2020 Book StudiesInEthnopragmaticsCultur PDF

Bert Peeters · Kerry Mullan ·
Lauren Sadow Editors
Studies in
Ethnopragmatics,
Cultural Semantics,
and Intercultural
Communication
Meaning and Culture
Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics,
and Intercultural Communication
Bert Peeters Kerry Mullan Lauren Sadow
• •
Editors
Studies in Ethnopragmatics,
Cultural Semantics,
and Intercultural
Communication
Meaning and Culture
123
Editors
Bert Peeters Kerry Mullan
Australian National University RMIT University
Canberra, ACT, Australia Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Lauren Sadow
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT, Australia
ISBN 978-981-32-9974-0 ISBN 978-981-32-9975-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
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Dedicated to our good friend and colleague
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Contents
1 Culture Is Everywhere! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Bert Peeters
Part I Words as Carriers of Cultural Meaning

2 In Staunch Pursuit: The Semantics of the Japanese Terms
Shūkatsu ‘Job Hunting’ and Konkatsu ‘Marriage Partner
Hunting’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Yuko Asano-Cavanagh and Gian Marco Farese
3 Cultural Keywords in Porteño Spanish: Viveza Criolla,
Vivo and Boludo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Jan Hein
4 The “Aussie” Bogan: An Occasioned Semantics Analysis . . . . . . . . 57
Roslyn Rowen
5 The Comfort of Home as an Ethical Value in Mike Packer’s
Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Stella Butter and Zuzanna Bułat Silva
6 Common Akan Insults on GhanaWeb: A Semantic Analysis
of Kwasea, Aboa and Gyimii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Rachel Thompson
7 Bwénaado: An Ethnolexicological Study of a Culturally Salient
Word in Cèmuhî (New Caledonia) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Bert Peeters and Margo Lecompte-Van Poucke
8 Heaven and Hell Are Here! The Non-religious Meanings
of English Heaven and Hell and Their Arabic and Hebrew
Counterparts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Sandy Habib
vii
viii Contents
Part II Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context

9 Postcolonial Prepositions: Semantics and Popular Geopolitics
in the Danosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Carsten Levisen
10 Combining NSM Explications for Clusters of Cantonese
Utterance Particles: laa3-wo3 and zaa3-wo3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Helen Hue Lam Leung
Part III Cliff Goddard: List of Publications

Cliff Goddard: List of Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Compiled by Bert Peeters
Chapter 1
Culture Is Everywhere!
Bert Peeters
Abstract This introductory chapter to the second of three volumes celebrating the
career of Griffith University academic Cliff Goddard recaps the fundamentals of the
Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, which is explicitly adopted by all
contributors to this volume (Sect. 1.2), then contextualizes and introduces the
individual papers (Sects. 1.3 and 1.4).

Keywords Meaning Culture Cultural keywords Discourse Natural Semantic
Metalanguage
1.1 Introduction
This volume, subtitled Meaning and culture, is the second of three celebrating the
career of Griffith University academic Cliff Goddard under the general title Studies
in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication. A ‘fun
tribute’ that recaps the major milestones in Goddard’s personal and professional life
may be found in the opening pages of volume 1; a hopefully exhaustive list of
Goddard’s publications to date closes each of the three volumes.
Apart from this introductory chapter, volume 2 comprises two main parts that are
very different in length (seven chapters as opposed to two). Part I is named after
Goddard’s contribution to the Oxford handbook of the word (Taylor 2015); in it, he
discusses ‘Words as carriers of cultural meaning’ (Goddard 2015). Part II repro-
duces the subtitle of Goddard’s (2006) foundational collection of edited
Ethnopragmatics chapters. Ethnopragmatics was of course one of the main topics
B. Peeters (&)
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
e-mail: bert.peeters@anu.edu.au
Universiteit Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium
e-mail: bert.peeters@uantwerpen.be
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 1

