.2%)
In both the case of taking the piss and take(s) the piss, the target is specified
significantly more frequently in Australian English compared to British English (v2:
30.81, p < 0.05). In sum, it does not appear to be the case that Australian English
speakers talk more about taking the piss than British English speakers. However,
targets of piss-taking are specified more frequently in Australian English. This is an
interesting finding that is suggestive of potential differences in the use of this
expression in these two varieties of English, given it remains an open question
whether the semantics of taking the piss remain the same in cases where targets are
specified or unspecified.
Our preliminary analysis of tokens of the expression taking the piss (alongside
take[s] the piss) in the OEC has indicated that what it is taken to mean may be
influenced both by the target in question and the variety of English in question.
However, while examining data from corpora offers some arguably useful insights,
untangling the various different possible meanings of taking the piss found in
dictionaries, and systematically examining possible sources of this variation in
meaning(s), clearly requires much more nuanced tools for lexical analysis.
NSM arguably offers those tools. The focus in NSM-based work thus far has
been on accounting for taking the piss in one particular sense, namely deflating or
puncturing the pretensions of others when they take themselves too seriously
(Goddard 2009: 32; Olivieri 2003: 32; Sinkeviciute 2014: 124; cf. Plester and
Sayers 2007: 158).
Olivieri (2003: 67), for instance, defines taking the piss as in [A]:
[A] X took the piss out of Y
X did something
X knew Y could feel something bad because of this
X didn’t not do it because of this
X did it because X thought like this:
“people can think like this about Y:
‘Y thinks like this: I am not like other people, I am someone very good
it is not good if Y thinks like this’
if someone else can know this, I will feel something good”
when X did this, it was as if X was saying, not with words, but at the same time:
“Y thinks like this: ‘I am not like other people, I am someone very good’
everyone knows: it is not good if a person thinks like this”
people think: it can be good to do this to people sometimes
This explication advances a number of specific claims. First, taking the piss
involves “deflating someone (or something) which is full of something that does not
have any worth or purpose” (Olivieri 2003: 68). Second, one can take the piss out of
someone through not only saying something but also doing something as well.
Third, while the target may well be “upset by what is said” the piss-taker will be
“unconcerned” if this happens because of the belief that “people will not and should
not mind much when someone takes the piss out of them—that they should take it
in ‘good humour’ (Olivieri 2003: 68; see also Sinkeviciute 2017a). Olivieri (2003:
71) also notes in passing that one can “take the piss out of oneself” alongside
others, although does not propose an additional script to account for this possibility.
Sinkeviciute (2014: 124), building on Olivieri’s (2003) earlier work, reformu-
lates the explication in [A] as a cultural script for taking the piss (out of someone).
Her cultural script is reproduced in [B]:
[B] people think like this:
a. sometimes someone says some (bad) things about another person to this other person
not because they want the other person to feel something bad
but because they want the other person to know something
b. when someone does this, they say something like this at the same time, not with words:
“I think that it is bad that now you think/feel that you are not like other people
I know that I can say things like this to you because I want you to be someone like me
I want to feel something good towards you now”
c. it is not bad when someone says something like that
people can know why someone says things like this, feel something good and laugh [m]
when they hear things like this
While Sinkeviciute (2014) also considers ‘deflating’ or ‘puncturing pretensions’ to

lie at the core of taking the piss, there are nevertheless some important differences
between the two scripts. First, Sinkeviciute (2014) restricts her definition of taking
the piss to instances in which the target is present in social interaction, thereby
implicitly treating it as a speech practice (Goddard 2009: 31). Second, she
emphasizes that what is conveyed by taking the piss arises in part through what is
‘implied’ by what has been said (i.e., ‘they say something like this at the same time,
not with words’), not just what has been said. Third, she emphasizes that taking the
piss is prototypically regarded as “funny” (cf. Goddard 2017: 59); that is, it can
make people ‘feel something good and laugh [m]’. In so doing, she links it more
closely with the study of conversational humour.8
Given such fine-grained differences are brought to the fore through comparing
these two cultural scripts, they clearly exemplify the “semantic resolution and
precision” (Goddard 2017: 56) that the use of semantic primes can bring to the
analysis of the meaning of taking the piss. However, they also give rise to two
interrelated questions with respect to their empirical grounding. First, how do we
know that the meaning of taking the piss is limited to just that sense which is being
advanced in those scripts? Second, on what basis would we favour one or the other
formulation of taking the piss being advanced in each of the scripts? One principled
8
In subsequent work, however, Sinkeviciute (2017b: 54) has characterized taking the piss as
arising when “jocularly making the target believe something that is untrue or, more frequently, by
sending somebody up, i.e. making the target look silly”.
way in which to address such questions would be consider the extent to which the
formulation adheres to the principles of NSM, including appropriate use of its
semantic primes and basic syntax, and also their degree of precision and clarity.
A second would be to examine more closely the empirical evidence that is offered
to warrant the claims that are being advanced in these two scripts.
Olivieri’s (2003) script appears to be based on examination of attested usage of
the expression taking the piss on the Internet, while Sinkeviciute (2014) appears to
be basing her script on close examination of examples of taking the piss in social
interaction (specifically, in the television reality show Big Brother). These are,
however, very different kinds of evidence. On the one hand, systematic examination
of attested tokens of an expression seems to us to provide strong grounds for
proposing semantic explications that helps us differentiate between different
potential senses of that expression. Whether analysing tokens of an expression offer
sufficient grounds on their own for proposing a cultural script is less clear. After all,
it is now well established that what people say they do is not necessarily aligned
with what they are actually doing in interaction. In addition, any attempt to develop
a semantic explication (or cultural script) with respect to the meaning(s) of taking
the piss would need to first untangle what is meant by the various expressions we
see invoked in attempts to define it, including frequently used terms such as funny,
amusing, humour, joking, kidding, teasing, and serious (Goddard 2009, 2017,
2018). A semantic explication for taking the piss thus needs to build on semantic
explications of these expressions (and likely more besides). It also needs to sys-
tematically examine all attested instances of its occurrence (or at least a randomly
selected sample of them) to avoid the charge that examples are being selected to
favour one sense of taking the piss (e.g. deflating or puncturing pretensions; Plester
and Sayers 2007: 158) over others (e.g. baiting someone; Davis 2009: 38). This is
particularly important given it is not yet self-evident that it has a single meaning in
light of the attested variability in dictionary definitions.
On the other hand, close examination of (presumed) examples of what the
expression is taken to refer to in interaction, as illustrated in Sinkeviciute’s (2014)
work, appears to provide grounds for proposing a cultural script that captures
“shared understandings and expectations” (Goddard 2017: 56, emphasis added)
about taking the piss as a speech practice. However, analysis of such interaction
does not on its own provide grounds for furthering our understanding of what is
meant by the expression taking the piss itself. One issue is that such work opens up
the possibility that the analyst is imposing his or her own understanding of taking
the piss on to the participants through an analysis of particular episodes of inter-
action as instances of taking the piss (as opposed to something else). In other words,
there is an inherent circularity in proposing a cultural script on the basis of one’s
analysis of examples of that speech practice in interaction and then attesting to the
validity of one’s cultural script through making reference to those examples. We
return to consider this issue in more detail in the following section, but note here
that this is not a problem that is easily solved without recourse to precise semantic
explications of the metalanguage being used by the analyst, particularly when
making reference to the object of one’s research (e.g. taking the piss as opposed to
rubbishing one’s mates).
In short, NSM offers a potentially fruitful way forward in furthering our
understanding of taking the piss from a semantic perspective. Systematic exami-
nation of attested tokens of the expression from large corpora, such as the Oxford
English Corpus, combined with the semantic resolution and precision of NSM, may
also help us start to unravel a number of interrelated questions about its meaning:
does taking the piss have multiple senses, do different senses reflect the different
possible targets of piss-taking, and are different senses favoured in different national
varieties of English (or regional varieties therein)?
6.3 Taking the Piss in Conversational Interaction
What then does an interactional perspective on taking the piss offer? For the most
part, studies of teasing or mocking in (Australian) English have only addressed this
issue in passing. In some cases, it is noted en passant that an instance of teasing,
particularly those where the tease has been occasioned by the target ‘overdoing’
something, such as extolling the virtues of someone or complaining about someone,
can be colloquially termed taking the piss (Haugh 2010: 2113–2114; Haugh and
Bousfield 2012: 1106). However, in signalling that this is a colloquial term what is
specifically avoided is a claim that this constitutes a practice. Sinkeviciute (2014)
makes reference to a ‘prank’ that occurred in an episode of the Australian edition of
the reality show Big Brother, but for the most part her work has focused on
evaluations of such incidents by either the participants themselves or third-party
observers rather than analysing the incidents themselves (Sinkeviciute 2017a, b, c).
Finally, while Plester and Sayers (2007) and Plester (2016) make reference to
taking the piss in their studies of interaction in New Zealand workplaces, their work
is primarily ethnographic in nature and so does not provide analyses of actual
examples in interaction either. It appears, then, that despite frequent talk about
taking the piss in Australian (and British and New Zealand) English, studies
examining instances of taking the piss in conversational interaction are more or less
non-existent. This raises the question as to why such studies of taking the piss as a
speech practice are vanishingly rare in pragmatics.
In order to address this issue, we need to first briefly outline what we mean by a
‘speech practice’. A practice in interactional pragmatics, following ethnomethod-
ological conversation analysis, refers to the “methodical, procedural, or ‘practice-d’
grounds” of the production of that talk/conduct that provides for its recognizability
as implementing a particular action (or set of actions) (Schegloff 1996: 173). The
focus is on analysing features of the composition of talk/conduct (including not
only linguistic forms, but paralinguistic and non-verbal aspects of conduct) and its
sequential position in order to identify recurrent interactional patterns across col-
lections of candidate examples of a possible action or practice. For instance, Haugh
(2016a) proposes that ‘jocular pretence’ [cf. ‘jocular deception’ (Goddard 2017:
65–66)] can be differentiated from ‘jocular mockery’ on the grounds that in the
former case, claiming non-serious intent (by means of phrases such as just kidding,
just joking) is constitutive of the tease, as laughter is invariably delayed until that
claim is made. It is worth noting that what defines jocular mockery or jocular
pretence as practices is not the definitional gloss provided by the researcher, but
rather recurrent features of its compositional and sequential design. Ultimately,
then, it is definition by example, hence the emphasis on collection-building
(Schegloff 1968) in conversation analysis, and by extension, interactional
pragmatics.
However, it is fair to say that this point is not always well understood in
pragmatics where terminological drift or even outright confusion can arise, espe-
cially when working across different linguistic or cultural contexts (Goddard 2018).
The use of semantic explications and accompanying cultural scripts clearly has the
potential to decrease such problems. The question arises, then, as to why
researchers do not make recourse to such methods more often?
One possible reason for this goes to the very heart of why we have not seen
extended studies of taking the piss as a speech practice to date. The essential
challenge is that when attempting to describe social actions, there are invariably
multiple ways in which it can be described (O’Keefe 1987; Schegloff 1988; Sidnell
2017). The way in which the same ‘humorous’ episode in interaction can be
labelled in various different ways is nicely illustrated in a recent paper by
Sinkeviciute (2017b). In her case study, third parties were shown an excerpt from
an episode of Big Brother in which George laughingly tells Bradley that the upshot
of there being a slightly lower number of housemates who voted for the latter to be
evicted is that there is “one less person who hates you”. He then goes on to
laughingly say “I hate you” after Layla tells Bradley that “no no one hates you”
(ibid.: 56). Our interest here is not in the details of this particular interaction,
however, but in the various ways in which it was described by the sample of
Australian and British observers who were shown the interaction in question and
then asked what they thought about it. What we think is of particular note is that the
observers of this interaction did not label it in the same way. It was variously
described by different people as taking the piss (ibid.: 58, 64), banter (ibid.: 58, 61,
63), and riffing off (ibid.: 61), as well as a putdown (ibid.: 62).9 This poses
somewhat of a dilemma for the analyst. Specific explications of these various
different terms do not really solve the underlying problem that when being used to
refer to something, users and observers do not necessarily agree on whether or not
something counts as taking the piss.
This sort of problem is often glossed over by analysts, either by claiming that
they are using ‘operational definitions’ (Janicki 2017) or by making recourse to a
9
Notably, the negatively valenced descriptor put down was only used by a small number of the
British interviewees, and not at all by any of the Australian interviewees (ibid.: 65).
particular theory that constrains the range of descriptive options available (Weber
1949). However, if one’s aim is to ground one’s analysis in the understandings of
participants—a methodological commitment that arguably lies in common to both
NSM and interactional pragmatics—how phenomena are described by the analyst is
a substantive issue that warrants serious consideration.
At this stage, then, we are not yet sure that taking the piss constitutes a reliable
category for pragmatic analysis, given variation in the way which ordinary users
appear to label possible instances of it, which reflects, in turn, considerable vari-
ation in the ways in which it appears to be defined. Even if we restrict ourselves to
instances of taking the piss out of someone that arise in interactions in more
everyday interpersonal settings (as opposed to enactments of it in broadcast media
and other forms of mass communication), the way in which the same interactional
episode can be labelled in multiple different ways makes it difficult to assemble a
candidate collection through which recurrent features of the compositional and
sequential design of taking the piss as a practice—if it is indeed one—can be
identified. This raises, in turn, challenges for researchers wishing to analyse pos-
sible power or gender effects on initiators and targets of taking the piss, and what
responses to it are treated as legitimate. Taking the piss is often associated with
male–male speech (Ryan 2000). However, we need to first establish what counts as
taking the piss before we can hope to examine what putative power or gender
effects may be coming into play.
What then can a pragmatic analysis of taking the piss offer? In the remainder of
this section, we propose that it can potentially offer two things. First, it leads us to
consider the possibility that taking the piss may not always surface in the con-
versational record. Second, it enables us to explore other understandings of taking
the piss beyond the claim that it involves puncturing pretensions or
over-seriousness (Olivieri 2003; Goddard 2009; Sinkeviciute 2014). Both of these
possibilities have implications for how we might formulate semantic explications
and/or cultural scripts with respect to taking the piss.
A key focus in pragmatics is not only what users are doing through what they
say, but also what they are doing through what they don’t say, that is, through what
they ‘imply’, ‘hint at’, ‘allude to’, and so on. One question that naturally arises
when approaching taking the piss from the perspective of pragmatics is the question
of whether participants, and thus we as analysts, can always be sure someone is
taking the piss out of someone else. It is well known that participants sometimes
leave things “off record” (Brown and Levinson 1987: 211) or “pragmatically
ambivalent” (Thomas 1985) as to what is meant by the speaker in question. In the
case of taking the piss, this can involve the piss-taker doing so deliberately in order
to keep the target unaware, or at least uncertain, as to whether the piss is being
taken out of them.
Consider the following excerpt from an initial interaction in which Norma and
David, two Australians in their mid-thirties, are getting acquainted. Prior to this
excerpt, Norma and David have been talking about David’s t-shirt. The excerpt
begins when Norma goes on to ask about the necklace that David is wearing (lines
1–2).10
(6) CAAT: AusAus05: 3:26
1 N: that’s related to the Celtic (0.3)

2 [necklace as well?]
3 D: [I wouldn’t have a] clue,
4 N: okay=
5 D: I got it from a fr- good friend of mi:ne (.)
6 abou:t (.) fifteen years ago for Christmas.
7 N: ↑oh wo:w=
8 D: =she was working in a jewellery store? [a guy] was
9 N: [yeah ]
10 D: hocking them off? (0.4) and she’s thought ↑me (0.3)
11 #and I’ve had it ever since#=and it’s been an
12 awesome conversation starter
13 N: .hhh there you ↑go.
14 |((squints eyes)) |((nods)) |((smiles))
15 D: MHm.
16 ((deep nod and smile))
17 N: ((smiling)) £just as well you wore it to↑day.£
19 D: (I) wear it all the time. ((shrugs))
20 N: [ha ha]
21 D: [the on]ly time I couldn’t wear it was when the kids
22 were y- really young
After explaining that he was given the necklace by a friend (lines 5–10), David
arguably orients to Norma’s prior noticing of the necklace (lines 1–2) in claiming
that the necklace has since proven to be “an awesome conversation starter” (lines
11–12). Norma responds with an explicit expression of accord (line 13) along with
a smile and head nod (line 14), thereby endorsing David’s assertion that he is doing
the right thing by wearing the necklace. David subsequently affiliates with this
affiliative stance on Norma’s part through an agreement token (line 15) and
emphatic nodding accompanied by smiling (line 16). Norma subsequently observes
that “just as well you wore it today” (line 17), which in this context could be taken
as implying that he needs to rely on such ‘props’ to hold a conversation and thus
that he is not a good conversationalist. However, Norma indexes through smiling
(Ford and Fox 2010), along with a hearable “smile voice” (Jefferson 2004b) that her
comment is meant “non-seriously” (cf. Goddard 2009: 35); that is, she is “joking”
10
This excerpt and the one following have been transcribed using standard CA transcription
conventions (Jefferson 2004a; see also the appendix to Susanna Karlsson’s chapter in this volume)
in order to allow readers access to specific details of timing, prosody, and non-verbal aspects of
these interactions.
(Goddard 2018).11 This provides a warrant for David to go beyond what she has
just said and consider what else she might have meant by her comment, namely that
she may be taking the piss—in the broad sense proposed by Olivieri (2003: 67) and
Sinkeviciute (2014: 124)—of his apparent (over-)enthusiasm for the necklace as a
“conversation starter.” David, however, responds seriously in asserting that he
wears it all the time (line 19), thereby rejecting the suggestion that it was good
fortune that he happens to be wearing it that day. In doing so, he attends only what
she has (literally) said and disattends any possible implications of her prior com-
ment. Whether Norma has indeed taken the piss out of David here remains prag-
matically ambivalent and thus off record.
As Levinson (2013: 115–116) points out, “researching the unsaid is not an easy
task: one needs to show that both participants are oriented to something not
occurring and deliberately kept off-stage as it were”. In this case, our warrant for
proposing that Norma may be (gently) taking the piss out of David is premised on
the way in which the comment itself is delivered (i.e. with smile voice, visible
smiling), and the laughter subsequently produced in line 20 in response to David’s
serious rejection of her comment. However, this inference is clearly defeasible, as
are many so-called particularized implicatures (Haugh 2015). In order to more
convincingly demonstrate this interpretive possibility, we would therefore need to
assemble a collection that includes instances where participants ‘call out’ the other
by asking whether they are taking the piss. While space precludes us doing so here,
our point is simply that whether someone is indeed taking the piss may be left
(deliberately) ambivalent (Haugh and Weinglass 2019). The upshot is that in for-
mulating a cultural script, if not a semantic explication, for taking the piss, one
needs to take into account the possibility that it may arise through “saying some-
thing not with words” (Sinkeviciute 2014: 124), and so it may not be clear to all
participants that the piss is being taken. In other words, we need to account for
instances in which taking the piss is done in such a way as to leave the target
unaware or unsure as to whether someone is taking the piss out of them.
A second line of analysis offered by a pragmatic perspective on taking the piss is
that it may enable us to broaden our understanding of what it might involve. In the
previous section, we discussed in some detail work that has suggested that taking
the piss out of someone involves somehow puncturing pretensions, more specifi-
cally, “mak[ing] someone aware of the fact that someone thinks about some aspect
of himself, or something he does, a little too seriously” (Olivieri 2003: 70; see also
Goddard 2009: 31–32; Sinkeviciute 2014: 124). One question this raises, however,
is whether this account is exhaustive of what taking the piss can be taken to be
doing in interaction.
Consider the following excerpt from a phone call in which Tim his calling his
mother who is out at a barbecue with other family and friends.12
11
Following Goddard (2009: 35), this might be formulated as “I said it like people say something
when they say it because they want someone to laugh [m].”
12
We would like to thank Roslyn Rowen for kindly sharing this data excerpt with us.
(7) New dog (Part I)
1 T: We:ll hh I’ve got some ne:ws for you.

2 (0.8)
3 J: Hmm?=
4 T: =◦Tsk◦ Yea::h. (0.5) um: you >sitting down?
5 (1.3)
6 J: .hh Oh: ↓ Go:d! hh (0.4) Is it ↑good or ba:d.
7 (0.4)
8 T: ↑I: think it’s ↑good
9 (0.9)
10 J: Yea::h?
11 (0.7)
12 T: Rachel and I are going to be £↑ parents £
13 (1.7)
14 J: OH :: my ↑ GO :::↓d!
15 (1.2)
16 T: ◦Mm.◦
17 (1.0)
18 J: Holy ↑shit!
19 T: Yeah?
20 (1.7)
21 J: ↑Ho-!
22 (0.3)
23 T: We bought a [dog we -] we bought a ↑dog
24 J: [↑ ri:ght]
25 (0.8)
26 J: Oh f:u(hh)ck [you:!]
27 T: [.hhh ] >HAhaha[haha<]
28 J: [hh ] huh huh
29 [huh ho ]
30 T: [>hahahaha<] (.) (eh)ha (0.3) haha (.)
31 ◦◦◦ haha[haha◦◦◦ ha ]
32 J: [hahaha .hhh Oh £ TI :M] you ↑ ba :stard!£
33 T: hahahahahaha [◦haha◦ (.) ◦haha◦]
34 J: [.hh (.) .hh ] ↑ YO u
35 ↑↑ TU :↓rd
36 T: hahahahaha ◦◦◦hahaha◦◦◦ .hh .HA £We have got
37 a dog We did definitely get a do:g£ ◦he he◦
38 J: £Oh th[(hh)at’s] all ↑ri( hh)ght£ ho ho
39 T: [◦he he◦ ]
40 T: hahahaha[haha] ◦◦◦hahahaha◦◦◦
41 J: [haha]
42 J: .hh oh: (0.5) you’re a shit↑head
43 T: hahahaha .hh=
This excerpt can be broadly divided into two interlinked moves: an initial news
delivery by Tim and his mother’s response to that news (lines 1–21), and a sub-
sequent informing that completely alters what the news actually turns out to be, and
an extended response from the mother to that subsequent informing (lines 23–43).
Tim initially builds up to what appears to be the delivery of ‘significant’ news for
this mother through first making a pre-announcement (line 1), then implying it
could shock his mother by asking whether she is seated (line 4), and then delivering
the news that he and Rachel are going to become parents (line 12) after an inter-
vening sequence about whether the news is going to be “good” or “bad”. It is clear
from his mother’s response (lines 14–21) that she has taken this to mean that she
will be becoming a grandmother. However, Tim subsequently ‘clarifies’ that they
have purchased a dog and so was only using parents in a very loose sense (line 23).
It turns out that Tim was leading his mother to believe that Rachel was pregnant,
only to reveal that his initial news was (deliberately) misleading. His mother
responds with a mixture of abuse (lines 26, 32, 34–35, 42) and laughter (lines 28–
29, 32, 41), while Tim repeatedly laughs in response to his mother’s abuse (lines
27, 30–31, 33, 36, 43). Notably, when Tim confirms that they really have bought a
dog (lines 36–37), his mother responds in line 38 by offering a laughing ‘absolu-
tion’ (Robinson 2004).
We submit here that Tim is taking the piss out of his mother. However, this
piss-taking does not appear to involve puncturing pretensions or responding to his
mother taking herself too seriously, at least not at that point in time (although
admittedly perhaps there is some history here in relation to her expectations around
them having children). Instead, it appears to be congruent with a conceptualization
of taking the piss as “baiting others” (Davis 2009: 38) in order to “cause both a bad
reaction and a good reaction at the same time or in close succession” (Rowen 2012:
74). More specifically, it appears to involve “jocularly making the target believe
something that is untrue” (Sinkeviciute 2017b: 54). Thus, rather than matching
either of the cultural scripts proposed by Olivieri (2003) and Sinkeviciute (2014), it
appears more congruent with Goddard’s (2017: 65–66) cultural script for ‘jocular
deception/provocation’. Goddard (2017) specifically links this cultural script to
expressions such as pulling someone’s leg, stirring someone up, or geeing someone
up rather than taking the piss. However, our view is that the practice—or set of
practices—that this script encompasses can also refer, at least in some instances, to
what users and observers might want to call taking the piss. One could, of course,
define taking the piss in such a way as to exclude examples such as these. However,
if users and observers can legitimately label or categorize something as taking the
piss that does not fit a particular semantic explication or cultural script, this raises
the possibility that the explication or script needs to be broadened so that it is
sufficiently inclusive. One could also, of course, take the view that semantic
explications are not meant to be used to identify examples of a speech practice,
given that evidence for them lies in the usage of the expression, not instantiations of
what the expression taking the piss is taken to be referring to. However, this still
leaves open the question of whether cultural scripts are better conceptualized using
‘etic’—to the users at least—terms, such as ‘jocular deception/provocation’ or
‘emic’ terms, such as pulling someone’s leg and taking the piss. We do not have a
ready answer to this question, as the former can lead to terminological drift from a
semantic perspective especially when undertaking cross-linguistic work (Goddard
2018), while the latter do not necessarily constitute analytically coherent categories
from the perspective of pragmatics. We are not suggesting here that it is not
possible to identify possible instances of taking the piss in conversational interac-
tion, but rather that if we are going to resolve this issue in pragmatics then the
solution lies in part in developing an account of the semantics of taking the piss.
Clearly, greater cross-fertilization between these two endeavours is needed.
One way forward that may potentially be very productive in furthering such
efforts is to undertake analyses of metapragmatic usages of the phrase taking the
piss (and variants), that is, where taking the piss becomes an explicit focus of
participants through the usage of that phrase (Haugh 2016a, 2018). Preliminary
work indicates that this phrase can be deployed by participants in interaction to
accomplish different things, ranging from sanctioning and baiting through to being
treated as topic in its own right (Haugh 2016b; Haugh and Weinglass 2019).
6.4 Concluding Remarks
While it is frequently claimed that taking the piss is central to Anglo-Australian

identity, there are very few studies that explore what is meant by taking the piss and
how it arises in social interaction. While this state of affairs might seem somewhat
curious at first glance, we would suggest that one of the reasons there is relatively
little research on taking the piss is that studying what it means and what is
accomplished through it in interaction needs to be grounded in both semantics and
pragmatics. We might therefore end this chapter by exhorting researchers to do just
that. However, as Goddard (2018) points out, doing so is challenging because it
requires the development of expertise in two distinct disciplines. We would add that
doing so also raises a number of methodological, empirical, and epistemological
questions that are yet to be fully addressed. Broader issues we have raised include
the questions of whether semantic explications and cultural scripts can be mean-
ingfully brought to bear on the examination of what participants are doing in social
interaction, and what the study of interactional practices offers to our understanding
of these explications and cultural scripts. On the one hand, we have suggested in the
course of examining extant semantic and pragmatic accounts of taking the piss that
not only can semantic explications and cultural scripts challenge a common ten-
dency in pragmatics for analysts to label phenomena without careful consideration
of what such terms mean in non-academic settings, but provide more nuanced tools
for analysing what is going on from the perspective of those participants. On the
other hand, we have proposed that pragmatics can usefully inform the formulation
of cultural scripts in that it provides a strong empirical foundation for making
assertions about what can happen in interaction, as well as draw attention to aspects
of a practice that are not straightforwardly accessible through an analysis of the use
of the expression in question.
More generally, we echo and endorse Goddard’s (2018) call that we pay greater
attention to our use of analytical metalanguage, including the ways in which we
categorize different forms of ‘humour’. While attention is frequently drawn to the
way in which complex expressions like taking the piss are not straightforwardly
translatable across languages, we would also caution that it may not mean the same
thing for speakers of different varieties of English in which its use is attested, or
even be understood in the same way by all speakers of those varieties themselves.
We would also caution that when using expressions like taking the piss, users are
invariably doing something through using that expression (as opposed to something
else). Metalinguistic labels are not merely referential, but categorical, and so their
use in discourse invariably has real-world interactional and moral consequences
(Haugh 2016a). A potentially fruitful way forward in enabling greater
cross-fertilization between semantic and pragmatic perspectives on different forms
of ‘conversational humour’, and ‘laughter talk’, more broadly might therefore be to
pay greater attention to metapragmatic uses of expressions like taking the piss in
interaction, as doing so inevitably leads one to consider both what is meant by the
expression and what it is doing in that particular situated interaction.
References
Beale, P. (1984). A dictionary of slang and unconventional English (8th ed.) London: Routledge.
Bellanta, M. (2012). Larrikins: A history. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Dalzell, T., & Victor, T. (2013). Concise new Partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional
English (2nd ed.) London: Taylor & Francis.
Davis, H., & Crofts, P. (1988). Australian humour. In A. Ziv (Ed.), National styles of humour
(pp. 1–29). New York: Greenwood Press.
Davis, J. M. (2007). ‘Taking the mickey’: A brave Australian tradition. The Fine Print, 4, 20–27.
Davis, J. M. (2009). ‘Aussie’ humour and laughter: Joking as an acculturation ritual. In F. De
Groen & P. Kirkpatrick (Eds.), Serious frolic: Essays on Australian humour (pp. 31–47).
St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Davis, J. M., & Foyle, L. (2017). The satirist, the larrikin and the politician: An Australian
perspective on satire and politics. In J. M. Davis (Ed.), Satire and politics (pp. 1–36). London:
De Groen, F., & Kirkpatrick, P. (2009). Introduction: A saucer of vinegar. In F. De Groen, &
P. Kirkpatrick (Eds.), Serious frolic: Essays on Australian humour (pp. xv–xxviii). St. Lucia:
University of Queensland Press.
Ford, C. E., & Fox, B. A. (2010). Multiple practices for constructing laughables. In D.
Barth-Weingarten, E. Reber, & M. Selting (Eds.), Prosody in interaction (pp. 339–368).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goddard, C. (2006a). Ethnopragmatics: A new paradigm. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics:

Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 1–30). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.
org/10.1515/9783110911114.1.
Goddard, C. (2006b). “Lift your game Martina!”: Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics
9783110911114.65.
Goddard, C. (2009). Not taking yourself too seriously in Australian English: Semantic
explications, cultural scripts, corpus evidence. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(1), 29–53. https://
doi.org/10.1515/IPRG.2009.002.
1016/j.langcom.2016.09.008.
Goddard, C. (2018). ‘Joking, kidding, teasing’: Slippery categories for cross-cultural comparison
but key words for understanding Anglo conversational humour. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15
(4), 487–514. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2018-0017.
communication in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 89–103). London: Routledge.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2004). Cultural scripts. What are they and what are they good for?
9780199668434.001.0001.
Green, J. (2011). Green’s dictionary of slang online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haugh, M. (2010). Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation and face. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(8), 2106–
2119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.12.018.
Haugh, M. (2015). Im/politeness implicatures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Haugh, M. (2016a). “Just kidding”: Teasing and claims to non-serious intent. Journal of
Pragmatics, 95, 120–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.12.004.
Haugh, M. (2016b). Mocking and (non-)seriousness in initial interactions amongst American and
Australian speakers of English. In D. Carbaugh (Ed.), Handbook of communication in
cross-cultural perspective (pp. 104–117). London: Routledge.
Haugh, M. (2018). Corpus-based metapragmatics. In A. Jucker, K.P. Schneider, & W. Bublitz
(Eds.), Methods in pragmatics (pp. 615–639). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.
1515/9783110424928-024.
Haugh, M. (2019). The metapragmatics of consideration in (Australian and New Zealand) English.
In E. Ogiermann, & P. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (Eds.), From speech acts to lay understandings
of politeness: Multilingual and multicultural perspectives (pp. 201–225). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Haugh, M., & Bousfield, D. (2012). Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in
Australian and British English. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1099–1114. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.pragma.2012.02.003.
Haugh, M., & Weinglass, L. (2019). “Taking the piss” in online discussion boards: A
metapragmatic perspective. Paper presented at the 25th Australasian Humour Studies Network
Conference, RMIT, Melbourne, 6–8 February.
Janicki, K. (2017). What is conflict? What is aggression? Are these challenging questions? Journal
of Language Aggression and Conflict, 5(1), 156–166. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.5.1.07jan.
Jefferson, G. (2004a). Glossary of transcript symbols with an Introduction. In G. Lerner (Ed.),
Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 13–23). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.125.02jef.
Jefferson, G. (2004b). A note on laughter in ‘male–female’ interaction. Discourse Studies, 6(1),

117–133.
Johansen, L. (1988). The Dinkum Dictionary. Ringwood: Viking O'Neil.
Levinson, S. (2013). Action formation and ascription. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), Handbook
of conversation analysis (pp. 103–130). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/
9781118325001.ch6.
McCarthy, M. (1998). Cambridge international dictionary of idioms. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Moore, B. (2004). Australian Oxford dictionary (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morton, J. (2008). Poofters taking the piss out of Anzacs: The (un-)Australian wit of Sydney’s gay
and lesbian mardi gras. Anthropological Forum, 18(3), 219–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/
00664670802429354.
O’Keefe, D. (1987). Message description. Paper presented at the Speech Communication
Association Annual Convention, Boston.
Olivieri, K. (2003). A semantic analysis of teasing-related speech act verbs in Australian English
(BA(Hons.) thesis). University of New England.
Plester, B. (2016). The complexity of workplace humor. London: Springer.
Plester, B., & Sayers, J. (2007). ‘Taking the piss’: Functions of banter in the IT industry. Humor,
20(2), 157–187. https://doi.org/10.1515/HUMOR.2007.008.
Rayson, P. (2008). From key words to key semantic domains. International Journal of Corpus
Linguistics, 13(4), 519–549. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.13.4.06ray.
Ritchie, C. (2014). ‘Taking the piss’: Mockery as a form of comic communication. Comedy
Studies, 5(1), 33–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2014.918809.
Robinson, J. D. (2004). The sequential organization of “explicit” apologies in naturally occurring
English. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 37(3), 291–330.
Rowen, R. (2012). “Shit bloke! You’re always geeing me up like that” A lexical semantic analysis
of negative personal descriptors and “jocular” speech-act verbs in informal Australian
English (BA(Hons.) thesis). Griffith University.
Ryan, P. (2000). Taking the mickey. Quadrant, 44(5), 87–88.
Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings 1. American Anthropologist, 70
(6), 1075–1095.
Schegloff, E. (1988). Description in the social sciences I: Talk-in-interaction. Papers in
Pragmatics, 2(1/2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1075/iprapip.2.1-2.01sch.
Schegloff, E. (1996). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. American
Journal of Sociology, 102(1), 161–216. https://doi.org/10.1086/230911.
Sidnell, J. (2017). Action in interaction is conduct under a description. Language in Society, 46(3),
313–337.
Simpson, J. (2018). Oxford English Dictionary online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sinkeviciute, V. (2014). “When a joke’s a joke and when it’s too much”: Mateship as a key to
interpreting jocular FTAs in Australian English. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 121–139. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.004.
Sinkeviciute, V. (2017a). Funniness and ‘the preferred reaction’ to jocularity in Australian and
British English: An analysis of interviewees’ metapragmatic comments. Language &
Communication, 55, 41–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2016.06.004.
Sinkeviciute, V. (2017b). ‘It’s just a bit of cultural […] lost in translation’: Australian and British
intracultural and intercultural metapragmatic evaluations of jocularity. Lingua, 197, 50–67.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2017.03.004.
Sinkeviciute, V. (2017c). What makes teasing impolite in Australian and British English? ‘Step
[ping] over those lines […] you shouldn’t be crossing’. Journal of Politeness Research, 13(2),
175–207. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2015-0034.
Thomas, J. (1985). Complex illocutionary acts and the analysis of discourse. Lancaster Papers in
Linguistics, 11, 1–29.
Weber, M. (1949). The methodology of the social sciences. Glencoe: The Free Press.
Wierzbicka, A. (2002). Russian cultural scripts: The theory of cultural scripts and its applications.
Ethos, 30(4), 401–432.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). New York:
Macmillan.
Yallop, C., Bernard, J., Blair, D., Butler, S., Delbridge, A., Peters, P., et al. (2004). Macquarie
Dictionary (4th ed.). North Ryde, NSW: Macquarie Library.
Michael Haugh is Professor of Linguistics in the School of Languages and Cultures at the
University of Queensland. His research interests include pragmatics, conversation analysis,
intercultural communication, and humour studies, with a particular focus on the role of language in
social interaction.
Lara Weinglass is Ph.D. candidate in Linguistics at the School of Languages and Cultures at the
University of Queensland. The working title for her Ph.D. project is Humour and Laughter in
Australian Workplace Interactions, and she is currently analysing data for her project. She is
particularly interested in conversational humour, conversation analysis, and interactional
pragmatics.
Chapter 7
Thứ-Bậc (‘Hierarchy’) in the Cultural
Logic of Vietnamese Interaction:
An Ethnopragmatic Perspective
Lien-Huong Vo
Abstract This study reproduces part of a larger project in the ethnopragmatics of

Vietnamese. It investigates thứ-bậc (‘hierarchy’) in the cultural logic of interaction,
adopting Goddard’s (2006) ethnopragmatic research paradigm within the natural
semantic metalanguage (NSM) framework and using cultural scripts as the main
analytical tool (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2005). Notwithstanding the meaning of
‘ranking’ in certain specific domains (such as competitions) and workplace power
dimension, Vietnamese thứ-bậc is argued to be different from its counterparts in
other cultures since it is commonly conceived of in terms of age difference (Tran
2016) and divided into three levels with special reference to relative age. In thứ-bậc,
a greater emphasis is placed on age, which amounts to seniority, thus bringing
authority, wisdom and due respect, than on other social factors. The exploration of
thứ-bậc has revealed interesting aspects of Vietnamese pragmatics. Thứ-bậc is a
system of cultural information available for thinking about socially and/or morally
acceptable behaviour in interactions. Accordingly, it provides standards and prin-
ciples for accepted verbal behaviour from a normative perspective. These standards
and principles are realized through a set of normative values and communicative
virtues underpinning the cultural logic of interaction, namely, lễ-phép (‘respect-
fulness’). The elaboration of thứ-bậc and its coexisting norms sheds light on
Vietnamese cultural motives underlying Vietnamese verbal behaviour. It constitutes
a basis for understanding the ethnopragmatics of Vietnamese. Although the cultural
concepts presented in the study are not necessarily culture-specific, the way
Vietnamese people conceive them, and perhaps, enact them in speech practice, is
specifically Vietnamese. No doubt it lays the groundwork for further studies into
Vietnamese interaction from the ‘insider’s perspective’.
Keywords Ethnopragmatics NSM Cultural scripts Vietnamese
L.-H. Vo (&)
Hue University, Hue, Vietnam
e-mail: vtlhuong@hueuni.edu.vn

