Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

English: Meaning and culture by Anna Wierzbicka

by
November 2006, no. 286

English: Meaning and culture by Anna Wierzbicka

OUP, $55 pb, 352 pp

English: Meaning and culture by Anna Wierzbicka

by
November 2006, no. 286

At the heart of Anna Wierzbicka’s book is the argument that what people now call World English is not culturally neutral; that it has embedded in it the Anglo values of its origin. Wierzbicka points to many seemingly ordinary English words, words that we would never suspect of being culturally distinctive, that have no equivalents in other languages. Anglo speakers will be surprised to discover that the values these seemingly commonplace words carry are not universals. Good and bad are universals, but right and wrong are not; the concept of fairness is Anglo, and most other languages do not have words that correspond to fair, fairness and unfair. Even at the level of verbal phrases such as I think, I guess and I believe, and in English’s proliferation of adverbs such as probably, possibly, apparently and conceivably, English differs from all other languages.

Bruce Moore reviews 'English: Meaning and culture' by Anna Wierzbicka

English: Meaning and culture

by Anna Wierzbicka

OUP, $55 pb, 352 pp

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.