B. Peeters et al. (eds.), Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics,
and Intercultural Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_1
2 B. Peeters
of volume 1, which only goes to show that culture is never far from Goddard’s
mind; he has even explicated the word in NSM (Goddard 2005a). The common
denominator in volume 3, where culture looms large as well, is the use of a recent
offspring of NSM, known as Minimal English, of which Goddard has been an
important advocate (see Goddard 2018a), but no less so than of NSM itself (see
Goddard 2018b). NSM as such being explicitly adopted by all contributors to
volume 2, a recap of the fundamentals of the NSM approach (Sect. 1.2) may be
appropriate before we contextualize and introduce the individual papers in the
remainder of this introductory chapter (Sects. 1.3 and 1.4).
1.2 NSM in a Nutshell
NSM is a powerful descriptive tool created by linguists for linguists, but also for the
world. It is a descriptive tool like no other. It is the tool that seventeenth-century
philosophers such as Leibnitz, Descartes, Pascal, Arnauld, Locke and others dreamt
of but were unable to piece together. They were philosophers, after all, and no
matter how well-intentioned they were, they did not have the linguistic know-how
to make their dream a reality. NSM consists of a maximally culture-neutral
vocabulary of universal (or at least quasi-universal) and semantically simple
building blocks held together by a syntax intended to be as universal as the building
blocks themselves. It was painstakingly developed over the last several decades,
first by Polish-born linguist Anna Wierzbicka, who migrated to Australia in the
early 1970s, then by the most formidable tandem in contemporary linguistics,
Wierzbicka and Goddard, her erstwhile student with whom she has co-authored
dozens of high-calibre publications. Apart from relying on their own investigations,
Wierzbicka and Goddard have been able to put to the best possible use the
extensive research carried out by linguists (colleagues as well as students), in
Australia and elsewhere, on dozens of typologically and genetically unrelated
languages from all corners of the world.
The NSM approach, which is inspired by a desire to overcome ethnocentrism
and in particular Anglo bias in linguistic analysis, is the paradigm in linguistic
semantics that uses the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (the term is Goddard’s) in
its endeavour to explicate, i.e. make explicit, the meaning of culture-specific words
and phrases. The technique used to this effect is known as ‘reductive paraphrase’; it
aims at reducing and ultimately removing cultural complexity by paraphrasing it
into semantically simpler terms. The result is referred to as an explication.
Explications are fine-grained and, above all, non-Anglo-based descriptions that the
English language as such is woefully inadequate to emulate in ways that are con-
vincing to native speakers of other languages. Written in non-technical language,
they are accessible to cultural insiders (those for whom English is their native
language) and cultural outsiders (all others) alike. Since, until compelling evidence
to the contrary (or unless stated otherwise), nothing in an explication is
non-universal, explications can be translated without deformation or bias into other
1 Culture Is Everywhere! 3
languages (other NSMs), thereby making culturally specific terms universally

intelligible. Several contributors, to this volume in particular, illustrate this by
providing explications not only in English, but in other languages as well.
In its purest form, NSM vocabulary is limited to 65 so-called semantic primes, a
list that is now considered near-final. As indicated above, the primes are concepts or
building blocks that are found in all (or nearly all) of the world’s languages and that
NSM practitioners believe to be semantically irreducible. They have resisted all
attempts at semantic decomposition into more basic elements and are therefore
deemed indefinable in terms that are semantically simpler than the primes them-
selves. The English exponents of the primes, grouped into meaningful categories,
are listed in Table 1.1. Comparable tables for many other languages can be found
on the NSM homepage at http://bit.ly/1XUoRRV.
NSM syntax, on the other hand, is as universal as the primes, it is empirically
validated, and it sets the rules for the combination of primes into the semantic
components that make up an explication. Each of the primes has its own set of
combinatorial properties. Charts that summarize these properties, or at least the
most important of them, can also be found on the NSM homepage at http://bit.ly/
1XUoRRV.
Table 1.1 Exponents of semantic primes in English