120 L.-H. Vo
7.1 Introduction
Vietnamese is probably among the languages under-investigated in linguistics and

other related fields. Research into Vietnamese language and culture has been carried
out internally, with research reports written in Vietnamese for Vietnamese readers.
Notwithstanding a number of studies in interlanguage pragmatics written in English
whose contributions are mainly to the teaching of English as a second/foreign lan-
guage, more research should be done from a culture-internal perspective to explain to
the world the speech practices of Vietnamese. This study is an attempt to fill this gap.
In his book Cultural Conceptualisation and Language, Sharifian (2011: 112)
asserts that ‘[d]ifferent cultural systems have different rationalizations for the sorts
of linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour that they encourage among their mem-
bers’. These rationalizations are, in other words, culture-specific ways of reasoning
and behaving within a speech community that make up the cultural logic of
interactions. This cultural logic can be best explored in terms of ‘the values and
social models of cultural insiders’, using the ethnopragmatics research paradigm
(Goddard and Ye 2015: 66).
In the exploration into the Vietnamese cultural logic of Vietnamese interactions,
Vo (2016a) argued that this cultural logic has been profoundly influenced by factors
arising from the nation’s historical development, including native cultural traits of
Vietnam, Chinese Confucian moral norms and elaborate French symbolic courtesy.
It is made up of two overarching systems of cultural information, namely quan-hệ
(‘relationship’) and thứ-bậc (‘hierarchy’), whose cultural norms and conventions
manipulate the speech culture of Vietnamese. Quan-hệ functions as a social basis
for Vietnamese interaction, while thứ-bậc is a salient normative basis (Vo 2014).
The present study aims to shed light on thứ-bậc as one of the co-constructs of the
cultural logic of Vietnamese interactions. It addresses the ethnopragmatic under-
standing of Vietnamese thứ-bậc and the sociolinguistic variables at play in
Vietnamese speech practice, which are all justified and rendered in the metalanguage
of the NSM framework. It should be noted that the discussion is not intended to
imply that the concepts related to this cultural logic are uniquely Vietnamese when
considered in their own right, although perhaps the way they interact may well be.
7.2 Background of the Study
An NSM-based ethnopragmatic study aims at understanding speech practices ‘in

terms of indigenous values, beliefs and attitudes, social categories, emotion and so
on’ from the cultural insider point of view (Goddard 2006: 2). Several early
ethnopragmatic studies were conducted in the early 2000s (e.g. Goddard 2000;
Wierzbicka 2002a, b); the collection of studies in the journal Intercultural
Pragmatics is especially noteworthy. This collection covered a variety of
culture-specific speech practices, including explorations in areal models for West
7 Thứ-Bậc (‘Hierarchy’) in the Cultural Logic of Vietnamese … 121
African social interactions (Ameka and Breedveld 2004), the use of honorifics in
Korean language and culture (Yoon 2004), the influence of interpersonal rela-
tionships on Chinese social interactions (Ye 2004), the use of diminutives in
Colombian Spanish conversational routines (Travis 2004).
Until the publication of Goddard (2006), ethnopragmatics was defined as a
research paradigm in its own right. More works contributed to the understanding of
the culturally shaped ways of speaking, including the Anglo cultural aversion to
‘putting pressure’ on others (Wierzbicka 2006), the influence of social hierarchy on
Singaporean speech culture (Wong 2006) and the Japanese norms for the expres-
sion of emotions (Hasada 2006). Enfield (2007: 419–420) praised this research
paradigm for its novel features:
The approach is unique in research on pragmatics and culture—nowhere else do we find
these kinds of explicit statements of cultural values in a descriptive metalanguage whose
degree of formalism rivals that of predicate calculus, and whose units are as close to directly
expressible in (any) natural language as we can get.
In the extended setting, scholars and practitioners continued to add to literature

further explorations of cultural life in different languages. Gladkova (2010) high-
lighted the differences in the conceptualization between English concepts of sym-
pathy, compassion and empathy and Russian equivalents sočuvstvie, sostradanie
and sopereživanie. Moonan (2007) examined the variants of Yes/No questions
patterns used by an English–Thai bilingual speaker and spelt out cultural scripts to
provide evidence for a transposition of Thai culture in her English-speaking
interactions with her mother.
It is worth noting that the studies cited above have tapped into a wide range of
data sources and thoroughly explained various aspects of language and culture from
the perspective of cultural insiders. This is thanks to the power of two NSM
analytical tools: semantic explications and cultural scripts. These instruments are
useful to access the meaning of culture-specific and culture-related concepts in a
neutral way and explain the specific way of thinking and speaking of a speech
community without bias.
This study, likewise, takes the insider point of view about cultural traditions and
orientations of the Vietnamese culture presented in Tran (2016), in which the
importance of ideals, norms and morals as acquired values and habits are empha-
sized. The findings from the Vietnamese Metapragmatic Survey (VMS) in Vo
(2016a) are taken as a priori grounds for the discussion. The survey, approved by
Griffith University’s ethics committee (GU Ref No: LAL/04/13), collected infor-
mation from 80 participants aged 18–55 from cities and provinces in Central
Vietnam in the form of free answers to an open-ended questionnaire. The VMS
addresses the issues in interaction, including the cultural concepts Vietnamese
speakers are most mindful of, and the parameters by which they define their
interpersonal relationships. In the process of data analysis, the key words that
respondents frequently mentioned were identified. Among these issues, thứ-bậc
was mentioned by 81% of the respondents and, together with quan-hệ (‘relation-
ship’), constituted the two overarching systems of cultural information.
122 L.-H. Vo
On the basis of the VMS data, the present study attempts to explicate the cultural
concept thứ-bậc in the self-explanatory language of NSM as well as spell out
cultural scripts for cultural norms and social skills associated with thứ-bậc. The
elaboration is corroborated by Vietnamese folk saying and proverbs.
7.3 Linguistic Evidence
Linguistic evidence is crucial to achieve the reliability and intelligibility in

ethnopragmatics. Nonetheless, the accessibility to linguistic evidence regarding
people’s thinking about their language use is challenging. One of the credible
sources of linguistic evidence to deploy in ethnopragmatic research is the folk
sayings and proverbs of a speech community. Folk sayings and proverbs can be
seen as capturing the ancestral experience and wisdom through generations, and
thus best conveying traditional values. Goddard (2009: 103) argues that the social
function of folk sayings and proverbs is to
[…] recapitulate and reproduce established cultural values. They are communicative
vehicles that both enact traditional authority and are partially constitutive of it. They are
“small forms” of authoritative discourse.
In Vietnamese, folk sayings and proverbs are considered to represent a ‘folk phi-
losophy’ (Nguyen 2002) that underpins the cultural logic of interactions. In this
study, a collection of 60 folk sayings and proverbs related to social interaction was
compiled. They come from school textbooks and N.P. Vu’s research work in
Vietnamese folklore (2005). These sources are reliable since the folk sayings and
proverbs presented in these books were carefully selected and widely accepted by
Vietnamese people from different regions. Among these folk sayings and proverbs,
16 items are used as linguistic evidence to corroborate the discussion of the
ethnopragmatic understanding of thứ-bậc as well as its associated cultural norms.
These folk sayings and proverbs are selected because they are translatable to the
extent that the literal translation of their contents is perfectly understandable to
cultural outsiders without special knowledge of Vietnamese folk life and language.
7.4 The Ethnopragmatic Understanding of Thứ-Bậc
Vietnamese interactions, as a reflection of Vietnamese cultural values, are

hierarchy-oriented. Previous studies into Vietnamese (e.g. Luong 1990; Vu 1997)
have highlighted the significance of thứ-bậc in Vietnamese interactions. The con-
cept thứ-bậc (thứ ‘order’, bậc ‘ranking’) is defined as the social organization of
people into order and rank with reference to determinants such as relative age and
social standing. In practice, thứ-bậc is commonly conceived in terms of age dif-
ference, except for the workplace power dimension and certain social domains
(Tran 2016). In Vietnamese thứ-bậc, the greater emphasis on age amounts to

seniority, wisdom and due respect. This distinguishes Vietnamese thứ-bậc from the
concept of ‘hierarchy’ in other cultures, thus a difference in the cultural logic of
interaction. Based on the VMS data, Vo (2016a) argues that in an ordinary social
interaction, a Vietnamese speaker is positioned in one of three levels of age-related
interactional standing: older, younger, or peer. These age-related interactional
standings are integral to the conceptualization of thứ-bậc and the awareness of thứ-
bậc is a cognitive process that determines the choice of behavioural norms.
On this premise, the age-related interactional standings are depicted in the fol-
lowing explication with three different tiers. It should be noted that although this
explication follows the NSM analytical method, it does not represent a standard
NSM explication as guided in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014). With a view to
highlighting the distinction of age positions, it has additional labels in the right
column. Furthermore, in Vietnamese interaction, family relationship constitutes a
special social group that has its own style of interaction (see Vo 2016b). The
discussion of thứ-bậc here focuses on how Vietnamese people conceive their
interactional standings with other people than family members. Nonetheless, family
relationships are used as parameters for the choice of verbal behaviour. For one
thing, family interactions are the most basic and they prepare the grounds for a
person’s extended social interactions. For another, the family-related set of
vocabulary has been proved to be near-universal semantic molecules, which are
useful for the explication of thứ-bậc.
As shown in explication [A], the emphasis in thứ-bậc is on what people are
expected to say and do, depending on their interactional ‘place’ in relation to
non-family interactants.
[A] Thứ bậc (‘hierarchy’)

(a) at many times it is like this: SOCIAL SCENARIO
I am with someone for some time
I am not part of the same family [m] as this someone
I want to say something to this someone, I want to do something with this someone
(b) when it is like this, I can’t not think like this: COGNITIVE PROCESS
“if this someone was born [m] before me, this someone is someone Older age group
above me, like someone above me in my family [m]
if this someone was born [m] after me, this someone is someone Younger age group
below me, like someone below me in my family [m]
if this someone was born [m] in the same year [m] as me, Peer group
this someone is not someone above me
this someone is not someone below me
this someone is someone like me”
(c) when I think like this, I can know well about these things: SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE
I know what words I can say to this someone about this someone
I know how to say something to this someone
I know how to do something with this someone
124 L.-H. Vo
Thứ-bậc is enacted only when there is a need for actual interaction. This is pre-
sented in Section (a) and results in a cognitive process that prepares an interactant
for his/her participation. In this process, an interactant self-positions in a hierarchy
with reference to the other interactant. This is stated in Section (b) of the expli-
cation, with its three levels relative to age. It is important to note in Section (b) that
the speaker’s family serves as a yardstick in the conceptualization of hierarchical
levels for older and younger interactants and in speech practice. This is most clearly
seen in the choice of address terms, which are based on kinship terms. The choice is
made on the basis of comparability with a relationship involving a family member,
especially in the case of interactants in a higher or lower age range. This is artic-
ulated in the explication through the phrases ‘like someone above/below me in my
family’. This self-positioning is normative for culturally accepted behaviour in
Vietnamese culture, where the awareness of and the attitudes towards seniority are
taken seriously. It is reflected in the folk cultural norm in (1):
(1) Tiên học lễ hậu học văn.

‘Learn to respect first, acquire knowledge later.’
The conceptualization of thứ-bậc provides the normative ground (i.e., the

hierarchy-based social knowledge) for interactants to work out their appropriate
verbal behaviour, which is indicated in Section (c) of the explication. The social
knowledge stated in this section is related to a system of folk ‘rituals’ underpinning
several cultural norms, namely, lễ-phép (‘ritual rules/respectfulness’).
7.4.1 Lễ-Phép (‘Respectfulness’) as a Manifestation of

Thứ-Bậc
In the VMS data (Vo 2016a), lễ-phép (‘respectfulness’) was among the most
mindful issues of interaction. It is argued to be an attribute of thứ-bậc as it is a
‘must-do’ in a Vietnamese interaction to show the interactant’s awareness of thứ-
bậc, as presented in Section (c) of the explication above. This system of rituals
informs several aspects of Vietnamese cultural life. Yet, in this discussion, the focus
is only on the praxis of lễ-phép in verbal interactions.
Lễ-phép is the most important part of lễ (‘ritual’) in Vietnamese. It originated
from the concept lĭ in Confucian ideology. Lễ-phép is one of the most significant
normative attributes of verbal behaviour in Vietnamese. Although it is often loosely
conceived by many Vietnamese people as showing respect to elder people, in fact, it
comprises a broader set of social and moral norms and attitudes for interpersonal
relationships. In her review of literature related to Vietnamese politeness, Ta (2009)
argues that lễ-phép is exercised on the basis of three collocations involving trọng
(‘esteem’): kính-trọng (‘veneration’), tôn-trọng (‘respect’) and tự-trọng
(‘self-esteem’).
Kính-trọng (‘veneration’) is defined as a kind of respect felt towards a person for

his/her values, including age, life experience, contribution, knowledge and talent. In
everyday life, kính-trọng is often clearly seen through the way Vietnamese people
behave towards elders. It appears to be similar to the Korean attitude towards noin
(‘old people’), as described in Yoon (2004). Vietnamese kính-trọng felt towards
elders is an indicator of the belief entrenched in the Confucian philosophy of a
cause–effect relationship with long life:
(2) Kính lão đắc thọ.

‘If you respect old people, you will live long.’
Vo (2016a) argues that kính-trọng is ritualistically normative as it is related to the

attitudes towards seniority, while tôn-trọng (‘respect’) and tự-trọng (‘self-esteem’)
can be negotiated. They are two further interdependent dimensions of lễ-phép.
Tôn-trong (‘respect’) in Vietnamese is often thought of as respect shown to
people in a higher age range or with a higher social status. Nonetheless, it is defined
in Vietnamese dictionaries as esteem or consideration shown to other interactants,
which implies that people of all ages and with all social statuses should be treated
with respect. In addition, tôn-trong is intertwined with tư-trong (‘self-esteem’),
which is the attempt to preserve one’s individual ‘face’ (including honour and
reputation). In consequence, the management of lễ-phép in Vietnamese speech
practice is a two-way affair. That is to say, younger people are required to show tôn-
trọng to the older, but equally the older interactants are expected to behave well
towards the younger, as a good example for the younger to follow to secure his/her
tư-trong. This two-way form of respect is manifested in a folk principle of beha-
viour, which is one of the most fundamental social precepts of Vietnamese:
(3) Kính trên nhường dưới.

‘Respect the older, yield to the younger.’
This principle of a mutuality of respect, as Vo (2016a) argues, implies that the

Vietnamese approach to respectful behaviour is evidence of the culture-specificity
in Vietnamese interaction featuring the emotion-based and harmony-preferred
characteristics presented in Tran (2016).
Nonetheless, the attitudes in the practice of lễ-phép are ultimately subject to the
interactants’ relative age positions, that is, whether the interactant is the older or the
younger in a particular interaction that he/she is expected to enact lễ-phép properly.
Therefore, the principle kính trên nhường dưới (‘respect the older, yield to the
younger’) is articulated in two different cultural scripts with a view to featuring thứ-
bậc in interaction. Both scripts are closely connected with attitudes, that is, with
thinking and feeling, but they are essential to form the ideas for the choice of
interactional behaviour, that is, saying and doing.
126 L.-H. Vo
[B] Cultural script for kính trên (‘respect the older’)

many people think like this:
(a) at many times, when I am with someone, SOCIAL SCENARIO
if this someone was born [m] before me, I can’t not think about this someone like this:
(b) “this someone is someone above me DEFINING HIERARCHY
it is good if I think something good about this someone, Attitude
like I think about someone above me in my family [m]
it is good if I feel something good towards this someone” Respect
The dimension ‘respect the older’ is thought of as obligatory. This is displayed

through the phrase ‘I can’t not think’ in Section (a) of script [B]. Behaviour to
elders is thus recommended through the phrase ‘it is good if …’ in Section (b). In
the script for nhường dưới (‘yield to the younger’), in contrast, the dimension ‘yield
to the younger’ is considered as a good way of thinking, which is reflected in the
phrase ‘it is good if I think like this’ in Section (a).
[C] Cultural script for nhường dưới (‘yield to the younger’)

(a) at many times, when I am with someone, SOCIAL SCENARIO
if this someone was born [m] after me, it is good if I think like this:
(b) “this someone is someone below me DEFINING HIERARCHY
I can feel something good towards this someone Attitude
like I feel something good towards someone below me in my family [m]
(c) I want this someone to think something good about me, Due respect
I want this someone to feel something good towards me”
The attitude of yielding to the younger presented in Section (b) is voluntary, as

indicated through the phrase ‘I can …’. This attitude towards the younger can be
expressed in speech practice through expressions of endearment. It exhibits the
consideration that an older person feels towards a younger one. In showing this
consideration, the elder also shows his/her expectation for respect, as captured in
Section (c) through the phrase ‘I want …’.
The behavioural principle kính trên nhường dưới is symptomatic of the influence
exercised by both normative Confucian philosophy and egalitarian French courtesy.
This implies that Vietnamese thứ-bậc is not as vertically distinctive as comparable
hierarchy concepts in other Asian cultures. Moreover, the levels in thứ-bậc are
relatively simple when compared to, for example, the complicated Japanese
counterpart: a vertical hierarchy in which one’s position varies from meue
(‘higher-ranking, superior’), meshita (‘lower-ranking, subordinate’), to senpai
(‘senior’) and so on (Haugh 2005).
7.4.2 Cultural Scripts for Constitutive Norms in Lễ-Phép
Research into Vietnamese politeness has asserted that lễ-phép is one of the most
important constituents of politeness in Vietnamese (Ta 2009; Vu 1997), which is
manipulated through a set of norms and skills, namely, đúng-mực (‘propriety’),
khiêm-nhường (‘humility’) and khôn-khéo (‘tact’) (Vu 1997).
Đúng-mực (‘propriety’) is a cultural norm that interactants must attentively
comply with when enacting the normative dimension of veneration, kính-trọng, to
show their awareness of lễ-phép as well as the desire for ‘face’. In script [D], this
awareness is displayed in Section (a). Section (b) captures the proper use of person
reference terms and/or expressions, such as honorifics, which exhibit appropriate
respect towards the other interactant (see Luong 1990). For the reason of ‘face’,
đúng-mực is connected with public judgements of the reputation and morals of the
interactants (and even of their families). A violation of this norm is likely to result
in negative evaluations, often described as vô-lê (‘disrespectful’) and mât-day
(‘uneducated’). Such evaluations threaten both the self-esteem of an individual and
the reputation of the family. This is clearly indicated in Section (c) of the script.
[D] Cultural script for đúng mực (‘propriety’)

(a) when I am with someone above me, I can’t not think like this: SOCIAL SCENARIO
I don’t want this someone to think something bad about me Desire for ‘face’
I don’t want this someone to feel something bad when I say something to this someone
(b) because of this, when I say something to this someone, INTERACTION CONSEQUENCE
I can’t not say some words about this someone to this someone, Proper reference term
like the words I say about someone above me in my family [m]
at the same time, it is good if I say something like this to this someone: Expression of respect
‘I feel something very good towards you’
(c) it is very bad if I don’t think like this, SOCIAL EVALUATION
because other people can think something very bad about me
Notwithstanding a normative rule of behaviour for everyone, the role of a younger

interactant in abiding by đúng-mực is important in speech practice. This is artic-
ulated in the script through the phrase ‘when I am with someone above me’.
On the part of the older interactants, their enactment of lễ-phép is shown via their
compliance with the norm khiêm-nhường (‘humility’). Khiêm-nhường is an inter-
esting cultural norm, being both normative and strategic. It not only represents a
socially expected standard for interactions with younger people, but also hints at a
tactful skill in maintaining relationship for the sake of harmony preference (Vo
2016a). The social cognition behind khiêm-nhường is captured in cultural script [E]:
128 L.-H. Vo
[E] Cultural script for khiêm nhường (‘humility’)

(a) when I am with someone below me, it is good if I think like this: SOCIAL SCENARIO
“I don’t want this someone to feel something bad towards me desire for ‘face’
I don’t want this someone to think something bad about me”
(b) because of this, it is good if I feel something good towards this someone FEELINGS AND ATTITUDES
it is good if I think about this someone like I think about someone below me in my family [m]
I want this someone to know this
(c) because of this, when I want to say something to this someone, INTERACTION CONSEQUENCE
it is good if I can say it in the same way as I say it to someone below me in my family [m]
(d) it is good if I think like this, SOCIAL EVALUATION
because other people can think something good about me
Vietnamese people are sensitive to social judgement and try to avoid mang-tiếng
(‘bearing [negative] reputation’) and mất-mặt (‘losing face’) in social interactions.
This is the motivation for their adherence to khiêm-nhường, clearly indicated in the
desire for ‘face’ in Section (a). To avoid the risk of ‘losing face’, an older inter-
actant is expected to project positive feelings and attitudes, as in Section (b), and
display proper verbal behaviour towards the junior, as in Section (c). Nonetheless,
the failure to comply with khiêm-nhường in the seniority-oriented Vietnamese
culture is not seriously criticized. Therefore, an older interactant’s acquiescence to
khiêm-nhường is likely to ‘polish’ the self-image in the public eye, as spelt out in
Section (d), and to sustain self-esteem, as a Vietnamese proverb has it:
(4) Làm anh làm ả thì ngã măt lên.
‘As a brother or sister, uphold the face.’
Literally, the proverb advises older people to show generosity to younger people, but
it applies by implication to anyone in an interactionally ‘higher place’. In Vietnamese
social cognition, being khiêm-nhường is not associated with ‘lowering’ oneself. Even
in situations where an older speaker uses bạn (‘friend’) as the second person address
term to a younger speaker, the younger speaker is expected to abide by đúng-mực and
show due respect. In other words, under no circumstances should the younger speaker
treat the older as a peer. He or she must follow the traditional address terms for older
people to maintain thứ-bậc and not to threaten the older speaker’s ‘face’ and dignity.
It is worth noting that there is a risk of a younger interactant’s violation of thứ-
bậc if an elder inappropriately conforms to khiêm-nhường, resulting in a state of
disorder, where no distinction is made between the elder and younger. In this
situation, both interlocutors risk losing their self-esteem. Thus, the younger inter-
actant must never neglect his/her standing under any circumstances because a
younger interactant’s infringement may be criticized for improper family education:
(5) Nguồn đục thì dòng không trong,
Gốc cong thì cây không thẳng.
‘A turbid source cannot create a clear water line,
a curved root cannot produce a straight tree’.
On the part of the older interactants, Vietnamese folk experience also reminds them
to be mindful of thứ-bậc and act as exemplars for younger people:
(6) Người trên đứng đắn kẻ dưới dám nhờn.

‘If the older is earnest, how does the younger dare to be disrespectful?’
The earnestness recommended in this proverb is verbally displayed via the older
interactant’s use of tôi (‘I’), a neutral form of address for first person in lieu of the
casual self-address forms used in age-asymmetric interaction. Furthermore, show-
ing earnestness to younger interactants is, to a certain degree, regarded as a col-
lective obligation with a view to teaching good manners to the younger generation,
as per the following proverb:
(7) Muốn tròn phải có khuôn, muốn vuông phải có thước.

‘There must be standards to cultivate etiquettes in younger people’.
Arguably, the Vietnamese norm khiêm-nhường is simply a way of minimizing

oneself without elevating the other. This makes it different from its Chinese and
Japanese counterparts (cf. Gu 1990; Lebra 2004). Vietnamese khiêm-nhường
appears to be a skill of impression management that helps create an amiable
interaction for the sake of harmony.
Another level of standing in thư-bâc is peer level. When the interactants have
equal interactional roles, the dimensions đúng-mực and khiêm-nhường become less
important although they are still recommended. In peer interactions, the norm in
focus is khôn-khéo (‘tact’), which can be seen as an experiential skill both taught in
the family and developed through one’s exposure to and experience in daily speech
practice. Interestingly, this dimension was mentioned most in the folk data both as a
cultural norm and as a social skill. Khôn-khéo is exhibited not only in careful choice
of language and content, but also in decisions about the amount of information and
the manner of delivery:
(8) Nói hay hơn hay nói.

‘Speaking convincingly is better than speaking frequently’.
Khôn-khéo is indicative of the ability to say or do things without upsetting the

hearer as well as the ability to make good decisions when dealing with situations. It
should be noted that compliance with this norm is expected in all interactions (i.e. in
both peer and age-asymmetric interactions), but above all in interactions among
peers. In cultural script [F], the applicability of khôn-khéo is not restricted to a
particular kind of interaction.
130 L.-H. Vo
[F] Cultural script for khôn khéo (‘tact’)

(a) when I am with someone, it is good if I think like this: SOCIAL SCENARIO
“I want this someone to think something good about me, desire for ‘face’
I want this someone to feel something good towards me”
(b) because of this, when I want to say something to this someone, INTERACTION CONSEQUENCE
it is good if I think well about these things:
- what I can say to this someone contents
- how I can say it to this someone manner of delivery
- how much I can say about it to this someone amount of information
(c) it is good if I think like this, SOCIAL EVALUATION
because other people can think something good about me
Section (a) states the interactant’s needs to be positively valued.

Section (b) describes the ‘interaction consequence’ when a person practises khôn-
khéo. The practice of khôn-khéo comprises a series of acts. In terms of contents, an
interactant must have a thoughtful plan for what is said, as reflected in (9), and this
is practised as part of an interactant’s life, as in (10):
(9) Uốn lưỡi bảy lần trước khi nói.
‘Roll your tongue seven times before you speak.’
(10) Ăn có nhai, nói có nghĩ.

‘Think as you speak, just like you chew as you eat.’
In addition, it is essential to make a careful choice for the method of delivery:
(11) Chim khôn hót tiếng rảnh rang,

‘Wise birds sing fine tunes,’
Người khôn nói tiếng dịu dàng dễ nghe.
‘Wise people speak in soft and gentle voices.’
The practice of khôn-khéo in Vietnamese interaction, like the compliance with other
norms in lê-phép, serves to solicit the esteem in thư-bâc. Since the enactment of lê-
phép, as argued above, requires interactants to feel a mutual respect towards each
other, practising khôn-khéo is also a way to avoid losing face in interaction, as goes
a folk saying:
(12) Kim vàng ai nỡ uốn câu,

Người khôn ai nỡ nói nhau nặng lời.
‘Who wants to bend a gold needle into a hook,
As wise people, who wants to say tough words to each other?’
Whereas đúng-mực is a communicative virtue, khôn-khéo is an interactional strat-

egy. Tran (1996) argues that khôn khéo is an indicator to evaluate an interactant’s
competence in verbal behaviour, as reflected in a folk saying:
(13) Chuông kêu thử tiếng, người ngoan thử lời.

‘To evaluate a bell, listen to its sound; to value a wise person, listen to the words.’
In practice, whether or not and to what extent khôn-khéo is shown will depend on the
interactant’s choice. This is shown in the ‘social evaluation’ component—
Section (c) of the script—that compliance with the norm is recommended (rather than
enforced) through the phrase ‘it is good if ….’ Obviously, this is very different from
the condemnation of non-compliance built into the cultural script for đúng-mưc.
At this point, it should perhaps be emphasized that the three norms in lê-phép are
interconnected and interdependent, making interactions culturally pleasant.
Nonetheless, for a particular interactant, one norm could be given priority over others.
Another notable point is that since khôn-khéo and khiêm-nhường can also be
considered to be social skills, they are not always easy to enact. An excessive
exhibition of khôn-khéo and/or khiêm-nhường could be regarded as insincerity,
especially in interactions with peers. Among peers, where thư-bâc is not very
significant, khôn-khéo is practised based on the interpersonal relationships. There
are two tendencies in this regard. Talk can be either open and frank (among peer
friends who have a close and long-established relationship) or cautious and com-
petitive (among peers who observe a certain distance). The overt style of com-
munication among peer friends is evident in the use of casual person reference
terms and, sometimes, in the way they make fun of each other. The other way of
communicating among peers, which is relatively competitive, emphasizes the
individual and/or collective reputation, as in (14), and strong desires to be positively
valued as in (15):
(14) Thua thầy một vạn không bằng thua bạn một li.
‘Not knowing ten thousand things a teacher knows is not as shameful as not knowing
a tiny thing a friend does.’
(15) Xấu che, tốt khoe.
‘Hide the bad, show the good.’
This verbal behaviour reflects a folk way of thinking about khôn-khéo:
(16) Người khôn ăn nói nửa chừng,

Để cho người dại nửa mừng nửa lo.
‘Wise people say things in a halfway manner,
so as to make injudicious people puzzled.’
This way of communicating, however, creates an image of a competitive ‘face-seeking’

Vietnamese interactant, who perhaps appears insincere, even ostentatious, in the eye of the
cultural outsider. Although the VMS (Vo 2016a) did not produce any data for this
communication style, it is arguable that this attitude is the outcome of a collectivist culture,
where one is put under psychological pressure to be a good member and to do good things
for collective pride. This is certainly a psychological aspect of peer interaction that is
worthy of more investigation.
132 L.-H. Vo
7.5 Conclusion
This study has sought to provide a culturally anchored ethnopragmatic under-

standing of the cultural logic of Vietnamese interactions through the concept of thư-
bâc. The concept has been analysed and explained in the self-explanatory and easily
translatable language of the natural semantic metalanguage. The elaboration has
highlighted that Vietnamese thư-bâc (often rendered in English as ‘hierarchy’) is a
culturally distinctive feature in interaction: it is the normative ground mainly
focussing on the relative age between interactants and implies several ritualized
rules of behaviour or attitudes that show high moral standards in interaction.
Taking Vo’s (2016a) survey data a priori, the study figures out the importance of
the three-level division with special reference to relative age in thứ-bậc. This
division provides a springboard for patterns of ritualized Vietnamese verbal
behaviour, known as lê-phép, which underpins a system of normative values and
communicative virtues. The three components of lê-phép, namely, đúng-mực,
khiêm-nhường and khôn-khéo, are a reconciliation between the mandatory norms
and social skills. They are spelt out in the NSM cultural scripts and supported with
Vietnamese folk sayings and proverbs as linguistic evidence. Although the cultural
concepts presented in this study are not necessarily culture-unique, the way
Vietnamese people conceive them, and perhaps, enact them in speech practice, is
specifically Vietnamese. Therefore, this discussion of thứ-bậc using NSM has
provided a new ground for understanding the ethnopragmatics of Vietnamese and
helps disclose the cultural motives underlying Vietnamese verbal behaviour.
However, the discussion also implies several aspects of verbal interaction that
need to be further explored in future. Apart from the traditional practice of thứ-bậc,
for which relative age is the primary parameter, there are certain social variables
that make the manifestation of thứ-bậc somewhat sophisticated. For example, one
of the variables that strongly informs the practice of thứ-bậc is the profession of the
interactant. In Vietnamese culture, education and intellectual accomplishment is
highly valued, so much that some occupations are regarded as ‘high-ranking’ or
‘noble’. Interactions with and/or between people of these professions are intricately
practised. In addition to the reference to relative age, thứ-bậc is also practised on the
basis of the interactants’ professional accomplishments. This is the ‘ranking’ aspect
of thứ-bậc. Of course, this aspect of interaction needs further investigation and
explanation that, within its scope, the present study is unable to cover.
References
Ameka, F. K., & Breedveld, A. (2004). Areal cultural scripts for social interaction in West African
communities. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2), 167–187. https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.
167.
Enfield, N. J. (2007). Review of the book Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural
context ed. by C. Goddard. Intercultural Pragmatics, 4(3), 419–433. https://doi.org/10.1515/
ip.2007.021.
Gladkova, A. (2010). Sympathy, compassion, and empathy in English and Russian: A linguistic
and cultural analysis. Culture & Psychology, 16(2), 267–285. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1354067X10361396.
Goddard, C. (2000). “Cultural scripts” and communicative style in Malay (“Bahasa Melayu”).
Anthropological Linguistics, 42(1), 81–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(96)00032-X.
Goddard, C. (2006). Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin:
Goddard, C. (2009). Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight: Proverbiality, semantics and
indexicality in English and Malay. In G. Senft, & E. B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual communication
(pp. 103–125). Oxford: Berg.
9780199668434.001.0001.
Goddard, C., & Ye, Z. (2015). Ethnopragmatics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), Routledge handbook of
Gu, Y. (1990). Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 237–257.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(90)90082-O.
Hasada, R. (2006). Cultural scripts: Glimpses into the Japanese emotion world. In C. Goddard
(Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 171–198). Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.171.
Haugh, M. (2005). The importance of “place” in Japanese politeness: Implications for
cross-cultural and intercultural analyses. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2(1), 41–68. https://doi.
org/10.1515/iprg.2005.2.1.41.
Lebra, T. S. (2004). The Japanese self in cultural logic. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Luong, V. H. (1990). Discursive practices and linguistic meanings: The Vietnamese system of
person reference. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.11.
Moonan, R. J. (2007). A cultural script analysis of an English-Thai bilingual speaker’s nominative
usage of “Mommy” in English and Yes/No question formation. PhD thesis, University of South
Carolina.
Nguyen, V. N. (2002). Lô gích ngôn giao trong tục ngữ Việt Nam [The logic of verbal
communication in Vietnamese proverbs]. Ngôn ngữ và Đời sống [Language and Life], 2, 21–
24.
Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural conceptualisations and language: Theoretical framework and
applications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.1.
Ta, T. T. T. (2009). Lich sư trong giao tiêp Tiêng Viêt [Politeness in Vietnamese Communication].
Ho Chi Minh City: Ho Chi Minh City General Publishing House.
Tran, N. T. (1996). Tìm về bản sắc văn hóa Việt Nam [Discovering the identity of Vietnamese
culture]. Ho Chi Minh City: General Publishing House.
Tran, N. T. (2016). Hệ giá trị Việt Nam: Từ truyền thống đến hiện tại và con đường tương lai
[Vietnamese Values: From traditions to modernity and the future]. Hanoi: Culture and Arts
Publisher.
Travis, C. E. (2004). The ethnopragmatics of the diminutive in conversational Colombian Spanish.
Vo, L.-H. (2014). A natural semantic metalanguage approach to quan-hệ (‘relationship’) and thứ-
bậc (‘hierarchy’) as cultural schemas in Vietnamese interaction. Paper presented at the Annual
meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society, Newcastle, Australia.
Vo, L.-H. (2016a). The ethnopragmatics of Vietnamese: An investigation into the cultural logic of
interactions, focussing on the speech act complex of disagreement. Ph.D. thesis, Griffith
University.
Vo, L.-H. (2016b). Responding to informational inaccuracy in family talk: A Vietnamese
ethnopragmatic perspective. Language, Culture and Society, 39, 57–67. https://aaref.com.au/
2018/05/12/issue-39-2016/.
134 L.-H. Vo
Vu, T. T. H. (1997). Politeness in modern Vietnamese: A sociolinguistic study of a Hanoi speech

community. Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto.
Vu, N. P. (2005). Tục ngữ, ca dao dân ca Việt Nam [Vietnamese folk sayings and proverbs].
Hanoi: Literature Publishing House.
Wierzbicka, A. (2002a). Australian cultural scripts: Bloody revisited. Journal of Pragmatics, 34
(9), 1167–1209. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(01)00023-6.
Wierzbicka, A. (2002b). Right and wrong: From philosophy to everyday discourse. Discourse
Studies, 4(2), 225–252. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456020040020601.
Wierzbicka, A. (2006). Anglo scripts against “putting pressure” on the other people and their
linguistic manifestations. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in
9783110911114.31.
Wong, J.-O. (2006). Social hierarchy in the “speech culture” of Singapore. In C. Goddard (Ed.),
Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 99–126). Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.99.
Ye, Z. (2004). Chinese categorization of interpersonal relationships and the cultural logic of
Chinese social interaction: An indigenous perspective. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2),
211–230. https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.211.
Yoon, K.-J. (2004). Not just words: Korean social models and the use of honorifics. Intercultural
Pragmatics, 1(2), 189–210. https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2004.1.2.189.
Lien-Huong Vo is Lecturer in Linguistics and Translation Studies at the College of Foreign

Languages, Hue University, Vietnam. Her main research interests pertain in pragmatics, discourse
analysis and translation competence between English and Vietnamese. As NSM Practitioner, she is
particularly interested in using semantic explications and cultural scripts to disentangle cultural
notions in Vietnamese and to support language teaching.
Chapter 8
Pile of Dead Leaves Free to a Good
Home: Humour and Belonging
in a Facebook Community
Kerry Mullan
Abstract This study examines the use of online humour in a local community
Facebook group, whose aims are to provide the members of an inner suburb of an
Australian city with the opportunity to ask for and receive help. Many of the posts
are from members seeking house/babysitting, recommendations for local services,
and/or offering goods to other members of the group at no cost. Most members are
not known to each other personally. By applying Winchatz and Kozin’s (Discourse
Stud 10:383–405, 2008) model for the analysis of comical hypothetical humour
combined with elements of computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) to one
particular discussion thread, and by administering a short survey to the contributors
of this same thread, this chapter will demonstrate how the use of spontaneous
conversational humour in this Facebook group contributes to the members’ sense of
belonging in this online community.

