This course, taught by a specialist in language and culture studies and the author of many books in this area, explores relationships between languages and cultures. Special attention will be given to recent debates and the nature of language, culture and social life, on the interplay between diversity and universals, and on the issues of continuity, change and variation in language and culture.

Topics discussed will include language universals and "human nature"; moral values across languages and cultures; emotions across languages and cultures; different ways of thinking about space and the environment; folk taxonomies and principles of human categorisation; the conceptualisation of colours, and different ways of "seeing the world" linked with different languages and cultures; culture reflected in grammar; cultural scripts - Western and Eastern perspectives.

1. Analyse the meaning of cultural keywords from different languages.
2. Articulate the meaning of expressions through the natural semantic metalanguage.
3. Formulate cultural scripts associated with different languages and suggested by specific linguistic evidence.
4. Identify terminological ethnocentrism of many descriptions formulated in technical English.
5. Systematically analyse cultural assumptions and values embedded in the meaning of linguistic expressions.

Test (20%), 2,500 word essay (40%) and 2 hour exam (40%).

34 classes. Weekly readings as specified in the course schedule.

Open to students who have completed either Introduction to the Study of Language LING1001 or Cross-Cultural Communication LING1021 or Introducing Anthropology ANTH1002 or Global and Local ANTH1003, or with permission of Lecturer.

LANG2015 Language and Culture.

* Foley, William A, 1997. Anthropological linguistics, Oxford: Blackwell.
(Chapters 3, 5, 7 and 11).

* Wierzbicka, Anna, 2006. English: Meaning and culture, New York, OUP. 
(Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9).

* Reading Brick papers as listed in the Course Outline

Three short chapters in:

Besemeres, Mary & Anna Wierzbicka (eds.) 2007. Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. (Chifley Short Loan).

Chapter 10: Besemeres, Mary. Between 'zal' and emotional blackmail: Ways of being in Polish and English.                                             

Chapter 11: Gladkova, Anna. The journey of self-discovery in another language.
                                               
Chapter 8: Wierzbicka, Anna. Two languages, two cultures, one (?) self: Between Polish and English.