I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING*THING, PEOPLE, BODY Substantives
KIND, PART Relational substantives
THIS, THE SAME, OTHER*ELSE Determiners
ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MUCH*MANY, LITTLE*FEW Quantifiers
GOOD, BAD Evaluators
BIG, SMALL Descriptors
KNOW, THINK, WANT, DON’T WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR Mental predicates
SAY, WORDS, TRUE Speech
DO, HAPPEN, MOVE Actions, events,
movement
BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) Location, existence,
specification
(IS) MINE Possession
LIVE, DIE Life and death
WHEN*TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR Time
SOME TIME, MOMENT
WHERE*PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE, TOUCH Place
NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF Logical concepts
VERY, MORE Augmentor, intensifier
LIKE*AS Similarity
Notes • Exponents of primes can be polysemous; i.e., they can have other, additional meanings. •
Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes. • They can be formally, i.e.
morphologically, complex. • They can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with*).
• Each prime has well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties
4 B. Peeters
Thanks to its universal (or at least quasi-universal) lexicon of primes and its
universal (or at least quasi-universal) syntax, NSM is quite unlike any other
descriptive tool used in linguistics. No other metalanguage has been developed for
which there exist so many strictly isomorphic versions in languages other than
English. No other metalanguage has been developed that allows for its outputs
(referred to above as explications) to be so freely and (mostly) effortlessly translated
into other NSMs. NSM is thus very much unlike ordinary languages, which at times
raise considerable translation issues. No other metalanguage has been developed
that can lay claim to being a genuine mini-language, as opposed to a terminology
that does not have its own intuitively clear grammar. No other metalanguage has
been developed that is unburdened with unnecessary (but necessarily alienating)
associations with culturally tainted material from any language. Its English version
can be used to explicate culturally specific material belonging to any other lan-
guage, e.g. Japanese or Warlpiri, without adding an English spin to the explication
—in exactly the same way as the Japanese or Warlpiri versions could be used to
explicate culturally specific material belonging to English, without adding a
Japanese or Warlpiri spin. For NSM practitioners, the so-called insider perspective
is sacrosanct.
Sometimes, though, it just cannot be done with primes alone. Attempts to sys-
tematically exclude non-prime material may at times lead to very cumbersome
explications that would be rather unpalatable. Apart from primes, some explications
may need to rely on so-called semantic molecules. To distinguish the latter from
genuine primes, molecules are usually formally identified by means of a following
lowercase m placed between square brackets, i.e. by means of the symbol [m].
Unlike primes, molecules are complex and not necessarily universal. However, they
could still be widely shared across languages of the modern world. They are never
posited lightly. Their main function is to maintain the overall readability of
explications that would otherwise become impenetrable. Most importantly, they can
and must be independently decomposed into semantic primes (or into combinations
of primes and more basic molecules, as the case may be). Several contributors to
this volume occasionally rely on molecules to ensure that their explications remain
legible yet are as culturally neutral as possible (or at least desirable).
There is much more that could be said. For more information (on NSM syntax,
on semantic molecules, semantic templates, cultural scripts, allolexy, Minimal
English, etc.), the reader is referred to the introductory chapters to volumes 1 and 3,
and to the literature referred to therein. Another source of reliable information is the
NSM homepage. Last but not least, information on literally hundreds of
NSM-related publications is available on https://nsm-approach.net, a fully search-
able and continually updated online database of relevant bibliographic notices that
also allows to trace explications, scripts, and tables of primes and molecules in the
NSM literature.
1.3 Words as Carriers of Cultural Meaning
Although, from a historiographical point of view, it is not entirely accurate to say