Keywords Australian English Conversational humour Social media Social

networking site Online community Facebook
8.1 Introduction
As the number of users of the Internet and social media has increased exponentially
in a relatively short period of time, so has the number of scholars conducting
research on computer-mediated communication (CMC). While early research per-
ceived the online space as a quite different medium from face to face (cf. Herring
2001), recent work has highlighted the nuances and overlap between online and
offline communication (e.g., Preece and Maloney-Krichmar 2005), and social media
has further blurred the boundaries (Angouri 2016). Facebook is perhaps the best
example of this: Since its conception, it has become the most successful social
networking site in the world, growing from a college start-up in 2004 to a
K. Mullan (&)
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: kerry.mullan@rmit.edu.au

136 K. Mullan
worldwide platform with one billion users in 2012, and one which continues to
expand (Tagg and Seargant 2016: 339). Central to the founder’s vision for
Facebook is a desire for individuals to “connect with the people they want and share
what they want” (Zuckerberg 2012), allowing for a kind of phatic communication
that blurs the boundaries between the interpersonal and the informational in online
communities (Tagg and Seargant 2016: 339).
De Souza and Preece (2004: 580) defined online communities as “group[s] of
people, who come together for a purpose online, and who are governed by norms
and policies.” Schwämmlein and Wodzicki (2012) later identified two main types
of online communities: common-bond communities (often profile-based like blogs
and Facebook), where the members are primarily interested in one another; and
common-identity communities (like discussion boards and email lists), where
individuals focus on interests that are shared by the community members. In
common-identity communities, “social identity builds on shared characteristics
(such as interests, attitudes, or values), on shared social categories (such as gender,
nationality, or organizational affiliations), or on a common task or purpose (such as
sports teams or work groups)” (Schwämmlein and Wodzicki 2012: 388). Lambert
Graham (2016: 310) points out, however, that the distinction between the two types
of communities is neither fixed, clear-cut, nor solely determined by the medium (as
in this study).
Similarly, technology has also blurred many of the traditional boundaries
between spoken and written language, and research into language used in SMS and
emails, and social media has been an area of great interest for many years (see, e.g.
Crystal 2006, inter alia). Countless articles have examined the influence of tech-
nology on language, concluding that, despite the absence of the usual performance
cues such as intonation, gestures, facial expressions, and so on, most
computer-mediated discourse (CMD) closely resembles spoken conversation (for
an overview of the literature, see Crystal 2014; Herring and Androutsopoulos
2015). It therefore follows that humour in CMD can also resemble conversational
humour. In addition to the humorous discourse itself, users actively exploit the
online environment for the purposes of creating context-dependent humour through
emoticons, images, and other graphics (North 2007), often using more humour than
in comparable face-to-face activities (Hancock 2004).
The vast interdisciplinary area of humour studies is such that an overview of the
literature is far beyond the scope of this chapter, and even defining the terms
humour and humour studies is problematic (see Goddard 2017, 2018). For our
purposes, however, we will use Lefcourt and Martin’s (1986: 9) definition of
humour as discourse which “brings together two disparate ideas, concepts or sit-
uations in a surprising or unexpected manner,” since this fits under the incongruity
theory of humour, and is relevant to this study. In addition, it is generally accepted
in most areas of humour research that, alongside the immediate aim of mutual
entertainment, the overall social function of humour is either to unite or divide (e.g.,
affiliative vs. aggressive humour, cf. Meyer 2015: 32), often simultaneously. There
are many ways in which these functions can be achieved, and there is a growing
body of work on humour in social interaction, otherwise known as verbal or
8 Pile of Dead Leaves Free to a Good Home … 137
conversational humour (e.g., Attardo 2003, inter alia; Dynel 2011, 2013, inter alia;
Norrick 1993, inter alia; Norrick and Chiaro 2009; Raskin 1985, 2008). As the
humour under examination here can be considered online conversational humour,
we will also adopt Holmes and Marra’s definition of the same as “utterances which
are identified […] as intended by the speaker(s) to be amusing and perceived to be
amusing by at least some of the participants” (2002: 67), understood to be both
spontaneous and co-constructed in this context.
In recent times, research into humour in various social media has come to the
fore (cf. Chiaro 2018; Holm 2017; Weitz 2016), although work on humour in
computer-mediated discourse began as early as the 1990s (Baym 1995). Baym
(2003: 2) identifies humour as one of the four most important language practices for
the development of community online (along with vocabulary, nonverbal com-
munication, and genres or frames). This can also be seen in Taiwo et al.’s (2016)
study on humour amongst friendship groups on Facebook, and Idowu-Faith’s
examination of collaborative conversational humour in blogs (2016). My interest in
this burgeoning area of research focuses on the use of co-constructed humour in
online social networking communities where for the most part the members do not
know each other in person. One such study is Marone (2015), who examined the
humour in an online gaming community as a group insider and researcher. He
looked particularly at how humour was used over two months in a discussion forum
to achieve a variety of overwhelmingly positive and supportive social and prag-
matic goals and to “overall engender a smiling atmosphere that incentiv[izes]
collaboration, peer feedback and social cohesion” (Marone 2015: 61). Other
scholars have analysed the use of fantasy humour to build supportive communities
and solidarity amongst cancer sufferers (Demjén 2016), and linguistic creativity in
humour in an online discussion board (North 2007). Hübler and Bell (2003)
examined what they call “ethos-building” humour in mailing lists. According to
Baym (1995), the use of humour in CMC can help reduce anonymity and the sense
of temporal and spatial separation.
Several scholars have identified certain recurring characteristics in the humour of
Australian English speakers. Goddard began his work on humour with an article
entitled “‘Lift your game, Martina!’: deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics
of Australian English” (2006). This was followed by other works which highlight
the prevalence of humour, the importance of having a sense of humour and of not
taking oneself too seriously (Goddard 2009, 2017; Goddard and Mullan in press),
and of being irreverent (Cramer and Goddard 2017) in (Anglo) Australian culture.
Other characteristics regularly found in Australian humour have been identified and
studied, such as the value of teasing, banter, mock impoliteness, and jocular
mockery and abuse (Haugh 2014; Haugh and Bousfield 2012), and the tendency of
Australian English speakers to create complicity with other participants by threat-
ening another’s face for the sake of humour (Béal and Mullan 2013, 2017). Of
particular relevance here is research (not exclusively on Australian English) on the
138 K. Mullan
co-construction of absurd ‘fantasy’ humour with escalation (Béal and Mullan 2013,
2017; Hay 2001; Mullan and Béal 2018), also known as ‘joint fictionalization’
(Kotthoff 1999), ‘joint fantasising’ (Stallone and Haugh 2017), and ‘comical
hypothetical’ (Winchatz and Kozin 2008), where participants collaborate to create a
humorous, often increasingly absurd, fictional scenario that takes on a “life of [its]
own” (Béal and Mullan 2013: 125). These characteristics are not unique to
Australian humour, nor do all Australians employ them; however, they do occur
frequently and are generally highly valued by Australian English speakers.
This study aims to contribute to the research in all of the above areas by
examining an episode of ‘online joint fictionalization’ (cf. Tsakona 2018) in one
particular discussion thread in an online local community Facebook group in
Australia. It will be seen how the jointly constructed conversational humour in this
thread highlights and contributes to the members’ sense of belonging to this
community—both through the analysis of the thread itself, including the use of
deadpan absurd ‘fantasy’ humour with escalation, banter, mock impoliteness and
jocular mockery—and in the participants’ responses to a short survey concerning
the thread in question.
8.2 Data and Methods
The Facebook group under examination here matches Schwämmlein and

Wodzicki’s (2012) description of a common-identity community, where individuals
focus on interests that are shared by the community members such as attitudes,
values, or a common task or purpose, resulting in a more cohesive and unified
group identity. According to the banner on its Facebook site, this (closed) com-
munity group’s aims are to provide local members of an inner suburb of Melbourne
with the opportunity to positively contribute to the lives of other people in the
neighbourhood. The banner lists the values of the group as “openness, compassion
and empathy, collaborative problem solving, unity and inclusion, positivity,
empowerment and action.” The group was founded in April 2016 and currently
comprises 7871 local members, of which over 50% are active members (i.e., they
read, react, and/or post)—an exceptionally high engagement rate for Facebook.1
According to the 2016 census, there were 10,812 residents in this area, meaning that
over 70% of local residents are members. This group was the catalyst for a growing
number of similar Facebook groups across Australia (currently forty-four), resulting
in the creation of an entire network with a combined total of over 62,000 members
1
It is difficult to obtain accurate engagement rates for Facebook, but most sites consulted provide
figures of 1.66–3.7%. See https://www.statista.com/statistics/804717/engagement-rates-of-
facebook-posts-australia/. Accessed July 29, 2018.
as of May 2019. Many of the posts in the group are from members seeking
assistance for house/pet/babysitting, looking for recommendations for local ser-
vices, advertising events, notifications of items lost and found (including pets), and/
or offering goods that are no longer required to other members of the group at
no cost.2 As a member of this online community myself, I was struck by the
extensive use of humour in a number of threads and sought permission from the
founder/moderator of the group to undertake research on the humour in the group.3
One particular illustrative thread was chosen for analysis since, from the initial
post, it was clear that it was intended purely to amuse and was potentially mocking
some group members’ tendency to offer unwanted goods (of varying quality) by
announcing the offer of a pile of dead leaves free to a good home, with accom-
panying photograph. The thread was contributed to enthusiastically and extensively
over five days (January 16–20th, 2017), and comprised ninety-one contributions
from thirty-five participants (distributed relatively evenly) and hundreds of reac-
tions from other members. It was the first such thread of its kind, sparking a number
of similar displays of humour in the group in its aftermath, and it has attained a
somewhat iconic status amongst group members.4
The thread was initially examined using Winchatz and Kozin’s (2008) model for
‘comical hypothetical’ humour, generally highly improbable scenarios created
impromptu by one or more speakers within an ordinary conversation (although the
latter factor was not the case here; see below). The authors identified four distinct
phases in (spoken) comical hypothetical humour, defined as “a discursive phe-
nomenon located between the genres of story-telling and joke-telling, while basing
itself in the imaginary” (2008: 402). I draw on these four phases (outlined below) to
identify certain sections of my data, with the caveat that phase 1 in my data
introduces a hypothetical scenario but does not suspend any ongoing talk:
1. Initiation: a speaker suspends ongoing talk and introduces a hypothetical sce-
nario, requesting permission to “move the conversation from the realm of the
real and the concrete […] to the realm of the imaginary or hypothetical” (2008:
392).
2. Acknowledgement: one or more recipients show approval with appreciation
signal (laughter, evaluative signals) or a creative addition to the scenario.
(A lack of reaction can also be considered an acknowledgement, allowing for
the creation of the scenario by others.)
2
There are strict guidelines around what is or is not acceptable to post on the site. (This has
recently given rise to some rival Facebook groups set up by disgruntled and/or members banned
from the original groups.)
3
University ethics approval was also obtained (reference CHEAN B 21054-08/17).
4
A recent post (April 15, 2019) on the local rival Facebook group (Footnote 3) referred back to the
thread under examination: “Anyone remember the post on free leaves […]? It [the group] used to
be fun.”
140 K. Mullan
3. Creating the imaginary: fictional scenario built by the initiator and/or

co-constructed by participants, often through the use of in-group and other
intertextual references.
4. Termination: scenario brought to an end by participants or naturally.
(Participants may return to the previous topic or start a new one.)
To further analyse the humour in the discussion thread, I combined various ele-
ments of computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA), such as conversation
analysis (Sacks et al. 1974), interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982), and
interactional pragmatics (Haugh 2014), to provide a qualitative description of the
interactions, the context, and the social behaviour in the thread and to show how all
participants contribute to the creation of a virtual community (cf. Herring 2004).
Like a growing number of scholars studying social media (cf. Sinanan and
McDonald 2018), I also used a participant-observer online ethnographic approach
to more fully understand the practices and references of this community.
Extracts of the thread presented below are taken directly from the Facebook page
in the original format and the full thread appears in the appendix. (It was copied and
pasted from the original Facebook page without the timing and reactions under the
‘like’ button for reasons of space.) All names are pseudonyms but retain the gender
and ethnicity of the participants’ original Facebook identity where apparent.
Underlined names in the Appendix signify that the participant ‘tagged’ another
person, i.e., alerted them to the thread.
In addition to my analysis of the thread, the thirty-five contributors were also
invited to answer a short six-question pilot survey on their impressions of this
thread and the humour in the group in general: eight responded. It is important to
note that I did not control for age, gender, socio-economic class, education, and
ethnic background of the participants. While the group members’ Facebook profiles
are fully available to all other members, I chose not to transgress the limits of
privacy by accessing them. On the other hand, as a longstanding participatory
member of this online community, I was able to decode several insider jokes and
allusions that enhanced my analysis of the humour. (My contributions to this thread
were restricted to a few reactions.)
8.3 Analysis of the Example
The analysis section combines a CMDA approach with the application of Winchatz
and Kozin’s (2008) model for ‘comical hypothetical’ humour to the thread,
showing how each of the four phases are present in this example of online joint
fictionalization. The first phase of initiation usually involves a speaker suspending
the ongoing talk and introducing a hypothetical scenario. In this case, however,
there is no ongoing talk, and the joint fictionalization begins when Alan offers
Fig. 8.1 Phase 1: Initiation

of hypothetical scenario
members of this online community a pile of dead leaves “free to a good home”
(a well-known formula when giving something away), with accompanying pho-
tograph of said leaves (turn 1). The winking face emoji5 signals the non-seriousness
of the post (Fig. 8.1).
Tony immediately acknowledges the scenario (phase 2) and shows his appre-
ciation by accepting the offer and adding to the comical hypothetical (turn 2).
A short side-sequence ensues between the two participants, where the humour is
co-constructed with an absurd pick-up time for the leaves (2.30 a.m.), punning, and
wordplay. Tony’s contributions are delivered in a seemingly serious manner,
unaccompanied by emojis, although he does use quotation marks to indicate his pun
“just ‘leave’ them on the porch” (turn 4). Rob shows his appreciation of the sce-
nario and the humour with a string of laughing emojis in turn 6. Overall, Alan’s
initial post received 118 Facebook ‘likes’ and laughing emojis,6 and the exchanges
5
Emoticons are punctuation marks, letters, and numbers used to create pictorial icons that gen-
erally display an emotion or sentiment (a portmanteau from emotional icon). Emojis (from the
Japanese e ‘picture’ and moji ‘character’) are pictographs of faces, objects, and symbols.
6
.
142 K. Mullan
Fig. 8.2 Phase 2:

Acknowledgement of
hypothetical scenario
in the acknowledgement phase themselves received several appreciative ‘likes’

(Fig. 8.2).
Other participants display their positive orientation to this scenario and quickly
begin to contribute to the creation of the imaginary (phase 3) and escalate the
fictionalization by negotiating the inclusion of pebbles with the leaves (turns 7–11);
offering to pick the leaves up at an even more absurd time (3.30 a.m.) (turn 12);
using jocular mockery (see below) to suggest that the post is useless without
knowing what size the leaves are (turn 14), whereupon Alan enters into the same
jocular frame and self-deprecatingly apologizes for the omission, blaming it on the
fact that he usually sells empty chip packets with the measurements already indi-
cated (turn 15); and one participant reserving one leaf in particular (turn 16). There
then follow two explicit metareferences to the humour (turns 19–20), before further
escalation when Gareth asks if the dog is included in the offer (turn 21), alluding to
posts offering goods where a pet is included in the photograph for scale, and the
posters explicitly state that the pet is not included in the giveaway (not the case
here). Anne then contributes further to the absurdity by asking to see a photograph
of the underside of one of the leaves (turn 22), whereupon Alan posts an image of
the singer Kylie Minogue (turn 23). Anne then declines the offer, but accepts a leaf
offered to her by Trang, since it apparently looks like the actor Brad Pitt underneath
(turns 24–26). The exchanges here reveal the shared knowledge of this online
community by following the traditional format of a post offering something for free,
and the usual negotiations that can take place. The humour is triggered by the
incongruity between this traditional format and the absurd offering of a pile of dead
leaves; as Kotthoff pointed out, “humorous fictionalizations establish unusual
perspectives on concrete images and scenes” (1999: 145).
While still sustaining the fictionalization (phase 3), George increases the level of
absurdity in turns 29–31 by expressing an interest in acquiring the crack in the
Fig. 8.3 Phase 3: Creating

the imaginary scenario
concrete next to the leaves to provide some “olde worlde” charm to his townhouse
and promises to look after the crack “as if it were [his] own,” a double entendre
implying buttocks. Gareth is then falsely indignant, pretending he has missed out on
obtaining the crack in the concrete because the original poster Alan did not receive
his private message to him about it (turns 32–33). Gareth goes on to make a number
of in-group references to a local plumber Barnesy (who is so revered that some
group members have suggested elsewhere that he be knighted or made mayor of the
neighbourhood), and a local pub (turn 34). The ensuing side sequence between
Gareth and George includes in-group references to the local hipster scene and to a
certain right-wing political ideology which advocates the return of immigrants to
their country of origin on the basis that they are perceived as lazy or as taking
locals’ jobs (turns 34–37) (Fig. 8.3).
The side sequence then makes several further in-group references (using jocular
mockery; see below) to previous posts where members had reported seeing
suspicious-looking people lingering in the neighbourhood (often described as tat-
tooed and/or wearing hoodies) (turns 39–41), followed by a joke-telling sequence
by Mike and the insertion of a cartoon by well-known Australian cartoonist Michael
Leunig (turns 42–44). A metacomment on the humour in the thread in turn 45
instigates several quotes from an iconic Australian comedy series Kath and Kim,
which aired on television between 2002 and 2007 (turns 46–49).
Nicola returns to the topic of the dead leaves in turn 50, triggering several
escalations of the absurdity in the scenario (turns 51–67), including a call to find the
original owner of the leaves as they may now be looking for them; an offer from
Vicky to trade the leaves for an empty cigarette packet and a ball of cat fur (which
she promotes as being particularly useful for stuffing tiny pillows and for using
against people one doesn’t like who are allergic to cats); a request to put an order in
144 K. Mullan
for next year’s leaves; and another question regarding the leaves’ size in case they
fit the poster’s leafy sea dragon. A side sequence of playful banter between two
participants who seem to perhaps know each other personally (turns 68–76) pre-
cedes another return to the original topic in turn 77, with further escalation con-
cerning the dimensions and price of the leaves and disappointment at missing out
on the offer (turns 78–81), culminating in a long and creative contribution from
Matt (turn 82) building on the scenario by pretending to take advantage of the post
to offer some of his own, albeit inferior, leaves, preferably to be taken as a set
(another allusion to a common request in giveaway posts). Turns 83–86 build on
Matt’s offer, where the participants negotiate to trade the leaves for an organic
Fairtrade ball of lint with dust and cat hair (at which point Vicky makes another
offer of cat hair, which she says she has in abundance).
At this point, Nigel provides the catalyst for the termination (phase 4) of the
scenario (turn 87). His elaborate post claims that this offer of free leaves is
apparently a scam, the leaves having been stolen from a collector in a small regional
town in South-West Queensland. The effort and creativity in this post is extensive
(and receives several ‘likes’ of appreciation), with references to an invented blog
and to Australian cars. Lily thanks Nigel for doing this research but mentions that
her leafy sea dragon will be upset at this news (turn 88); Gareth announces that he
has reported it to the local plumber (“mayor”) (turn 90); and turns 91–92 terminate
the scenario (Fig. 8.4).
Let us first examine how the discourse features in this thread are typical of
conversational humour. The paralinguistic and discursive clues outlined in Holmes
and Marra’s (2002) definition (see Sect. 8.1) appear throughout the fictionalization
in the form of humour markers (Adams 2012; Burgers and van Mulken 2017): For
example, the use of punctuation (exclamation marks), images, acronyms (LOL),
and spelling (ha ha) representing laughter, and emojis of clapping hands, thumbs
up, and smiling or winking faces. Together with the various Facebook reactions,
these markers do the work of contextualization cues to communicate various
Fig. 8.4 Phase 4:

Termination of hypothetical
scenario
emotions such as non-seriousness, delight, surprise, approval, amusement, etc. The

informal register, synchronicity, and rapidity of many of the exchanges, multiple
participants, and collaborative spontaneous nature of the contributions (often in real
time) are also all typical of offline joint fictionalization. On the other hand, the
digital environment allowed this scenario to be sustained over more time (five days)
and with more contributors (and passive ‘listeners’) than would be usual face to
face. The participants also used the digital environment to create humour through
the use of graphics relevant to the scenario (such as photographs of celebrities); this
could not have been achieved in the same way in spoken interaction.
Further investigation of the humour markers, however, reveals that the delivery
of the humour in this thread can largely be considered deadpan, or “emotionally
flat,” as is often the case with Australian humour (Goddard 2006). Only twelve
participants (one-third of the total) used humour markers; eight of these contributed
only one marker each, and one contributed two. Just three participants (Alan, Rob,
and Gareth) provided almost all of the markers (77% or 34 out of 44), many of
which occurred in the same 17 turns (out of a total of 92). This means that the vast
majority of this scenario contained no or very few contextualization cues indicating
non-seriousness, yet participants understood and entered into the hypothetical
nature of the scenario enthusiastically and extensively, demonstrating appreciation
and capacity for “online deadpan” humour (Holm 2017) and the irreverent nature of
the post.
Australian humour […] can be exuberant and boisterous, but more usually dry and
understated. It delights in an irreverence which cautions us not to take ourselves, or the
things we revere, too seriously. Irony is one of its favourite devices […] The best Australian
humour has a severe economy —of language, in its laconic wording, and of emotional
expression, in its deadpan delivery. (Thornhill 1992: 134, 137 cited in Goddard 2006: 86).
Goddard claims that this deadpan delivery of humour challenges the listener’s
mental alertness and expresses solidarity and fellow feeling, not only to people one
knows, but also to strangers (2006: 88–89), as was overwhelmingly the case with
the participants of this thread. Although there were only two instances of (deadpan
jocular) irony in the thread (turns 12–13, 81), it is important to mention that this is
also a marker of solidarity, since it indicates that the addressee is someone like the
speaker and will understand the utterance in the spirit in which it was made
(Goddard 2006, 2017). This understanding between participants can be seen in the
following exchange (turns 12–13):
Trang: If Tony doesn’t want [the leaves] I can pick [them] up at 3:30am. Been
looking everywhere for leaves.
Alan: I know, so rare these days! You’d think it was autumn
The thread includes a small number of instances of jocular mockery (turns 14, 34,
56), identified by Haugh (2014) and Haugh and Bousfield (2012) as a common
interactional practice that highlights the value of not taking oneself too seriously in
Australian conversation and that also reinforces solidarity. Haugh (2014: 78)
defines jocular mockery as a social action “whereby the speaker somehow
146 K. Mullan
diminishes something of relevance to self, other or a non-co-present third party, but

does so within a non-serious or playful frame,” giving rise to evaluations of mock
impoliteness. While Haugh and Bousfield (2012) point out the difficulties inherent
in determining the speaker’s intended level of offence in some instances of mock
impoliteness, the obviously hypothetical nature of this joint fictionalization overall
means that this was only ambiguous in one instance of jocular mockery (turn 56),
where the original poster of the thread, Alan, announces, “This group is so handy!
Imagine all the useful things that would go to waste! I can’t believe people used to
throw out their rubbish…”. While any possible offence was almost certainly not
aimed at the contributors to the thread or any individual in particular, and was no
doubt triggered by the escalating absurdity of the scenario, there remains a possi-
bility that the mocking and ironic tone was a playful—but potentially provocative—
veiled criticism of the poor-quality goods that some members of the group give
away (in the spirit of the entire thread). In this case, the jocular mockery was framed
as such by the use of exclamation marks, and treated as such by Vicky, who
responds with explicit agreement: “I know, right?”.
The constant escalation of the level of absurdity and incongruous images and
ideas in such joint fictionalizations has been described elsewhere (e.g., Hay 2001;
Tsakona 2018) and has been found to be a particularly popular device for creating
humour amongst (Anglo)Australians (Béal and Mullan 2013, 2017; Mullan and
Béal 2018). Béal and Mullan (2013: 120) describe this humour device as “the
creation of an alternative imaginary world in which the normal rules of the real
world do not apply. These new ‘rules’ are often outrageous, quite irrational, or even
absurd, but they have their own logic within the scenario that is being created.”
What is interesting here is that a large number of participants collaborate to escalate
the absurdity of the scenario, while staying within the logic of the ‘new rules’. This
is illustrated by Vicky’s response to Rob below (turns 68–69), where she highlights
the disjuncture of his attempted link between the death (i.e., very poor season) of a
football club and the dead leaves:
Rob: Like the Essendon FC …..they died.
Vicky: Hey Rob, look up non sequitur.
It is quite possible that Rob’s comment was intentionally opaque and the link
intended to be tenuous, and that Vicky responded rather sharply as an offended
Essendon supporter, but the explicit reference to Rob’s comments not following the
logic of the scenario is telling, and she clearly did not find it funny. For humour to
be successful, it has to be coherent and its implications and allusions interpreted in
context, building on what has gone before. Several instances of in-group references
and allusions in the scenario were understood and responded to. These included:
(a) the more general—widely known Australian references such as Kath and Kim
(turns 46–49), real estate advertising discourse (turn 27), populist anti-immigrant
discourse (turn 36), an Australian football team (turn 68), and a car advertisement
(turn 87); (b) the more local—people or places in the neighbourhood (turns 34–35,
90); and (c) the more specific—particularities of this community Facebook group
(turns 21, 38, 39–40, 53, 56). Understanding the humorous allusions and references
at the local and specific levels contribute to members’ recognition of a shared sense
of humour and of belonging to an in-group.
The textual cohesion, like the humour, is jointly constructed, and both reflects and helps to
constitute the social cohesion of the group. […] groups are formed not only through the
cohesion that binds them together, but also through the boundaries that mark them off from
other groups. (North 2007: 551)
It is clear that the thirty-five contributors appreciated the humour in this thread. This
can be seen in their explicit metacomments (turns 6, 19–20, 38, 45, 53, 60) and
markers of appreciation of particular utterances (turns 64, 67, 70, 72). Countless
other group members expressed their appreciation for the humour in this thread
through hundreds of Facebook reactions.
The following section will present the findings of the pilot survey conducted
with the participants of the thread, with a particular focus on their perception of how
the humour contributes to creating a sense of belonging in this online community.
8.4 Survey Data
The thirty-five contributors to the thread were contacted through the Facebook
private messaging tool to inform them of my study (and asked to let me know if
they had any objection to my analysis of the thread). At the same time, they were
invited to answer a short six-question survey, the goal of which was to ascertain
their opinion on the humour in this thread in particular and in the group in general.
Although all the contributors saw my message (and none opted out of the study),
only eight responded to the survey. While this is a very limited data set, some
interesting and common observations were received with respect to the positive role
played by the humour in the group.
In answer to question 1 (Do you personally know any of the other group
members who posted in this thread?), four participants said they did. In answer to
question 2 (If so, did this influence the humour you used in the thread? In what
way?), only one said that it influenced them: “[m]y housemate posted the picture of
the dead leaves and we both have the same twisted sense of humour so yes, it
absolutely did influence my humour!” It is important to reiterate the fact that most
of the group members do not know each other personally. Because of this, one
might think that the participants were taking rather a risk with some of their posts,
given the mock impoliteness and jocular mockery. However, all eight survey
respondents confirmed that they did not find the humour in this thread offensive in
any way (question 3). One participant said: “our style of humour is absurdist […]
I wouldn’t be surprised if people were offended, although that was not our inten-
tion.” Despite this, the participants did not know who was going to read their posts,
or how they would be received; given that we all live in the same neighbourhood,
anonymity is not guaranteed. It could be argued that such behaviour can be
attributed to what Suler described as the “online disinhibition effect” (2004), where
148 K. Mullan
Table 8.1 Can you explain 1. This was a sarcastic thread, which I enjoyed
why you enjoy/do not enjoy
2. It is generally non-offensive and witty
the humour used in the group?
3. It’s refreshing to have a little bit of humour. A number of
posts seem too stiff and serious. I happened to comment on a
photo 18 months ago and got a number of likes for my bit of
humour but of course there was one comment for me that said
“Karma…”. There is always one stick in the mud
4. It’s always good to have a laugh about nothing
5. It’s always good to lighten up a group that can sometimes get
too serious and become a platform for complaining
6. Dry wit
7. I think it builds community—it shows that we can laugh at
ourselves, and if we laugh together about something in our
community, that means we identify with each other’s opinion of
said community—which helps each of us understand our
identity in that community
people say and do things in cyberspace that they would not usually say and do face
to face. However, given that the humour in this scenario so closely replicates earlier
findings for tendencies in spoken (Anglo) Australian humour, I would argue that the
online disinhibition effect in this scenario is relatively limited, and that the overall
importance of humour for Australian English speakers (as illustrated in Table 8.1)
suggests that Australians often use humour indiscriminately with friends and
strangers alike (cf. Béal and Mullan 2017: 33 (Footnote 9); Goddard 2006).
Previous research (see Tsakona 2018: 231) has shown that such co-constructed
fantasy scenarios are based on information and knowledge shared by the participants
(and in this case also by the other group members who reacted approvingly). Also in
answer to question 3, another participant said, “I assume the original post was meant
to make fun of people giving things away and others responded accordingly. […]
I responded because I liked the witty exchanges.” In a manner that Tsakona proposes
is normal (2018: 232), the scenario emerged alongside the normal group activity of
helping each other, with the aim of creating a sort of parallel universe purely to
entertain and amuse. In what might be considered a typical Australian approach to
humour, however, (according to previously described findings concerning
Australian preferences), here the fantasy scenario was actually based on an irreverent
and somewhat subversive representation of one of the group’s main aims. According
to Goddard and Cramer (2017: 97), irreverence can be understood as a challenge to
people taking something too seriously, and people who express or perform irrev-
erence know that they may offend others and/or face social disapproval. The mod-
erator of the group subsequently told me that she was not sure if she should block
this thread initially, given its potentially mocking and irreverent tone, but she let it
develop as so many people seemed to enjoy and engage with it.
When asked if they enjoyed the humour used in the group generally (question 4),
six of the eight survey respondents said yes and two said “sometimes.” When asked
why or why not (question 5), the (seven) responses were as follows.
For these participants at least, the general importance of humour and not taking
things too seriously in the group (Goddard 2009) is evident. Response number 7
explicitly supports the research findings in terms of humour building relationships
in a community, as well as identifying with shared values and ethos (Stallone and
Haugh 2017; Tsakona 2018). When asked if the humour made the participants feel
any differently towards the community (question 6), the following responses were
received (together with three no’s):
The final comment refers to the community as “family,” as well as sharing
“beliefs/ethics.” As Hübler and Bell (2003: 282) point out, “[i]ndividuals strate-
gically construct jokes that resonate with the intelligence, character, and goodwill of
others in hopes of defining themselves as part of a group. […] Humor, then, helps
participants to find their place in a community and simultaneously constitutes or
reshapes that community.”
Stallone and Haugh (2017) argue that joint fantasizing is not simply for mutual
entertainment, however, but is also important for the participants’ ongoing rela-
tionships: Not only does it reinforce a shared ethos, but it also builds and/or
reinforces interpersonal trust amongst the group members. Tsakona (2018: 231)
proposes that the relationship between the participants is also strengthened by
allowing them to display their creativity, as well as their shared values and attitudes
towards this absurdity—what Baym (1995: 234) calls “interpretive consensus”: The
many in-group allusions and references in the scenario are evidence of this.
Frequent humorous references (across several separate threads at different times) to
certain recurring themes in the group—such as the highly regarded local plumber—
also strengthen the sense of cohesion and positivity towards and belonging to an
in-group. These constant cross-references keep certain topics “in play” (North
2007: 553) over time, generating further cohesive ties. This suggests that, as
Idowu-Faith (2016: 97) found in her study of blogs, “humour is a collaborative
effort that strengthens social bonds and acts as a tool for sustaining entertainment.”
Indeed, as Meyer (2015: 30) states, “[s]uccessful humor strengthens the group by
increasing the desire of members to communicate together.”
The participants collectively assume responsibility for the entertainment, for
building and maintaining the fantasy scenario, and for keeping the interaction alive.
This is the case with conversational humour generally, although, as Tsakona (2018:
234) points out, this collective aspect and the solidarity functions of online humour
are particularly important for group members who do not know each other per-
sonally, as is largely the case here. Moreover, this type of online joint fictional-
ization brings the participants together for and by this activity (Tsakona 2018: 239):
In spoken joint fictionalization, the participants are brought together by the activity
from which the scenario emerges; in this online joint fictionalization, the partici-
pants were brought together by the scenario itself.
While only a very limited number of survey responses were received, they
almost exclusively support previous findings on the relationship between humour
and belonging.
150 K. Mullan
8.5 Conclusion
This study has examined the use of online humour in a local community Facebook
group, through the detailed analysis of an episode of online joint fictionalization and
a small pilot survey sample of responses from some of the participants on their views
on the humour in the thread and in the group. The humour in the online data
resembles conversational humour in terms of structure, through the interactional
sequencing, humour markers, and collaborative spontaneous contributions (even
though the humorous use of graphics enabled by the digital environment is an option
less easily achieved in spoken interaction). Throughout the thread, we saw many
features and practices of humour previously identified as highly valued in (Anglo)
Australian culture: co-construction and escalation of absurd ‘fantasy’ humour,
banter, mock impoliteness, irreverence, deadpan delivery, and jocular mockery. The
very premise of the thread is irreverent and subversive, and was initiated purely to
entertain and amuse group members. The majority of the (rapid and extensive)
collaborative and increasingly absurd and fantastical exchanges were presented in a
typically Australian overall deadpan jocular manner with few humour markers.
Survey responses from eight of the participants in the humorous thread strongly
support the role of humour in building and strengthening relationships and creating
a sense of belonging to a community—in this case, an online community where
most of the participants do not know each other. Participants feel that the humour in
the group reinforces shared values, both individually and collectively as a
group. Similar comments were also received in the same survey administered to the
participants of another humorous thread (cf. Mullan, forthcoming), two of which
are worth quoting here, since they specifically highlight the importance of humour
in an online community where people do not know each other (Tsakona 2018: 234).
The responses were received from two different participants in answer to the
questions posed in Tables 8.1 and 8.2 respectively:
[t]he XXXX is a diverse group of people, some of whom have never met and only associate
online. The use of humour within this group creates bonds, strengthens our sense of
camaraderie, and eases tension….7
The humour in this group makes for a lighter tone. It makes me feel, that if I met this person
in real life—at work, in the shop, pub or coffee shop, or on the street—I may be able to
relate, have a good laugh and possibly make a good friend. I guess, this means through the
humour I feel that this may be a community I enjoy being part of and contributing to.
It is clear that the in-group references and allusions, the playful spirit entered into,
and so many members’ willingness to participate in this thread (through actual
contributions or signs of appreciation) engendered feelings of solidarity and a
shared moment across the group. What is not clear, however, is whether the humour
in the group (including this thread) excludes some members. Further research is
required on a larger scale to determine other members’ views of the humour in the
7
This response inadvertently invokes the relief theory of humour.
Table 8.2 Does [the 1. That others at times finds the group interesting/odd as I do
humour] make you feel any
2. I enjoy the exchanges and while not knowing the people who
differently towards the
respond it gives me a sense that there are like-minded people or
community in this group?
people on my wavelength in it. What that is worth I guess is
another question
3. Most of the time I tend to not comment due to possibly
copping backlash…
4. It makes me think that they agree with my view of what we as
a community stand for. If I make a joke about our community
(family), and people laugh, that shows me they see the same
comedy about the same thing, i.e. we’re of the same beliefs/
ethics
group, in particular those who did not contribute to this thread. In view of the recent
developments outlined below, this could be of particular importance.
An unfortunate postscript to this study is that, over the last few months, there has
been a growing sense of member dissatisfaction with the guidelines and the
administration of this Facebook community. There are various reasons for this, but
one recurring theme is the perceived lack of humour in the group. A number of
humorous posts have been removed from the Facebook site for “breaching the
guidelines,” leading several members to complain about the group being “com-
pletely devoid of humour,” and the creator of the rival group to post the following
message on May 18, 2019, “Welcome to everyone fleeing the dictatorial excesses
of the ‘other’ group! We hope you enjoy your new, light-hearted, irreverent
community.”8 (The explicit reference to light-heartedness and irreverence is par-
ticularly noteworthy in light of the above analysis.) There are of course a great
number of complex factors involved in the successful cohesion of community social
networking sites, but humour clearly plays a significant part in the rise and fall of
such groups.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful
feedback on an earlier version of this chapter.
8
Part of the rival group description reads as follows: “This group is a genuine community forum
where people can discuss issues in a safe and respectful environment. I hope that you find this
group useful, entertaining, and totally irreverent. […] this is a light-hearted, genuine group where
you can post relevant stuff…”.
152 K. Mullan
Appendix—Pile of Dead Leaves Thread
1 Alan
→ INITIATION (Phase 1)
Does anyone want this pile of dead leaves? I found them in the garden, free to good
home
→ ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (Phase 2)
Tony Ah yes please, what times do you have available for me to pick them up? I hate to
2
see leaves going to waste, happy to take them off your hands.
Alan That's fantastic! Pick-up is 2.30 in the night, I love looking out for my
3
neighbourly neighbours
4 Tony Perhaps you can just "leave" them on the porch for me...
5 Alan Haha, I will! It's so exciting! It's like they just fell from the trees!
Rob
6
→ CREATING THE IMAGINARY (Phase 3)
7 Marie Rose were you not looking for some dead leaves yesterday? Would these work?
8 Lam Pebbles included?
9 Alan I’ll think about it
10 Marie NIL10 Pebbles
11 Alan #greedy
12 Trang If Tony doesn't want I can pick up at 3:30am. Been looking everywhere for leaves.
13 Alan I know, so rare these days! You'd think it was autumn
14 Colin What sizes? Useless post without knowing.
15 Alan I'm so sorry! Silly me, I'm so used to trying to peddle empty chip packets with
the measurements already on them.
16 Annabel I'd like the one in the top left hand corner if still available?
17 Alan I'll mark you as NIL
18 Mizue Stan
19 Nicola LOL! 11
20 Julie Hehehe, nothing more to add
21 Gareth Is the dog included? NIL
22 Anne Can you take a photo of the underside of the large one, sold pending.
23 Alan Sorry about the blurry image.
10
Next in line.
11
Laugh out loud.
24 Anne Pass
Trang Anne I have a leaf that you might be interested in. The underside looks like
25
this. This leaf is free and is available
26 Anne SOLD
27 Gareth Are they close to public Transport?
28 Mary Is that blossom next to it? Is it up for grabs
George I'd be happy to take that crack in the concrete off your hands if you aren't using it.
29
I'm trying to add some olde worlde charm to my townhouse in the banks.
30 Alan Free to good home
31 George I will look after your crack as if it were my own.
32 Gareth Alan, I PMd12 you about the crack about an hour ago—did you not get it?!?!
33 Alan Gareth no
Gareth Alan damn! This is the worst community ever. So many lies.... You owe me
34
those leaves now –
I don't want to have to get Mayor Barnesy involved. You have til sun down or
Landsdowne is going to see an ol' fashioned western bar brawl!
George I've seen that brawl at Landsdowne. A holistic decorator and a bespoke
35
coffee weaver having slapsies.
Gareth George good! We need to send those weavers back to their own country!
36
They're lazy & they're taking all our baskets!
37 George *making, according to the logic of the OP13.
Rachel You guys are hilarious. So glad it's not just me who giggles at the "give away"
38
posts!
Mike A few of them have piercings. Probably one or two wearing hoodies as well.
39
Lock your doors.
40 George And an ironic tattoo.
41 Vicky Yeah, but it's misspelled.
Mike Reminds me of the guy who wanted 'Born loser' tattooed on his forehead.
42 When the tattooist finished, he noticed he'd accidently written 'born looser'. The
client said "Yeah, that's okay. It kinda drives the point home doesn't it?"
George That was a Leunig drawing.
12
Private message.
13
Original poster (of the message).
154 K. Mullan
43
44 Mike Yes!
45 John Ladies and gentleman we have a comedian in the group! Lol
46 Alan Using 'yooma' Kimmie...
47 John Alan it's nice it's different it's unusual hah
48 Alan John jojoba in October
49 John Alan threw for ya carch
50 Nicola Abigail we could use these?
51 Abigail Nah, I think Brent and Kath got dibbs on these bad boys already.
Don Rachel, if we're lucky there might still be a few left. Did you want me to see if they're
52
still available?
Trish This wins for best post so far for 2017, aside from the wig post...this site gets better
53
and better!
Brian Hang on. Can we at least try and find their original owner first? I bet there is
54
someone who wants their lost leaves to be returned.
Vicky If you get any more, let me know. Can trade for an empty pack of B&H14 and a
55
ball of hair I brushed off the cat. GREAT for stuffing tiny pillows.
Alan This group is so handy! Imagine all the useful things that would go to waste! I can't
56
believe people used to throw out their rubbish...
57 Vicky I know, right?
Vicky The cat hair can also be used to get rid of people you don't particularly like
58
who are also allergic to cats. Score!
59 Manav Shuli I'm sure Col said you guys were desperate for these...
60 Mel Hahahahaha
61 Nigel Are they still available?
62 Fiona Tempted
63 Manav Good Looking Leaves, are you close with tree? Would like to get in early for next
year as they're clearly very popular.
64 Rob
65 Dave I was after a bigger size mate
Lily What size are they? They may fit my sea dragon
66
67 Alan Haha!
14
Benson and Hedges cigarettes.
68 Rob Like the Essendon FC15.....they died.

