Imprisoned in English : the hazards of English as a default language /

This title argues that in the present English-dominated world social sciences and the humanities are locked in a conceptual framework grounded in English and that scholars need to break away from this framework to reach a more universal culture-independent perspective on things human.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wierzbicka, Anna (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: New York : Oxford University Press, 2014.
Subjects:
Online Access:Connect to the full text of this electronic book
Table of Contents:
  • Recognizing the contingency of one's own language
  • Naming the world or construing the world?
  • The givens of human life
  • Universal words, semantic atoms and semantic molecules
  • Human bodies and human minds: what is visible and what is invisible
  • Anglo values vs. human values: talking about values in a global world
  • Human emotions and English words: are anger and disgust universal?
  • Taking to other people: politeness and cultural scripts
  • Doing things with other people: cooperation, interaction and obščenie
  • Grammar and social cognition: the Hawaiians, the Dalabons, and the Anglos
  • Thinking about things in Yucatec and in English
  • Endangered languages, endangered meanings
  • Chimpanzees and the evolution of human cognition
  • From ordinary (Anglo) English to Minimal English
  • Anthropology, psychology, psychiatry
  • Philosophy, theology, politics
  • Linguistics: cognitive and cultural approaches
  • Bilingualism, life writing, translation.