so, it is nonetheless defensible to argue that, in some way, the most commonly used
variant of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is a form of English devoid
of its multiple layers of cultural meaning: a form of English stripped to the bone.
This is not how NSM saw the light of day, but looking at it that way enables us to
focus on a very important point that is often lost sight of. English, as we know it
today, in its multiple varieties (British English, American English, Australian
English, New Zealand English, to name but a few), is as impregnated with culture
as any other language, which means it cannot be used as an objective yardstick and
an unbiased descriptive tool for cultural specificities in other languages. It can be
used as a yardstick and a descriptive tool, as can any other language; but if it is, it is
with total disregard for the insider perspective. The alternative—some would say
the only alternative—is the use of a fine-grained and relentlessly fine-tuned tool
such as NSM, which allows us to unpack culturally complex meanings in a way that
makes sense to cultural insiders and outsiders alike. It allows us to realize that
‘almost any and every word can be seen as culture-bearing to some extent’
(Goddard 2015: 397). Indeed, the research that underpins the NSM approach has
revealed that the number of genuine semantic universals is unlikely to exceed 200.
This number includes the 65 semantic primes, as well as several dozens of universal
semantic molecules. Everything else is culturally specific, and everything else
carries cultural meaning, even in English.
The first and by far the largest part of this volume deals with words as carriers of
cultural meaning. Most words do, as we have just seen, but not all to the same
extent. In the NSM literature, the most obvious lexical carriers of cultural meaning,
be it in English or in any other language, are usually referred to as ‘cultural
keywords’. The term keyword (or key word), used with or without the adjective
cultural (which is always understood to be there), has been a staple of NSM
semantics for the last twenty-odd years. It figures prominently in the title of two
book-length publications. One is Wierzbicka’s trailblazing book Understanding
cultures through their key words (1997),1 the other Levisen and Waters’ collective
volume Cultural keywords in discourse (2017). Cultural keywords are ‘highly
salient and deeply culture-laden’ and as such act as ‘focal points around which
whole cultural domains are organized’ (Goddard & Wierzbicka 1995: 57; Goddard
2005b: 78); they are ‘culture-rich and translation-resistant words that occupy focal
points in cultural ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and speaking’ (Goddard 2015:
386, 2017: 9; Goddard and Ye 2015: 71). Fernández (2016: 197) defines them as
‘salient words from a particular language that act as ‘guiding words’, as they
embody a particular value or a set of values that is central to the culture in
1
In subsequent NSM work, Wierzbicka (1997) has come to be referred to as “the Key Words book”
(see, e.g., Peeters 2000: 444, Goddard 2017: 9). Wierzbicka herself uses the phrase in her response
(Wierzbicka 2001a) to William Ramson’s attack on her views.
6 B. Peeters
question’. The phrase guiding words, i.e. words that serve as guides to a particular
culture, is taken from Levisen (2012: 70), who observes that cultural keywords
‘embody underlying shared assumptions which are at work in a speech commu-
nity’. Cultural keywords exist in all languages but are rarely studied in a way that
combines total transparency (regardless of the audience) with the absence of any
cultural bias. Transparency and bias avoidance can only be achieved with a
sophisticated methodology such as the NSM approach, which relies on decades of
empirical research into the true universals of meaning.
Inspired by Goddard (2001, 2005a, 2011, 2018c, inter alia) and Wierzbicka
(1997, 2001b, 2006a, b, 2010a, b, c, inter alia), several contributors to this volume
firmly situate themselves in the ‘cultural keyword tradition’. The decision to start
off Part I with a chapter on Japanese was prompted by the fact that, in NSM circles,
the concept of ‘cultural keyword’ seems to have been operationalized first in a
paper that deals with ‘Japanese key words and core cultural values’ (Wierzbicka
1991).2 Japanese has always remained high on the NSM keyword agenda, with
subsequent publications by Travis (1998), Hasada (2002, 2008), Svetanant (2013),
Asano-Cavanagh (2013, 2017, 2019, inter alia) and Farese (2016). Yuko
Asano-Cavanagh and Gian Marco Farese are the joint authors of a chapter on the
Japanese compounds shūkatsu ‘job hunting’ and konkatsu ‘marriage partner hunt-
ing’, which appears as Chap. 2 in this volume. Securing the ideal job and finding
the ideal marriage partner are stressful and time-consuming processes that involve a
great deal more than the English glosses suggest. A lot of hard work is required of
those who engage in them. Both endeavours are usually taken very seriously, with
people living in fear of not reaching their goal. All of this information is implicit in
the suffix katsu, which also occurs in other compounds, making it a productive
morpheme in modern Japanese word formation processes, a morpheme that,
judging by the available evidence, is semantically rooted.
Chapter 3 is by Jan Hein, whose work on viveza criolla, vivo and boludo in
Porteño Spanish, the variety of Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires, is another illus-
tration of the shortcomings of simple English glosses. Viveza criolla is far more
than ‘native wit and cunning’, a vivo is not just someone ‘vivacious’ or ‘clever’, and
boludo and ‘moron’ are not in the same league either. Existing definitions have not
sufficiently insisted on viveza being an expression of local culture and sociality, nor
have they appropriately captured vivo and boludo as social categories. A boludo is
usually a victim of someone else’s (a vivo’s) viveza. Of course, Porteño Spanish is
not the only language whose speakers refer to inventiveness or the lack thereof by
means of commonly used words, which thereby acquire the status of cultural
keywords. French (Peeters 2015a) is another such language, among many more.
Importantly, though, the exact meaning of those words is not the same from one
language to another. The words themselves came about in different cultural
2
An updated version of this paper appears in Wierzbicka (1997), together with other early work
involving other languages, including but not limited to Wierzbicka (1992) on so-called ‘Australian
b-words’ and Wierzbicka (1995) on concepts akin to ‘homeland’ and ‘fatherland’ in German,
Polish and Russian.
contexts, which is something that needs to be acknowledged through properly