69 Vicky Hey Rob, look up non sequitur.
70 Rob Far too serious for me
71 Vicky Clearly.
72 Rob Onya smart arse
73 Vicky That's the best you've got? Pssh.
74 Rob Giving you a clap you deserve.
75 Vicky I seriously doubt that.
76 Val Oh dear
77 Joel They are very photogenic leaves
78 Nigel Can you give the dimensions please. Also, are you negotiable on price?
79 Vicky I think they're gone Nigel. I missed out too.
80 Nigel Vicky blast. Wait for ages for them to come along and then you miss out
Vicky I know. I was so disappointed. It's not like you can find leaves like that
81
anywhere.
Matt It seems that dead leaves are very popular and there are a lot of will buyers, I also
have a few spare dead leaves. They are probably not in as good condition as Alan’s leaves,
82 as they are fig leaves instead of gum, and they have been drying on the lawn instead of the
concrete, so probably have a little bit of natural mould underneath. But they are definitely
mostly dead. Prefer to sell as a set, but will separate them if the price is right.
Nigel Would you consider swapping them for a reasonable size ball of lint? It's
83
organic and Fair Trade
84 Trish Do they come with dust or is that extra?
Nigel Trish someone else already claimed the dust. But there's a fair amount of cat
85
hair in it
86 Vicky If anyone wants cat hair, I have an abundance of it.
Nigel Hi everyone. Sorry to say I think this is a scam. I did a google image search and
found the original photo. Seems the pile actually belongs to a Cosmo Blart, a retired
drainage inspector, in Cunamulla. He is a famous leaf pile collector. He even used to take
them to shows around the country until the Trangsaxle in the Torana died and he couldn't
87
drive anymore. He does still occasionally sell parts of his collection but this pile is way too
valuable. He's got a blog you can read—
://myadventuresincolllectingpilesofleavesandotherstories.... All I can say is be wary of
people offering you piles of leaves and check them out before you part with your money.
Especially if they are free. Also don't buy Australian cars because they break down too
easily. Should have got a Galant.
Lily Thanks Nigel for doing the research. How very disappointing. My leafy sea
88
dragon will be shattered...
89 Nigel Lily try adding some Valium to the water
Gareth I've reported this to the mayor Barnesy. He should take swift action to make
90 sure this doesn't happen again.
→ TERMINATION OF SCENARIO (Phase 4)

91 Yao Bump16
92 Marie NIL
15
Football club.
16
Bring Up My Post (i.e. to the top of a Facebook page).
156 K. Mullan
References
Adams, A. C. (2012). On the identification of humor markers in computer-mediated communi-

cation. In 2012 AAII Fall Symposium Series. https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/FSS/FSS12/
paper/view/5554. Accessed May 19, 2019.
Angouri, J. (2016). Online communities and communities of practice. In A. Georgakopoulou & T.
Spilioti (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and digital communication (pp. 323–
337). London: Routledge.
Attardo, S. (2003). Introduction: The pragmatics of humor. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(9), 1287–
1294. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00178-9.
Baym, N. K. (1995). The performance of humor in computer‐mediated communication. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 1(2), JCMC123. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.
1995.tb00327.x.
Baym, N. K. (2003). Communication in online communities. In K. Christensen & D. Levinson
(Eds.), Encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world (Vol. 3, pp. 1015–
1017). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Béal, C., & Mullan, K. (2013). Issues in conversational humour from a cross-cultural perspective:
Comparing French and Australian corpora. In B. Peeters, K. Mullan, & C. Béal (Eds.),
Cross-culturally speaking, speaking cross-culturally (pp. 107–139). Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars.
Béal, C., & Mullan, K. (2017). The pragmatics of conversational humour in social visits: French
and Australian English. Language & Communication, 55, 24–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
langcom.2016.09.004.
Burgers, C. F., & van Mulken, M. J. P. (2017). Humor markers. In S. Attardo (Ed.), The Routledge
handbook of language and humor (pp. 385–399). New York: Routledge.
Chiaro, D. (2018). The language of jokes in the digital age. London: Routledge.
Crystal, D. (2006). Language and the internet (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487002.
Crystal, D. (2014). The internet: Changing the language. In Ch@nge: 19 key essays on how
internet is changing our lives (pp. 330–356). BBVA OpenMind. https://www.bbvaopenmind.
com/en/article/the-internet-changing-the-language. Accessed May 19, 2019.
Demjén, Z. (2016). Laughing at cancer: Humour, empowerment, solidarity and coping online.
Journal of Pragmatics, 101, 18–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.05.010.
de Souza, C. S., & Preece, J. (2004). A framework for analyzing and understanding online
communities. Interacting with Computers, 16(3), 579–610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.
2003.12.006.
Dynel, M. (Ed.). (2011). The pragmatics of humour across discourse domains. Amsterdam: John
Dynel, M. (Ed.). 2013. Developments in linguistic humour theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.1.
Goddard, C. (2006). “Lift your game, Martina!”: Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics
9783110911114.65.
Goddard, C. (2009). Not taking yourself too seriously in Australian English: Semantic
explications, cultural scripts, corpus evidence. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(1), 29–53. https://
doi.org/10.1515/IPRG.2009.002.
1016/j.langcom.2016.09.008.
Goddard, C. (2018). “Joking, kidding, teasing”: Slippery categories for cross-cultural comparison
but key words for understanding Anglo conversational humour. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15
(4), 487–514. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2018-0017.
communication in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 89–103). New York: Routledge.
Goddard, C., & Mullan, K. (in press). Explicating verbs for “laughing with other people” in French
and English (and why it matters for humour studies). Humor.
Gumperz, J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/
10.1017/CBO9780511611834.
Hancock, J. T. (2004). Verbal irony use in face-to-face and computer-mediated conversations.
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 23(4), 447–463. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0261927X04269587.
Haugh, M. (2014). Jocular mockery as interactional practice in everyday Anglo-Australian
conversation. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 34(1), 76–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/
07268602.2014.875456.
Haugh, M., & Bousfield, D. (2012). Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in
Australian and British English. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(9), 1099–1114. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.pragma.2012.02.003.
Hay, J. (2001). The pragmatics of humor support. Humor, 14(1), 55–82. https://doi.org/10.1515/
humr.14.1.55.
Herring, S. C. (2001). Computer-mediated discourse. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton
(Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 612–634). Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/
10.1002/9780470753460.ch32.
Herring, S. C. (2004). Computer-mediated discourse analysis: An approach to researching online
behaviour. In S. A. Barab, R. Kling, & J. H. Gray (Eds.), Designing for virtual communities in
the service of learning (pp. 338–376). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/
10.1017/CBO9780511805080.016.
Herring, S. C., & Androutsopoulos, J. (2015). Computer-mediated discourse 2.0. In D. Tannen, H.
E. Hamilton, & D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (2nd ed., pp. 127–
151). Chichester: Wiley.
Holm, N. (2017). The politics of deadpan in Australasian satire. In J. Milner Davis (Ed.), Satire
and politics: The interplay of heritage and practice (pp. 103–123). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56774-7_4.
Holmes, J., & Marra, M. (2002). Over the edge? Subversive humor between colleagues and
friends. Humor, 15(1), 65–87. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.2002.006.
Hübler, M. T., & Bell, D. C. (2003). Computer-mediated humor and ethos: Exploring threads of
constitutive laughter in online communities. Computers and Composition, 20(3), 277–294.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S8755-4615(03)00036-7.
Idowu-Faith, B. (2016). Speaking in the free marketplace of ideas: The stylistics of humour in
“blogversations”. In R. Taiwo, A. Odebunmi, & A. Adetunji (Eds.), Analyzing language and
humor in online communication (pp. 65–84). Hershey: Information Science Reference (IGI
Global). https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0338-5.ch004.
Kotthoff, H. (1999). Coherent keying in conversational humour: Contextualising joint fictional-
isation. In W. Bublitz, U. Lenk, & E. Ventola (Eds.), Coherence in spoken and written
discourse: How to create it and how to describe it (pp. 125–150). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.63.10kot.
Lambert Graham, S. (2016). Relationality, friendship, and identity in digital communication. In A.
Georgakopoulou & T. Spilioti (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and digital
communication (pp. 305–319). London: Routledge.
158 K. Mullan
Lefcourt, H. M., & Martin, R. A. (1986). Humor and life stress: Antidote to adversity. New York:
Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4900-9.
Marone, V. (2015). Online humour as a community-building cushioning glue. European Journal
of Humour Research, 3(1), 61–83. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2015.3.1.marone.
Meyer, J. C. (2015). Understanding humor through communication: Why be funny, anyway?.
Lanham: Lexington.
Mullan, K. (forthcoming). “I’m sorry if this topples over into oversharing but…”: Toilet humour in
an online community.
Mullan, K., & Béal, C. (2018). Conversational humour in French and Australian English: What
makes an utterance (un)funny? Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(4), 457–485. https://doi.org/10.
1515/ip-2018-0016.
Norrick, N. R. (1993). Conversational joking: Humor in everyday talk. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Norrick, N. R., & Chiaro, D. (Eds.). (2009). Humor in interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.182.
North, S. (2007). ‘The voices, the voices’: Creativity in online conversation. Applied Linguistics,
28(4), 538–555. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amm042.
Preece, J., & Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2005). Online communities: Design, theory, and practice.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), 00–00. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-
6101.2005.tb00264.x.
Raskin, V. (1985). Semantic mechanisms of humor. Dordrecht: Reidel. https://doi.org/10.1007/
978-94-009-6472-3.
Raskin, V. (2008). The primer of humor research. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of
turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735. https://doi.org/10.2307/412243.
Schwämmlein, E., & Wodzicki, K. (2012). ‘What to tell about me?’ Self-presentation in online
communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17(4), 387–407. https://doi.org/
10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01582.x.
Sinanan, J., & McDonald, T. (2018). Ethnography. In J. Burgess, A. Marwick, & T. Poell (Eds.),
The SAGE handbook of social media (pp. 179–195). London: Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/
9781473984066.n11.
Stallone, L., & Haugh, M. (2017). Joint fantasising as relational practice in Brazilian Portuguese
interactions. Language & Communication, 55, 10–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2016.
08.012.
Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. Cyberpsychology and behaviour, 7(3), 321–326.
https://doi.org/10.1089/1094931041291295.
Tagg, C., & Seargant, P. (2016). Facebook and the discursive construction of the social network.
In A. Georgakopoulou, & T. Spilioti (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and digital
communication (pp. 339–352). London: Routledge.
Taiwo, R., Odebunmi, A., & Adetunji, A. (2016). Analyzing language and humor in online
communication. Hershey: Information Science Reference (IGI Global). https://doi.org/10.4018/
978-1-5225-0338-5.
Thornhill, J. (1992). Making Australia. Sydney: Millennium Books.
Tsakona, V. (2018). Online joint fictionalization. In V. Tsakona, & J. Chovanec (Eds.), The
dynamics of interactional humour: Creating and negotiating humor in everyday encounters
(pp. 229–255). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.7.10tsa.
Weitz, E. (2016). Editorial: Humour and social media. European Journal of Humour Research, 4
(4), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2016.4.4.weitz.
Wierzbicka, A. (2010). Experience, evidence, and sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Winchatz, M. R., & Kozin, A. (2008). Comical hypothetical: Arguing for a conversational
phenomenon. Discourse Studies, 10(3), 383–405. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445608089917.
Zuckerberg, M. (2012). Registration statement. Facebook, Inc. United States Securities and
Exchange Commission. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001193125
12034517/d287954ds1.htm.
Kerry Mullan is Associate Professor and Convenor of Languages in the School of Global, Urban
and Social Studies at RMIT University. She teaches French language and culture, and
sociolinguistics. Her main research interests are cross-cultural communication and the differing
interactional styles of French and Australian English speakers. She also researches in the areas of
intercultural pragmatics, discourse analysis, language teaching, and in humour in social
interactions. Her publications include Expressing opinions in French and Australian English
discourse: A semantic and interactional analysis (2010) and Cross-culturally speaking, speaking
cross-culturally (ed. with B. Peeters and C. Béal, 2013).
Part II
Semantic Analysis
Chapter 9
The Semantics and Pragmatics of Three
Potential Slurring Terms
Keith Allan
Abstract In this chapter, I propose a lexical semantics with interlaced pragmatic

elements for three potential slurring terms: bitch, cunt, and nigger. These contro-
versial lexical items are worthy of attention because each can be used without the
utterance being either intended or interpreted as a slur or even felt to be a slur. To
specify the differing potentials of such terms, I postulate a cocktail of interlaced
semantic and pragmatic components. I first hinted that pragmatic components be
included in lexicon entries in Allan (Linguistic meaning. Routledge and Kegan
Paul, London, 1986/2014: 170–174) and subsequently confirmed the idea and
developed it substantially in Allan (The lexicon-encyclopedia interface. Elsevier,
Amsterdam, pp. 169–218, 2000; Natural language semantics. Blackwell, Oxford,
2001; Salience and defaults in utterance processing. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin,
2011; Cambridge handbook of pragmatics. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, pp. 227–250, 2012). Something similar, at least in spirit, is proposed in
Copestake and Briscoe (Lexical semantics and knowledge representation. Springer,
Berlin, pp. 107–119, 1992), Copestake and Lascarides (Proceedings of the 35th
annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics (ACL97).
Association for Computational Linguistics, Stroudsburg, PA, pp. 136–143, 1997)
and more recently in Carston (Thoughts and utterances: the pragmatics of explicit
communication. Blackwell, Oxford, 2002: Chap. 5) and Wilson and Carston
(Pragmatics. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, pp. 230–259, 2007). What I am
proposing in this new chapter is that the triggers for the potentially diverse inter-
pretations of the terms bitch, cunt, and nigger are specified in the lexicon for the
various identifiable classes of contexts in which such words are used.
Keywords Camaraderie Context Contronym Dysphemism Orthophemism
K. Allan (&)
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: keith.allan@monash.edu

164 K. Allan
9.1 Introduction
Cliff Goddard is a leading proponent of Anna Wierzbicka’s Natural Semantic

Metalanguage, which applies to lexical semantics across languages, taking account
of (ethno)pragmatics, and relevant cultural issues. Cliff is also a scholar of several
languages other than English. I do not know whether he has studied any of the
words discussed in this chapter (a couple of his students have), but he has touched
on the topic in Goddard (2015). I dedicate this chapter to Cliff and wonder if he can
convert my analyses into NSM—a task which I am incompetent to achieve.
The words bitch, cunt, and nigger are, when applied to humans, typically
deprecated because they are used as insults. But like many such slurs they are
sometimes adopted by people who are potentially targeted in the insult and sub-
verted to become markers of in-group solidarity. Consequently, their representation
in a lexicon must be able to predict the probable intended sense according to the
context of use. In the present short chapter, I show how this can be done for just
these three terms with a proviso that there must be similar mechanisms at play for
the rest of the vocabulary in a language.
A first question to ask is why the salient connotation1 of such terms is dys-
phemistic (offensive), such that they are typically deprecated. In 1935, Allen Read
wrote:
The ordinary reaction to a display of filth and vulgarity should be a neutral one or else
disgust; but the reaction to certain words connected with excrement and sex is neither of
these, but a titillating thrill of scandalized perturbation. (Read 1977 [1935]: 9)
Osgood et al. (1957) discovered a general tendency for any derogatory or unfa-
vourable denotation or connotation within a language expression to dominate the
interpretation of its immediate context. In the same vein, MacWhinney et al. (1982:
315) found that
sentences with profane and sexually suggestive language elicited responses quite different
from those [without….] Sentences with off-color language possess a memorability that is
quite independent of their role in conversation.
Instantiating these observations is a true story emailed to me in 1989 by Cynthia R.:

“The highest award in boy scouting is, or was in the sixties, The Silver Beaver. It
was the cause of endless (suppressed) merriment when Grandfather received this
coveted award.” What makes dysphemisms like bitch, cunt, and nigger cognitively
prominent is their affective force: they typically evoke stronger emotional response
than most other vocabulary because of their combined connotation and denotation.
There is no better description of this than Allen Read’s “titillating thrill of scan-
dalized perturbation”. But there is an additional factor that makes them more
marked than other vocabulary: they are stored differently in the brain from other
1
The connotations of a language expression are pragmatic effects that arise from encyclopaedic
knowledge about its denotation (or reference) and also from experiences, beliefs, and prejudices
about the contexts in which the expression is typically used (Allan 2007: 1048).
9 The Semantics and Pragmatics of Three Potential Slurring Terms 165
vocabulary. Thus, people with certain kinds of dementia and/or aphasia can curse
profusely, producing what sound like exclamatory interjections as an emotional
reaction; however, when called upon to repeat the performance, they are unable to
do so because they have lost the capacity to construct ordinary language. The fact
that dirty words, abusive words, and slurs pour forth in these particular mental
disorders and from people with Tourette syndrome is only possible because they are
stored separately (or at least accessed differently) from other language (Finkelstein
2018; Jay 2000; Valenstein and Heilman 1979: 431). As I have said, this is a
contributory factor to their cognitive salience, but the latter arises principally from
the emotional impact evoked by their combined denotation and connotation.
That words like bitch, cunt and nigger are undoubtedly saliently dysphemistic is
evidenced from dictionary entries.
Bitch in British (bɪtʃ)
noun
1. a female dog or other female canine animal, such as a wolf
2. offensive, slang a malicious, spiteful, or coarse woman
3. slang a complaint
4. slang a difficult situation or problem
5. slang a person who acts as a subordinate or slave to another person
verb informal
6. (intransitive) to complain; grumble
7. to behave (towards) in a spiteful or malicious manner
8. (transitive; often followed by up) to botch; bungle.
(https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bitch)
Cunt in British (kʌnt)
noun taboo
1. the female genitals
2. offensive, slang a woman considered sexually
3. offensive, slang a mean or obnoxious person.
▶ USAGE: Although there has been some relaxation of the taboo against using
words such as fuck in conversation and print, the use of cunt is still not considered
acceptable by most people outside very limited social contexts. Though originally a
racily descriptive word in Middle English, it has been taboo for many centuries and
continues to be so.
(https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/cunt)
Nigger in British (ˈnɪɡə)
noun offensive, taboo
1. a. a Black person
166 K. Allan
b. (as modifier) nigger minstrels

2. a member of any dark-skinned race
3. nigger in the woodpile.
▶ [American] USAGE: originally simply a dialectal variant of Negro, the term

nigger is today acceptable only in black English; in all other contexts it is now
generally regarded as virtually taboo because of the legacy of racial hatred that
underlies the history of its use among whites, and its continuing use among a
minority of speakers as a viciously hostile epithet
(https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nigger)
Although dictionaries vary somewhat, the quotes above are typical. Given the
salient dysphemism, how can such terms be used as an expression of camaraderie?
The answer is hinted at in some words of the final quote: “the term nigger is
today acceptable only in black English”. This is because the speaker identifies as a
person who has attracted or might attract the slur nigger: in other words, he or she
trades on the hurtful, contemptuous connotation and subverts it (cf. Hornsby 2001:
134). Within many minorities and oppressed groups, a term of abuse used by
outsiders is often reclaimed to wear as a badge of honour to mark identification with
and camaraderie within the in-group. Used as an in-group term of address, nigger
has much in common with the British and Australian address term mate (see
Rendle-Short 2009) or American bud(dy) even though neither bud(dy) nor mate has
the negative connotations of nigger. To this end, many (male)2 African Americans
have adopted the term nigger, often respelled nigga (which remains homophonous),
to use to or about their fellows (Allan and Burridge 1991, 2006; Asim 2007; Croom
2013; Folb 1980; Kennedy 2000, 2003; McWhorter 2002, 2010; Rahman 2012,
inter alia).3 This is a classic example of polysemy and so, although one cannot say
Ordell is a nigger1 and so is Beaumont [a nigger2] because it violates the
Q-principle of both Horn (1984) and Levinson (2000), it is perfectly possible for
one African American to say to another That honkey called me a nigger2, nigger1.4
JULES: You remember Antwan Rockamora? Half-black, half-Samoan, usta call
him Tony Rocky Horror.
VINCENT: Yeah maybe, fat right?
JULES: I wouldn’t go so far as to call the brother fat. He’s got a weight problem.
What’s the nigger gonna do, he’s Samoan. (Tarantino 1999: 18)
The context, i.e. the situation of utterance and what is said through the co-text,
determines that this use of nigger is clearly not a racial slur. For a start Jules is black
and he’s addressing a white guy while speaking of a shared acquaintance who is a
half African American half Samoan and who counts as one of Jules’ in-group of
2
It is reportedly rare among females.
3
There is at least one example of this in President Obama’s autobiography when, in an exchange of
banter, his friend Ray addresses him as ‘nigger’; see Obama (2004: 73).
4
Assuming nigger2 is the slur and nigger1 is not.
black ‘brothers’. Secondly, Jules thinks well enough of Antwan to be kindly

euphemistic about his size. So when he says “What’s the nigger gonna do, he’s
Samoan”, he is using nigger as a colloquial descriptive. Colloquial language uses
informal and intimate styles (cf. Joos 1961); it includes, but is not identical with,
slang (see Allan and Burridge 2006). So we have nigger used as an in-group
marker, here referring to a man described as ‘Samoan’, although he is also
described as ‘half-black’. Jules clearly has no malice towards this black brother of
whom nigger is surely used in the sympathetic spirit of camaraderie. Another
example:
So, Mr. President, if I’m going to keep it 100: Yo, Barry, you did it, my nigger. You did it.
(Larry Wilmore to President Barack (= Barry) Obama at the 2016 White House
Correspondents’ Dinner, cited by black journalist Jonathan Capehart in the Washington
Post, May 2, 2016, ‘Why Larry Wilmore is not ‘my n———’)5
Larry Wilmore’s attribution was controversial. His use of nigger was mostly
referred to in the media as “the N-word” and otherwise written n— or nigga.
Jonathan Capehart disapproved not because an African American was addressed as
nigger by another African American, but because the addressee was the President of
the USA whom Capehart believes should not be treated so familiarly on a public
occasion. But it is clear that Wilmore was intending to be colloquial and familiar,
witness “keep it 100” and “Yo, Barry”. It certainly did not appear that Obama was
offended. All these comments are tempered by the context in which nigger/nigga
occurs and is spoken or written of.
The same kind of argument goes when women or gay men address each other as
bitch in amity. Lisa Jervis, editor of the magazine Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop
Culture, wrote in 1996 how the word was not meant as an insult but because “a
confrontational stance is powerful”. This was reiteration of the stance in Jo
Freeman’s Bitch Manifesto of 1970:
Bitches seek their identity strictly thru themselves and what they do. They are subjects, not
objects. […] It is a popular derogation to put down uppity women that was created by man
and adopted by women. Like the term “nigger,” “bitch” serves the social function of
isolating and discrediting a class of people who do not conform to the socially accepted
patterns of behavior.
(http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/bitch.htm)
There is a meme widely distributed over the internet: “My best friend can’t stop
being my best friend. The bitch knows too much.” Tongue in cheek it may be, but it
clearly maintains the banter of camaraderie.
For instances of bitch (and also cunt) used as an insult, see the following:
[H]e called me a slut, cunt, worthless bitch, I slapped him at some point, then he followed
me to the porch, where I’d gone to cry, to tell me how I spread my legs for anyone who
walks by, and how I have no respect for myself because no one taught me to respect my
5
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/05/02/why-larry-wilmore-is-not-
my-n/. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IDFt3BL7FA (my nigger occurs at 22:04 min).
168 K. Allan
body when I was a teenager. […] This is not the first time he’s called me a slut/whore/cunt/
bitch/etc. He accused me of cheating 2 weeks ago (I’m not, nor will I ever because of
family history with cheating) with a coworker. […] I put a hand out and said “If you lay one
finger on me, I will scream and call the police.” This is when he proceeded to call me a
f*cking cunt, bitch, and a piece of shit (he’d called me worthless earlier in the week, again
not for the first time). (http://forums.thenest.com/discussion/12002898/husband-called-me-
a-c-t-b-ch-sl-t, September 2013)
The author slapped her husband because she was upset by the fact that he was
insulting her: it was not only the perlocutionary effect of his words, but there can be
no doubt from the wife’s report and our own onlooker observation, it was the
illocutionary intention of the husband. Terms like slut, whore, cunt, bitch, etc.,
imply that the wife was being accused of sexual promiscuity.
Below is a report mentioning a slur by Barbara Bush (wife of Republican 41st
US President George H. Bush) on the 1984 Democrat Vice Presidential candidate
Geraldine Ferraro. Note that the topic of the article is the Bush’s pooch Millie.
To borrow words Barbara Bush once used to describe Geraldine Ferraro, Millie Kerr Bush
is something that rhymes with rich. (Time Australia, March 6, 1989: 62)
The original report of the slur reads, in part:

But if some people were surprised to hear white-haired, gentle-looking Barbara Bush
calling Mrs. Ferraro a “four million dollar—I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich,” some
others were not so shocked. (Joyce 1984)
This is understood to mean that Barbara Bush called her husband’s political
opponent a bitch, thus slurring Ferraro. Obviously, the Time Australia reporter
understood her to mean “bitch”, otherwise it would make no sense to apply Bush’s
words to a female dog. However, Bush used a euphemistic dysphemism, because it
would have reflected badly on her had she explicitly spelled out the slur. Joyce
(1984) writes: “Mrs. Bush later apologized for the remark”. Such an apology does
not indicate that Barbara Bush revised her opinion of Geraldine Ferraro, only that
she later regretted making the insult public, thereby staining her own character.
It is widely acknowledged that cunt is the most tabooed word in English.
Interestingly, the same is not true of its cognates in closely related languages:
French con and Spanish coño have the same origin—Latin cunnus “cunt, promis-
cuous woman”—but their extended uses are much less dysphemistic. For instance,
French vieux con (literally, “old cunt”) is more likely to be jocular than insulting—
comparable with British old bugger. (On Spanish coño see Allan and Burridge
2006: 52).
As with the other terms I have been discussing, cunt can be used
orthophemistically in, for instance, academic studies like this one. Dismissing a
prosecution for using offensive language, Australian magistrate Heilpern J
explained: “Channel 9 has recently broadcast a show (Sex in the City) that includes
the words fuck off and fucking as well as cunt” (Police v Butler 2003, NSWLC 2
before Heilpern J, June 14, 2002). In other words, cunt is not criminally unac-
ceptable. And, of course, cunt may be used as an expression of bantering cama-
raderie—as can silly, ass, idiot, bastard, and fucker, as in “[laughs] you’re a gross
cunt [laughs]” (Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English J 2) and the
following (Welsh 2001: 129), from the novel Trainspotting (using the Leith dialect
of Edinburgh, Scotland).
– Granty … ye didnae hear? … Coke looked straight at Lenny.
– Naw. Wha …
– Deid. Potted heid.
– Yir jokin! Eh? Gies a fuckin brek ya cunt …
– Gen up. Last night, likes.
– Whit the fuck happened …
– Ticker. Boom. Coke snapped his fingers.—Dodgy hert, apparently. Nae cunt
kent aboot it. Perr Granty wis workin wi Pete Gilleghan, oan the side likesay. It
wis aboot five, n Granty wis helpin Pete tidy up, ready to shoot the craw n that
likes, whin he jist hauds his chist n cowps ower. Gilly gits an ambulance, n they
take the perr cunt tae the hospital, but he dies a couple of ooirs later. Perr
Granty. Good cunt n aw. You play cairds wi the guy, eh?
– Eh … aye … one ay the nicest cunts ye could hope tae meet. That’s gutted us,
that hus.
A newspaper report of Phil Grant’s fatal heart attack, even if equally sympathetic,
would—as a matter of social appropriateness—necessarily use very different
language.
The phenomenon of subversion of slurs is not so strange when we compare it
with the existence of contronyms6 in the vocabulary, e.g. bound ‘fastened to a spot’
versus ‘heading for somewhere’; cleave ‘adhere to’ versus ‘separate’; consult ‘offer
advice’ versus ‘seek advice’; dust ‘remove fine particles’ versus ‘cover with fine
particles’; fast ‘moving quickly’ versus ‘fixed, unable to move’; give out ‘provide,
supply’ versus ‘stop for lack of supply’; hold up ‘support’ versus ‘impede’; over-
look ‘supervise’ versus ‘neglect’; sanction ‘approve’ versus ‘boycott’; trim ‘deco-
rate’ versus ‘remove excess from’; etc. There are many more, including some that
are controversial, for instance infer is used to mean both ‘imply by saying’ and
‘understand from what is said’; rent and let7 can be ambiguous between ‘allow the
use of something in return for being paid’ and ‘use something in return for payment
to the owner’. What contronyms show is that speakers and writers and their
audiences can happily operate using a word or phrase with contrary meanings
relying on context to disambiguate—which is exactly what normally applies with
terms of abuse and their contronymic subversions.
The slurs bitch, cunt, and nigger are typically dysphemistic but they are dif-
ferently dysphemistic. I suggest that the dysphemisms cunt and nigger are both
superlatively offensive, say, to degree 0.9 on a scale from 0 to 1, while bitch is
6
Also called contranyms and autoantonyms, among other things.
7
There are also the verb let ‘allow’ as in Let me pay and the noun let ‘hindrance’ as in tennis (when
during service a ball is hindered by the net cord).
170 K. Allan
Table 9.1 Credibility metric for a proposition

CRED = 1.0 Undoubtedly true: □p, I know that p
CRED = 0.9 Most probably true: I am almost certain that p
CRED = 0.8 Probably true: I believe that p
CRED = 0.7 Possibly true: I think p is probable
CRED = 0.6 Just possibly true: I think that perhaps p
CRED = 0.5 Indeterminable: (◇p 0.5) XOR (◇¬p 0.5)
CRED = 0.4 Just possibly false: It is not impossible that p
CRED = 0.3 Possibly false: It is not necessarily impossible that p
CRED = 0.2 Probably false: It is (very) unlikely that p
CRED = 0.1 Most probably false: It is almost impossible that p
CRED = 0.0 Undoubtedly false: □¬p, I know that ¬p
(simply) offensive, say, to degree 0.6. Used in expressions of camaraderie, such

terms nevertheless risk being assessed as slightly offensive, say, to degree 0.1.
Because most so-called facts are propositions about phenomena as interpreted by
whomever is speaking, we find that so-called experts differ as to what the facts are
(for instance, on the economy or what should be done about narcotics). Whether
ordinary language users judge a proposition true or false depends not only on its
pragmatic halo,8 but also on how credible it is and this is reflected in the way that
they use and understand language. There is a credibility metric such as that in
Table 9.1, in which complete confidence that a proposition is true rates 1, repre-
sented CRED = 1, and complete confidence that a proposition is false rates CRED = 0;
indeterminability is midway between these two, CRED = 0.5. Other values lie in
between. □ is the necessity operator, ◇ the possibility operator, and XOR sym-
bolizes exclusive disjunction. In reality, one level of the metric overlaps an adjacent
level so that the cross-over from one level to another is more often than not entirely
subjective; levels 0.1, 0.4, 0.6, 0.9 are as much an artefact of the decimal system as
they are independently distinct levels in which I have a great deal of confidence.
Nonetheless, I am certain that some variant of the credibility metric exists and is
justified by the employment of the adverbials (very) probably, (very) possibly and
perhaps in everyday speech.
I have established that the salient senses of bitch, cunt, and nigger are dys-
phemistic. At first sight a salient meaning should be almost the opposite of a default
meaning. Something that is salient jumps out at you; by contrast a default is the
fall-back state when there is no contextual motivation to prefer any other. On a
second look, what qualifies a state to become the default is its salience in the
8
In any normal situation Sue arrived at three o’clock is treated as true if she arrived close to three
o’clock; Lasersohn (1999) refers to this slackness as a “pragmatic halo”. A pragmatic regulator is
an adverb such as precisely or exactly in Sue arrived precisely at three o’clock or Sue arrived at
exactly three o’clock which restricts the slack in the interpretation. Unlike Lasersohn, I do not
believe the slack is erased, but it is certainly restricted.
absence of any contextual motivation to prefer another. Giora (2003: 34, 37) defines
salience as what is foremost in the mind based on “such factors as familiarity,
conventionality, and frequency of occurrence”. Clearly this applies to salience on a
particular occasion. Can it also apply to the condition of comparative decontextu-
alization that is encountered with a lexicon entry? Typically, meanings in a lexicon
are given so as to apply to as wide a range of contexts as possible and these are
what I describe as default meanings, namely those that are applied more frequently
by more people and normally with greater certitude than any alternatives. Thus,
default meanings are largely similar to salient meanings except that the latter,
according to Giora, are foremost in the mind of an individual: “Salience […] is
relative to an individual. What is foremost on one’s mind need not necessarily be
foremost on another’s” (Giora 2003: 37). We might here distinguish between a
linguist’s model of the mental lexicon as an abstraction or generalization over the
hypothetical lexicon of a typical individual and the real-life internalized lexicon of a
particular individual in which certain meanings may indeed be salient because of
that individual’s unique experience. The upshot of this perambulation is that what I
describe as the representation and ranking of default meanings in the lexicon are
based on my own intuitions about the relative saliency of those meanings—which
Giora would refer to as “graded salience” (Giora 2003: 10); but I propose that my
intuitions need to be replaced by objective rankings obtained after examining data
from a wide variety of corpora and from questioning language users.
In the sections that follow, I will specify the differing potentials of such nouns9
as bitch, cunt, and nigger in a sequence of interlaced semantic and pragmatic
components.
9.2 A Lexicon Entry for Bitch
Primarily, a bitch is a female domestic dog, more precisely a female of genus Canis.
Its figurative uses derive from this. What makes a bitch different from other female
mammals is that a bitch in oestrus has the reputation for being unconstrainedly
willing to mate, often with several partners; many dog-owners believe that the bitch
needs to be protected from male dogs at this time and rather than have all this
(perhaps apocryphal) trouble, they have the bitch spayed. In other words, when in
heat, a bitch is a nuisance, and therefore a cause of complaint to people and that is
what leads to the figurative meanings.
We might capture this literal sense in (1) and more formally in (2).
(1) If x is a female canine, then x is (properly called) a bitch.
(2) 8(x)[k(y)[FEMALE-SEX(y) & CANINE(y)](x) ➤properly bitch(x)]
9
I will not consider the use of bitch as a verb.
172 K. Allan
Where x is the referent10 labelled bitch and female canine means ‘female of the
genus Canis’. FEMALE-SEX predicates y as being of female sex; in formulae such as
(2), italicized bitch indicates the form of the lexicon item, as it also does in (1) and
➤properly symbolizes ‘is properly called’. The lambda operator is introduced in k(y)
[FEMALE-SEX(y) & CANINE(y)](x) to capture the fact that x must be both female and
canine, i.e. x 2 F \ C (x is a member of the intersection of things that are female and
things that are canine). Otherwise, 8(x)[[FEMALE-SEX(x) & CANINE(x) ➤properly bitch
(x)] gives the false readings that any female is properly called a bitch and any
canine is properly called a bitch.
But not everything labelled bitch is a female canine, hence (3) obtains.
(3) If x is a bitch, then x is possibly a female canine.
(3) is inferred in part from (1) and the fact that “not everything labelled bitch is a
female canine”. Hence, (4) in which ¬ symbolizes “not” and ◇ is the possibility
operator.
(4) 8(x)[[k(y)[FEMALE-SEX(y) & CANINE(y)](x) ➤properly bitch(x)]
& 9(x)[k(y)[bitch(y) & ¬[FEMALE-SEX(y) & CANINE(y)](x)]]
! 9(x)[bitch(x) & ◇[k(y)[FEMALE-SEX(y) & CANINE(y)](x)]]
(4) can be glossed as follows: from the facts that (a) every referent x that is both
female and canine is called a bitch (b) and yet there is some referent x that is among
the set of things called a bitch but is not both female and canine (c) it follows11 that
some referent x that is among the set of things called a bitch is possibly both female
and canine.
The extended uses of bitch are grounded in the literal sense. To condemn a
woman as a bitch potentially likens her to a bitch in heat, suggesting she is sexually
promiscuous. Linking the sexual insult with an animal-name insult is
doubly-dysphemistic. It is common for insults to liken humans to animals that are
conventionally ascribed certain behaviours, cf. cat, fox, vixen, sow, pig, cow, bitch,
cur, dog, mongrel, swine, louse, dove, hawk, coot, galah, chicken, turkey, mouse,
rabbit, bull, ox, goat, ape, monkey, ass, donkey, mule, rat, snake, etc. Incidentally,
although son-of-a-bitch is comparable with Spanish hijo de puta and similar
expressions in many other languages, the use of bitch simply to mean “prostitute” is
rare to non-existent in English. So, the sexual undertone is normally secondary
when bitch is used as a slur. Among American children bitch is the favourite insult
from girl to girl and used proportionately more often than by boys—who also target
girls with it, of course—(Jay 1992: 60–67). Hence, bitch is applicable to girls as
well as women, and typically ascribes the female human being as aggravating (i.e.
of confrontational, disagreeable or malicious character). The same is applicable to
homosexual males, but the term is derivative. Hence, (5) and more formally
(6) where ➤colloquially symbolizes “is colloquially called”. Note that the FEMALE-SEX
10
By referent I mean whatever is spoken about; see Allan (2013).
11
An anonymous reviewer objected to this gloss of entailment, but I stand by it on this occasion.
of (2) is replaced by FEMALE-GENDER: something of female-sex is biologically female

bearing organs that potentially enable it to reproduce offspring; humans of
female-gender identify as psycho-socially female (and are typically recognized as
female), though they are not necessarily born to the female sex.
(5) If x is a female human and aggravating she is colloquially called a bitch.
(6) 8(x)[[k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)] ➤colloquially bitch(x)]
(6) Gives rise to (7):

(7) 9(x)[bitch(x) & ◇[k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)]]
Despite being nonliteral, (7) is the salient sense of bitch instead of the literal
sense (2) whence it derives. On a rough count (via the internet) it is about 1500
times as common such that the salient sense could be assigned a likelihood of
CRED = 0.9 versus a CRED = 0.0006 for the literal sense, but it is more appropriate in
the model to peg it at 0.1.
If the speaker is a female human it is possible for her to use bitch as a term of
camaraderie or amicable banter. Let me distinguish banter from insult.
Insult. (A) The agent has the perlocutionary intention in uttering e (the expression
under consideration) to assail the target with offensively dishonouring or con-
temptuous speech or action and/or to treat the target with scornful abuse or
offensive disrespect. (B) The agent’s uttering e has the perlocutionary effect (per-
haps realizing the agent’s perlocutionary intention) of demeaning someone and/or
of affronting or outraging them by manifest arrogance, scorn, contempt, or
insolence.
Banter. A form of competitive verbal play and upmanship in which the agent
needles a sparring partner with critical observations on their physical appearance,
mental ability, character, behaviour, beliefs, and/or familial and social relations in
circumstances where it is mutually understood that in uttering e there is no serious
attempt to wound or belittle the interlocutor.
Where bitch is used as an expression of camaraderie or amicable banter the
antagonistic aggravating is replaceable by the positive counterpart like-minded
since most people prefer to regard themselves as trying to be resolute and agreeable
and their preferred comrades as similar to themselves, i.e. like-minded. This gives
us (8), glossed “some things called bitch are like-minded human females”. There is
a restriction: s (the person uttering bitch) must be a human of female gender (or
someone attributed similar status, such as a male homosexual); this is represented in
(8) by an implicature, conventionally symbolized +>. A justification for the
implicature is that it is implied by correct usage but can readily be violated resulting
from misunderstanding on the part of s or, if deliberately violated by s, probable
misunderstanding by the audience. +>CRED 0.9 indicates that is most likely that s, the
one who utters bitch, is of female gender.
174 K. Allan
(8) 9(x)[bitch(x) & [k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & LIKE-MINDED(y)](x)] +>CRED 0.9
k(x)[FEMALE-GENDER(x) & HUMAN(x)](s)
There is a spin-off from (6) and (7) from female human to inanimate objects or
events, e.g. life’s a bitch; the bitch of a thing won’t work.
(9) 8(x)[[k(y)[¬[ANIMATE(y)] & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)] ➤colloquially bitch(x)]
(10) 9(x)[bitch(x) & ◇[k(y)[¬[ANIMATE(y)] & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)]]
The foregoing capture the various senses of the noun bitch and are brought
together into a model lexicon entry in (11). In (11), ELSE indicates that if the
preceding sense of bitch does not apply we move to the next, less likely, one.
Obviously (11) is heavily dependent on context: the motivation to move from

one sense to another depends on recognizing that the first does not apply in context.
So, what is context? In Allan (2018: 182–183), I suggested that context consists of
common ground plus three categories of context as described in (12) in which s is
the speaker (utterer, writer, signer), h the hearer (audience), e t is the expression
e under consideration in utterance t.
(12) (a) Common ground for any community K of two or more people is that every
member, or almost every member, of K knows or believes some fact or set of
facts F.
(b) A member of K is presumed to know or believe F by (almost) every other
member of K.
(c) A member of K knows that both (a) and (b) are true.
(d) Both s and h are members of K.
(e) s utters t to h in context Ct.
(f) When a member of K applies knowledge of F in order to interpret t, he or she
can presume that others in the community will also apply (or be able to apply)
knowledge of F in order to interpret t.
(g) The existence of F, t, and the application of knowledge of F to interpreting t is
common ground for members of the community K. Once attended to, t
becomes part of F, incrementing the common ground.
(h) If language expression e is a constituent of utterance t, such that e t, then
part of the context C of e, namely C1, is the world (and time) spoken of,
constituted by the topic of discourse revealed by expression e’s co-text (what
has been said and what is said, including text that follows e).
(i) Part of C, C2, is the situation in which t is uttered, which includes what is
known about s and the perlocutionary effect of this and similar uses of e—we
might call this situation of utterance ‘the world spoken in’.
(j) Finally, part of C, C3, is the situation of interpretation in which h seeks to
understand e t, i.e. the meaning of e in the context of the utterance t in
which it occurs.
I distinguish three aspects of context: C1, C2, and C3.12 C1 is the world (and
time) spoken of, which is largely identified from co-text; essentially, C1captures
what is said about what at some world. This is achieved (i) via the semantic frames
and scripts evoked by the various constituents (e1…n) of t—identified through e and
its co-text; and (ii) s’s attitude to what is spoken of or the persons addressed as this
is revealed by the locution. (i) and (ii) contribute to identifying what s’s purpose
might be in making the utterance, which is the effective meaning of e t. C2 is the
world (and time) spoken in, the situation of utterance. C2 captures who does the
saying to whom, and where and when this takes place. C2 normally determines the
social relationships and conventions that s is expected to follow and, in conse-
quence, sets the standard for the psycho-social appropriateness of what is said. C2 is
what governs, for instance, whether such terms as bitch, cunt, or nigger are used as
a slur or an expression of camaraderie and whether or not a particular form of words
is polite. C3 is the situation of interpretation, the circumstances under which h in-
terprets e t, which in face-to-face interaction is effectively identical with C2. So
far as possible, s predicts common ground with h in order to shape utterance t for
maximum comprehensibility. Where C3 is very different from C2 such that h does
not share s’s system of beliefs and assumptions, the context is disparate from s’s
presumed common ground. Although h may be well able to understand what
s intended to mean, e t can have reduced comprehensibility and its
psycho-social appropriateness may be differently evaluated from the way s expected
to be understood. This can, of course, happen where s and h are face-to-face and
s has mistaken the common ground with h.
Let’s return to the use of a lexicon entry such as (11) by both s and h. I assume
that s takes into account the probable common ground with h and what obtains with
respect to C1 and C2 in particular and, if writing for an unpredictable audience,
perhaps with an eye to C3. If s wishes to slur some aggravating woman, s must
ensure that h can readily identify her from C1 and/or C2. Conversely, when s utters
bitch, h applies to C1 and/or C2 to distinguish an appropriate referent, if one is
found the search ends; if none is found h turns to the next sense of something
inanimate but aggravating, h applies to C1 and/or C2 to distinguish an appropriate
referent, if one is found the search ends; if none is found h turns to the next sense of
a like-minded female human, but only if s is a human female (or a gay male, most
likely speaking of another gay male). Once again, if none of these conditions are
met, as a last resort, h turns to the least likely but literal sense of bitch and should
find a canine referent in C1 and/or C2. If C3 applies, i.e. if h is spatially and/or
12
For additional clarification and justification, see Allan (2018).
176 K. Allan
temporally very distant from s, he or she proceeds so far as possible in the same
manner as with C1 and C2. Essentially, s seeks to make sure that h can retrieve the
intended meaning from C1 and/or C2 and/or C3.
Perhaps in the account just given I have appeared to suggest that encountering
the word bitch, h goes systematically through the sequence in (11). In fact as
language users, we look to context immediately to try to determine the s’s intended
meaning, even though it is likely that at least the salient sense will be activated and
then suppressed as irrelevant or not in the light of the prevailing context (cf.
Gernsbacher 1990, Giora 2003).
(13) (a) 8(x)[bitch(x) ! [k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)]]

