This course provides practical training for anyone interested in the study of meaning, intercultural communication, or translation. It focuses on basic and universal human concepts and their role as a tool for comparing and explaining meanings across languages and cultures. The course explores semantic universals and their implications for semantic analysis on all levels of language, including lexicon, grammar and discourse. The course aims at improving the student's skills in exploring and describing the meaning of words, constructions and whole texts in the context of the study of languages and the 'stream of life'.

Topics discussed will include the following: semantic analysis and the current social, political and moral debates (e.g. the debates around the concept of 'genocide'); semantic universals and the issue of 'primitive thought'; comparing grammatical categories across languages; the semantics of modals, the semantics of evidentials; social categories and kinship terms; human bodies and their parts; human emotions and values, with a special focus on happiness; cultural scripts and intercultural communication; physical activities; semantic molecules and semantic templates; non verbal communication; semantics and social cognition (with a focus on reflexive and reciprocal constructions); practice in writing explications and cultural scripts.

On satisfying the requirements of the course, the students will be able to:

1. Analyse the meaning of words, phrases and grammatical constructions in different languages.
2. Articulate the meaning of expressions through the natural semantic metalanguage in a precise and clear way.
3. Articulate cultural norms through 'cultural scripts'.
4. Clarify ideas, values and norms through simple and universal concepts.
5. Participate effectively in a collective thinking process leading towards a consensus about the meaning of expressions and ideas.

Two 2,500 word essays (90%) and class participation, including class presentation (10%).

A two-hour weekly seminar. Weekly readings as specified in the Course Schedule

Semantics LING2008 or equivalent, or with permission of Lecturer

Prescribed Text (Available on Short Loan in Chifley Library):

Wierzbicka, Anna. 1996. Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2: A Survey of Semantic Primitives. pp 35-111

Chapter 3: Universal Grammar: The Syntax of Universal Semantic Primitives. pp112-147.

Chapter 6. Semantics and "Primitive Thought". 184-210.

Chapter 14. A Semantic Basis for Grammatical Description and Typology: Transitivity and

Reflexives. 402-426.

Chapter 15. Comparing Grammatical Categories across Languages: The Semantics of 

Evidentials. 427-458.

  In the Reading Brick

• Goddard, Cliff. In press. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to linguistic analysis. In Heine and Narrog (eds.). Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis.
• Gaita, Raimond. 2009. Holocaust Resentment: the implications of the claim that the holocaust is unique and that aspects of it will forevere defeat our attempts to understand it. Lecture given at the Fritz Bauer Institute and Department of Philosophy of the University of Frankfurt on Holocaust Memorial Day.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. In press. Bilingualism and Cognition: Perspective from Semantics. In Vivian Cook and Benedetta Bassetti (eds.) Language and Bilingual Cognition.
• Goddard, Cliff. To appear. Have to, Have Got To, and Must: NSM Analyses of English Modal Verbs of "Necessity". Journal of English Linguistics.
• Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka. Forthcoming. Men, women and children: the semantics of basic social categories. Language.
• Priestley, Carol. Forthcoming. What's in a name? Cultural values and terms of address and reference in a Papuan language.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. Forthcoming. "Sex" in a cross-linguistics, cross-cultural and historical perspective. In Fifty English Keywords. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka. 2008. Universal human concepts as a basis for contrastive linguistics. In María de los Ángeles Gómez-González, Lachlan Mackenzie and Elsa González Álvarez. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Gladkova, Anna. 2008. Tolerance. New and traditional values in Russian in comparison with English. In Cliff Goddard. Cross-Linguistic Semantics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 2009. Language and Metalanguage: Key issues in emotion research. Emotion Review. 1 (1) 3-14. With the Debate, four short papers. 15-23.
• Ye, Zhengdao. 2001. An inquiry into "sadness" in Chinese. In Jean Harkins and Anna Wierzbicka. Emotions in Crosslinguistic Perspective. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 359-404.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 2008. A conceptual basis for intercultural pragmatics and world-wide understanding. In Martin Pütz and JoAnne Neff-van Aertselaer. Developing Contrastive Pragmatics: Interlanguage and Cross-Cultural Perspectives.
• Yoon, Kyung-Joo. 2009. Imposition as an expression of ceng ‘affection' in the Korean cultural context. Presented at the international Cross-Culturally Speaking, Speaking Cross-culturally Conference, Macquarie University, Sydney (on July 6^th 2009).
• Wierzbicka, Anna In press. All people eat and drink. Does that mean that ‘eat' and ‘drink' are universal human concepts? In John Newman (ed.). The Linguistics of Eating and Drinking. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Ye, Zhengdao. 2006. Why the "inscrutable" Chinese face? Emotionality and facial expression in Chinese. In Cliff Goddard. Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. Reading human faces: Emotion components and universal semantics. Pragmatics and Cognition 1(1) 1-23.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 2009. Case in NSM: A reanalysis of the Polish dative. In The Oxford Handbook of Case. Oxford University Press.
• Goddard, Cliff. 2008. Natural Semantic Metalanguage: The state of the art. Introduction to Cross-Linguistic Semantics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 1-34.
• Goddard, Cliff. 2006. Cultural Scripts. In Jan Östman and Jef Verschueren in colloboration with Eline Versluys. Handbook of Pragmatics.
• Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka. 2004. Cultural Scripts: What are they and what are they good for? Intercultural Pragmatics. (Special Issue on Cultural Scripts) 2: 153-165.

In Chifley Library

Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka. 2002. Meaning and Universal Grammar: Theory and empirical findings. Volumes I and II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. English: Meaning and culture. New York: OUP

Wierzbicka, Anna. 2010. Experience, Evidence, and Sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English. New York: Oxford University Press.