conducted semantic analysis.
Chapter 4 is by Roslyn Rowen, whose earlier work (Rowen 2017) forms the
backdrop for a so-called occasioned semantics analysis the object of which is the
term bogan, a social identity and community membership marker that, in recent
times, has been trending in Australian (and New Zealand) English. Unlike the other
contributors to this volume, Rowen does not enrich our stock of NSM explications.
Instead, she critically engages with her existing explication, drawing attention to the
need for a metalexical awareness component to be added at the end. Rowen’s
chapter convincingly demonstrates that meaning is constructed (or ‘occasioned’) in
discourse and that not all components included in her 2017 explication of the term
bogan are necessarily present in every single use of the word in context.
In Chap. 5, Stella Butler and Zuzanna Bułat Silva take a complementary view:
they show that NSM explications do not have to aim for the ultimate semantic
invariant, thereby glossing over individual or contextual differences. Instead,
explications can be used to highlight divergent takes on the same word. This is
illustrated with reference to the English word comfort in a contemporary social
realist play by British author Mike Packer in which the loss of, and search for,
comfort plays a central role. The protagonists of Inheritance approach comfort
either as ‘an ethical value’ or as ‘sensuous appeasement’, and this is a difference
that can be captured in NSM. Butler and Bułat Silva’s analysis has the added
quality of being overtly interdisciplinary. It is an attempt to demonstrate, on the one
hand, that NSM can be profitably used to study how meanings and values are
negotiated in the literature and, on the other, that adding literary writing to the NSM
data set may provide previously unexplored evidence of evolving meanings in a
fast-changing world.
Asano-Cavanagh and Farese’s shūkatsu and konkatsu (Chap. 2), Hein’s viveza,
vivo and boludo (Chap. 3), Rowen’s bogan (Chap. 4) and Butler and Bułat Silva’s
comfort (Chap. 5) refer to important aspects or social categories of the culture of
Japan, Buenos Aires, Australia and New Zealand, and the English-speaking world
more generally. This makes them eminently eligible for the status of (cultural)
keywords, a term effectively found in all but one of the above chapters.
Asano-Cavanagh and Farese do not use it. Nor does Rachel Thompson (Chap. 6).
Her investigation of insults in Akan (Ghana) reveals that kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa
‘animal/beast’ and gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’, all of which are commonly used
and, as one would expect, highly culture-specific, can even target individuals in
high political office whose alleged inappropriate acts contravene Akan values.
The keyword status of insults is an open question. Different authors seem to be
holding different views, with both sides being represented in this volume.3 Boludo,
3
Insults have been the topic (exclusive or otherwise) of a handful of other NSM studies, among
which Tien’s (2015) work on Hokkien words in the vernacular languages of Singapore (Hokkien
itself, Malay, Tamil, and the much-despised Singlish, i.e. the local English) deserves special
mention. Older research includes Wierzbicka (1992), Kidman (1993) and Stollznow (2004).
Unfortunately, Indrawati’s (2006) study on Madurese insults is only available in Indonesian.
8 B. Peeters
in Porteño Spanish, is an insult—even though in today’s usage the word has