IF IN C1 9(x)[k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)] &
IN C1 &OR C2 AGGRAVATED(s) ELSE
(b) 8(x)[bitch(x) ! [k(y)[¬[ANIMATE(y)] & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)] IF IN C1 9(x)
[¬ANIMATE(x)] & IN C1 &OR C2 AGGRAVATED(s) ELSE
(c) 8(x)[bitch(x) ! [k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & LIKE-MINDED(y)](x) IF
in C1 9(x)[k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & LIKE-MINDED(y)](x)] & IN C1
&OR C2 ¬AGGRAVATED(s) +>CRED 0.9 FEMALE-GENDER(s) ELSE
(d) 8(x)[bitch(x) ! [k(y)[FEMALE-SEX(y) & CANINE(y)](x)] IF IN C1 9(x)[CANINE
(x)]
Only if none of the contextual conditions in (13) applies, e.g. in the unlikely
situation where a bottle floats ashore with a piece of paper inscribed with the word
bitch which h seeks to interpret in C3, then would h run through the sequence in
(11) and speculate on, but be unable to satisfactorily resolve, the probable referent
symbolized x. By the way, I need to comment on the relation between AGGRAVATING
(x) and AGGRAVATED(s): the relationship is that CAUSE(x)[AGGRAVATED(s)], i.e. x is
(said to be) aggravating because x causes s to be aggravated.
The activating of the dominant sense of dysphemistic expressions is what leads
to their avoidance in even orthophemistic uses—that is, some people will avoid
referring to a female dog as a bitch lest they be judged unmannerly. How should
this be accounted for in the lexical entry? Most dictionaries advert the user to the
fact that (13)(a) is ‘offensive’, ‘rude’, ‘not now in decent use’, i.e. dysphemistic.
Consequently, we need to revise (13) to (14) where ‘DYSPHEMISTIC0.6’ symbolizes
offensiveness to a degree of 0.613 on a scale from 0 to 1 where 0 = ¬DYSPHEMISTIC.
(14) (a) 8(x)[bitch(x) ! [k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)]]

IF IN C1 9(x)[k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)] &
IN C1 &OR C2 k(z)[AGGRAVATED(z) & DYSPHEMISTIC0.6(z)](s) ELSE
(b) 8(x)[bitch(x) ! [k(y)[¬[ANIMATE(y)] & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)] IF IN C1 9(x)
[¬ANIMATE(x)] & IN C1 &OR C2 k(z)[AGGRAVATED(z) & DYSPHEMISTIC0.6(z)]
(s) ELSE
13
Cf. Beers Fägersten (2007).
(c) 8(x)[bitch(x) ! [k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & LIKE-MINDED(y)](x)

IF IN C1 9(x)[k(y)[FEMALE-GENDER(y) & HUMAN(y) & LIKE-MINDED(y)](x)] & IN
C1 &OR C2 k(z)[¬AGGRAVATED(z) & DYSPHEMISTIC0.1(z)](s) +>CRED 0.9 FEMALE-
GENDER(s) ELSE
(d) 8(x)[bitch(x) ! [k(y)[FEMALE-SEX(y) & CANINE(y)](x)] IF IN C1 9(x)[CANINE
(x)]
9.3 A Lexicon Entry for Cunt
I do not know of any figures to confirm or reject the claim, but I believe the primary
use of the word cunt is as a term of abuse for a reviled, aggravating person or thing
even though this sense derives misogynistically from its literal use to refer to the
genitals (vulva and vagina) of the human female sex.14
(15) 8(x)[[k(y)[REVILED(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)] ➤colloquially cunt(x)]
(16) 9(x)[cunt(x) & ◇[k(y)[REVILED(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)]
(17) 8(x)[GENITALS(x) $ 8(y)[k(z)[HUMAN(z) & FEMALE-SEX(z)](y)] ! PART-OF(x, y)]]
➤colloquially cunt(x)
➤properly vagina(x) &OR vulva(x)
(15)–(17) give rise to the lexicon entry in (18)—included in which is the
information that cunt is dysphemistic to degree 0.9.
(18) (a) 8(x)[cunt(x) ! [k(y)[REVILED(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)]] IF IN C1 9(x)[k(y)

[REVILED(y) & AGGRAVATING(y)](x)] & IN C1 &OR C2 k(z)[AGGRAVATED(z) &
DYSPHEMISTIC0.9(z)](s) ELSE
(b) 8(x)[cunt(x) ! GENITALS(x) $ 8(y)[[k(z)[HUMAN(z) & FEMALE-SEX(z)]
(y)] ! PART-OF(x, y)]] IF IN C1 9(x)[GENITALS(x) $ 8(y)[[k(z)[HUMAN(z) &
FEMALE-SEX(z)](y)] ! PART-OF(x, y)] & IN C1 &OR C2
DYSPHEMISTIC0.9(s) ELSE
(c) 8(x)[cunt(x) ! k(y)[ANIMATE(y) & LIKE-MINDED(y)](x) IF IN C1 9(x)[k(y)
[ANIMATE(y) & LIKE-MINDED(y)](x)] & IN C1 &OR C2 k(z)[¬AGGRAVATED(z) &
DYSPHEMISTIC0.1(z)](s) +>CRED 0.9 MALE-GENDER(s)
In (18c), +>CRED 0.9 MALE-GENDER(s), indicates that it is most likely s is male. (18b)
gives rise to the use of cunt in the sense “a woman as a source of sexual gratifi-
cation” where this one body part is the sole focus of interest, which leads to
cancelling of some components as in (19).
(19) 8(x)[cunt(x) ! [k(z)[HUMAN(z) & FEMALE-SEX(z)](x)] IF IN C1 &OR C2 k(z)[MALE-
SEX(z) & DYSPHEMISTIC0.9(z) & MISOGYNISTIC0.9(z)](s)
(19) is severely misogynistic and in very limited use.
14
A usage very rarely extended to the genitals of other female animates.
178 K. Allan
9.4 A Lexicon Entry for Nigger
Croom (2011, 2013) argues that the use of nigger both as a slur and in-group
marker of camaraderie can be accommodated if the meaning is expressed as a
cluster of properties applicable to the referent, not all of which need to be present in
the referent on a particular occasion. The properties Croom (2013: 199) identifies
are based on what American speakers report of the meaning of nigger in the works
cited in the quote where, of course, X is the referent.
P1. X is African American (Frederickson 1971, p. 41; Asim 2007, p. 12;
Williamson 2009)
P2. X is prone to laziness (Asim 2007, p. 27)
P3. X is subservient (Frederickson 1971, p. 41; Asim 2007, p. 12)
P4. X is commonly the recipient of poor treatment (Frederickson 1971, p. 41; Asim
2007, p. 12)
P5. X is athletic and musical (Alim et al. 2010, p. 128)
P6. X is sexually liberal or licentious (Asim 2007, p. 27)
P7. X is simple-minded (Asim 2007, p. 27)
P8. X is emotionally shallow (Asim 2007, p. 27)
P9. X is a survivor, tough, or prone to violence (Anderson 1999, p. 50; Rahman
2012)
P10. X is loud and excessively noisy (Anderson 1999, p. 50).
We find in this quote a mix of semantics and pragmatics: there is far more con-
notation (pragmatics, cf. Allan 2007) than denotation (semantics)—which is limited
to P1. P1 is incorrect in that nigger does not only denote African Americans or even
of somebody of black African descent but someone not white as, for instance,
Burmese (27 times in Orwell 1935), Australian Aborigines (18 times in Gunn 1983
[1908]), Asian Indians (four times in Forster 1924), Native American (Apache)
(once in Abbey 1980: 75). Of the connoted properties in Croom’s definition, only
one, P5, is positive, although P9 is partially positive: ‘survivor, tough’. P1 is neither
positive nor negative. All the others are derogatory or potentially so. Asim (2007:
85) lists in a glossary of disdainful expressions for his race: ‘beastlike, depraved,
inferior, childlike, menacing, lazy, small-brained’ and there are quotations that
confirm these. Furthermore Asim (2007: 146) quarries from Reddick (1944) the
following properties found in portrayals of African Americans in media, films, and
books; I group these into three classes: positive, somewhat dismissive, and nega-
tive. Positive: natural-born cook, natural-born musician, perfect entertainer, sexual
superman, superior athlete. Somewhat dismissive: chicken and watermelon eater,
devoted servant, happy slave, unhappy non-white, superstitious churchgoer, unin-
hibited expressionist. Negative: corrupt politician, irresponsible citizen, mental
inferior, petty thief, savage African, social delinquent, vicious criminal, razor and
knife toter.
What are we to make of such data? Well, etymologically nigger derives from
Latin niger ‘black, dark, unlucky’ which extended in late Latin to ‘black person’—
that lives on in English Negro, which is typically orthophemistic. Until the late
eighteenth century nig(g)er was synonymous with Negro (see the OED); thereafter
and until the second half of the twentieth century the term nigger was essentially a
colloquial synonym for Negro. Because it was colloquial it was more appropriate
for use as a racial slur than was Negro—though use of the latter was no guarantee
against racism. Although Charles Darwin (1809–1892) was not spitefully racist he
was reflecting the racial stereotyping of his era when he wrote of the cultural
superiority of Caucasians and the evolutionary proximity of Negros and Australian
Aborigines to gorillas (Darwin 1871: 201).15 The same attitude was almost cer-
tainly shared by writers like Gunn (1983 [1908]), Forster (1924), and Orwell (1935)
and certainly of the relevant characters in the novels by Forster, Orwell, and Abbey
(1980). In all of these cases, nigger is used of people looked upon as from the
servant class to whom the speaker is ipso facto a social superior.16 Interesting in
that regard is the fact that in the film Pulp Fiction (1994, Tarantino 1999) when the
black gangster millionaire Marsellus hands white boxer Butch a bribe to go down in
the fifth round of his bout with Floyd Wilson (black) he says “You’re my nigger”,
which is not in the published script.
MARSELLUS: […] How many fights d’you think you got in you anyway? Mhm? Two?
Boxers don’t have an Old Timers Place. You came close but you never made it. And if you
were gonna make it, you would’ve made it before now. (Holds out the envelope of cash to
Butch, but just out of his reach.) You’re my nigger. [0:22:45]
BUTCH: Certainly appears so.
Here is an exquisite social irony in that (within C1) a powerful African American is
calling a white man ‘my nigger’ invoking the sense of nigger as an inferior and
servant, Croom’s property P3.
The lexicon entry for nigger must take the dysphemistic uses as most salient,
(20a), which explains why it is regularly euphemized to the N-word and n—, etc.
(20) (a) 8(x)[nigger(x) ! k(y)[HUMAN(y) & ¬WHITE-RACE(y) & SOCIAL-INFERIOR(y)](x)]

+>cred0.9 OF-AFRICAN-DESCENT(x) IF IN C1 &OR C2 k(y)[HUMAN(y) & ¬WHITE-
RACE(y) & SOCIAL-INFERIOR(y)](x)] & IN C1 &OR C2 DYSPHEMISTIC0.9(s) ELSE
(b) 8(x)[nigger(x) ! k(y)[HUMAN(y) & AFRICAN-AMERICAN(y) & LIKE-MINDED(y)]
(x)] +>cred0.8 MALE-GENDER(x) & IN C1 &OR C2 DYSPHEMISTIC0.1(s) +>CRED 0.9
AFRICAN-AMERICAN(s)
Since Croom’s definition ignores the use of nigger as an expression of cama-

raderie, (20)(b), my (20a) replaces his ten properties with this single sense which
15
I am drawing attention to the different interpretations made in C2, circa 1870, and C3, circa
2018.
16
It is not irrelevant that their written works show that Forster and Orwell regarded themselves as
socially and intellectually superior to the working classes who were not their ‘sort’. Likewise, there
is evidence from his writings that Edward Abbey felt similarly socially and intellectually superior
to ‘Indians’, i.e. Native Americans.
180 K. Allan
gives rise to the necessary implication subservient(x) and to connotations such as

dangerous(x) from the prejudice that social inferiors are often criminals and to lazy
(x) from the prejudice that social inferiors are typically indolent. Still dwelling on
(20a): a nigger(x) who is not subservient is uppity, revolutionary, unmannerly,
upsetting the status quo as s perceives it, and therefore dangerous. Furthermore, if a
nigger(x) is not lazy, s’s prejudice is not fulfilled, leading s to feel insecure. Hence,
slurs like nigger are socially destructive to both s and x.
9.5 Finale
I have claimed that all of bitch, cunt, and nigger are slurs, i.e. that they are saliently
dysphemistic even though each of them can be used in the spirit of camaraderie.
One matter not hitherto considered is what might motivate the choice of one rather
than another where x has the potential to be labelled by any one of them. Let’s
suppose that the same black woman, x, can be slurred as either a bitch or a cunt by a
speaker she aggravates whom, for the sake of argument, we shall assume is female
herself. The principal difference is that bitch focuses on the target being female
whereas cunt focuses on the target being a reviled object. If x were addressed by the
insult nigger, it would most likely be because the focus is on her skin colour,
although it could be, if rarely, because s is assuming her own social and intellectual
superiority to x.
In this chapter, I have examined the semantics and pragmatics of three slurs and
suggested model lexicon entries for them. The formalisms I have utilized are only
of relevance in seeking to cover all necessary bases. Provided these can be covered
in any other formal system, it is of no consequence what that may be, say, Natural
Semantic Metalanguage (Goddard 2015, 2017; Stollnow 2002; Waters 2012),
Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp and Reyle 1993), Default Semantics
(Jaszczolt 2005), and so on. The formal terms I have used in the lexicon entries are
the following:
¬; 8; 9; □; ◇; k; ! ; $; +>; &; &OR; XOR; s; h; x, y, z; IN; C1; C2; IF; ELSE;
➤colloquially; ➤properly; AFRICAN-AMERICAN; AGGRAVATED; AGGRAVATING; ANIMATE; CANINE;
DYSPHEMISTIC; FEMALE-GENDER; FEMALE-SEX; GENITALS; HUMAN; LIKE-MINDED; MALE-GENDER;
MALE-SEX; MISOGYNISTIC; OF-AFRICAN-DESCENT; PART-OF; REVILED; SOCIAL-INFERIOR; WHITE-RACE
All of these are, I hope, easily interpreted in the context of this chapter. It should be
obvious that there is no claim that these are semantic primes; nor do I claim that
they are all universally applicable, although I anticipate that their translation
equivalents are applicable to very many languages.
References
Abbey, E. (1980). Good news. New York: Dutton.

Alim, H. S., Lee, J., & Carris, L. M. (2010). “Short fried-rice-eating Chinese MCs” and
“Good-Hair-Havin Uncle Tom Niggas”: Performing race and ethnicity in freestyle rap battles.
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 20(1), 116–133.
Allan, K. (1986). Linguistic meaning, 2 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Reissued in
2014 in one volume as Routledge Library Editions, Linguistics Volume, 8.
Allan, K. (2000). Quantity implicatures and the lexicon. In B. Peeters (Ed.), The
lexicon-encyclopedia interface (pp. 169–218). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Allan, K. (2001). Natural language semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Allan, K. (2007). The pragmatics of connotation. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(6), 1047–1057.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.08.004.
Allan, K. (2011). Graded salience: Probabilistic meanings in the lexicon. In K. M. Jaszczolt & K.
Allan (Eds.), Salience and defaults in utterance processing (pp. 165–187). Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter.
Allan, K. (2012). Pragmatics in the (English) lexicon. In K. Allan, & K. M. Jaszczolt (Eds.), The
Cambridge handbook of pragmatics (pp. 227–250). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139022453.013.
Allan, K. (2013). Referring to ‘what counts as the referent’: A view from linguistics. In A. Capone,
F. Lo Piparo, & M. Carapezza (Eds.), Perspectives on linguistic pragmatics (pp. 263–284).
Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01014-4_10.
Allan, K. (2018). Getting a grip on context as a determinant of meaning. In A. Capone, M.
Carapezza, & F. Lo Piparo (Eds.), Further advances in pragmatics and philosophy: Vol. 1.
From theory to practice (pp. 177–201). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-
72173-6_9.
Allan, K., & Burridge, K. (1991). Euphemism and dysphemism: Language used as shield and
weapon. New York: Oxford University Press.
Allan, K., & Burridge, K. (2006). Forbidden words: Taboo and the censoring of language.
Anderson, E. (1999). Code of the street: Decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city.
New York: Norton.
Asim, J. (2007). The N word: Who can say it, who shouldn’t, and why. New York: Houghton
Mifflin.
Beers Fägersten, K. (2007). A sociolinguistic analysis of swear word offensiveness. Saarland
Working Papers in Linguistics, 1, 14–37.
Carston, R. (2002). Thoughts and utterances: The pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Copestake, A., & Briscoe, T. (1992). Lexical operations in a unification-based framework.
In J. Pustejovsky & S. Bergler (Eds.), Lexical semantics and knowledge representation
(pp. 101–119). Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-55801-2_30.
Copestake, A., & Lascarides, A. (1997). Integrating symbolic and statistical representations: The
lexicon pragmatics interface. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Association for
Computational Linguistics (ACL97) (pp. 136–143). Stroudsburg, PA: Association for
Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.3115/979617.979635.
Croom, A. M. (2011). Slurs. Language Sciences, 33(3), 343–358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.
2010.11.005.
Croom, A. M. (2013). How to do things with slurs: Studies in the way of derogatory words.
Language & Communication, 33(3), 177–204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.11.005.
Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and Selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray.
Finkelstein, S. R. (2018). Swearing and the brain. In K. Allan (Ed.), Oxford handbook of taboo
words and language (pp. 108–139). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/
oxfordhb/9780198808190.013.7.
182 K. Allan
Folb, E. (1980). Runnin’ down some lines: The language and culture of black teenagers.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Forster, E. M. (1924). Passage to India. London: Edward Arnold.
Frederickson, G. M. (1971). The black image in the white mind: The debate on Afro-American
character and destiny 1817–1914. New York: Harper and Row.
Gernsbacher, M. A. (1990). Language comprehension as structure building. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Giora, R. (2003). On our mind: Salience, context, and figurative language. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Goddard, C. (2015). “Swear words” and “curse words” in Australian (and American) English. At
the crossroads of pragmatics, semantics and sociolinguistics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 12(2),
189–218. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2015-0010.
Goddard, C. (2017). Natural Semantic Metalanguage and lexicography. In P. Hanks & G.-M. de
Schryver (Eds.), International handbook of modern lexis and lexicography. Berlin: Springer.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45369-4_14-1.
Gunn, Mrs. Aeneas [Jeannie] (1983). We of the never never. Richmond, Vic: Hutchinson.
Originally published in 1908.
Horn, L. R. (1984). Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based
implicature. In D. Schriffin (Ed.), Meaning, form, and use in context: Linguistic applications
(pp. 11–42). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Hornsby, J. (2001). Meaning and uselessness: How to think about derogatory words. Midwest
Studies in Philosophy, 25, 128–141. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4975.00042.
Jaszczolt, K. M. (2005). Default semantics: Foundations of a compositional theory of acts of
communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jay, T. (1992). Cursing in America. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Jay, T. (2000). Why we curse: A neuro-psycho-social theory of speech. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Joos, M. (1961). The five clocks. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Joyce, F. S. (1984, October 15). Barbara Bush as her husband’s ardent defender. New York Times,
p. B5.
Kamp, H., & Reyle, U. (1993). From discourse to logic: Introduction to modeltheoretic semantics
of natural language, formal logic and discourse representation theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Kennedy, R. L. (2000). Who can say “Nigger”? And other considerations. Journal of Blacks in
Higher Education, 26, 86–96. https://doi.org/10.2307/2999172.
Kennedy, R. L. (2003). Nigger: The strange career of a troublesome word. New York: Vintage.
Lasersohn, P. (1999). Pragmatic halos. Language, 75(3), 522–551. https://doi.org/10.2307/417059.
Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational
implicature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
MacWhinney, B., Keenan, J. M., & Reinke, P. (1982). The role of arousal in memory for
conversation. Memory and Cognition, 10(4), 308–317. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202422.
McWhorter, J. (2002, January 14). The uses of ugliness. A review of ‘Nigger: The strange career
of a troublesome word’ by Randall Kennedy. New Republic. http://www.newrepublic.com/
article/uses-ugliness.
McWhorter, J. (2010, August 16). Let’s make a deal on the N-Word: White folks will stop using it,
and black folks will stop pretending that quoting it is saying it. The Root. http://www.theroot.
com/articles/culture/2010/08/blacks_and_whites_should_make_a_deal_on_the_nword.1.html.
Obama, B. (2004). Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance. New York: Three
Rivers Press.
Orwell, G. (1935). Burmese days. London: Victor Gollancz.
Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J., & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1957). The measurement of meaning. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Rahman, J. (2012). The N word: Its history and use in the African American community. Journal
of English Linguistics, 40(2), 137–171. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424211414807.
Read, A.W. (1977). Classic American graffitti: Lexical evidence from folk epigraphy in Western
North America. Waukesha, WI: Maledicta. Originally published in 1935.
Reddick, L. D. (1944). Educational programs for the improvement of race relations: Motion
pictures, radio, the press, and libraries. Journal of Negro Education, 13(3), 367–389. https://
doi.org/10.2307/2292454.
Rendle-Short, J. (2009). The address term mate in Australian English: Is it still a masculine term?
Australian Journal of Linguistics, 29(2), 245–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/
07268600902823110.
Stollnow, K. (2002). Terms of abuse in Australian English: A study of semantics and usage. BA
(Hons) thesis, University of New England.
Tarantino, Q. (1999). Pulp fiction: Three stories about one story. London: Faber & Faber.
Originally published in 1996 [The film dates from 1994].
Valenstein, E., & Heilman, K. M. (1979). Emotional disorders resulting from lesions of the central
nervous system. In K. M. Heilman & E. Valenstein (Eds.), Clinical neuropsychology (pp. 413–
438). New York: Oxford University Press.
Waters, S. (2012). “It’s rude to VP”: The cultural semantics of rudeness. Journal of Pragmatics,
44(9), 1051–1062. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.02.002.
Welsh, I. (2001). Trainspotting. London: Vintage. Originally published in 1993.
Williamson, T. (2009). Reference, inference, and the semantics of pejoratives. In J. Almog, &
P. Leonardi (Eds.), The philosophy of David Kaplan (pp. 137–159). New York: Oxford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367881.003.0009.
Wilson, D., & Carston, R. (2007). A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: Relevance, inference
and ad hoc concepts. In N. Burton-Roberts (Ed.), Pragmatics (pp. 230–259). Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Keith Allan M.Litt., Ph.D. (Edinburgh), FAHA. Emeritus Professor, Monash University. Selected
books: Linguistic Meaning (Routledge, 1986; 2014); Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language
Used as Shield and Weapon (with Kate Burridge, OUP, 1991); Natural Language Semantics
(Blackwell, 2001); Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language (with Kate Burridge,
CUP, 2006); Concise Encyclopaedia of Semantics (Elsevier, 2009); The Western Classical
Tradition in Linguistics Second Expanded Edition (Equinox, 2010); Cambridge Handbook of
Pragmatics (with Kasia Jaszczolt, CUP, 2012); Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics
(OUP, 2013); Routledge Handbook of Linguistics (2016); Oxford Handbook of Taboo Words and
Language (OUP, 2018) Homepage: http://users.monash.edu.au/*kallan/homepage.html.
Chapter 10
Positive Appraisal in Online News
Comments
Radoslava Trnavac and Maite Taboada
Abstract This chapter investigates the linguistic expression of positive evaluation

in English and describes a preliminary typology of linguistic devices used for
positive evaluation. Using corpus-assisted analysis, we classify some of the
resources that play a role in the expression of positive evaluation into phenomena in
the lexicogrammar and phenomena that belong in discourse semantics and compare
those resources to the ones deployed for negative evaluation (see the work on
negative evaluation in Taboada et al. in Corpus Pragmat, 1:57–76, 2017). This
general classification of evaluative devices overlaps with the planes of expression in
systemic functional linguistics. Our data comes from a collection of opinion articles
and the comments associated with them (Kolhatkar et al., in the SFU Opinion and
Comments Corpus: A corpus for the analysis of online news comments, under
review). We use a set of 1000 comments previously annotated for Appraisal (Martin
and White in The language of evaluation. Palgrave, New York, 2005), including
labels of Attitude (Affect, Judgement, Appreciation) and polarity (positive, nega-
tive, neutral). The central component of the chapter is the analysis of the resources
used by commenters to express positive evaluation. We explore whether they make
use of rhetorical figures, following up on our work with Cliff Goddard on the use of
rhetorical figures in the expression of negative evaluation (Taboada et al. in Corpus
Pragmat, 1:57–76, 2017). We then analyse the semantics of evaluative adjectives
using the natural semantic metalanguage approach and follow our previous work on
templates that capture different types of adjectives and fall into five groups
(Goddard et al., in Funct Lang 26, 2019). Although our corpus analysis is limited,
and it includes only a specific type of data (online news comments), the phenomena
that we discuss are present across different genres of texts. While our previous work
R. Trnavac (&)
University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
e-mail: radoslava.trnavac@ff.uns.ac.rs
M. Taboada
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
e-mail: mtaboada@sfu.ca

186 R. Trnavac and M. Taboada
has focused on how to express negative evaluation, this chapter seeks to honour
Cliff Goddard and his positive influence by studying how positivity is realized in
language.

Keywords Natural semantic metalanguage Systemic functional linguistics

Positive appraisal Online news comments Evaluative adjectives
10.1 Introduction
Against the backdrop of our previous research on negative evaluation (Taboada

et al. 2017), we focus in this chapter on how positive evaluation is expressed in
English and we make comparisons. The term evaluation in our work refers to
assessments of objects, situations, and other people, as well as the expression of
emotional states, following definitions in the Appraisal framework (Martin and
White 2005; Kaplan 2007; Carretero and Taboada 2014; Taboada et al. 2014, inter
alia). Previous research on negativity has shown that humans have an inherent
negative bias, because negative events and emotions are perceived as more salient
(Jing-Schmidt 2007; Rozin et al. 2010; Rozin and Royzman 2001). Schrauf and
Sanchez (2004) suggest that the ‘working emotion vocabulary’ typically shows a
preponderance of words for negative emotions (50%) over positive (30%) and
neutral (20%) emotions.
The presence of a negative bias in humans has been explained in evolutionary
terms. It is more beneficial to humans to pay attention to threatening negative events
than to attend to positive experiences (see Rozin and Royzman 2001 for a full
discussion). However, there is a possible contradiction to the above research.
Languages seem to have more positive than negative words and seem to use
positive words with higher frequency. This has been dubbed the Pollyanna
Hypothesis by Boucher and Osgood (1969). A recent study (Dodds et al. 2015)
took an in-depth look into this bias within language, taking advantage of some of
the Internet resources we use every day—Twitter, Google Books, and online
newspapers. The researchers started by selecting ten languages from around the
world.1 They collected data sets of approximately 10,000 words for each language,
by using computer programs to pull common words from the online resources.
Finally, native speakers for each language were paid to rate the words on a scale
from 1 to 9 based on how positive or negative each word made them feel. The
results of this analysis demonstrated that every language tested showed a positive
bias in their word scores, regardless of what source was used to collect the words.
This could be because people choose to discuss more positive than negative events
online.
1
The research included the following languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German,
Russian, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, and Chinese.
10 Positive Appraisal in Online News Comments 187
The literature, as we can see, is not conclusive on whether we are more positive,
whether we use more positive words in public situations only, or whether negative
emotions are more salient and then bubble to the surface in free-form contexts.
However, as we have pointed out in previous work (Taboada et al. 2017), these
phenomena can be viewed as complementary. We discuss positive events and
feelings more often, because negative events and feelings are unpleasant and have a
contagion effect. However, negative events and feelings are more salient.
In this chapter, we present an overview of the resources for positive evaluation
from the two planes proposed in systemic functional linguistics—lexicogrammar
and discourse semantics. We present a corpus-based analysis of some of those
resources, noting that they make less use of rhetorical figures and figurative lan-
guage in general than negative expressions. We then study what types of adjectives
are used in positive appraisal2 and how those adjectives fit into templates that we
have previously defined (Goddard et al. 2016, 2019), contributing explications for
some of them following the methodology of the natural semantic metalanguage
approach that Cliff Goddard has so successfully developed together with a number
of collaborators (Wierzbicka 1972; Goddard 2011; Peeters 2006; Goddard and
Wierzbicka 2014, inter alia).
10.2 A Taxonomy of Linguistic Devices Expressing

Positive Evaluation
Speakers and writers draw from different levels of language to express negative
evaluation. In Taboada et al. (2017), we proposed that the linguistic resources used
in negative evaluation can be classified as belonging to the two planes of expression
in systemic functional linguistics (Halliday 1985; Halliday and Matthiessen 2014):
lexicogrammar and discourse semantics. A language’s lexicogrammar comprises
the grammatical and lexical resources in the language, and its phraseology. At the
discourse semantic level, we find meanings created through text (whether spoken or
written). Our view is that, because negative evaluation often uses linguistic
resources that are deployed for effect, such as rhetorical figures and tropes or
phraseology, we need to study negative evaluation by taking into account these two
planes of expression. Figure 10.1, taken from Taboada et al. (2017), shows the
interaction between discourse semantics and lexicogrammar. A clear-cut separation
between the two categories is not possible; discourse semantics and rhetorical
figures are necessarily encoded in the lexicogrammar.
In our study of negative evaluation, we found the usual suspects: negative words
(awful, hate, horribly), some lexicalized phrases (muddy the waters), and some
syntactic patterns (It’s hard to believe that…), all of them within the realm of the
2
We follow systemic functional linguistics conventions and capitalize names of language systems
(Appraisal, Attitude, Affect, etc.).
Fig. 10.1 High-level taxonomy of resources involved in negative evaluation
lexicogrammar. What we found particularly interesting was the fact that many
negative expressions were conveyed by rhetorical devices, such as figures of speech
(simile, metaphor, hyperbole, euphemism), indirect and direct speech, or rhetorical
questions. Our hypothesis was that, because negative evaluation is less socially
desirable, it tends to be couched in more complex figurative language.
In our corpus of negative evaluation, there were two salient categories of
rhetorical figures: tropes and schemes. Tropes represent an ‘artful deviation’ from
the ordinary or principal signification of a word, while schemes present a deviation
from the ordinary arrangement of words (Borchers 2006). Among the most
prominent tropes was the use of metaphors, which in most cases compared a
person, a group, or an idea to an undesirable source, such as in (1).3
(1) Under the trickled down upon theory, a rising tide lifts all yachts. We are all the guinea
pigs of medical science.
Another salient category is hyperbole, illustrated in (2).

(2) Here is yet another leftist bleeding heart that would rather we go back to the years of
giving money equally to 64th place losers for whom getting a ‘personal best’ is seen as
an accomplishment.
Negative evaluations to a considerable level are expressed with indirect figures of

speech. Among those are figures of speech that substitute expressions for a pejo-
rative or socially delicate term. These are referred to as euphemisms and litotes, that
is, deliberate understatements, as in (3) illustrating litotes.
3
Examples illustrating negative evaluation are from Taboada et al. (2017). Examples are repro-
duced as posted. Some of them may contain non-standard spelling or grammar. Italics have been
added to selected examples to draw attention to particular aspects.
(3) Bernard-Henri Lévy has influence in most democracies of Europe. He helped French
government during Libya revolution anti Kadafy. Now he would be more fair play if he
recognized right to live to Palestinians of Gaza Strip and Cisjordania.
Sarcasm and irony, tropes that involve changes in meaning by extending, turning,
or alluding to a meaning that needs to be reinterpreted in the new context, were also
frequent in our corpus of negative evaluation, as seen in (4).
(4) Christians do not silence their nutbar extremists either. It would serve our own best
interests—trust me. Like always, trees are not the problem, the people are.
Indirect speech and rhetorical questions were found as well, as in (5) and (6).
(5) Can you believe a computer company is still installing 250 W power supplies in their
computers?
(6) ‘We have seen an outpouring of public support’. Not sure where the author is from but
I live in Canada and I certainly have not seen much support for more refugees.
We explore, in this chapter, whether the same applies to positive evaluation. We

extracted positive expressions from a corpus and categorized them in terms of
whether they were mostly grounded in the lexicogrammar or in the discourse
semantics. We present the data used for the study in Sect. 10.3, followed by a
description of the analysis in Sect. 10.4. In Sect. 10.5, we describe in detail a
selection of adjectives in terms of what type of adjective they are, and present
explications for them.
10.3 Data: Online News Comments
For our analysis, we used data from the Simon Fraser University Opinion and
Comments Corpus (SOCC) (Kolhatkar et al., under review), a collection of opinion
articles and the comments posted in response to the articles.4 The full corpus
contains 10,339 opinion articles (editorials, columns, and op-eds) together with
their 663,173 comments from 303,665 comment threads, from the main Canadian
daily newspaper in English, The Globe and Mail, for a five-year period (from
January 2012 to December 2016). In addition to this raw text, the corpus also
contains annotations for several linguistic phenomena: negation, Appraisal, con-
structiveness (whether the comment is constructive and contributes to the conver-
sation), and toxicity (whether the comment is abusive). We used the Appraisal
annotations for the analyses in this chapter.
The corpus was annotated following the Appraisal framework (Martin and White
2005), which is, in our opinion, the most complete system for characterizing and
4
Available from: https://github.com/sfu-discourse-lab/SOCC.
classifying different types of evaluative language. It captures how people use lan-
guage to express their feelings and evaluate others and the world around them. One
of the most important contributions of Appraisal is its classification of different
types of Appraisal. The first level of classification breaks evaluation into Attitude,
Graduation, and Engagement. Attitude constitutes the core of the classification,
distinguishing whether the evaluation is about feelings and emotions (Affect),
evaluation of people’s character and behaviour (Judgement), or evaluation of
objects and situations (Appreciation). Attitude can be modulated through
Graduation, the intensification or downtoning of that Attitude, and it can also be
modified by devices characterized as Engagement, referring to whether the opinion
is presented as negotiable. Figure 10.2 summarizes the Appraisal system, with
some example realizations for Attitude and Graduation. Engagement was not
annotated in the SOCC.
The annotation is more thoroughly described in Kolhatkar et al. (under review).
Briefly, segments (spans) of varying size were annotated by members of the
Discourse Processing Lab at Simon Fraser University, as evaluation occurs at all
levels of language (words, phrases, clauses, or entire sentences). Example (7) shows
some annotations from the corpus, all of them labelled as positive, with the spans
annotated underlined.
Fig. 10.2 Appraisal system used in the annotation

Table 10.1 Distribution of Affect Judgement Appreciation Total

attitude in the SOCC
annotated Negative 175 2342 2350 4867
Positive 46 469 1173 1688
Neutral 5 10 53 68
Total 226 2821 3576 6623
(7) a. We were very pleased to learn that the California Labor Commissioner agrees that
Uber is acting as an employer (Affect).
b. Like Airbnb or eBay, they regulate themselves and do an excellent job (Judgement).
c. Maybe integration is the key if it will improve the standard of living (Appreciation).
The annotation of 1043 comments yielded 6623 spans, of which the vast majority
were negative, as shown in Table 10.1. Another interesting result is that Affect
makes up a small proportion of the overall spans (less than 3.5%). This is contrary
to the popular impression that online comments are emotionally laden (Reagle
2015; Phillips and Milner 2018). Although writers express clear emotions and
opinions in the excerpts in (7), they are not couched as Affect (I feel good), but as
either Judgement (This person is good) or as Appreciation (The situation is bad). In
the latter two cases, there may be an implication that because the person or the
situation is good, the speaker can feel good. That is, the underlying meaning may be
affective, but the expression is either Judgement or Appreciation.
This annotated version of the corpus contains 1043 comments, of which we
chose 250 evaluations in order to outline the types of devices that are used for
positive evaluation. In the next sections, we first list the devices that are predom-
inantly found in our data for positive evaluation and then we compare to the devices
that express negative evaluation.
10.4 Data Analysis
We are interested in how positive evaluation is expressed and whether it happens

mostly via individual words, or phraseology and figures of speech. We started with
segments that had been annotated for as part of the SOCC (Kolhatkar et al., under
review) and examined only positive ones. For each of those positive evaluative
segments, we considered the following parameters:
• Type of the segment: individual part of speech (adjective, noun, verb, etc.),
phrase, clause, or sentence.
• Presence of figurative language: phraseology, direct/indirect speech, rhetorical
question, other rhetorical figures.
Table 10.2 Distribution of positive evaluations across different parts of speech

Noun Pronoun Verb Adjective Adverb Interjection
29 2 37 65 17 3
• Specific semantics: quantity, enumeration, temporal adverbials, person refer-

ence, modal verbs, imperative forms.
• Lexical or connotative meaning: whether the segment draws its evaluative
meaning from the lexical meaning of the word(s) it contains, or from conno-
tative meanings such as discourse prosody.
We tested our data against the preliminarily established parameters based on our
previous work on negative evaluation (Taboada et al. 2017). Table 10.2 contains
the distribution of positive evaluations across different parts of speech.
As Table 10.2 shows, adjectives are frequently used to express positive evalu-
ation, as has been shown for evaluation in general (Benamara et al. 2007; Goddard
et al. 2019; Wiebe 2000). Elsewhere, the evaluative core element consists of
combinations of adjectives (e.g. good and healing), verbs and adverbs (e.g. live
longer), verbs and nouns (e.g. give access), adjectives and nouns (e.g. good dis-
counts), modals and lexical verbs (e.g. have to lead on this), modals and nouns (e.g.
need a strategy to deal with it), negated verbs (e.g. did not oppose him), negated
nouns (e.g. no reason to embrace new technology), or negated adjectives (e.g.
aren’t wrong). These combinations belong to the lexicogrammar plane.
Table 10.3 shows the distribution of positive evaluations in the data across the
lexicogrammar and the discourse semantics planes that are relevant to the expres-
sion of negative evaluation. What is striking in Table 10.3 is that few of the
expressions we studied make use of resources that can be characterized as
belonging to discourse semantics, and in particular, none of the expressions anal-
ysed seemed to be rhetorical in nature. We observed in Taboada et al. (2017) that
rhetorical figures (metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, litotes, sarcasm) seem to be
Table 10.3 Positive Phenomena in the lexicogrammar

evaluation patterns, by type
Morphology –
Lexis 193
Enumeration 1
Person reference 4
Temporal adverbial 3
Discourse prosody –
Phraseology 15
Phenomena in the discourse semantics
Direct/indirect speech –
Rhetorical questions –
Rhetorical figures –
widely used when expressing negative evaluation, perhaps in an attempt to disguise

the negative nature of the opinion. Although this is a small sample of positive
expressions, it seems to be the case that positive evaluation does not employ
rhetorical figures to the same extent as negative evaluation. Below we briefly
describe and provide some examples of each of these types.
10.4.1 Phenomena in the Lexicogrammar
Positive evaluation is predominantly represented through lexical items (lexis), such

as the words tolerable, best, free, and equal. This category is easily classified.
Sometimes, positive evaluations are expressed with entire clauses and sentences, as
in (8) and (9).
(8) We need a national strategy.
(9) The ones for which the idea came to be can benefit.
Phraseology is also present in our data. Certain combinations of words (‘lexical

bundles’) or phrases tend to be used with positive evaluation. Some of the examples
include the following: breathing a sigh of relief, feel good, would be a good start,
has to be a change of culture.
Person reference can emphasize positive evaluation as well. Direct expression of
positive feelings is found with the first-person reference: I am glad; We sincerely
hope. In our study of negative evaluation, we found that certain third-person
expressions such as those people could be used pejoratively, perhaps because of the
distance involved in the demonstrative reference.
A single example of enumeration that occurred in our corpus appeared to con-
tribute to positive evaluation, as we see in (10), where the evaluation is built
incrementally by listing all the positive features of a device.
(10) But with the latest iPhone or iPad you can check the weather, take pictures, have a
FaceTime chat with a loved one in another city (anywhere in the world, really), send
and receive email, browse the Web, track your BP, play a game while waiting for a
bus, look up a word in a dictionary, check a fact pertinent to a discussion you are
having, check how your team is doing in the standings, shop, research your next big
purchase, read a PDF, look up a recipe, tune an instrument, translate a phrase into a
another language. I could literally go on for a couple of days to enumerate the
hundreds of thousands of things you can do with a smartphone.
In our data, we did not find examples that reflect discourse or semantic prosody.
Discourse prosody refers to the intrinsic positive or negative connotations that a
word carries, by virtue of its association with overtly positive or negative items
(Hunston 2011; Louw 1993). We cannot draw strong conclusive statements on this
parameter, since the number of examples that we analysed is relatively small, but it
is significant that, in most of the examples that Louw discusses, the semantic
prosody associated with certain expressions (bent on and symptomatic of) is often
negative.
After we finalized the corpus analysis on positive evaluation, we concluded that
two additional parameters are relevant to positive evaluation—modal and impera-
tive forms. Modals seem to be used to suggest courses of action or potential
solutions to problems. In particular, deontic expressions (you shouldn’t do that; you
ought to do X), which can appear in orders, commands, or expressions of obliga-
tion, take on a more positive tone in our examples, proposing how a problem may
be solved, or the writer’s desire for a better state of affairs, as seen in example (11).
(11) Continuing to live in the past and rightly criticize past treatment by the white man
may feel good but is done at great cost to the First Nations people. FN need to look to
the future, not the past.
Imperatives in our examples suggest positive and/or constructive solutions as well,

as we can see in (12), (13), and (14).
(12) Let’s think about debt repayment.
(13) Let’s focus on funding healthcare and re-listing services de-listed by governments.
(14) Stop violence against women and children!
Positive evaluation can be emphasized with expressed quantities of ‘something

good’, such as in (15).
(15) The Apple Watch actually offers quite a bit of utility as far as wrist adornments go,
but it is first and foremost something to look good.
10.4.2 Phenomena in Discourse Semantics
The more drastic difference between positive and negative evaluation is in the
sphere of discourse semantics. In the 250 examples that we examined, we did not
find a single case of a positive evaluation that contains a rhetorical figure, a
rhetorical question, or direct/indirect speech. It seems that cognitive processing of a
positive event reflects on language use—as suggested by Schrauf and Sanchez
(2004)—in that positive emotions are accompanied by schema-based cognitive
processing, while negative emotions are accompanied by detailed systematic cog-
nitive processing. Language that describes a positive event is less complex and less
metaphorical.
10.5 The Semantics of Positive Adjectives
Table 10.2 shows that the vast majority of positive evaluations is conveyed by
means of positive adjectives. This section details the semantics of a sample of such
adjectives that occurred in our data.
Our classification of positive adjectives is based on the same corpus as our
previous work on the semantics of adjectives, to which the reader is referred to
more information. In Goddard et al. (2019), together with a method of
trial-and-error experimentation that allowed us to identify five different templates,
natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) was used to represent both the templates and
the meaning of individual adjectives. There are certainly a number of adjectives that
may not fall under any of these templates, but that we did not consider in our initial
study, because we were inspired by adjectives that appeared in movie reviews. One
such adjective is nice, a cultural keyword in Australian (and other varieties of)
English that has multiple positive connotations (see Waters 2017 for a study
focusing on Australian English).
We labelled the five templates A, B (subtypes B1 and B2), C, and D. Short
descriptions of the adjectives that come under each template are as follows:
• Adjectives that fall under Template A, such as awesome and awful, were
characterized as ‘first-person thought-plus-feeling’ words. These words were
considered overtly subjective.
• Those that fell under the two B templates, e.g. interesting, boring, stunning,
disgusting, were termed experiential evaluators. They involved both thought
and feeling.
• B2 was the more complex of the two B templates because it included an
additional component that alluded to a potential bodily effect on the experiencer
(gripping and exciting).
• Template C covered words that imply a lasting impact on the experiencer, e.g.
inspiring and depressing.
• The final group, Template D, included purely cognitive evaluations that do not
encode any feeling (original and dismal).
In Sects. 10.5.1–10.5.4, we present all templates and, as stated previously, provide
explications for a selection of adjectives implying positive evaluation. Apart from
the SFU Opinion and Comments Corpus (SOCC) (Kolhatkar et al., under review),
where we found the analysed adjectives, we also consulted the Corpus of
Contemporary American English (COCA, Davies 2008) to check the collocations
in which these adjectives occur.
10.5.1 The Semantics of Positive Adjectives in Template A
Template A is modelled predominantly for an attributive use of the adjective.

