This course, taught by a specialist in language, culture and translation studies and the author of many books in all these areas, explores relationships between languages and cultures and their relevance to translation. Special attention will be given to recent debates on the nature of language, culture and social life, to the interplay between diversity and universals, and to the issues of continuity, change and variation in language and culture. The course will explore links between culture and translation and the limits of translatability related to cultural differences.

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; the hidden cultural legacy of English; translation from English and into English in the era of “global English”.

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

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.

6. Discuss difficulties involved in translation of selected English cultural keywords into other languages and possible solutions.

7. Identify the challenges involved in translating from English and into English arising from some Anglo cultural scripts.

8. Read critically a wide range of publications bearing on education, social policy, international relations, law etc., and identify their hidden cultural biases.

9. Explain to others (e.g. in a work context) tacit cultural presuppositions embedded in certain English key words, key phrases and interactional routines, and to do so in a language that others could understand.

Test (20%), 3,000 word essay (40%) and 2 hour exam (40%).

Graduate students attend joint classes with undergraduates but may expect more rigorous assessment and additional assignment work, tailored to the student's interests.

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 ANTH 1003, or with permission of Lecturer.

* 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

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.

In the Reading Brick

• Goddard, Cliff. 2002. The Search for the Shared Semantic Core of All Languages. In Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka eds. Meaning and Universal Grammar: Theory and Empirical Findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. In press. Bilingualism and Cognition: Perspective from Semantics. In Vivian Cook and Benedetta Bassetti (eds.) Language and Bilingual Cognition.
• Colapinto, John. 2007. The Interpreter: Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language? The New Yorker. April 16.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 1996. Semantics and "Primitive Thought". Chapter 6 in Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hasada, Rie. 2008. Two "virtuous emotions" in Japanese: Nasake/joo and jihi. In Cliff Goddard. (ed.) Cross-Linguistic Semantics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins. 331-347.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. In press. Experience, Evidence and Sense. Chapter 8 New York: Oxford University Press.
• Travis, Catherine E. 2004. The ethnopragmatics of the diminutive in Conversational Colombian Spanish. Intercultural Pragmatics. 1-2. 249-274.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. Anglo scripts against ‘putting pressure' on other people and their linguistic manifestations. In Cliff Goddard, (ed.) Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 31-63.
• Wong, Jock. 2007. East meets West, or does it really? Chapter 6 in Mary Besemeres and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.) Translating Lives: Living with two Languages and Cultures. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. In press. Cultural Scripts and Intercultural Communication. In Anna Trosborg (ed.) Pragmatics across Languages and Cultures. Vol 1. In Handbooks of Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 2008. Why there are no ‘colour universals' in language and thought. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 14 (2). 407-425.
• Kay, Paul and Rolf G Kuehni. 2008. Correspondence. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 14 (4). 886-887.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 2008. Correspondence. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 14 (4). 887-889.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 2007. Bodies and their parts: An NSM approach to semantic typology. Language Sciences. 29. 14-65.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 1996. The Semantics of Natural Kinds (Chapter 11) & Semantics and Ethnobiology (Chapter 12) of Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 2009. Language and Metalanguage: Key issues in emotion research. Emotion Review. 1 (1) 3-14.
• Gladkova, Anna. In press. A Linguist's View of ‘Pride". Emotion Review.
• Goddard, Cliff. 2009. Not taking yourself too seriously in Australian English: Semantic explications, cultural scripts, corpus evidence. Intercultural Pragmatics. 6 (1). 29-53.
• Goddard, Cliff. 2006. "Lift your game, Martina!" - Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics of "Aussie" English. In Cliff Goddard (ed.). In Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1-30.

In Chifley (Short Loan during Semester 2, 2009) 

• Besemeres, Mary and Anna Wierzbicka eds. 2007. Translating Lives: Living with two Languages and Cultures.  St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
• Foley, Wiliam A. 1997. Anthropological Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell
• Goddard, Cliff ed. Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin.
• Shweder, Richard and Robert LeVine eds. 1984. Culture Theory: essays on mind, self, and emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schwartz, Theodore, Geoffrey White and Catherine Lutz eds. 1992. New Directions in Psychological Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 1992. Semantics, Culture, and Cognition : Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 1997. Understanding cultures through their key words : English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 1999. Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006 English: Meaning and culture. New York: OUP