Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default LanguageIn Imprisoned in English, Anna Wierzbicka argues that in the present English-dominated world, millions of people - including academics, lawyers, diplomats, and writers - can become "prisoners of English", unable to think outside English. In particular, social sciences and the humanities are now increasingly locked in a conceptual framework grounded in English. To most scholars in these fields, treating English as a default language seems a natural thing to do. The book's approach is interdisciplinary, and its themes range over areas of central interest to anthropology, psychology, and sociology, among others. The linguistic material is drawn from languages of America, Australia, the Pacific, South-East Asia and Europe. Wierzbicka argues that it is time for human sciences to take advantage of English as a global lingua franca while at the same time transcending the limitations of the historically-shaped conceptual vocabulary of English. And she shows how this can be done. |
Contents
PART TWO Emotions and Values | 53 |
PART THREE Politeness and Cooperation | 87 |
PART FOUR Entering Other Minds | 117 |
PART FIVE Breaking Down the Walls of the Prison | 183 |
PART SIX Kindred Thinking Across Disciplines | 197 |
Final Remarks | 243 |
Notes | 249 |
253 | |
275 | |
Other editions - View all
Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language Anna Wierzbicka Limited preview - 2014 |
Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language Anna Wierzbicka No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
altruism anger Anglo Anglo culture Anglocentrism Anglophone Anna Wierzbicka anthropologist Australian Aboriginal languages Australian language basic emotions bilingual body chapter chimp chimpanzees Cliff Goddard Coetzee cognitive scenarios collaboration color complex cooperation cross-cultural cross-linguistic cultural scripts culture-specific Dalabon dictionary different languages disgust douleur Ekman and Cordaro emotion terms endangered languages English concepts English words Eva Hoffman evolutionary example explication expressions Fabrega fact feel glosses guage Hoffman ideas indigenous Jahai Kayardild languages and cultures lexical linguistic Lucy Majid metalanguage Michael Tomasello mind moral mother Narungga native speakers Natural Semantic Metalanguage nouns NSM research one’s people’s perspective philosopher phrase Pirahã Pitjantjatjara Polish politeness polysemy primes psychology question quote reference Richard Shweder Russian Sapir scholars semantic sense shared Shweder speakers of English speaking theory things thought tion Tomasello translation understanding universal values vocabulary walu-no Warlpiri word meaning writes Yucatec