Adjectives falling under Template A can be characterized as ‘first-person
thought-plus-feeling’, and they are strongly ‘feeling-related’. They have the fol-
lowing opening component: ‘I think about this X like this: …’, which is succeeded
by a thought that begins with an evaluation such as ‘this X is (very) good’ or a
variant. The middle part of an explication represents the thought component, which
differs for each adjective. The template is completed with an element indicating that
on account of thinking in this particular way, the speaker feels ‘something (very)
good’ (or: ‘(very) bad’).5
Template A, e.g. a great movie, a wonderful performance
I think about this X like this: “FIRST-PERSON” THOUGHT
“---------- THOUGHT CONTENT

----------”
when I think like this, I feel something (very) good/bad because of it FEELING
Many of the adjectives in this group can be used as predicative complements of

the verb feel to characterize one’s own feelings, e.g. I feel terrific. Some of them
can be used by themselves as self-contained expressive utterances as well: e.g.
Great! Wonderful! In this subsection, we take a closer look at two adjectives, used
as predicative complements, that belong to Template A. The first explication is for
the adjective pleased, which conveys the meaning ‘feeling satisfaction, especially at
an event or a situation’, as in example (16).
(16) To reform the port’s governance, said he was pleased to see that all the candidates
have real experience in port management.
The explication is straightforward with the central part (second row) referring to the
content of the thought that triggers the emotion of pleasure.
I feel pleased
I think about this X like this:
“when X happens, I think: ‘This is +good for me’

I feel good because X happened”
when I think like this, I feel something good because of it
The second adjective from Template A is thankful, the meaning of which is

related to the feeling of relief. Example (17) illustrates this meaning.
5
Many of the adjectives in Template A are characterized by strong evaluation.
(17) He is safe, she thought, be thankful for that. But she could not hold on to her relief.
We suggest the following explication for this adjective:

I feel thankful
I think about X like this:
“I know that X is good for me

I want X to happen
I feel very good when X happens”
when I think like this, I feel something very good because of it
This explication could have an additional component that includes expressing

gratitude for a specific situation or act, such as ‘I can say something good to
someone who made X happen’. This is an optional component since the feeling of
gratitude does not need to be verbally expressed.
10.5.2 The Semantics of Positive Adjectives in Templates B1

and B2
Semantically, words belonging to Template B differ from Template A words in that

they are less explicitly subjective. The main notion for these templates is that they
invoke a hypothetical ‘someone’ and the explications attribute certain thoughts and
associated feelings to this hypothetical someone. The adjectives that fall under
templates B1 and B2 say something about someone’s ‘experience’ of the things
being evaluated.
Experiential evaluation can take place in two aspectual frames: durational and
non-durational. Many experiential adjectives, especially present participial adjec-
tives in -ing, e.g. amazing, entertaining, surprising, are inherently durational
(imperfective-like) in that they imply an experience that takes place over some
period of time. Other experiential evaluators, such as funny, are not inherently
durational but may acquire an iterative interpretation when combined with certain
kinds of nouns. For example, a funny face can strike us as such in a single moment,
but when we speak of a funny movie, we imply that a reader can experience many
funny moments while watching this movie (see Goddard 2017 for an explication of
funny). In durational contexts, experiential evaluation can be characterized in terms
of a certain kind of thought that can repeatedly occur to someone over the time
period in question, linked with a certain kind of accompanying feeling. The
semantic explications will therefore include the component: ‘during this time, this
someone can think like this at many times: “[…]”’, followed by ‘when this
someone thinks like this, he/she can feel something good/bad because of it’. In
non-durational contexts, experiential evaluation can be characterized in terms of a

certain kind of thought occurring at one particular time.
Template B1 appears below in its durational version.
Template B1, e.g. an interesting documentary, a compelling performance
during this time (e.g. when someone watches this film, reads this book; when DURATIONAL FRAME
certain things are happening to someone),
this someone can think like this at many times: POTENTIAL THOUGHT
“---------- THOUGHT
-----------”
when this someone thinks like this, he/she can feel something ((very) FEELING
good/bad) because of it
In the following, we provide explications for the adjectives hilarious and

amazing, both of which belong here.
The explication for hilarious contains the meaning that refers to ‘laughing’,
which necessitates the semantic molecule to laugh in the explication. Semantic
molecules are building blocks of higher semantic complexity, whose meaning is
decomposable into smaller atomic meanings. The meaning of the adjective hilar-
ious is exemplified in the following sentence:
(18) Kauffman says that no matter how many hilarious bits of business they added to the
Ross/Rachel argument, it did not play.
(a) hilarious X, e.g. a hilarious story, a hilarious joke.
during this time (when certain things are happening to someone)
this someone can think like this at many times:
“some things are happening now

I feel very good because of it, like people often feel when they want to laugh [m] a lot”
when this someone thinks like this, he/she can feel something very good because of it
The medium part of the explication has the component ‘I feel very good because
of it’, since hilarious captures a very intense feeling. The component that follows
includes the idea of people feeling as they often do when they want to laugh.
A similar concept to the last component is used in the explication of the adjective
entertaining in Goddard et al. (2019).
The component of something ‘very good’ but ‘unexpected’ is found in the
explication for the adjective amazing. There is a strong tendency for amazing in our
data to occur modified by the adverb pretty, as in example (19). Pretty acts as an
intensifier in our data, in our view.
(19) Joe is pretty amazing. You think about all the players that have gone through here.
We suggest the following explication for the above adjective:

(an) amazing X, e.g. an amazing movie, an amazing actress
“something is happening now

it is very good
people can think about it like this: ‘it can’t be like this’”
when this someone thinks like this, he/she can feel something good because of it
The adjectives that belong to Template B2 follow a similar structure to those that
belong to Template B1, but with an extra component—some kind of potential
bodily reaction.
Template B2, e.g. a tense scene, a suspenseful plot
during this time (e.g. when someone watches this film, reads this book; when DURATIONAL FRAME
certain things happen to someone),
this someone can think like this at many times: POTENTIAL THOUGHT
“---------- THOUGHT
----------”
when this someone thinks like this, this someone can (or: can’t not) feel FEELING
something (very) good/bad because of it
at the same time he/she can feel something in the body because of it and/or: BODILY REACTION
at the same time something can happen in his/her body because of it
Below are explications for two adjectives: humorous and comfortable. The
semantics of the adjective humorous implies the bodily sensation of ‘feeling good’
because a humorous experience is amusing and makes one feel positive. An
example and the explication are presented below.
(20) The children’s book illustrates a humorous connection between penguins and
humans.
(a) humorous X, e.g. a humorous person, a humorous story.
during this time (when certain things are happening to someone),
“because I see/hear this something happening, I want to laugh [m]”
The adjective comfortable can also be explicated as ‘something happening in the

body because someone feels something good’. We demonstrated the explication for
the semantics of the adjective comfortable that implies ‘providing physical ease and
relaxation’, as in example (21).
(21) He was said to be comfortable in the West Highland Hospital.
Below is the explication:

(a) comfortable X, e.g. a comfortable life, a comfortable chair.
“something is good
I feel as I want to feel because of it”
10.5.3 The Semantics of Positive Adjectives in Template C
The meaning of adjectives that belong to Template C is focused on a lasting impact

on the experiencer. The middle section in the explication, labelled ‘after-effect’,
contains psychological components, i.e. components that hinge on semantic primes
such as THINK and FEEL after which the final component of the template implies a
broad evaluation as either good or bad. The template for this group of adjectives is
given below:
Template C, e.g. an inspiring movie, a haunting melody
when someone does something like this for some time (e.g. watches this film, EFFECT
reads this book, listens to this music), something happens to this someone
because of it
because of this, for some time afterwards it is like this: AFTER-EFFECT

…………
…………
people can think about it like this: “this is good/bad” SOCIAL EVALUATION
The first adjective that we explicate within this template is refreshing. According
to Oxford online dictionary of English, the adjective refreshing has the meaning
‘welcome or stimulating because new and different’ (whether in the physical or
mental sense). This does not necessarily constitute polysemy, as the sense of being
refreshed can apply in both cases.
(22) Marcy’s voice, as refreshing against his ear as a spring breeze in the twilight,
interrupted his thoughts.
(a) refreshing X, e.g. a refreshing drink, a refreshing change.
when someone does something like this for some time, something happens to this someone
because of it
because of this, for some time afterwards it is like this:

this someone feels good now because of it
this someone can do much more of something because of it
people can think about it like this: “this is good”
The ‘new’ and ‘stimulating’ effect of this adjective is characterized with the
potential of an agent to do certain activity which is expressed with the lines: ‘This
someone feels good now because of it, this someone can do much more of
something because of it’.
The semantics of the positive adjective relieved contains the meaning of ‘no
longer feeling distressed’. The agent of this verb has felt anxiety while expecting
something bad to happen. Instead ‘something good happens’, and the agent starts
feeling better. This state of ‘feeling better’ lasts for some time, as illustrated in (23).
(23) He was relieved to be getting her call, given the outcome of his last case.
The explication below captures the meaning of relieved.

(a) relieved X, e.g. a relieved smile, a relieved face.
when someone does something like this for some time

something happens to this someone because of it
because of this, for some time afterwards it is like this:

this someone thought that bad things would happen
this someone felt bad because of it
after something good happened, this someone felt better
this someone feels as he/she would like to feel because of it
people can think about it like this: “this is good”
10.5.4 The Semantics of Positive Adjectives in Template D
The final template includes adjectives that have purely cognitive meaning; that is,
they involve the attribution of a certain kind of evaluative thought without
attributing any associated feeling. They imply ‘a holistic appraisal’. The template
for the adjectives in this group is the following:
Template D, e.g. an original story, a clever plan
if someone knows what this X is like, KNOWLEDGE BASE
he/she can think about it (or: about someone) like this: POTENTIAL THOUGHT
“---------- THOUGHT
----------”
We present here the explications for two adjectives: critical and noble. We
created two explications for the adjective critical based on the data from our corpus.
The first one involves the meaning of ‘inclined to criticize something’6; the other
involves a ‘turning point’ in some course of action, which is exemplified in the two
sentences below. This is a case of polysemy, one meaning relating to criticize and
the other one to crisis.
(24) The great majority of legal academics and moral philosophers are critical of ven-
geance for precisely these reasons.
(25) Given the importance of regulations, it is critical to understand the process.
6
Although we are aware that the first meaning of the adjective critical does not bear positive
evaluation, we decided to provide an explication for it.
(a) critical1 X, e.g. a critical review, a critical article.
if someone knows what this X is like,
he/she can think about it (or: about someone) like this:
“this someone thinks bad things about X

this someone can say bad things about X
this someone thinks that these bad things should not happen”
(b) critical2 X, e.g. a critical period, a critical election.
“at this moment X should be done

if X does not happen, some bad things will happen”
The final adjective in this chapter that we devised NSM explications for is the
adjective noble. We considered the following two components important to its
meaning: (1) possessing outstanding qualities and (2) having aristocratic rank, as in
example (26).
(26) The ancient and noble family of House Stark trace their blood to the First Men
12,000 years ago.
(a) noble, e.g. a noble person, a noble intention.
“this X can be better than many others

many people can know about X
people want to be like this X
this X can be one of the people that make other people live and do things as he/she wants”
10.6 Conclusion
The goal of this chapter was to investigate the linguistic expression of positive
evaluation. We described a preliminary typology of the devices that are deployed
for positive evaluation and compared it with those that are used for negative
evaluation. The main conclusion of our work is that positive evaluation does not
employ rhetorical figures to the same extent as negative evaluation. Using

corpus-assisted analysis, we chose to explicate ten adjectives that carry positive
meaning, which fit into the classification of adjectives previously described in
Goddard et al. (2019). As with negative evaluation, the NSM approach once again
proved to be a powerful analytical tool to semantically describe evaluation as a
language phenomenon. We believe that the NSM method would be equally suc-
cessful in the explication of neutral adjectives.
Acknowledgements Funding for this research was provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada. Our work with Cliff Goddard over the last few years has
been funded by successive Griffith University-Simon Fraser University Collaborative Travel
Grants.
References
Benamara, F., Cesarano, C., Picariello, A., Reforgiato, D., & Subrahmanian, V. S. (2007).
Sentiment analysis: Adjectives and adverbs are better than adjectives alone. In Proceedings of
the 2006 International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (Boulder, Colorado).
Borchers, T. (2006). Rhetorical theory: An introduction. Long Grove: Waveland.
Boucher, J. D., & Osgood, C. E. (1969). The Pollyanna hypothesis. Journal of Verbal Learning
and Verbal Behaviour, 8(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(69)80002-2.
Carretero, M., & Taboada, M. (2014). Appraisal in English and Spanish consumer reviews of
books and movies: A contrastive study of the expression of graduation within the scope of
attitude. In G. Thompson, & L. Alba-Juez (Eds.), Evaluation in context (pp. 221–240).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.242.11car.
Dodds, P. S., Clark, E. M., Desu, S., Frank, M. R., Reagan, A. J., Williams, J. R., et al. (2015).
Human language reveals a positivity bias. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
112(8), 2389–2394.
Goddard, C. (2006). ‘Lift your game, Martina!’ Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics of
Australian English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in
9783110911114.65.
Goddard, C. (2011). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction, 2nd edn. Oxford: OUP.
1016/j.langcom.2016.09.008.
Goddard, C., Taboada, M., & Trnavac, R. (2016). Semantic descriptions of 24 evoluational
adjectives, for application in sentiment analysis (Technical report SFU-CMPT TR 2016-42-1).
Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, School of Computing Science.
Goddard, C., Taboada, M., & Trnavac, R. (2019). The semantics of evaluational adjectives:
Perspectives from Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Appraisal. Functions of Language, 26
(3), in press.
languages, and cultures. Oxford: OUP.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An introduction to Functional Grammar (1st ed.). London: Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014). An introduction to Functional Grammar
(4th ed.). London: Arnold.
Hunston, S. (2011). Corpus approaches to evaluation: Phraseology and evaluative language.
New York: Routledge.
Jing-Schmidt, Z. (2007). Negativity bias in language: A cognitive-affective model of emotive

intensifiers. Cognitive Linguistics, 18(3), 417–443. https://doi.org/10.1515/COG.2007.023.
Kaplan, N. (2007). La construcción discursiva del evento conflictivo en las noticias por televisión.
PhD dissertation, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela.
Kolhatkar, V., Wu, H., Cavasso, L., Francis, E., Shukla, K., & Taboada, M. (under review).
The SFU Opinion and Comments Corpus: A corpus for the analysis of online news comments.
Louw, B. (1993). Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic
prosodies. In M. Baker, G. Francis, & E. Tognini-Bonelli (Eds.), Text and technology: In
honour of John Sinclair (pp. 157–176). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/
z.64.11lou.
Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). The language of evaluation. New York: Palgrave.
Peeters, B. (Ed.). (2006). Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical evidence from the
Romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.81.
Phillips, W., & Milner, R. M. (2018). The ambivalent internet: Mischief, oddity, and antagonism
online. Malden: Wiley.
Reagle, J. M. (2015). Reading the comments: Likers, haters, and manipulators at the bottom of the
Web. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Rozin, P., Berman, L., & Royzman, E. B. (2010). Biases in use of positive and negative words
across twenty natural languages. Cognition and Emotion, 24(3), 536–548. https://doi.org/10.
1080/02699930902793462.
Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(4), 296–320. https://doi.org/10.1207/
S15327957PSPR0504_2.
Schrauf, R. W., & Sanchez, J. (2004). The preponderance of negative emotion words in the
emotion lexicon: A cross-generational and cross-linguistic study. Journal of multilingual and
multicultural development, 25(2/3), 266–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434630408666532.
Taboada, M., Carretero, M., & Hinnell, J. (2014). Loving and hating the movies in English,
German and Spanish. Languages in Contrast, 14(1), 127–161. https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.14.1.
07tab.
Taboada, M., Trnavac, R., & Goddard, C. (2017). On being negative. Corpus Pragmatics, 1(1),
57–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-017-0006-y.
Waters, S. (2017). Nice as a cultural keyword. In C. Levisen & S. Waters (Eds.), Cultural
keywords in discourse (pp. 25–54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.
277.02wat.
Wiebe, J. (2000). Learning subjective adjectives from corpora. In Proceedings of the 17th National
Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 735–740). Austin: AAAI.
Wierzbicka, A. (1972). Semantic primitives. Frankfurt: Athenaeum.
Wierzbicka, A. (2014). “Pain” and “suffering” in cross-linguistic perspective. International
Journal of Language & Culture, 1(2), 149–173.
Radoslava Trnavac is Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University
of Belgrade. Her research focuses on the analysis of evaluation in discourse, subjectivity,
sentiment detection, and corpus linguistics.
Maite Taboada is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at SFU. Her research combines
discourse analysis and computational linguistics, with an emphasis on discourse relations and
sentiment analysis. Current work focuses on the analysis of online comments, drawing insights
from corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and big data. She is Director of the Discourse
Processing Lab at SFU.
Chapter 11
The Conceptual Semantics of Alienable
Possession in Amharic
Mengistu Amberber
Abstract This chapter investigates the semantics of alienable possession in

Amharic, with particular reference to a recent proposal in the natural semantic
metalanguage (NSM) framework according to which ‘true possession’ or ‘owner-
ship’ is more adequately expressed by the semantic prime (IS) MINE than by the (now
abandoned) prime HAVE (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2016). The chapter argues that
this claim is borne out by data from Amharic. It will be shown that the verb allə
‘have’ cannot reliably distinguish between true possession and other types of
possessive relations, whereas the sequence jəne nəw ‘it is mine’ is consistently
associated with ownership. The chapter also briefly examines the semantics of two
sets of verbs təbəddərə ‘borrow’/abəddərə ‘lend’, and wərrəsə ‘inherit’/awərrəsə
‘bequeath’, in which the semantic prime for alienable possession plays a key role. It
is hoped that the chapter will contribute towards a lexical semantic typology of
possession concepts.

Keywords Amharic Definiteness Inalienable possession Lexical semantics
Natural semantic metalanguage
11.1 Introduction
The semantics of possession has been the subject of a recent study by Goddard and
Wierzbicka (2016) within the framework of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM).
The authors focus on what linguists refer to as ‘true possession’ or ‘ownership’,
excluding ‘inalienable’ possession found in the expression of part–whole relations
and kinship relations.
A central tenet of the NSM framework is reductive paraphrase, an approach to
semantic analysis that explains meaning by using simpler words (primes) which
themselves cannot be explained further without resulting in circularity. There are
M. Amberber (&)
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
e-mail: m.amberber@unsw.edu.au

208 M. Amberber
currently 65 such primes, all of which are assumed to be universal (or near uni-
versal). The English exponent of the semantic prime for possession is (IS) MINE, and
its canonical frame is predicative with a subject that denotes a thing: ‘It (=this
thing)’. This prime was introduced to replace the prime HAVE (SOMETHING). Goddard
and Wierzbicka (2016) argue that the main justification for abandoning HAVE
(SOMETHING) as a prime is its ‘extreme polysemy’ and multifunctionality. In English,
for instance, have can occur in a wide range of constructions with different meanings
as in I have a watch, I have a child, I have two hands, etc. The construction I have a
watch, for example, could refer to true ownership or mean something like ‘I have a
watch here (“on me”)’ (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2016: 95). While exponents of
semantic primes may have a range of polysemous meanings, it turns out that ‘the
polysemy of have is much more extensive than usual’. A less polysemous and less
multifunctional prime was therefore to be preferred, as long as it could be motivated
on empirical grounds. Goddard and Wierzbicka (2016) argue, convincingly, that the
prime (IS) MINE is more suited for capturing the semantics of true possession/
ownership than the prime HAVE (SOMETHING).
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the conceptual semantics of (alienable)
possession in Amharic. First, we look at the empirical coverage of the Amharic
exponent of the (old) prime allə ‘have’ (Amberber 2008) to determine if it poses the
same difficulties identified by Goddard and Wierzbicka (2016) for its English
equivalent have. Second, we examine the Amharic prime jəne (nəw) ‘(IS) MINE’ and
explore the extent to which it is empirically better than the old exponent. Third, we
look at the semantics of two sets of verbs that imply alienable possession, namely
təbəddərə ‘borrow’/abəddərə ‘lend’, and wərrəsə ‘inherit’/awərrəsə ‘bequeath’. It
is hoped that the chapter will contribute towards ‘a lexical semantic typology of
‘ownership-related’ concepts in the languages of the world’ (Goddard and
Wierzbicka 2016: 93).
11.2 The Verb allə, Exponent of the Former Semantic

Prime HAVE
In Amberber (Amberber 2008: 103–104), it was shown that the verb allə is the
Amharic exponent of what was then the semantic prime HAVE.1 It was noted that this
exponent was polysemous as it is also the lexicalization of the prime THERE IS. To
illustrate this, consider examples (1) to (3)2:
1
The verb allə has suppletive past and future forms, nəbbərə and norə respectively, which also
function independently as existential verbs.
2
The following abbreviations are used in interlinear glosses: ACC = accusative; APL = applicative;
ATT = attenuative; AUX = auxiliary verb; COP = copula; CSD = direct causative; DEF = definite article;
F = feminine; GEN = genitive; IPFV = imperfective verb; M = masculine; MEDP = medio-passive;
NEG = negation; NPST = non-past tense; OBJ = object or non-subject agreement; PL = plural;
PFV = perfective verb; S = singular; SBJ = subject.
11 The Conceptual Semantics of Alienable Possession … 209
(1) ɨzzih səbat lɨdʒ-otʃtʃ all-u

here seven child-PL exist\PFV-SBJ.3PL
‘There are seven children here.’
(2) aster səbat lɨdʒ-otʃtʃ all-u-wat
Aster seven child-PL exist\PFV-SBJ.3PL-OBJ.3SF
‘Aster has seven children.’
(3) aster bɨzu gize all-at
Aster lot time exist\PFV-SBJ.3SM-OBJ.3SF
‘Aster has a lot of time.’
In (1), we see the existential use of the verb allə ‘there is’: the subject of the verb is
‘seven children’ as can be seen from the subject agreement on the verb (see Leslau
1995; Yimam 1997). In Amharic, subject agreement on the verb is obligatory,
whereas object agreement is governed by a variety of factors including definiteness
and specificity of the object, among others (Leslau 1995; Yimam 1996; Baker 2012;
Baker and Kramer 2014; Kramer 2014). In (2), the same form occurs as the
predicate, but notice that subject agreement is with the possessed NP (=‘seven
children’), whereas object agreement is with the possessor (=‘Aster’).3 The object
agreement marker in this context is obligatory. Example (3) shows that the
possessed argument can be an abstract entity, such as ‘time’, ‘idea’.
Before we determine the suitability of allə as an exponent for the expression of
(alienable) possession, let us first look at the prime jəne (nəw) ‘(IS) MINE’.
11.3 jəne (nəw), Exponent of the Current Semantic Prime

(IS) MINE
The prime jəne (nəw) ‘(IS) MINE’ is expressed by juxtaposing the possessive pronoun
and the copula, as in (4).
(4) jə-ne nəw

GEN-I COP.NPST.3SM
‘(It) is mine.’
Amharic allows the omission of overt subjects (‘it’), but as the copula is marked for
subject agreement; the construction is interpreted as agreeing with a third person
singular masculine subject. Note that the form of the possessor pronoun is itself
complex: it is formed by attaching the relational particle jə-4 to the independent
3
One possible analysis of this construction is to say that the possessor NP is actually in a dislocated
or extraposed syntactic position (Hetzron 1970: 307).
4
This particle has a range of functions, including marking the genitive and the relative clause (cf.
Leslau 1995: 191ff; Kapeliuk 1994).
210 M. Amberber
personal pronoun ɨne ‘I’ jə-(ɨ)ne ‘my’. The initial vowel of the independent pronoun
is elided when jə- is attached to it by a general vowel elision rule.
The possessive pronoun can also occur as adnominal modifier:
(5) jə-ne wənbər

GEN-I chair
‘my chair’
A noun phrase can occur in a copula construction, as when one points to an object,
for example, a chair and says:
(6) jə-ne wənbər nəw5

GEN-I chair COP.NPST.3SG.M
‘It is my chair.’
This should not be confused with the ‘(it) is mine’ construction despite the use of
the formally identical pronoun in both constructions (i.e. ‘my’ and ‘mine’ are
expressed by the same form).
We note here that Amharic has a set of possessive suffixes that mark the pos-
sessor by directly attaching to the possessed noun:
(7) wənbər -e
chair-my
‘my chair’
Thus, while formally different, (5), jə-ne wənbər, and (7), wənbər -e, have exactly
the same meaning ‘my chair’. That they are marking the same category can be seen
in their complementary distribution: if the possessive pronoun is used, the pos-
sessive suffix cannot occur on the possessed noun:
(8) *jə-ne wənbər -e

GEN-I chair-my
However, the genitive marker and the possessive suffix can occur on the same noun
with different functions. Consider (9):
(9) jə-wənbər -e
GEN-chair-my
‘my chair’s’
5
The root of the copula verb, the single segment *n-, cannot occur by itself: it must be inflected for
person, number and gender. It also has irregular past and negative forms—nəbbərə ‘it was’ and
ajdəlləmm ‘it is not’, respectively. A detailed discussion of the inflectional properties of this verb,
including gender distinction (as suggested by an anonymous reviewer) will take us too far afield.
The interested reader may consult Leslau’s (1995) comprehensive reference grammar.
As we saw, the prime jəne (nəw) ‘(IS) MINE’ involves the copula verb that agrees
with the possessed noun in subject position. This can be seen clearly in the contrast
between (10) and (11):
(10) wənbər-u jə-ne nəw

chair-DEF.M GEN-I COP.NPST.3SM
‘The chair is mine’
(11) wənbər-otʃtʃ-u jə-ne natʃtʃəw
chair-PL-DEF GEN-I COP.NPST.3PL
‘The chairs are mine’
Note also that the possessive pronoun jə-ne is used predicatively. Thus, in the
exchange in (12), jə-ne can stand alone:
(12) Q. jə-mann wənbər nəw?

GEN-who chair COP.NPST.3SM
‘Whose chair is it?’
A. jə-ne
GEN-I
‘Mine’
*‘My’
Before we look at how this semantic prime can be used to explicate possessive
verbs, let us look at some of its grammatical properties in more detail. One inter-
esting fact is that the possessed NP seems to be typically definite or specific.
Consider (13):
(13) *wənbər jə-ne nəw

chair GEN-I COP.NPST.3SG.M
(*‘A chair is mine’)
(13) sounds distinctly odd. Interestingly, the same oddity arises with the equivalent
English construction: *a chair is mine. Compare this with the well-formed con-
structions: the chair is mine; it is mine; that chair is mine; all the chairs are mine;
each chair is mine; every chair is mine. It appears that as long as the possessed NP
is definite the use of the predicate ‘is mine’ is acceptable. It becomes illicit when it
is indefinite.
Interestingly, the opposite seems to be true for possessive have, in that typically
the complement of ‘have’ is indefinite.6 This is most clearly seen when the com-
plement of have is a kinship term (Tham 2006: 137):
(14) a. Eliza has a/three/some sister(s).

b. Eliza has #every/#the sister(s).
6
While it can be definite it has a different (not necessarily possessive) interpretation.
212 M. Amberber
This phenomenon is reminiscent of the well-known definiteness effect (DE) of

existential constructions—There is a man versus *There is the man—that has been
studied extensively in the syntactic literature (Milsark 1974; Safir 1987). Tham
(2006) argues, convincingly, that even when the complement of have is
non-relational (i.e. alienable), the definiteness effect holds. Tham (2006: 138) fur-
ther argues that ‘definite non-relational complements to have are odd
discourse-initially’. Furthermore, ‘even when not discourse-initial, have sentences
containing a definite non-relational complement are not felicitous in all contexts’, as
can be seen in the exchange in (15), proposed by Tham:
(15) a. This is a good mirror.

b. #Eliza has it.
Parallel utterances from Amharic, with the existential verb allə used to express the
meaning ‘have’, are given in (16):
(16) a. jɨh t’ɨru wənbər nəw

this good chair COP.NPST.3SM
‘This is a good chair’
b. #aster all-at
Aster exist\PFV-SBJ.3SM-OBJ.3SF
‘Aster has it’
The question, then, is: why is I have a chair grammatical, whereas *‘A chair is
mine’ is not, either in Amharic or in English? The distinction has been used to
describe the typology of possessive predication. Thus, the terms indefinite pos-
sessive predication and definite possessive predication are used to refer to have
possessives (‘I have x’) and belong possessives (‘x is mine’), respectively (Tham
2013). A detailed investigation of this phenomenon is beyond the scope of the
present chapter, but one plausible approach is to assume that the definite possessive
predication involves ellipsis (see Tham 2013 and references therein): the chair is
mine = the chair is my chair. Whatever analysis turns out to be correct, it is obvious
that the have construction does not exclusively mark true ownership. In (17),
ownership is implied but not entailed, as Tham (2006: 138) pointed out; that this
sentence is not contradictory shows that have does not encode true ownership.
(17) Eliza has a mirror, but it does not belong to her.
11.4 Comparing allə ‘HAVE’ with jəne (nəw) ‘(IS) MINE’
One of Goddard and Wierzbicka’s (2016) motivations for removing HAVE from the
inventory of semantic primes is its extensive multifunctionality and polysemy,
compared to ‘it’s mine’ constructions in which the entity in the subject position is
possessed, whereas the entity in the complement position is the possessor.

Interestingly, when we look at the allə construction, we find that it seems to have
exactly the same pattern: the possessed entity controls subject agreement, whereas
the possessor controls object agreement. One could then argue that the verb allə in
Amharic is formally and semantically closer to the ‘x is mine’ construction than to
the ‘I have x’ construction. However, we maintain that allə is much more multi-
functional than the exponent of (IS) MINE, as it can be used to express all three types
of possession—ownership, part–whole relations, and kinship relations—as shown
in (18):
(18) a. bet allə-ɲɲ

house exist\PFV-SBJ.3SM-OBJ.1S
‘I have a house.’
b. rəʒʒim s'əggur all-at
long hair exist\PFV-SBJ.3SM-OBJ.1S
‘She has long hair.’
c. tɨllɨk’ wəndɨmm allə-w
big brother exist\PFV.SBJ .3SM-OBJ.3SM
‘He has an elder brother.’
The ‘(it) is mine’ construction, on the other hand, is acceptable with ownership, as
shown in (19a), but it is either ungrammatical or rather odd with part–whole and
kinship relations as can be seen in (19b) and (19c), respectively:
(19) a. bet-u jə-ne nəw

house-DEF.M GEN-I COP.NPST.3SM
‘The house is mine.’
b. *rəʒʒim-u s'əggur jə-sswa nəw
long-DEF.M hair GEN-her COP.NPST.3SM
(Intended: ‘The long hair is hers.’)
c. *?tɨllɨk’-u wəndɨmm jə-ssu nəw
big-DEF.M brother GEN-he COP.NPST.3SM
(Intended: ‘The elder brother is his’)
Thus, jəne (nəw) ‘(IS) MINE’ is best suited to express ‘true’ possession (ownership) as
predicted by Goddard and Wierzbicka’s (2016) analysis. We will therefore employ
the prime jəne (nəw) in the following sections to explore the conceptual semantics
of other verbs of acquisition.
Before we leave this section, we note that when the possessed is an abstract
entity such as ‘time’, or ‘idea’, the ‘(it) is mine’ frame does sound odd:
?
(20) gize-w jə-ne nəw
time-DEF.M GEN-I COP.NPST.3SM
(Intended: ‘The time is mine.’)
Recall that such abstract entities can be possessed easily in the allə ‘have’
construction:
214 M. Amberber
(21) gɨze allə-ɲɲ

time exist\PFV.3SM-OBJ.1S
‘I have time.’
It is not clear why (20) sounds odd. The preferred reading is if the word gɨze
glossed as ‘time’ is interpreted as ‘moment’, or ‘era’, as in ‘the moment is mine’,
which is not the intended meaning in (20). Note that it is not the case that all
abstract entities cannot be possessed in the ‘is mine’ frame. For example, if we
replace ‘time’ with ‘idea’ the construction becomes fine:
(22) hassab-u jə-ne nəw

idea-DEF.M GEN-1SG COP.NPST.3SG.M
‘The idea is mine.’
Why, then, does (20), and its equivalent in English, with ‘time’ as the possessed
entity, sound odd? Is it because ‘time’ is something that cannot be truly
‘possessed’? We leave this question for future work.7
11.5 The Meaning of tə-/a- bəddərə ‘Borrow’/‘Lend’
The concepts expressed by the verbs ‘borrow’ and ‘lend’ refer to the temporary
acquisition of things rather than the permanent transfer of ownership.8 Consider
(23):
(23) aster gənzəb tə-bəddər-ətʃtʃ

Aster money MEDP-borrow\PFV-3SF
‘Aster borrowed (some) money.’
The Agent (‘the borrower’) is mapped onto subject position, and the Theme (‘the
borrowed thing’) is mapped onto object position. The verb takes the prefix tə-,
which is used to mark the reflexive, passive and inchoative (anticausative). Now,
consider (24):
(24) almaz aster-ɨn gənzəb a-bəddər-ətʃtʃ-at

Almaz Aster-ACC money CSD-borrow\PFV-SBJ.3SF-OBJ.3SF
‘Almaz lent Aster (some) money.’
7
As an anonymous reviewer suggested, this may be due to the ‘non-static’ nature of time:
“something about its lack of boundedness or lack of delineation that leads to it being problematic
in the structures discussed”.
8
This notion of ‘temporary’ transfer of ownership may not be appropriate for describing the
meaning of financial borrowing, which we will look at later in this section.
The Agent (the lender) is mapped onto subject position; the Recipient (the bor-
rower) is mapped onto direct object position, whereas the Theme occurs as a
secondary object. Note that the same verb base is used in (24) but this time it is
marked by the causative prefix a- to derive a meaning equivalent to English lend. In
other words, the meanings expressed by two suppletive lexemes—borrow and lend
—in English, are expressed by derivationally related verbs in Amharic.9
Another pair of verbs, təwasə/awasə, can also be used to express the meaning
‘borrow’, but they can be used felicitously only with certain entities as a Theme.
(25) aster məs’haf tə-was-ətʃtʃ

Aster book REF-borrow\PFV-SBJ.3SF
‘Aster borrowed (a) book.’
(26) almaz aster-ɨn məs’haf a-was-ətʃtʃ-at
Almaz Aster-ACC book CSD-lend\PFV-SBJ.3SF-OBJ.3SF
‘Almaz lent Aster (a) book’.
If we replace ‘book’ with ‘money’, the constructions become unacceptable:
(27) *?aster gənzəb tə-was-ətʃtʃ

Aster money REF-borrow\PFV-SBJ.3SF
(28) *?almaz aster-ɨn gənzəb a-was-ətʃtʃ-at
Almaz Aster-ACC money CSD-lend\PFV-SBJ.3SF-OBJ.3SF
It appears that the verbs təwasə/awasə (based on the stem *-wasə) are typically used
if the entity that is borrowed is conceptualized as an object that ‘must be returned
specifically, not its equivalent’ (Kane 1990: 1517). In other words, the object must
be returned in the same physical shape/condition after the borrower’s perusal: it is
the same object that changes hands. In the case of financial borrowing, on the other
hand, the item borrowed and the item that is ‘returned’ or paid back to the lender,
are not physically identical, though they have the same value.10 Here is one attempt
at explicating the meaning of this verb using the prime (IS) MINE:
9
The basic stem of the verb, shown in examples (23) and (24), does not occur by itself. It belongs
to a class of verbs that require a valency encoding prefix to be well-formed (see Amberber 2002
and references therein).
10
The money paid back will have more value if it involves interest, the normal situation.
216 M. Amberber
[A] This someone X awas ə ‘lent’ someone else (Y) something (at that time)
this someone X did something to something at that time LEXICO-SYNTACTIC FRAME
because this someone wanted to do something good for someone else Y
because of this, something happened to this something at that time
at the same time something happened to this someone else
when someone does this to something, it is like this: SCENARIO
a short time before, someone thought like this about something:
“this something is mine, I can do with it as I want”
at the same time, this someone thought like this:
“I want it to be like this:
someone else can do some things with this something for some time as they want
after this time this something is not this other someone’s anymore
this something is mine
this something is like before”
because of this, this someone says something to this someone else
at the same time this someone does something to this something
because this someone X did this, after this, this other someone Y could think OUTCOME
like this about this something:
“I know that it is not mine
at the same time, I know that for some time I can do some things with it as I want”
The explication attempts to capture two key factors in the meaning of the verb
awasə. First, it encodes the temporary nature of the transfer by the temporal prime
FOR SOME TIME. As mentioned earlier, the transfer of the object is temporary—i.e. the
object has to be returned to the lender. Second, the explication captures the crucial
requirement that the object that is returned to the lender is the same object that was
lent—not its equivalent as it would be in the case of financial borrowing: this is
captured by the component ‘this something is like before’. In the following section,
we examine verbs that imply the existence of the prime jəne (nəw) ‘(IS) MINE’, thus
lending support to the proposed analysis.
11.6 The Meaning of wərrəsə ‘Inherit’ and awərrəsə