acquired other meanings as well. Hein has no qualms about calling it a cultural
keyword. Thompson’s Akan insults, on the other hand, are not referred to as
keywords at all. What is this telling us?
No matter how successful the notion of ‘(cultural) key word’ (or ‘keyword’,
which appears to be today’s preferred spelling) has been in NSM studies—as
recently illustrated by Levisen and Waters’ edited (2017) volume on ‘Cultural
keywords in discourse’ and by my own work on the Dutch ‘keyword’ gezellig
(Peeters 2019)—I feel little is to be gained from trying to categorize individual
words in overly narrow ways that are unlikely to ever be consensual. Goddard’s
(2015) distinction between ‘cultural key words’, ‘other culturally important words’
and ‘other culture-related words’ is anything but straightforward. Goddard (2015:
386) has made this point himself: ‘The concept of a cultural key word is qualitative
and somewhat inexact in the sense that it is not always possible to draw a strict line
between cultural key words, other culturally important words, and less important
but still culture-related words’ (see also Goddard 2017: 9). Disagreements are
bound to arise as to whether a (lexical) carrier of cultural meaning is a cultural
keyword or otherwise. Referring to a continuum ranging from obvious cultural
specificity to hardly noticeable cultural specificity appears to be a more attractive
alternative. Provided we do not doubt the existence of cultures (as some people do),
it seems uncontroversial to say that, in one way or the other (without subdividing
them any further), all the words explicated in Chaps. 2–6 are ‘carriers of cultural
meaning’, to use Goddard’s phrase—or, as I would call them (Peeters 2013, 2015b,
2017), ‘culturally salient words’ (see also Wierzbicka & Harkins 2001: 25; Levisen
2012: 70). Culturally salient words exist in any language side by side with cul-
turally salient phrases, metaphors, norms, syntactic moulds and perhaps other
categories, all of which are carriers of cultural meaning.
Some may object that the label ‘culturally salient’ is not perfect either: what is
salient for one person may not be salient for another (Peeters 2015b: 55). In fact, the
label is neither more nor less appropriate than Goddard’s. Something that may carry
cultural meaning for one person may not be perceived by another person as carrying
cultural meaning at all. However, once cultural salience has been established by one
individual, on whatever grounds, and this individual has subsequently shared his or
her view with others who may not have had the same impression, the word may
well gain in cultural salience for those who were not inclined to think that way. The
same could be said, mutatis mutandis, with respect to the label ‘carrier of cultural
meaning’. Still, in my view, the label ‘culturally salient’ has a slight edge over the
other one: as it is an adjectival phrase, it is easier to combine with the linguistic data
(words, phrases, norms, metaphors, etc.) it applies to than the label ‘carrier of
cultural meaning’, which requires an explicit link (as in ‘words as carriers of
cultural meaning’).
The authors of Chap. 7, Bert Peeters and Margo Lecompte-van Poucke, call the
Cèmuhî (New Caledonia) word bwénaado ‘culturally salient’, without trying to
categorize it any further. Three discrete meanings of the word (roughly, ‘large-scale
customary celebration’, ‘customary ceremony’ and ‘customary gift’) are identified.
Arguing against the simplistic—but at the same time terminologically complex—