‘Bequeath’
The verb wərrəsə ‘inherit’ occurs with an Agent–Goal argument in the subject
position, and the Source as an optional adjunct:
(29) aster (kə-ɨnnat-wa) tɨllɨk’ bet wərrəs-ətʃtʃ

Aster (from-mother-her) big house inherit\PFV-SBJ.3SF
‘Aster inherited a big house from her mother.’
The verb can occur without a Theme (the thing inherited), with the Source marked
by the accusative case suffix—n and cross-referenced by obligatory object agree-
ment on the verb:
(30) aster ɨnnat-wa-n wərrəs-ətʃtʃ-at

Aster mother-her-ACC inherit\PFV-SBJ.3SF-OBJ.3SF
‘Aster inherited (something) (from) her mother.’
The verb wərrəsə can take the causative prefix to derive a form whose meaning is
equivalent to ‘bequeath’, whereby the Agent–Source is mapped onto subject
position and the Goal occurs in an adpositional phrase:
(31) almaz lə-lɨdʒ-wa tɨllɨk’ bet a-wərrəs-ətʃtʃ-(at)

Almaz to-daughter-her big house CSD-inherit\PFV-SBJ.3SF-OBJ.3SM
‘Almaz bequeathed the big house to her daughter.’
Like other ‘give’-type verbs, the verb awərrəsə can also occur in the double object
construction where the Goal is marked by the accusative case suffix—n and controls
object agreement on the verb:
(32) almaz lɨdʒ-wa-n tɨllɨk’ bet a-wərrəs-ətʃtʃ-at

Almaz daughter-her-ACC big house CSD-inherit\PFV-SBJ.3SF-OBJ.3SF
‘Almaz bequeathed the big house to her daughter.’
Importantly, the verb wərrəsə can also be used to refer to the forceful acquisition
of property by someone, usually a government authority—equivalent to ‘to con-
fiscate’ (cf. Kane 1990: 1502). Consider (33):
(33) məngɨst nɨbrət-wa-n wərrəsə-(bb)-at

government property-her-ACC inherit\PFV-SBJ.3SM-(APL)-OBJ.3SF
‘The government confiscated her property.’
Notice that when the verb is used to mean ‘confiscate’, it can be optionally
marked by the (malefactive) applicative suffix, -bb-, and the object agreement on
the verb is with the Source (not explicitly expressed in the above example).
The verb wərrəsə ‘inherit’ and its related derivations embody a key concept in
Amharic due to the cultural and economic importance of land ownership. For
example, the noun rɨst, which is morphologically related to the verb wərrəsə, is
defined by Kane (1990: 1503) as ‘land to which title is acquired by hereditary right
through descent from the original holder through any combination of male and
female ancestors; family land; estate’. The noun wəraʃ ‘inheritor’ can be found in a
number of collocations, including hɨggawi wəraʃ ‘legal heir’ (lit. ‘legal inheritor’)
and alga wəraʃ ‘crown prince’ (lit. ‘throne inheritor’).11 The meaning ‘crown
11
The gloss ‘throne’ for the word alga is not entirely accurate here as the word literally means
‘bed’. There is a separate word for ‘throne’ in Amharic: zufan.
218 M. Amberber
prince’ is interesting in that the individual so referred to has not yet become a king
but is the next in line to inherit the throne.
For the purpose of investigating the role of the prime jəne (nəw) ‘(IS) MINE’ in the
meaning of ‘inherit’/‘bequeath’, we will focus on the ‘canonical’ use of these verbs,
abstracting away from their other uses (such as the ‘forceful acquisition of prop-
erty’). We assume that this canonical use can be found when an individual
bequeaths their children some property.
[B] This someone X awərrəsə ‘bequeathed’ someone else Y something

(at that time)
someone X did something to something at that time LEXICO-SYNTACTIC FRAME
because this someone wanted to do something good for someone else Y
because of this, something happened to this something at that time
at the same time, something happened to this someone else
when someone does this to something, it is like this: SCENARIO
a short time before, someone thought like this about something:
“I want it to be like this:
after I die, someone else can say about this something: ‘it is mine’
because of this I want some people to know this now
it can be as I want if these people do something after I die”
because of this, this someone says something to these people
at the same time this someone does something to this something
because this someone X did this, after this someone X died, OUTCOME
this something was someone else’s, as this someone X wanted
The explication has close resemblance to the explication of the English verb give
(said of a gift) proposed by Goddard and Wierzbicka (2016: 101). This close
affinity between give and bequeath is of course not surprising as the latter is a kind
of ‘giving’, albeit a special kind. The key element is that the transfer of ownership
of whatever is given takes place after the giver has passed away, the typical situ-
ation. Departures from this typical situation do of course arise, but such instances
will be ignored here.
Before leaving this section, we note that there is one distinct use of the verb
wərrəsə which, at the outset, seems to be very different from its core meaning
isolated in the previous discussion. Consider (34):
(34) (a) ɨkəkk wərrəsə-w

rash inherit\PFV-SBJ.3SM-OBJ.3SM
‘A rash covered him.’ (= ‘He is covered with a rash.’)
(b) ɨrʃa-w-ɨn arəm wərrəsə-w
farm-DEF.M-ACC weed inherit\PFV-SBJ.3SM-OBJ.3SM
‘Weeds covered the farm.’ (= ‘The farm is covered with weed.’)
In (34a), the implicit experiencer (the person who is covered with a rash) is
cross-referenced by object agreement on the verb. In (34b), the affected argument is
‘the farm’ which controls object agreement. Is there any conceptual link between
this use of the verb and the ‘inherit’/‘confiscate’ sense of the verb discussed above?
Or is this a case of homophony where the two meanings are completely unrelated?
It seems reasonable to assume that the two meanings are related to the ‘cover X
with something’ meaning metaphorically derived from the ‘inherit’ meaning’. At
the core of inheriting (or confiscating), something is the idea of replacing one owner
by another owner. When weed covers a farm, it does so by displacing the normal
vegetation and crop—thus taking over ‘ownership’ of the farm or land, so to speak.
11.7 Conclusion
Goddard and Wierzbicka (2016), building on recent work in the NSM framework,
have argued that the prime HAVE cannot capture the meaning of true possession
(ownership). They show, on the basis of English, that the prime (IS) MINE is better
suited to explicate the meaning of true possession. In this chapter, I therefore started
out by re-examining the status of the semantic prime for (alienable) possession in
Amharic, which previous work assumed to be the verb allə—the Amharic exponent of
the prime HAVE. I examined the extent to which the new prime (IS) MINE can capture the
Amharic facts by comparing it with the previous prime allə ‘have’. I showed that allə
is formally different from its counterpart ‘have’ in English as the possessed argument
is the subject of the predicate (it controls subject agreement on the verb). However, I
argued that allə is much more multifunctional compared to the exponent of (IS) MINE.
Interestingly, the construction based on the exponent of (IS) MINE sounds strange
when used to express inalienable possession—part–whole relations and kinship
relations. This will follow naturally from the assumption that this exponent’s main
function is to express alienable possession (or true ownership).
We also looked at the meaning of two sets of verbs that implicate alienable
possession: təbəddərə ‘borrow’ and abəddərə ‘lend’, and wərrəsə ‘inherit’,
awərrəsə ‘bequeath’. These verbs are derivationally related (as opposed to the
equivalent items in English). There is a different verb, namely təwassə, that is used
when the borrowed item itself must be returned (not, for instance, an equivalent).
Finally, we examined the meaning of awərrəsə ‘bequeath’ and proposed an
explication that makes use of the new exponent jəne (nəw).
There are a number of other verbs of acquisition including sət’t’ə ‘give’ and
sərrək’ə ‘steal’ (whose English equivalents are explicated by Goddard and
Wierzbicka 2016) and also verbs that express commercial transaction which may
benefit from a similar analysis. I leave this for future work.
220 M. Amberber
Acknowledgements I am very grateful to the editors, Kerry Mullan, Bert Peeters and Lauren
Sadow, for inviting me to contribute a chapter to this volume. Special thanks are due to Cliff
Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka for their comments on an earlier draft of the chapter. Many thanks
to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and corrections. I hope there aren’t too
many errors remaining, but if there are, they are mine. The chapter is intended as a small token of
appreciation for Cliff’s continuing interest in my work. Thank you!
Appendix—Amharic Exponents of Semantic Primes

(cf. Amberber 2008)
L
Notes: • Exponents of primes can be polysemous, i.e. they can have other meanings in addition to
the semantically primitive meaning • Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or
phrasemes • They can be formally complex • They can have combinatorial variants or “allolexes”
(indicated with ~). Some Amharic primes may have other allolexes in addition to those indicated
in the Table. • Each prime has well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties
References
Amberber, M. (2002). Verb classes and transitivity in Amharic. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Amberber, M. (2008). Semantic primes in Amharic. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic
semantics (pp. 83–119). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.102.09amb.
Baker, M. (2012). On the relationship of object agreement and accusative case: Evidence from
Amharic. Linguistic Inquiry, 43(1), 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1162/LING_a_00085.
Baker, M., & Kramer, R. (2014). Rethinking Amharic prepositions as case markers inserted at PF.
Lingua, 145, 141–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.03.005.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2016). ‘It’s Mine!’: Rethinking the conceptual semantics of
“possession” through NSM. Language Sciences, 56, 93–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.
2016.03.002.
Hetzron, R. (1970). Toward an Amharic case-grammar. Studies in African Linguistics, 1(3), 301–
354.
Kane, T. L. (1990). Amharic-english dictionary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Kapeliuk, O. (1994). Syntax of the noun in Amharic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Kramer, R. (2014). Clitic doubling or object agreement: The view from Amharic. Natural
Language & Linguistic Theory, 32(2), 593–634. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9233-0.
Leslau, W. (1995). Reference grammar of Amharic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Milsark, G. L. (1974). Existential sentences in English. Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
222 M. Amberber
Safir, K. (1987). What explains the definiteness effect? In E. J. Reuland & A. G. B. ter Meulen
(Eds.), The representation of (in)definiteness (pp. 71–97). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Tham, S. W. (2006). The definiteness effect in English have sentences. In P. Denis et al. (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 2004 texas linguistics society conference (pp. 137–149). Somerville, MA:
Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Tham, S. W. (2013). Possession as non-verbal predication. Berkeley linguistics society:
Proceedings of the annual meeting (Vol. 39, pp. 302–316). https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.
v39i1.3888.
Yimam, B. (1996). Definiteness in Amharic discourse. Journal of African Languages and
Linguistics, 17(1), 47–83.
Yimam, B. (1997). The verb ‘to have’ in Amharic. In K. Fukui, E. Kurimoto, & M. Shigeta (Eds.),
Ethiopia in broader perspective: Papers of the 13th International Conference of Ethiopian
Studies (Vol. 1, pp. 619–636). Kyoto: Shokado.
Mengistu Amberber teaches linguistics at the University of New South Wales (Sydney,
Australia). His main areas of research are morphosyntax and lexical semantics. He is the editor of
The language of memory in a cross-linguistic perspective (2007), and co-editor (with P. Collins) of
Language universals and variation (2002), (with H. de Hoop) of Competition and variation in
natural languages: The case for case (2005), (with B. Baker and M. Harvey) of Complex
predicates: Cross-linguistic perspectives on event structure (2010).
Chapter 12
The Meanings of List Constructions:
Explicating Interactional Polysemy
Susanna Karlsson
Abstract This chapter engages in the semantic explication of lists in Swedish. For
this study, the author analyses lists found in a corpus of naturally occurring tele-
phone conversations between friends. The study combines the framework of the
natural semantic metalanguage approach with the analytical methods of interac-
tional linguistics. The aim of the study is to contribute to the knowledge about how
the manner of coordination contributes to our understanding of lists and how the
respective list items are meant to be understood to relate to one another. In Swedish
conversation, lists come in two syntactic formats: one where the conjunction is
produced before the listed item and one where the conjunction comes after the item.
There are also two prosodic formats: one that indicates a closed set and one that
indicates an open set. The combination of the syntactic and prosodic formats results
into three basic types. Explications using the natural semantic metalanguage reveal
not only that the list formats display the relationship between the listed items
differently but also that the speaker can draw upon the different formats to display
an interpersonal stance towards what the other participants can be expected to know
or understand about the list. The explications contribute to a heightened under-
standing of the differences as well as the similarities of the three list types.
Keywords Lists Coordination Interactional linguistics Swedish Syntax
12.1 Introduction
Lists, or the coordination of several items by means of conjunctions (and, or, etc.),
or by means of the repetition of prosodic gestalts, syntactic structures or accom-
panying gestural shapes, can be found in most languages. They can be described as
grammatical constructions that allow speakers to grammatically, prosodically,
gesturally and semantically package items that are lexically different, and to present
S. Karlsson (&)
Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
e-mail: susanna.karlsson@gu.se

224 S. Karlsson
them as belonging to the same class, group or set. Although there are commonal-
ities, lists differ from reduplication (on which see, e.g., Wierzbicka 1986). Whereas
lists consist of the stylized coordination of different lexical items, reduplication is
the stylized coordination and repetition of the same (or a similar) lexical item.
The classification or grouping of list items, once it emerges in interaction, is
interactionally relevant. When speakers present information as a list, they are doing
more than simply presenting the information; the list is a tool for the speaker to
display the information as belonging together, as information that is to be heard and
understood by others as belonging to the same class (which is either commonly
understood as such, or locally constructed as such in conversation). In that sense,
lists are legitimate interactional formats that have garnered some interest from
researchers in interactional linguistics. Listing practices in interaction have thus
been studied in English, German, French and Swedish conversational data
(Bertrand and Priego-Valverde 2017; Jefferson 1990; Karlsson 2010; Lerner 1994;
Selting 2007). By contrast, lists have received little attention from more traditional
areas of linguistics. Phoneticians and typological field workers tend to view list
prosody as something to be avoided during elicitation, and syntacticians view it as a
variation on coordination. It may, however, be prudent to acknowledge here such
trailblazers as Jack Goody, who in The domestication of the savage mind (1977)
explores the role of listing practices in the establishment of writing systems and the
effects writing and listing have had on human cognition since (see especially Goody
1977: 74–111).1
It has been shown that lists are part of a greater three-part structure, where the
first part sets the stage for the list; the second part makes up the list proper; and the
third part is where the listing activity is terminated and in some way or other tied
back to the interactional context of the list (Selting 2007). The literature is abundant
with discussions of the status of the number three in list constructions. Jefferson
(1990), Lerner (1994) and Selting (2007) all argue that three seems to be a very
common number of items in lists, and that speakers orient towards their
three-partedness (not to be confused with a different form of three-partedness,
referred to in Sect. 2). This seems to be the case not only because speakers produce
lists with three list items, but also because they tend to finish a list consisting of two
items by producing discourse markers known as generalized list completers
(Jefferson 1990) or general extenders (Overstreet 1999), such as and so, and such,
and stuff or and other things, all of which complete the set and achieve the desired
trinity. While Jefferson (1990), Lerner (1994) and Selting (2007) all agree that
1
While Goody is probably right about the special position of listing practices in early literary
societies, he is equally likely wrong when he claims that lists are scarce in oral societies and in
speech in general. Goody operates with an extremely narrow definition of lists, one that requires
the capacity (which writing possesses but speech does not) to be context-free. With the more
general definition proposed in the beginning of this section, oral lists and written lists will simply
have different characteristics due to the different affordances of speech and writing.
12 The Meanings of List Constructions: Explicating … 225
three-partedness is often made interactionally relevant, Jefferson and Selting argue

that lists are recognizable as such already on the first list item, because what
identifies lists as lists, and not simply as coordination, is that they are prosodically
exposed with a stylized, almost sing-song quality compared to the speech that
comes before and after the list (Couper-Kuhlen 1999; Karlsson 2010). Lerner does
not account for prosody and so argues that it is only on the second item that the list
is identifiable as a list; he claims that it is the repetition of the syntactic format that
creates the special coordination that makes up a list. Selting (2007) argues that some
lists may go on indefinitely; the very format allows for theoretically infinite
recursion.
A list, in short, can be described as a set of lexical items—one or more—
constructed as belonging to an identifiable class. First and foremost, speakers rely
on prosody to identify lists; however, the repetition of packaging on all commu-
nicative levels (prosody, syntax, and gesture) stands out as a list’s most salient
feature.
This chapter engages in the categorization and semantic explication of list for-
mats in Swedish interaction. Based on an emergent, interactional analysis of three
conversation lists, the semantics of the respective list formats is explicated using
natural semantic metalanguage (Goddard 2008, 2010; Goddard and Wierzbicka
2002; Wierzbicka 1972). The aim is to contribute to the knowledge of how the
manner of coordination contributes to our understanding of lists and of how the
respective list items are meant to be understood to relate to one another. This study
combines the descriptive framework of the natural semantic metalanguage approach
with the analytical methods of interactional linguistics (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting
2018; Selting and Couper-Kuhlen 2001). This combination of methodologies is an
extension of the interactional linguistics endeavour into the field of semantics,
which in itself is a contribution to both fields.
12.2 Materials and Methods
The main methodology for this chapter is interactional linguistics (henceforth IL;
for a comprehensive introduction, see Lindström 2006). IL is a development of
conversation analysis (henceforth CA; cf. ten Have 1999; Hutchby and Wooffitt
1998; Sacks et al. 1974), in which CA’s rigorous methods for analysing talk
sequentially in real time is coupled with (mostly functional) linguistic analytical
methods. Mainly, IL concerns itself with the syntactic (Ochs et al. 1996; Selting and
Couper-Kuhlen 2001) and prosodic (Bruce et al. 1998; Chafe 1993; Couper-Kuhlen
and Selting 1996a, b; Schegloff 1998; Selting 1996; Wells and Macfarlane 1998)
features of naturally occurring conversation.
CA, and by extension IL, takes as its starting point the observation that naturally
occurring conversation develops sequentially in time, and that every contribution to
226 S. Karlsson
the conversation is at once next, current and previous (Schegloff 1996), meaning that
everything that is uttered has a status not only as a product, but as a process where it
is delivered after something else, is being uttered and is followed by another utter-
ance. A large amount of research has shown that participants orient towards this
other form of three-partedness, and as a consequence, towards signs of the endings
and the beginnings of interactional units (among many others Goodwin 1979; Sacks
et al. 1974; Schegloff 1996; Walker 2004). Based on the empirical observation that
speakers orient towards the conversational actions of other speakers, analysts rely on
what has come to be called ‘the next turn proof procedure’, namely that, to determine
the status and function of a contribution to interaction, analysts do not rely on their
own judgement when determining when an action is complete or what it means, but
on the actions of the participants in an interaction.
NSM is a semantic paradigm developed by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard
(Goddard 2008, 2010; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002; Wierzbicka 1972). The main
feature of the framework is its reliance on a set of semantic primes that provide the
base for its semantic explications, or paraphrases, as opposed to the more com-
monly featured formal semantic languages. Specifically, this study draws on the
concept of grammatical polysemy, namely that grammatical constructions can
exhibit polysemy that is connected to the construction itself, not the lexical items it
is made up of. Typically, in an NSM analysis of grammatical polysemy, families of
constructions are seen as having certain members that are more prototypical, while
others are variants or extensions (Goddard 2003; Wierzbicka 1988). While I am
hesitant to talk about any of the constructions analysed in this chapter as more
prototypical than the others,2 a softer take on the notion of families of constructions,
where all members are equal until proven otherwise, has proven to be a fruitful
approach to variation in constructions in interaction.
The empirical base for this study is a collection of 67 telephone conversations
between family members and friends. The calls were recorded in 2007. The par-
ticipants are between 30 and 65 years old and are all native speakers of Swedish.
All participants were aware that they were being recorded and have given their
informed consent. All empirical examples were transcribed using the Jeffersonian
transcription system (Jefferson 2004), and all names and identifiers were changed to
secure anonymity (Jefferson 2004). A key for the transcription symbols can be
found at the end of the chapter.
While syntactic and prosodic analyses have shown themselves to be fruitful
resources for IL researchers in their endeavour to provide insight into human
speech, there have been few or no attempts at incorporating a strictly semantic
analysis in the IL enterprise. In this chapter, I aim to combine CA with NSM-style
explications in an attempt to bring in semantics under the IL umbrella. In order to
2
While one of the constructions is certainly more in line with the common idea of what a list is, I
believe that that idea is largely based on ideas about written language. The most ‘prototypical’ list
construction is also certainly the least common one. While high frequency does not equal pro-
totypicality, there is nothing in the interactional analysis to date that would indicate that any list
variant is more interactionally salient than any other one.
do so, I will first identify the objects of analysis, namely the list construction
formats available in Swedish conversation, then explicate them in order to provide a
deeper understanding of the differences in the syntactic and prosodic variation in
the formats.
12.3 Categorization and IL Analysis of List Formats

in Swedish Conversation
Not all lists are created equal. In this section, I discuss the different list formats that
I have been able to identify in conversational Swedish. For the purpose of this
chapter, I only discuss the syntactic and prosodic make-up of the lists. While
gesture is a prominent feature for identifying lists, it is a resource that is only
available to speakers if they can see each other. As the data used for this study come
exclusively from telephone conversations, gesture will not be taken into account, as
that modality is not available to the participants (Karlsson 2010).
In Swedish interaction, lists can belong to either of two main syntactic formats,
described in (a) and (b) below. X, Y and Z refer to the list items or core structures a
particular conjunction is syntactically related to. In (a), conjunctions are placed
ahead of list items; in (b), they are prosodically placed after the list items. Each line
in (a) and (b) denotes a prosodic phrase:
(a) lists with anteposed conjunctions
X
(conj) Y
conj Z
(b) lists with postposed conjunctions
X conj
Y conj
Z conj
Format (a) lines up with the standards of written Swedish (cf. Swedish Language
Council 2017), while format (b) is considered ungrammatical in writing (Loman
and Jörgensen 1971). Format (a) is the syntactic format of examples (1) and (2),
while format (b) is illustrated in example (3).
In example (1), speakers A and B are discussing common denominators in their
respective research interests. In lines 2–5, speaker A states that what B has been
talking about before the extract, namely the differences between epistemic and
deontic modality, has very specific implications for her own work. By doing so, A
sets the stage for the list of properties that become relevant (lines 6–8). In line 10, A
makes explicit exactly how the list items (or at least one of them) is relevant to the
research mentioned in lines 2–5, thus tying the former back to the latter.
228 S. Karlsson
(1) Closed list with prosodic down-step and anteposed conjunction. The list is
highlighted in grey.
1 A: nä jaja
no yeahyeah
2 nä men allså älit talat,
no but like seriously
3 de här e ju exakt de som ja sitter me,
this is exactly what I’m working on right
4 på min litterära stilistik?
in literary stylistics
5 nämlien där e ju liksom kombinationen av;
namely there it’s like the combination of
6 tid;
time
7 tempus;
tense
8 å källa,
and source
9 B: ja:
yeah
10 A: k älla e extremt viktit i i i berättande ju,
source is extremely important in storytelling right
In this example, the list is made up of three noun phrases: the first two produced
with remarkably similar prosody and the third with a contrasting prosody, indi-
cating it as the final list item (Schubiger 1958; Selting 2007). What does not come
across very well in the transcription, due to limitations in the Jeffersonian system, is
that the three items are produced in a down-step fashion (cf. Selting 2007), like in a
staircase; the first item makes up the highest step, the second the middle step and
the third the bottom step. The list in lines 6–8 happens to be a three-part list, and
very thoroughly constructed as such.
The down-step prosody of example (1) suggests that the entire list set is planned
from the beginning; it is produced in one breath as a closed set (Karlsson 2010;
Selting 2007). The speaker has to be economical with the pneumatic resources and
plan the amount of air released for each item already from the top. Line 6 cannot be
heard as prosodically complete, as it does not provide a so-called transition relevance
place, a time in interaction that is audibly identifiable as making speaker change
relevant (Ford et al. 1996; Sacks et al. 1974). The same is true for line 7. Only with
line 8 does the speaker produce what can be audibly identified as the end of a turn.
In example (2), speaker A calls long-time friend B to cancel their plans for going
to the gym. The list she produces to account for why she is opting out of their
exercise routine lists several tasks she has to accomplish during the day. The list has
an audibly different prosodic composition from the one in example (1), despite
sharing syntactic features with it in that both are examples of anteposed conjunc-
tions. Where the list in example (1) was produced in down-step over one single
breath, this list is produced by a reduplication of syntactic form and prosodic form,
with one breath per listed item.
(2) Open-ended list with level prosodic repetition and anteposed conjunction.
The list is highlighted in grey.
1 A: ja känner att ja helst vill HOppa över- hoppa

I feel that I would rather skip over- skip
2 ÖVer den hära eh styrketräningen föreh
over this work out because
3 B: °mm°
mm
4 A: först så måste ja samla ihop material↑
first I have to collect data
5 å sen så ska ja träffa Anna klockan e[tt↑]
and then I’m meeting Anna at one o’clock
6 B: [°mm°]
mm
7 A: å sen så ska ja va på Lärkan kvart över tre↑
and then I’m to be at the Larch quarter past three
8 (.)
9 å sen så ska ja va på tillbaks på institutionen
and then I’m to be at back at the department
10 kvart över fem↑ (för fram för alldeles-)
quarter past five (it’ll be all too-)
11 så ja känner att de blir lit[e- ]
so I feel that it’ll be a bit-
12 B: [°ja]a blir lite-°
yeah it’ll be a bit-
13 A: det blir tufft å- å gå å gymnastisera på morgonen
it'll be tough to- to go and work out in the morning
14 å sen [hem å duscha å greja [att eh
and then home for to shower and stuff so eh-
15 B: [°mm° [°mm°
mm mm
The first list item in line 4 is lexically formulated as a first item (‘first I have to …’)
and ends with a rising final intonation. The second item reduplicates the prosody of
the first, being audibly the same as that of the previous line, but it does not continue
the counting format. Instead it employs a formulation that resists counting, but
230 S. Karlsson
invokes temporality (‘and then …’). This syntactic frame, along with the prosodic
contour established in line 4, is reduplicated in lines 7 and 9, after which the
speaker exits the list by abandoning the stylized prosody and returning to the
project of cancelling the gym plans.
The speaker’s main project in example (2) is to provide an acceptable account
for why she is cancelling her appointment. Her busy schedule, complete with time
indicators, implies that A will be in a rush most of the day. The format of the list
adds to that message: the reduplication of the prosody and the syntax implies more
of the same (Karlsson 2010). The open-ended list format becomes a rhetorical
device that helps bring home the point that A’s day is swamped; cancelling the gym
is not an unreasonable thing to do.
In example (3), speaker A tells B about an onion-themed evening that she
attended the previous day. Here, A takes on turn-taking responsibilities as a
response to a more passive stance by B. A’s assessment of the evening in line 5
makes speaker change relevant; however, B refrains from taking the turn and does
not contribute, for example by asking what had happened, who was there, etc.
Instead, A herself provides that information in lines 7–8, where she starts giving an
account of the evening’s activities. The account is cut off in the middle of a noun
phrase. A resumes her account in line 9, now audibly produced as a list. The
prosody is off-set from the previous utterance and is of a distinctly stylized nature.
(3) Open-ended list with level prosody and postposed conjunctions. The list is
highlighted in grey.
1 A: de va Alnarpsparkens vänner
it was Friends of the Alnarp Parklands
2 å så va hetere- (.)
and then it was whatsitcalled
3 Skånes Gastronomiska Sällskap som (.) [hade nåt >ihop],
the Scania Gastronomical Society that had something together
4 B: [<°jahh°> ]
yeah
5 A: de va< väldit trevlit .hh[hh].
it was very nice
6 B: [hjaa]
yeah
7 A: så de va en som hade doktorerat om LÖ:k
then there was someone who had written a thesis on onions
8 som berättade om lökens eh::-
who told us of the onions’ eh
9 gul lök åh,
onions and
10 hur nyttit de: va åh,
how nutritious that was and
11 så vidare?
so on
12 B: °hja°
yeah
13 A: /å så¿ åh,
and such and
14 vicka ämnen man fick i sej åh,=
what substances you ingest and
15 =motverka cancer åh,=
prevent cancer and
16 =allt va de nu va för nånting åh mnh., (.)
all kinds of stuff and
17 å sådär vidare å så, >.h<\
and so on and so
18 sen fick vi äta nån (.) FRAnsk #eh LÖKgrej::,#=
then we got something to eat some (.) french onion thingy
19 =>eller nej<, italiENsk¿
or no, italian
20 (0.5)
21 apu↑li↓sk lök↑paj↓.
apulian onion quiche
The list items in lines 10, 14, 15 and 16 reduplicate the first item’s level prosody
with falling final intonation, as well as the syntactic format of a postposition. The
articulation is of a trail-off, breathy quality and reduced articulation, consistent with
words undergoing grammaticalization. Conjunctions in postposition have received
a fair amount of attention (Auer and Lindström 2016; Mulder and Thompson 2008;
Mulder et al. 2009), suggesting that postposition could be a locus for grammati-
calization of conjunctions into discourse markers. This example suggests that
something like that may be afoot for Swedish: the conjunction is phonetically
reduced and does not seem to do what conjunctions are traditionally considered to
be doing, namely connect two constituents with each other. Instead the postposed
conjunctions in example (3) function as end markers for the list item, while they
also imply that there is a shared understanding of what a projected but unspoken
coordinated constituent could be (Mulder and Thompson 2008; Mulder et al. 2009).
A list format with postpositioned conjunctions, in that sense, becomes a more
interpersonal, intersubjective achievement, in that it invokes the knowledge and
experience of the co-participants. In example (3), this aspect is underscored by the
generalized list completers (Jefferson 1990) in lines 11, 13 and 17, which also
invoke an implied common understanding of what a presentation about onions
could entail. In line 18, A abandons the list format and goes on to talk about what
happened after the presentation.
The lists in examples (2) and (3) are similar in the way that they are constructed
around resources that imply more of the same: reduplication of prosodic format and
reduplication of anteposed and postposed conjunctions, respectively. They differ
from example (1) in that they are not projected as a closed set of items, but are
open-ended and potentially infinitely recursible. In those lists, each list item is
produced on its own breath, while example (1) is produced with the limited
232 S. Karlsson
resources of one lungful of air. But they are also different from one another. While
both are projected with an open-ended design, the syntactic format of example
(2) follows the traditional expectations of conjunctions, and each list item is con-
structed as belonging to previous talk by the anteposed conjunction. The postposed
conjunction cannot do that job, but instead functions as a discourse-marker-like
device, closing the list item, and invoking the interpersonal resources of the
experiences of the co-participant. In the following section, I will endeavour to
explicate the semantics of the list formats, and by doing so, hope to illustrate the
interactional and functional differences between the formats.
12.4 Explications of the List Formats
In this section, I propose semantic explications of the different list formats. The
explications will illustrate the different planning aspects and interpersonal affor-
dances of the formats.
[A] Closed list with prosodic down-step and anteposed conjunction(s)
I say something
I want to say more
I know how many things I want to say
I think you do not know the things I want to say
I say one thing
I say another thing
I say the things I want to say
I say one thing is like the other thing
now you know the things I want to say
now you know that one thing is like the other thing.
[B] Open-ended list with level prosodic repetition and anteposed conjunction(s)
I say something
I want to say more
I do not know how many things I want to say
I say one thing
I say another thing
I can say many other things
I say one thing is like the other things
now you know that one thing is like the other things.
[C] Open-ended list with level prosody and postposed conjunctions

I say something
I want to say more
I do not know how many things I want to say
I think you know many things like these things
I say one thing
I say another thing
I can say many other things
I say one thing is like the other things
now you know that one thing is like the other things.
The explications primarily deal with epistemic planning and the invocation of
epistemic access displayed by speakers in examples (1) to (3) (cf. Heritage and
Raymond 2005, 2012). All three explications start out with establishing an inter-
actional base (I say something) and the conversational need to develop what is
being said (I want to say more). The line about the speaker’s knowledge of the
number of projected list items (I know/do not know how many things) marks the
basic structural difference between the closed-set list and the open-ended lists.
The completion of the former is by necessity planned from the first word, or else the
speaker’s air would run out or they would have to descend to a pitch that is
unnaturally low for them. The completion of the open-ended lists may be planned in
some sense, but what is shown to us for certain is that the speakers produce the list
items in a fashion that allows for infinite recursivity. This method leaves the speaker
with the possibility to add to the list or end it as they please, giving them a flexible
resource for both expanding their narration and adapting to the cues from
co-participants.
In dealing with the a priori knowledge status of the co-participants, all three
explications share a line about the ‘not-knowing status’ of the other speakers (I
think you do not know the things I want to say). That line addresses the general
context and function of lists: they are a narrative and rhetorical device that is meant
to illustrate a point of a state of affairs that is epistemically within the speaker’s
domain. In example (1), the listing illustrates how the speaker makes sense of the
co-participant’s research vis-à-vis her own work; in example (2), the list is a display
of future plans that are logically well-known to the speaker but unknown to the
co-participant; and finally, in example (3), the listing is a recapitulation of the
speaker’s activities the previous day, activities the co-participant did not take part
in. In all three examples, the co-participant is treated as a ‘non-knower’ of the
content of the list. However, in explication [C] there is an additional line,
addressing the knowledge status of the non-speaking party (I think you know many
things like these things). The open-ended lists with postposed conjunctions are
constructed to invoke the other speakers’ experience of the topic handled in the list.
While the speaker is naturally more knowledgeable about the topic of the narration,
234 S. Karlsson
they also construct the list prosodically and syntactically to convey the notion of
‘you know what I am talking about’.
The next couple of lines address the production of the list proper. All three
explications contain lines that illustrate the emerging nature of lists (I say one thing;
I say another thing) and the reduplicative nature of listing practices. In [B] and [C],
there is a line dealing with the near infinite recursivity of open-ended lists, a feature
that closed-set lists do not have (I can say many other things). The explication of
the production of the list proper is closed with a line to indicate that the list is the
speaker’s communicative project, and that it is a predominant feature of lists that
speakers give prosodic (example 1), syntactic (example 2) or lexical (example 3)
cues that they are about to abandon the list-in-progress (I say the things I want to
say). The antepenultimate line of all three explications conveys that one of the
things that lists do is to present a number of items uttered in succession as related to
one another (I say one thing is like the other thing; I say one thing is like the other
things). That, I would argue, is one of the most salient features of listing practices;
what a list does best is to be a forcefully coordinating device.
The penultimate and ultimate lines resume the matter of dealing with the epis-
temic status of the co-participants. They have now gone from lacking knowledge
about the events or matters at hand to being the focus of the narrative that the listing
is illustrating. Not only is the co-participant now in the know about the matter at
hand, they are also knowledgeable about the proposed relationship between the
listed items.
An NSM-styled approach to semantic explication turned out to be a useful
resource for illustrating apparent polysemy of the three list constructions. While one
might raise concerns that the metalanguage primarily would lend itself to the
semantic description of the list as a product, not to the process that is the preferred
analytical locus of CA and IL, that concern is negligible. The explications [A–C]
show that it is possible to allow the explication to follow the lists as they are being
produced, to reflect their emergent nature.
12.5 Conclusions
In this chapter, I have analysed three structurally different list formats from Swedish
telephone conversations. I argue that the syntactic and prosodic set-up of the lists
allows for different levels of interpersonal engagement on the part of the speaker,
and that the list format reflects how the speaker is achieving coordination of the
items listed. Example (1) illustrates how the speaker plans the list as a complete set,
examples (2) and (3) how the speaker constructs the emerging list as ever
extendable and indicative of muchness. In the analysis, I draw heavily upon the
reduplicative nature of examples (2) and (3) to show how syntactical and prosodical
form contribute to the meaning of ‘muchness’ conveyed by the open-set listing
practices. The analysis also shows that the placement of the conjunction before or
after the list item not only contributes to the coordinating nature of the list, but also
to the added interpersonal functionality of invoking a shared understanding of the