view that the Kanak social exchange system (in which all three meanings are highly
relevant) is underpinned by a universal principle of reciprocity, the authors point
out that ‘Kanak reciprocity’, as some might want to call it, is in fact culture-specific.
They adopt one of the pathways in Peeters’ (2013, 2015b, 2017) applied ethno-
linguistics model, viz. ethnoaxiology, to build a case for a hypothetical cultural
value underpinning the culturally salient word bwénaado. That hypothetical cultural
value, which is hypothetical only from a learner’s or outsider perspective, needs to
be corroborated with additional linguistic and non-linguistic evidence for the
hypothesis to become more of a reality (for the learner or the outsider).4
Chapter 8, which concludes the first part of this volume, is the only one to tackle
head-on the issue of words whose cultural import is not confined to a single
language (such as Japanese, Akan or Cèmuhî) or to one or more languacultures
(such as Porteño Spanish or Australian and New Zealand English). Regardless of
their insistence on cultural specificity and on the shifts in meaning that almost
necessarily result when culturally salient words cross cultural boundaries (which is
not unusual in today’s world, as shown in selected chapters in volume 3), NSM
practitioners recognize that such shifts are not inevitable. Culturally salient words
that are ‘pan-European’ or ‘pan-religious’, for instance, do exist.5 These words may
well look different from one language to another, sometimes dramatically so, but
what they convey remains the same, wherever they are used. Chapter 8 is a brief but
enlightening study by Sandy Habib of the metaphorical meanings of English
heaven and hell and their Hebrew and Arabic counterparts. Most of Habib’s pub-
lications deal with religious concepts that, in some cases, have acquired meanings
beyond the realms of religion (see, inter alia Habib 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017a, b,
2018). What he demonstrates here is that the metaphorical meanings of heaven and
hell, Hebrew gan eden and geyhinom, and Arabic aljanna and Jahannam, are the
same in all three languages (and no doubt in a host of other languages as well,
although this is a hypothesis he does not explicitly address). Heaven is used
metaphorically in a sentence such as California is heaven; hell is used metaphor-
ically in War is hell.
4
One aspect that this chapter shares with several chapters in the third of the three volumes is its
(fairly tentative) use of Minimal English, an offspring of NSM, in a few so-called pedagogical
scripts, which translate the pure NSM of cultural scripts into something that may be of more
immediate use to non-linguists and therefore appeal more to those for whom such scripts are
ultimately created.
5
The idea of a culturally salient word that is nonetheless ‘pan-European’ is touched upon by Butter
and Bułat Silva in Chap. 7. They point out (using established NSM terminology) that comfort “has
become a keyword in contemporary Western accounts of the ideal home”, which seems to indicate
that it may have been a cultural keyword (or at least a culturally salient word) in English before
being adopted and acquiring a similar status in other languages. But this is not, as we have seen,
their main focus.
10 B. Peeters
1.4 Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context
Ethnopragmatics, as several chapters in the first volume show, is all about ‘un-
derstanding discourse in cultural context’. This does not mean that, to understand
discourse in cultural context, while at the same time adopting the NSM approach,
ethnopragmatics is the only way forward. The two chapters in Part II show
otherwise.
Chapter 9, by Carsten Levisen, is a study in ‘popular Danish geopolitics’, the
first of its genre by an author who is well known for his work on Danish cultural
semantics (see Levisen 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, inter alia). Levisen’s focus is on
the two Danish prepositions, i and på, that are instrumental in how Danes con-
ceptualize Greenland. Whereas the so-called på-attitude, i.e. the habit of saying på
Grønland ‘on Greenland’, highlights its status as an island and Danish dependency,
the i-attitude, or habit of saying i Grønland ‘in Greenland’, acknowledges its status
as a separate country. Levisen draws on Goddard’s work on spatial semantics, place
constructs and ethnopragmatics, but he stops short of calling his ‘postcolonial
semantic account of Danish preposition talk’ an exercise in the latter (on Danish
ethnopragmatics, see Levisen and Waters 2015; Levisen 2018). Cultural scripts, one
of the hallmarks of ethnopragmatics, are used to account for the ways of thinking
that underpin Danish på- and i- attitudes towards Greenland.
Last but not least, Chap. 10, by Helen Leung, brings us more or less back to the
part of the world where we started off. Leung, who has authored several papers on
Cantonese utterance particles, which are used in informal Hong Kong Cantonese to
express speakers’ attitudes, assumptions or feelings (see Leung 2012, 2013, inter
alia), shows that, when such particles are combined, as they often are, the meaning
that results is the exact sum of the meanings of the individual particles. This claim,
often put forward in the literature, had never been substantiated (because the par-
ticles themselves had not been subjected to rigorous semantic analysis). Leung’s
chapter fills an important gap in our knowledge of the functioning of utterance
particles in a language that, without them, would sound unusual at best.
1.5 Send-Off
I will hopefully be forgiven for repeating verbatim the first sentence of this intro-
ductory chapter, the one in which I stated that this volume, subtitled Meaning and
culture, is the second of three celebrating the career of Griffith University academic
Cliff Goddard. On behalf of all the contributors, I congratulate Cliff on his many
invaluable contributions to linguistics at large and to the NSM approach in par-
ticular and hope many more papers and chapters (and, why not, books) will see the
light of day in years to come.
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14 B. Peeters
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Bert Peeters is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University and a
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Heart- and soul-like constructs across languages, cultures, and epochs (ed. 2019).
Part I
Words as Carriers of Cultural Meaning
Chapter 2
In Staunch Pursuit: The Semantics
of the Japanese Terms Shūkatsu
‘Job Hunting’ and Konkatsu
‘Marriage Partner Hunting’
Yuko Asano-Cavanagh and Gian Marco Farese
Abstract This chapter presents an analysis of two Japanese compound words that
share a common suffix. The words are shūkatsu ‘job hunting’ and konkatsu ‘mar-
riage partner hunting’. It is perhaps not entirely unexpected that the English glosses
fall short of conveying the significant cultural context behind them. The shared
suffix, katsu, comes from the Japanese word katsudō, which means ‘activity’. As
Dalton and Dales (Japanese Studies 36(1):1–19, 2016) point out, katsu implies a
high level of engagement and dedication as well as a degree of obligation or a sense
of duty associated with the task. For instance, shūkatsu implies single-mindedness
regarding the activity of job-seeking, requiring deliberate effort from the participant.
Similarly, konkatsu implies that total devotion to the act of finding a marriage
partner. Konkatsu, unlike shūkatsu, has drawn some attention from scholars
(Yamada in ‘Konkatsu’ genshō no shakaigaku. Tōyōkeizaishinpōsha, Tokyo, 2010;
Dalton and Dales in Japanese Studies 36(1):1–19, 2016), but no accurate semantic
analysis of either has been carried out thus far. This study uses the framework of the
Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to clarify the meaning of these two
Japanese compound words. The analysis reveals that the people engaged in the
activities they refer to are fearful of not attaining their goal and that the use of the
suffix katsu in the Japanese word formation process is therefore semantically roo-
ted. The analysis also assists in identifying and elaborating on some of the con-
tradictions and complexities of modern Japanese society.