matter at hand. The interpersonal functionality along with the prosodic and
semantic bleaching of the postposed conjunction leads me to propose that the
postposed conjunction is undergoing a grammaticalization process and is on its way
to becoming a discourse marker.
I have also tested to what extent the natural semantic metalanguage is able to
tease out the finer details of the different uses of the three similar, but not identical
list formats. While I have allowed myself some liberty in the matter, it seems to me
that the use of simple words and simple grammar go a long way. With the three
explications laid out side by side, the different characteristics of the lists come out
well. The explications contribute to a heightened understanding of the differences as
well as the similarities of the three list types. The conclusion is that natural semantic
metalanguage, or at least a form thereof, lends itself well to illustrating interactional
variation in syntax and prosody.
Appendix—Transcription Key
(0.5) pause measured by 1/10 of a second
(.) pause under 0.2 s
[ overlap starts
] overlap ends
= lines latch onto one another without hearable pause
<> slower than the surrounding talk
>< faster than the surrounding talk
::: elongated sound
- break-off or stuttering speech
/ pitch upstep
\ pitch down-step
# falling pitch
" rising pitch
! continuation tone
. falling final tone
, tone falls slightly towards the end
? tone clearly rises towards the end
¿ tone rises slightly towards the end
ja emphasized syllable
JA louder than the surrounding speech
°° sotto voce
## creaky voice
.ja said on inhalation
h exhalation
.h inhalation
236 S. Karlsson
References
Auer, P., & Lindström, J. (2016). Left/right asymmetries and the grammar of pre- vs.
post-positioning in German and Swedish talk-in-interaction. Language Sciences, 56, 68–92.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2016.03.001.
Bertrand, R., & Priego-Valverde, B. (2017). Listing practice in French conversation: From
collaborative achievement to interactional convergence. Discours, 20, 3–33. https://doi.org/10.
4000/discours.9315.
Bruce, G., Frid, J., Granström, B., Gustafson, K., Horne, M., & House, D. (1998). Prosodic
segmentation and structuring of dialogue. In S. Werner (Ed.), Nordic prosody: Proceedings of
the VIIth Conference, Joensuu 1996. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Chafe, W. L. (1993). Prosodic and functional units of language. In J. A. Edwards & M. D. Lampert
(Eds.), Talking data: Transcription and coding methods for language research (pp. 33–43).
Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1999). Prosodic stylization: Lists as prosodic routines. Paper presented at the
Seminar on Prosody, Grammar and Interaction, Helsinki.
Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Selting, M. (Eds.). (1996a). Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597862.
Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Selting, M. (1996b). Towards an interactional perspective on prosody and a
prosodic perspective on interaction. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & M. Selting (Eds.), Prosody in
conversation: Interactional Studies (pp. 11–56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597862.003.
Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Selting, M. (2018). Interactional linguistics: Studying language in social
interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ford, C. E., Fox, B. A., & Thompson, S. A. (1996). Practices in the construction of turns: The
“TCU” revisited. Pragmatics, 6(3), 427–454.
Goddard, C. (2003). Thinking across languages and cultures: Six dimensions of variation.
Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2/3), 109–140. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2003.005.
Goddard, C. (Ed.). (2008). Cross-linguistic semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.
org/10.1075/slcs.102.
Goddard, C. (2010). The natural semantic metalanguage approach. In B. Heine & H. Narrog
(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 459–484). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2002). Semantic primes and universal grammar. In C. Goddard &
A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings (Vol.
1, pp. 41–85). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60.08god.
Goodwin, C. (1979). The interactive construction of a sentence in natural conversation. In G.
Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 97–119). New York:
Irvington.
Goody, J. (1977). The domestication of the savage mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heritage, J., & Raymond, G. (2005). The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and
subordination in talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 15–38. https://doi.org/
10.1177/019027250506800103.
Heritage, J., & Raymond, G. (2012). Navigating epistemic landscapes: Acquiescence, agency and
resistance in responses to polar questions. In J. P. de Ruiter (Ed.), Questions: Formal,
functional and interactional perspectives (pp. 179–192). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139045414.01.
Hutchby, I., & Wooffitt, R. (1998). Conversation analysis: Principles, practices and applications.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Jefferson, G. (1990). List construction as a task and interactional resource. In G. Psathas (Ed.),
Interaction competence (pp. 63–92). Washington D.C.: University Press of America.
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an Introduction. In G. H. Lerner (Ed.),
Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 43–59). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.125.02jef.
Karlsson, S. (2010). Listor och multimodal koordination. Språk och interaktion, 2, 141–170.
Lerner, Gene H. (1994). Responsive list construction: A conversational resource for accomplishing
multifaceted social action. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 13(1), 20–33. https://
doi.org/10.1177/0261927X94131002.
Lindström, J. (2006). Interactional linguistics. In J. Verschueren & O. Östman (Eds.), Handbook of
pragmatics, 2006 installment. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.10.
int11.
Loman, B., & Jörgensen, N. (1971). Manual för analys och beskrivning av makrosyntagmer.
Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Mulder, J., & Thompson, S. A. (2008). The grammaticization of but as a final particle in English
conversation. In R. Laury (Ed.), Crosslinguistic studies of clause combining: The multifunc-
tionality of conjunctions (pp. 179–204). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/
tsl.80.09mul.
Mulder, J., Thompson, S. A., & Williams, C. P. (2009). Final but in Australian English
conversation. In P. Peters, P. Collins, & A. Smith (Eds.), Comparative studies in Australian
and New Zealand English (pp. 337–357). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.
1075/veaw.g39.19mul.
Ochs, E., Schegloff, E. A., & Thompson, S. A. (Eds.). (1996). Interaction and grammar.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620874.
Overstreet, M. (1999). Whales, candlelight, and stuff like that: General extenders in discourse.
New York: Oxford University Pres.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of
turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735. https://doi.org/10.2307/412243.
Schegloff, E. A. (1996). Turn organization: One intersection of grammar and interaction. In E.
Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and grammar (pp. 52–133).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620874.002.
Schegloff, E. A. (1998). Reflections on studying prosody in talk-in-interaction. Language and
Speech, 41(3/4), 235–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383099804100402.
Schubiger, M. (1958). English intonation: Its form and function. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Selting, M. (1996). On the interplay of syntax and prosody in the constitution of
turn-constructional units and turns in conversation. Pragmatics, 6(3), 371–388. https://doi.
org/10.1075/prag.6.3.06sel.
Selting, M. (2007). Lists as embedded structures and the prosody of list construction as an
interactional resource. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(3), 483–526. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
pragma.2006.07.008.
Selting, M., & Couper-Kuhlen, E. (Eds.). (2001). Studies in interactional linguistics. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sidag.10.
Swedish Language Council. (2017). Svenska skrivregler. Stockholm: Liber.
ten Have, P. (1999). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. Introducing qualitative
methods. London: Sage.
Walker, G. (2004). On some interactional and phonetic properties of increment to turns in
talk-in-interaction. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & C. E. Ford (Eds.), Sound patterns in interaction.
Cross-linguistic studies from conversation (pp. 147–169). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.62.10wal.
238 S. Karlsson
Wells, B., & Macfarlane, S. (1998). Prosody as an interactional resource: Turn-projection and
overlap. Language and Speech, 41(3/4), 265–294. https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309980
4100403.
Wierzbicka, A. (1972). Semantic primitives. Frankfurt: Athenaeum.
Wierzbicka, A. (1986). Italian reduplication: Cross-cultural pragmatics and illocutionary
semantics. Linguistics, 24(2), 287–315. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1986.24.2.287.
Wierzbicka, A. (1988). The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/
10.1075/slcs.18.
Susanna Karlsson is an Associate Professor at Gothenburg University. Her main research

interests are in Swedish linguistics, conversation analysis and the grammatical specificities of
interaction. She also studies attitude to linguistic variation and the practices of language planning.
Part III
Cliff Goddard: List of Publications
Cliff Goddard: List of Publications
Compiled by Bert Peeters
1976
(Book review) The Speculative Grammar by C. S. Peirce. International Review of
Slavic Linguistics, 1(2/3), 427–440.
(Book review) The Tractatus Syncategorematum of Peter of Spain by J. Mullally.
Reviewed with reference to modern linguistic theory. International Review of
Slavic Linguistics, 1(2/3), 441–458.
1979
Particles and illocutionary semantics. Papers in Linguistics, 12(1/2), 185–229.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08351817909370468.
1982
Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara picture vocabulary. Illustrations by J. Carter. Alice
Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. 113 pp.
Case systems and case marking in Australian languages: A new interpretation.
07268608208599290.
1984
Cohesion and switch-reference in Yankunytjatjara. Language in Central Australia,
1, 35–42.
When to use that apostrophe? Language in Central Australia, 3, 11–13.
B. Peeters (&)
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
e-mail: Bert.Peeters@anu.edu.au
Universiteit Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium

e-mail: Bert.Peeters@uantwerpen.be

242 B. Peeters
1985
A grammar of Yankunytjatjara. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal
Development] Press. 207 pp.
(Co-edited; second editor: A. Kalotas) Punu: Yankunytjatjara plant use. Traditional
methods of preparing foods, medicines, utensils and weapons from native plants.
Sydney: Angus & Robertson. 166 pp. Reprinted 1995 (Alice Springs: IAD
[Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press), 2002 (Alice Springs: Jukurrpa
Books).
1986
The natural semantics of too. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(5), 635–643. https://doi.
org/10.1016/0378-2166(86)90018-4.
1987
A basic Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatara to English dictionary. Alice Springs: IAD
[Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. vi + 195 pp. See also 1992, 1996.
1988
Verb serialisation and the circumstantial construction in Yankunytjatjara.
In P. Austin (Ed.), Complex sentence constructions in Australian languages
(pp. 177–192). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.15.08god.
(Book review) K. Liberman, Understanding interaction in Central Australia: An
ethnomethodological study of Australian Aboriginal people. Language in Society,
17(1), 113–118. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500012641.
(Book review) Z. Kövecses, Metaphors of anger, pride and love: A lexical
approach to the structure of concepts. Lingua, 77(1), 90–98. https://doi.org/10.
1016/0024-3841(89)90041-7.
1989
Issues in Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Quaderni di semantica, 10(1), 51–64.
The goals and limits of semantic representation. Quaderni di semantica, 10(2),
297–308.
1990
Emergent genres of reportage and advocacy in the Pitjantjatjara print media.
Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1990(2), 27–47.
The lexical semantics of “good feelings” in Yankunytjatjara. Australian Journal of
Linguistics, 10(2), 257–292. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268609008599444.
1991
Testing the translatability of semantic primitives into an Australian Aboriginal
Language. Anthropological Linguistics, 33(1): 31–56. https://doi.org/10.2307/
30028013.
Anger in the Western Desert: A case study in the cross-cultural semantics of
emotion. Man, (N.S.) 26(2), 265–279.
Cliff Goddard: List of Publications 243
(Book review) C. Lutz, Unnatural emotions: Everyday sentiments on a

Micronesian atoll and their challenge to Western theory. Australian Journal of
1992
Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatara to English dictionary. 2nd ed. Alice Springs: IAD
[Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. 260 pp. See also 1987, 1996.
(Co-edited; first editor: N. Evans) Aboriginal linguistics. Australian Journal of
Linguistics, 12(1) (special issue dedicated to the memory of Steve Johnson).
Traditional Yankunytjatjara ways of speaking—A semantic perspective. Australian
Journal of Linguistics, 12(1), 93–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268609208599472.
1993
A learner’s guide to Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute
for Aboriginal Development] Press. 48 pp.
(Book review) J. Green (comp.), Alyawarr to English dictionary. Australian
Journal of Linguistics, 13(2), 265–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/0726860930
8599497.
1994
(Co-edited; second editor: A. Wierzbicka) Semantic and lexical universals: Theory
and empirical findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. vii + 510 pp. https://doi.org/
10.1075/slcs.25.
Semantic theory and semantic universals. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.),
Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 7–29).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.25.04god.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Introducing lexical primitives. In C.
Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and
empirical findings (pp. 31–54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.
1075/slcs.25.05god.
Lexical primitives in Yankunytjatjara. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.),
Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 229–262).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.25.13god.
The meaning of lah: Understanding “emphasis” in Malay (Bahasa Melayu).
Oceanic Linguistics, 33(1): 145–165. https://doi.org/10.2307/3623004.
The Pitjantjatjara story-writing contest, 1988. In D. Hartman, & J. Henderson
(Eds.), Aboriginal languages in education (pp. 316–323). Alice Springs: IAD
[Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press.
Semantics. In V.S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior: Vol. 4
(pp. 109–120). New York: Academic Press.
1995
Conceptual and cultural issues in emotion research. Culture & Psychology, 1(2),
289–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X9512009.
244 B. Peeters
Who are we? The natural semantics of pronouns. Language Sciences, 17(1), 99–
121. https://doi.org/10.1016/0388-0001(95)00011-J.
‘Cognitive mapping’ or ‘verbal explication’? Understanding love on the Malay
Archipelago. Semiotica, 106(3/4): 323–354. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1995.106.
3-4.301.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Key words, culture and cognition.
Philosophica, 55(1), 37–67.
Componential analysis. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, & J. Blommaert (Eds.),
Handbook of pragmatics: Manual (pp. 147–153). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
See also 2005, 2009.https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.m.
(Book review) J.A. Lucy, Grammatical categories and cognition: A case study of
the linguistic relativity hypothesis. American Ethnologist, 22(3), 617–621. https://
doi.org/10.1525/ae.1995.22.3.02a00160.
(Book review) B. Levin, & S. Pinker (Eds.), Lexical and conceptual analysis.
07268609508599518.
1996
Aboriginal bird names of the Yankunytjatjara people of Central Australia. Alice
Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. v + 41 pp.
Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatara to English dictionary. Revised 2nd ed. Alice Springs:
IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press. 306 pp. See also 1987, 1992.
The “social emotions” of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Ethos, 24(3), 426–464. https://
doi.org/10.1525/eth.1996.24.3.02a00020.
Can linguists help judges know what they mean? Linguistic semantics in the
court-room. Forensic Linguistics, 3(2), 250–272. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.v3i2.
250.
Cross-linguistic research on metaphor. Language & Communication, 16(2), 145–
151. https://doi.org/10.1016/0271-5309(96)00003-1.
1997
(Edited; consultant editors: E. Ellis, & L. Cook) Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara
pocket dictionary. Alice Springs: IAD [Institute for Aboriginal Development] Press.
269 pp.
(Edited) Studies in the syntax of universal semantic primitives. Language Sciences,
19(3) (special issue).
The universal syntax of semantic primitives. Language Sciences, 19(3), 197–207.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00059-9.
(Co-authored; first author: M. Tong, second author: M. Yell) Semantic primitives of
time and space in Hong Kong Cantonese. Language Sciences, 19(3), 245–261.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00063-0.
(Co-authored; first author: D. Hill). Spatial terms, polysemy and possession in
Longgu (Solomon Islands). Language Sciences, 19(3), 263–275. https://doi.org/10.
1016/S0388-0001(96)00064-2.
Semantic primes and grammatical categories. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 17

(1), 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268609708599543.
Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: ‘Surprise’ in Malay and English.
Culture & Psychology, 3(2), 153–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X97
00300204.
Cultural values and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Journal of
Pragmatics, 27(2), 183–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(96)00032-X.
The semantics of coming and going. Pragmatics, 7(2), 147–162. https://doi.org/10.
1075/prag.7.2.02god.
(Co-authored; second author: N. Thieberger) Lexicographic research on Australian
Aboriginal languages 1968–1993. In D. Tryon, & M. Walsh (Eds.), Boundary
rider: Essays in honour of Geoffrey O’Grady (pp. 175–208). Canberra: Pacific
Linguistics.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Discourse and culture. In T.A. van
Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 231–257). London: Sage.
(Book review) U. Eco, The search for the perfect language. Australian Journal of
1998
Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xv +
411 pp. See also 2011.
Universal semantic primes of space—A lost cause? LAUD Series A: General &
theoretical papers, 434. Reprinted in 2007 with divergent page numbering.
Bad arguments against semantic primitives. Theoretical Linguistics, 24(2/3), 129–
156. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.1998.24.2-3.129.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Language, culture and meaning:
Cross-cultural semantics. In R. Dirven, & M. Verspoor (Eds.), Cognitive explo-
ration of language and linguistics (pp. 137–159). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See
also 2004.
1999
Building a universal semantic metalanguage: The semantic theory of Anna
Wierzbicka. RASK, 9/10, 3–35.
(Book review) D.L. Shaul, & N.L. Furbee, Language and culture. Journal of
Sociolinguistics, 3(4), 570–573.
(Book review) C.L. Hardin, & L. Maffi (Eds.), Color categories in thought and
language. Linguistic Typology, 3(2), 259–269. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.1999.3.
2.259.
2000
“Cultural scripts” and communicative style in Malay (Bahasa Melayu).
Anthropological Linguistics, 42(1), 81–106.
Polysemy: A problem of definition. In Y. Ravin, & C. Leacock (Eds.), Polysemy:
Theoretical and computational approaches (pp. 129–151). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
246 B. Peeters
2001
Sabar, ikhlas, setia—patient, sincere, loyal? Contrastive semantics of some ‘vir-
tues’ in Malay and English. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(5), 653–681. https://doi.org/
10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00028-X.
Lexico-semantic universals: A critical overview. Linguistic Typology, 5(1), 1–65.
https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.5.1.1.
The polyfunctional Malay focus particle pun. Multilingua, 20(1), 27–59. https://doi.
org/10.1515/multi.2001.002.
Conceptual primes in early language development. In M. Pütz, & S. Niemeier
(Eds.), Applied Cognitive Linguistics: Vol. 1. Theory and language acquisition
(pp. 193–227). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/
9783110866247.193.
Hati: A key word in the Malay vocabulary of emotion. In J. Harkins, & A.
Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 167–195). Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110880168.167.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Language and society: Cultural
concerns. In Neil J. Smelser, & P.B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the
social & behavioral sciences: Vol. 12 (pp. 8315–8320). Oxford: Pergamon.
Universal units in the lexicon. In M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher, & W.
Raible (Eds.), Language typology and language universals. An international
handbook: Vol. 2 (pp. 1190–1203). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.
1515/9783110171549.2.11.1190.
Cultural semantics and intercultural communication. In D. Killick, M. Perry, & A.
Phipps (Eds.), Poetics and praxis of languages and intercultural communication:
Vol. 2 (pp. 33–44). Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German
Publications.
(Book review) R. Jackendoff, P. Bloom, & K. Wynn (Eds.), Language, logic and
concepts: Essays in memory of John Macnamara. Journal of Linguistics, 37(1),
205–210. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226701268765.
2002
(Co-edited; second editor: A. Wierzbicka) Meaning and universal grammar.
Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xvi +
334 pp. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60.
(Co-edited; second editor: A. Wierzbicka) Meaning and universal grammar.
Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xv +
The search for the shared semantic core of all languages. In C. Goddard, & A.
Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar. Theory and empirical find-
ings: Vol. 1 (pp. 5–41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.
60.07god.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantic primes and universal
grammar. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal gram-
mar. Theory and empirical findings: Vol. 1 (pp. 41–85). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.60.08god.
Semantic primes and universal grammar in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). In C. Goddard,

& A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar. Theory and empirical
findings: Vol. 1 (pp. 87–172). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.
1075/slcs.60.10god.
The on-going development of the NSM research program. In C. Goddard, & A.
Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar. Theory and empirical find-
ings: Vol. 2 (pp. 301–321). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/
slcs.61.11god.
Directive speech acts in Malay (Bahasa Melayu): An ethnopragmatic perspective.
Cahiers de praxématique, 38, 113–143. https://doi.org/10.4000/praxematique.582.
On and on: Verbal explications for a polysemic network. Cognitive Linguistics,
13(3), 277–294. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2002.019.
Overcoming terminological ethnocentrism. IIAS Newsletter 27: 28.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantics and cognition.
In L. Nadel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of cognitive science (pp. 1096–1102). New York:
John Wiley.
Ethnosyntax, ethnopragmatics, sign-functions, and culture. In N.J. Enfield (Ed.),
Ethnosyntax: Explorations in grammar and culture (pp. 52–73). Oxford: Oxford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266500.003.0003.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka). Lexical decomposition II:
Conceptual axiology. In D.A. Cruse, F. Hundsnurscher, M. Job, & P.R. Lutzeier
(Eds.), Lexicology. An international handbook on the nature and structure of words
and vocabularies: Vol. 1 (pp. 256–268). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
(Co-authored; second author: J. Harkins) Posture, location, existence, and states of
being in two Central Australian languages. In J. Newman (Ed.), The linguistics of
sitting, standing and lying (pp. 213–238). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.
org/10.1075/tsl.51.10god.
Explicating emotions across languages and cultures: A semantic approach. In S.R.
Fussell (Ed.), The verbal communication of emotions: Interdisciplinary perspec-
tives (pp. 19–53). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
2003
(Co-edited; second editor: G. Palmer; third editor: P. Lee) Talking about “think-
ing”. Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2/3) (special issue).
Thinking across languages and cultures: Six dimensions of variation. Cognitive
Linguistics, 14(2/3), 109–140. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2003.005.
Whorf meets Wierzbicka: Variation and universals in language and thinking.
Language Sciences, 25(4), 393–432. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(03)
00002-0.
Dynamic ter- in Malay (Bahasa Melayu): A study in grammatical polysemy.
Studies in Language, 27(2), 287–322. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.27.2.04god.
Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Latest perspectives. Theoretical Linguistics,
29(3), 227–236. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.29.3.227.
248 B. Peeters
Semantic primes within and across languages. In D. Willems, B. Defrancq, T.

Colleman, & D. Noël (Eds.), Contrastive analysis in language: Identifying lin-
guistic units of comparison (pp. 13–43). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://
doi.org/10.1057/9780230524637_2.
Yes or no? The complex semantics of a simple question. In P. Collins, & M.
Amberber (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic
Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2002/Goddard.pdf.
2004
(Co-edited; second editor: A. Wierzbicka) Cultural scripts. Intercultural
Pragmatics, 1(2) (special issue).
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Cultural scripts: What are they and
what are they good for? Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(2), 153–166. https://doi.org/10.
1515/iprg.2004.1.2.153.
The atoms of meaning. IIAS Newsletter, 33, 17.
The ethnopragmatics and semantics of ‘active metaphors’. Journal of Pragmatics,
36(7), 1211–1230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2003.10.011.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Language, culture and meaning:
Cross-cultural semantics. In R. Dirven, & M. Verspoor (Eds.), Cognitive explo-
ration of language and linguistics. Second revised edition (pp. 127–148).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 1998.
“Cultural scripts”: A new medium for ethnopragmatic instruction. In M. Achard, &
S. Niemeier (Eds.), Cognitive Linguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign
language teaching (pp. 143–163). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.
1515/9783110199857.143.
(Co-authored; second author: S. Karlsson) Re-thinking THINK: Contrastive seman-
tics of Swedish and English. In C. Moskovsky (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2003
Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/
als2003/goddard.pdf. See also 2008.
Speech-acts, values and cultural scripts: A study in Malay ethnopragmatics. In R.
Cribb (Ed.), Asia examined: Proceedings of the 15th biennial conference of the
ASAA. http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/124461/20110211-1446/coombs.anu.edu.au/
SpecialProj/ASAA/biennial-conference/2004/Goddard-C-ASAA2004.pdf.
2005
The languages of East and Southeast Asia: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. xvi + 315 pp.
The quest for meaning… Communication, culture and cognition. Armidale:
University of New England (inaugural public lecture). 20 pp.
The lexical semantics of culture. Language Sciences, 27(1), 51–73. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.langsci.2004.05.001.
Componential analysis. In J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of
pragmatics: 2003–2005 installment. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 1995,
2009. https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.m.comm1.
2006
(Edited) Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter. vii + 278 pp. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.
Ethnopragmatics: A new paradigm. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics:
Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 1–30). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.1.
“Lift your game Martina!”: Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics of
Australian English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding dis-
course in cultural context (pp. 65–97). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. See also 2007.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110911114.65.
Verbal explication and the place of NSM semantics in Cognitive Linguistics.
In J. Luchjenbroers (Ed.), Cognitive Linguistics investigations: Across languages,
fields and philosophical boundaries (pp. 189–218). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.15.14god.
Natural Semantic Metalanguage. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and
linguistics, 2nd edition (pp. 544–551). Oxford: Elsevier.
Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and
linguistics, 2nd edition (pp. 609–612). Oxford: Elsevier.
Cultural scripts. In J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of prag-
matics: Vol. 10. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 2009. doi: https://doi.org/
10.1075/hop.10.cul2.
(Co-authored; second author: B. Peeters) The Natural Semantic Metalanguage
(NSM) approach: An overview with reference to the most important Romance
languages. In B. Peeters (Ed.), Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical
evidence from the Romance languages (pp. 13–38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.81.07god.
(Book review) M. Stubbs, Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics.
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 16(1), 143–144.
2007
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) NSM analyses of the semantics of
physical qualities: sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp in cross-linguistic per-
spective. Studies in Language, 31(4), 765–800. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.31.4.
03god.
A “lexicographic portrait” of forgetting. In M. Amberber (Ed.), The language of
memory in a crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 119–137). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.21.08god.
A culture-neutral metalanguage for mental state concepts. In A.C. Schalley, & D.
Khlentzos (Eds.), Mental states: Vol. 2. Language and cognitive structure (pp. 11–
35). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.93.04god.
Semantic primes and conceptual ontology. In A.C. Schalley, & D. Zaefferer (Eds.),
Ontolinguistics: How ontological status shapes the linguistic coding of concepts
(pp. 145–173). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/
9783110197792.2.145.
250 B. Peeters
Semantic molecules. In I. Mushin, & M. Laughren (Eds.), Selected papers from the
2006 Annual Meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society. https://espace.library.uq.
edu.au/view/UQ:12798/.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantic primes and cultural scripts
in language learning and intercultural communication. In F. Sharifian, & G.B.
Palmer (Eds.), Applied Cultural Linguistics: Implications for second language
learning and intercultural communication (pp. 105–124). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.7.08god.
«Игpaй лyчшe, Mapтинa!» (иpoния «c кaмeнным лицoм» и этнoпpaгмaтикa
aвcтpaлийcкoгo вapиaнтa aнглийcкoгo языкa). Жaнpы peчи [Zhanry rechi/
Speech genres], 5, 159–183. Russian translation of “Lift your game Martina!”:
Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics of Australian English (2006).
(Book review) R. Pustet, Copulas: Universals in the categorization of the lexicon.
Language, 83(2), 446–449. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2007.0070.
A response to N.J. Enfield’s review of Ethnopragmatics (Goddard, Ed., 2006).
Intercultural Pragmatics, 4(4), 531–538. https://doi.org/10.1515/IP.2007.027.
2008
(Edited) Cross-linguistic semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xvi +
Natural Semantic Metalanguage: The state of the art. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Cross-
linguistic semantics (pp. 1–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.
1075/slcs.102.05god.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) New semantic primes and new syn-
tactic frames: “Specificational BE” and “abstract THIS/IT”. In C. Goddard (Ed.),
Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 35–57). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.
org/10.1075/slcs.102.06god.
Towards a systematic table of semantic elements. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Cross-
linguistic semantics (pp. 59–81). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.
1075/slcs.102.07god.
(Co-authored; second author: S. Karlsson) Re-thinking THINK in contrastive per-
spective: Swedish vs. English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics
(pp. 225–240). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.102.
14god.
Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: English heart vs. Malay hati. In F.
Sharifian, R. Dirven, N. Yu, & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Culture, body, and language:
Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 75–
102). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110199109.2.75.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Universal human concepts as a basis
for contrastive linguistic semantics. In M.Á. Gómez González, J.L. Mackenzie, &
E.M. González Álvarez (Eds.), Current trends in contrastive linguistics: Functional
and cognitive perspectives (pp. 205–226). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.
org/10.1075/sfsl.60.13god.
(Book review) H. Wiese, Numbers, language and the human mind. Language,
84(3), 672–675. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0051.
2009
The ‘communication concept’ and the ‘language concept’ in everyday English.
07268600802516350.
The conceptual semantics of numbers and counting: An NSM analysis. Functions
of Language, 16(2), 193–224. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.16.2.02god.
Not taking yourself too seriously in Australian English: Semantic explications,
cultural scripts, corpus evidence. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(1), 29–53. https://doi.
org/10.1515/IPRG.2009.002.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Contrastive semantics of physical
activity verbs: ‘Cutting’ and ‘chopping’ in English, Polish, and Japanese. Language
Sciences, 31, 60–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2007.10.002.
“Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight”: Proverbiality, semantics, and
indexicality in English and Malay. In G. Senft, & E.B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual com-
munication (pp. 103–125). New York: Berg.
Componential analysis. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Culture
and language use (pp. 58–67). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 1995, 2005.
https://doi.org/10.1075/hoph.2.06god.
Cultural scripts. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and
language use (pp. 68–80). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 2006. https://doi.
org/10.1075/hoph.2.07god.
“Cлeдyй пyтeм pиcoвoгo пoля”: ceмaнтикa пocлoвиц в aнглийcкoм и
мaлaйcкoм языкax [“Follow the way of the rice plant”: The semantics of proverbs
in English and Malay (Bahasa Melayu)]. Жaнpы peчи [Speech genres], 6, 184–
207. Russian translation of a paper presented at the Wenner-Gren Foundation
Symposium on Ritual Communication, Portugal, 17-23 March 2007. Updated and
published in English as chapter 8 of Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across
domains, languages, and cultures (2014).
Culture. In L. Cummings (Ed.), The Routledge pragmatics encyclopedia (pp. 121–
122). London: Routledge.
2010
Semantic molecules and semantic complexity (with special reference to “environ-
mental” molecules). Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 8(1), 123–155. https://doi.org/
10.1075/ml.8.1.05god.
Cultural scripts: Applications to language teaching and intercultural communica-
tion. Studies in Pragmatics (Journal of the China Pragmatics Association), 3, 105–
119.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) ‘Want’ is a lexical and conceptual
universal: Reply to Khanina. Studies in Language, 34(1): 108–123. https://doi.org/
10.1075/sl.34.1.04god.
A piece of cheese, a grain of sand: The semantics of mass nouns and unitizers. In F.
J. Pelletier (Ed.), Kinds, things and stuff: Mass terms and generics (pp. 132–165).
252 B. Peeters
New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/

9780195382891.003.0008.
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In B. Heine, & H. Narrog (Eds.),
The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 459–484). Oxford: Oxford
University Press. See also 2015.
Universals and variation in the lexicon of mental state concepts. In B.C. Malt, &
P. Wolff (Eds.), Words and the mind: How words capture human experience
(pp. 72–92). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/
9780195311129.003.0005.
(Co-authored; second author: A.C. Schalley) Semantic analysis. In N. Indurkhya, &
F.J. Damerau (Eds.), Handbook of natural language processing: Second edition
(pp. 93–120). Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC.
2011
Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Revised and expanded second edition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. xix + 490 pp. See also 1998.
The lexical semantics of language (with special reference to words). Language
Sciences, 33(1), 40–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.03.003.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantics and cognition. Wiley
interdisciplinary reviews: Cognitive science, 2(2): 125–135. https://doi.org/10.
1002/wcs.101.
Semantic primitives (primes). In P.C. Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of
the language sciences (pp. 740–742). New York: Cambridge University Press.
2012
‘Early interactions’ in Australian English, American English, and English English:
Cultural differences and cultural scripts. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1038–1050.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.04.010.
Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the
NSM approach to lexical typology. Linguistics, 50(3): 711–743. https://doi.org/10.
1515/ling-2012-0022.
Cultural scripts and communication style differences in three Anglo Englishes
(English English, American English and Australian English). In B. Kryk-Kastovsky
(Ed.), Intercultural miscommunication past and present (pp. 101–120). Frankfurt:
Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-653-01353-5.
2013
(Edited) Semantics and/in social cognition. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33(3)
(special issue).
The semantic roots and cultural grounding of ‘social cognition’. Australian Journal
of Linguistics, 33(3): 245–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2013.846454.
On the river, on an island, on the street: The semantics of English on-constructions
involving “laterality”. International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics [China], 3(2),
153–167.
(Co-authored; first author: M.A. Barrios Rodríguez) ‘Degrad verbs’ in Spanish and
English: Collocations, lexical functions and contrastive NSM semantic analysis.
Functions of Language, 20(2), 219–249. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.20.2.04bar.
Comparatives without scales: An NSM analysis of English comparative construc-
tions. In J. Henderson, M.-È. Ritz, & C. Rodríguez Louro (Eds.), Proceedings of
the 2012 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. https://sites.google.com/
site/als2012uwa/proceedings/Goddard_Comparatives.pdf.
English valency patterns. In I. Hartmann, M. Haspelmath, & B. Taylor (Eds.),
Valency patterns Leipzig. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology. http://valpal.info/languages/english.
2014
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Words and meanings: Lexical
semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. viii + 314 pp. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668434.001.0001.
(Co-edited; second editor: Z. Ye) “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and
cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2) (special issue). See
also 2016. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.1.2.
(Co-authored; second author: Z. Ye) Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across
languages and cultures. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 131–
148. See also 2016. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.1.2.01god.
Interjections and emotion (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”).
Emotion Review, 6(1): 53–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073913491843.
Author reply [to respondents of the previous entry]. Emotion Review, 6(1), 66–67.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka, third author: H. Fabréga Jr)
Evolutionary semantics: Using NSM to model stages in human cognitive evolution.
Language Sciences, 42, 60–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.11.003.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantic fieldwork and lexical uni-
versals. Studies in Language, 38(1): 80–126. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.38.1.03god.
On “disgust”. In F. Baider, & G. Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions
in context (pp. 73–97). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.
241.06god.
Have to, have got to, and must: NSM analyses of English modal verbs of ‘neces-
sity’. In M. Taboada, & R. Trnavac (Eds.), Nonveridicality and evaluation:
Theoretical, computational and corpus approaches (pp. 50–75). Leiden: Brill.
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004258174_004.
Jesus! vs. Christ! in Australian English: Semantics, secondary interjections and
corpus analysis. In J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.), Yearbook of corpus linguistics and
pragmatics 2014: New empirical and theoretical paradigms (pp. 55–77). Cham:
Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06007-1_4.
2015
“Swear words” and “curse words” in Australian (and American) English: At the
crossroads of pragmatics, semantics and sociolinguistics. Intercultural Pragmatics,
12(2), 189–218. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2015-0010.
254 B. Peeters
The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. Review of Cognitive

Linguistics, 13(2), 291–313. See also 2017. https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.13.2.02god.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) What does Jukurrpa (‘Dreamtime’,
‘the Dreaming’) mean? A semantic and conceptual journey of discovery. Australian
Aboriginal Studies, 2015(1): 43–65.
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In B. Heine, & H. Narrog (Eds.),
The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis, 2nd edition (pp. 817–841). Oxford:
Oxford University Press. See also 2010. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/
9780199677078.013.0018.
Words as carriers of cultural meaning. In J.R. Taylor (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of
the word (pp. 380–398). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/
oxfordhb/9780199641604.013.027.
Verb classes and valency alternations (NSM approach), with special reference to
English physical activity verbs. In A. Malchukov, & B. Comrie (Eds.), Valency
classes in the world’s languages: Vol. 2 (pp. 1671–1701). Berlin: de Gruyter
Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110429343-020.
(Co-authored; contributor: Z. Ye) Ethnopragmatics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The
Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 66–83). London: Routledge.
2016
(Co-edited; second editor: Z. Ye) “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and
cultures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. vi + 145 pp. See also 2014..https://doi.org/
10.1075/bct.84.
(Co-authored; second author: Z. Ye) Exploring “happiness” and “pain” across
languages and cultures. In C. Goddard, & Z. Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain”
across languages and cultures (pp. 1–18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also
2014. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.84.01god.
(Co-authored; second author: M. Taboada, third author: R. Trnavac) Semantic
descriptions of 24 evaluational adjectives, for application in sentiment analysis
(Technical report SFU-CMPT TR 2016-42-1). Vancouver: Simon Fraser
University, School of Computing Science.
Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de lexi-
cologie, 109, 13–34. https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0013.
(Co-authored; first author: A. Gladkova, second author: U. Vanhatalo) The
semantics of interjections: An experimental study with natural semantic metalan-
guage. Applied Psycholinguistics 37(4): 841–865. https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0142716415000260.
(Co-authored; second author: Anna Wierzbicka) Explicating the English lexicon of
‘doing and happening’. Functions of Language, 23(2), 214–256. https://doi.org/10.
1075/fol.23.2.03god.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) ‘It’s mine!’ Re-thinking the con-
ceptual semantics of “possession” through NSM. Language Sciences, 56, 93–104.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2016.03.002.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka, third author: J. Wong) “Walking” and
“running” in English and German: The conceptual semantics of verbs of human
locomotion. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 14(2): 303–336. https://doi.org/10.

1075/rcl.14.2.03god.
(Co-authored; second author: R. Cramer) “Laid back” and “irreverent”: An
ethnopragmatic analysis of two cultural themes in Australian English communi-
cation. In D. Carbaugh (Ed.), The handbook of communication in cross-cultural
perspective (pp. 89–103). New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/
9781315709321.ch8.
Comment: Lakoff on metaphor—More heat than light. Emotion Review, 8(3), 277–
278. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073915595099.
2017
Ethnopragmatic perspectives on conversational humour, with special reference to
Australian English. Language & Communication, 55, 55–68. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.langcom.2016.09.008.
(Co-authored; first author: M. Taboada, second author: R. Trnavac) On being
negative. Corpus Pragmatics, 1(1): 57–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-017-
0006-y.
The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. In A. Celle, & L. Lansari
(Eds.), Expressing and describing surprise (pp. 27–49). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. See also 2015. https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.92.02god.
Natural Semantic Metalanguage and lexicography. In P. Hanks, & G.-M. de
Schryver (Eds.), International handbook of modern lexis and lexicography. Berlin:
Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45369-4_14-1.
Furniture, vegetables, weapons: Functional collective superordinates in the English
lexicon. In Z. Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (pp. 246–281). Oxford: Oxford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0010.
2018
Ten lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring language, thought and
culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill. xi + 356 pp. https://doi.org/
10.1163/9789004357723.
(Edited) Minimal English for a global world: Improved communication using fewer
words. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. xiii + 292 pp. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-
319-62512-6.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Minimal English and how it can add
to Global English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a global world:
Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 5–27). Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62512-6_2.
Minimal English: The science behind it. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Minimal English for a
global world: Improved communication using fewer words (pp. 29–70). Cham:
“Joking, kidding, teasing”: Slippery categories for cross-cultural comparison but
key words for understanding Anglo conversational humor. Intercultural
Pragmatics, 15(4), 487–514. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2018-0017.
256 B. Peeters
A semantic menagerie: The conceptual semantics of ethnozoological categories.

Russian Journal of Linguistics, 22(3), 539-559. https://doi.org/10.22363/2312-
9182-2018-22-3-539-559.
(Co-authored; first author: A. Wierzbicka) Talking about our bodies and their parts
in Warlpiri. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 38(1), 31–62. https://doi.org/10.
1080/07268602.2018.1393862.
2019
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Direct and indirect speech revisited:
Semantic universals and semantic diversity. In A. Capone, M. García-Carpintero, &
A. Falzone (Eds.), Indirect reports and pragmatics in the world languages
(pp. 173–199). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78771-8_9.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Reported speech as a pivotal human
phenomenon: Response to Spronck and Nikitina. Linguistic Typology, 23(1), 167–
175. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2019-0006.
In Press and Forthcoming
(Co-edited; first editor: M. Mizumoto, second editor: J. Ganeri) Ethno-epistemol-
ogy: Global perspectives on the study of knowledge.
Overcoming the linguistic challenges for ethno-epistemology: NSM perspectives.
In M. Mizumoto, J. Ganeri, & C. Goddard (Eds.), Ethno-epistemology: Global
perspectives on the study of knowledge.
‘Country’, ‘land’, ‘nation’: Key Anglo English words for talking and thinking about
people in places. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 1(2).
(Co-authored; second author: M. Taboada, third author: R. Trnavac) The semantics
of evaluational adjectives: Perspectives from Natural Semantic Metalanguage and
Appraisal. Functions of Language, 26(3).
(Co-authored; second author: K. Mullan) Explicating verbs for “laughing with other
people” in French and English (and why it matters for humour studies). Humor, 33(1).
Vocabulary of emotions and its development in English, German and other languages.
In G.L. Schiewer, J. Altarriba, & B.C. Ng (Eds.), Handbook of language and emotion.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Cognitive Linguistics. In J. Stanlaw (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of linguistic
anthropology. New York: Wiley Blackwell.

2020 Book StudiesInEthnopragmaticsCultur PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

2020 Book StudiesInEthnopragmaticsCultur PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Kerry Mullan · Bert Peeters ·

ISBN 978-981-32-9982-5 ISBN 978-981-32-9983-2 (eBook)

1 Lift Your Game, Cliff! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part II Semantic Analysis

Part III Cliff Goddard: List of Publications

Universiteit Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 1

well. Aren’t we lucky he preferred linguistics to linguini sticks, though, which he

Fortunately, there is something to take Goddard’s mind off royal encounters—

A handful of potential contributors, unfortunately, could not be reached. Others had

publications, many of which are referred to throughout these volumes, is included at

Dixon, R. M. W. (2011). I am a linguist. Leiden: Brill.

Lauren Sadow and Kerry Mullan

In 1972 the Polish-born linguist Anna Wierzbicka published a book—the ﬁrst of

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 13

Volume 1, Ethnopragmatics and Semantic Analysis, presents a series of chapters

2.2 A Metalanguage for Comparing and Deﬁning

Drawing on the philosophical ideas of such intellectual greats as Leibniz, Arnauld

2.3 The Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach

As a way of ‘doing’ lexical semantics, the natural semantic metalanguage approach

2.3.1 Semantic Primes and Their Syntax

Fig. 2.1 Semantic primes organized by conceptual category

(a) something happens

2.3.2 Semantic Molecules

people of one kind

people of one kind

it can be like this:

This example of a cultural keyword in English is part of a body of research

2.5 Semantic Templates

2.6 NSM Versus the NSM Approach

which is used to create reductive paraphrases or explications. On the other hand,

2.7 Offshoots and Spinoffs

2.7.1 Ethnopragmatics and Cultural Scripts

As a label, ‘ethnopragmatics’ is nowadays mostly associated with work by Cliff

many people in Australia think like this:

likely to be shared as individual modes of interaction. However, they exist in social

[in Australia, many people think like this:]

In between, master-level scripts and interaction-level scripts are mid-level scripts,

2.7.2 Minimal English

hungry, brain, heart Body

month, week, clock, hour, second Times

house, village, city, school, hospital Places

teacher, doctor, nurse, soldier Professions

country, government, capital, border, flag, passport, vote ‘Country’

science, the law, health, education, sport ‘Fields’

knife, key, gun, bomb, medicines ‘Tools’

pipe, telephone, television, radio, phone Technology

money, God, war, poison, music Other: nouns

2.8 Introduction to Volume 1

As previously indicated, Ethnopragmatics and semantic analysis is the ﬁrst of three

ethnopragmatics (Goddard 2006a) is also an important component of volume 2,

2.8.1 Part I: Ethnopragmatics

In accordance with the principles underlying ethnopragmatics as deﬁned by

apply an ethnopragmatic approach to Persian. Arab illustrates the practice using a

2.8.2 Part II: Semantic Analysis

In Chap. 11, Mengistu Amberber examines the semantics of alienable posses-

2.9 Final Words

Bromhead, H. (2018). Landscape and culture—Cross-linguistic perspectives. Amsterdam: John

Wierzbicka, A. (1994). ‘Cultural scripts’: A new approach to the study of cross-cultural

John C. Wakeﬁeld, Winnie Chor and Nikko Lai

Abstract This study used the ethnopragmatics approach to examine the

Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 35