Keywords Shūkatsu Konkatsu Japanese culture Japanese compounds

Semantics-culture interface Natural Semantic Metalanguage
Y. Asano-Cavanagh (&)
Curtin University, Perth, Australia
e-mail: y.asano@curtin.edu.au
G. M. Farese
Chapman University, Orange (CA), USA
e-mail: farese@chapman.edu

18 Y. Asano-Cavanagh and G. M. Farese
2.1 Introduction
Katsu is one of the most prolifically used suffixes in Japanese discourse today. It is a
derivative of the word katsudō, which can be roughly translated to mean ‘activity’.
Initially, katsu was used exclusively in words such as shūkatsu 就活, which is an
abbreviation of shūshoku-katsudō (roughly, ‘the activity of job hunting’) and
bukatsu 部活, which is a shortened form of kurabu-katsudō (roughly, ‘club
activity’). Shūkatsu and bukatsu are the only expressions listed in conventional
dictionaries (Daijirin 2006; Kōjien 2008). The phrase konkatsu 婚活 ‘marriage
partner hunting’ was coined in 2007 by sociologist Yamada Masahiro and journalist
Shirakawa Momoko, and since that time the practice of attaching katsu to another
word has become somewhat of a ‘linguistic fad’ (Dalton and Dales 2016: 2).
Numerous other expressions have been created, such as hokatsu 保活 ‘nursery
school hunting’, ninkatsu 妊活 ‘fertility treatment’, rankatsu ラン活 ‘school bag
hunting’, yūkatsu1 友活 ‘new friends hunting’, asakatsu 朝活‘morning activity’,
yūkatsu2 夕活 ‘evening activity’, bikatsu 美活 ‘beautifying activity’, and shūkatsu2
終活 ‘preparation for the end of one’s life’.1 The suffix katsu is applied to various
kinds of activities and can therefore be considered a productive morpheme in
modern Japanese word formation processes.
As Dalton and Dales (2016: 2) point out, a term incorporating the morpheme
katsu indicates an ‘idea of obligation’, an ‘activity that requires dedicated and
prioritized effort’. For instance, shūkatsu does not merely stand for ‘job hunting’.
Conventional dictionaries (e.g. Daijirin 2006) state that the meaning of shūkatsu
encompasses the broad range of activities that high school, undergraduate and
postgraduate students in Japan engage in shortly before graduation, for the purpose
of finding employment. Shūkatsu typically refers to the wholehearted and intense
pursuit of full-time work.2 Similarly, konkatsu does not simply refer to ‘marriage
partner hunting’, but to active engagement in the process of finding one’s future
husband or wife, such as registering with marriage agencies, participating in sin-
gles’ parties, or having formal matchmaking interviews (Dalton and Dales 2016: 2).
As Yamada and Shirakawa (2008: 19–20, 176) suggest, the participant’s engage-
ment, deliberate action and any initiatives taken in regard to attaining their goal are
vital. It can be assumed that those who do not seriously and fully commit to the task
will not achieve their goal.
At the same time, terms containing the suffix katsu reflect an important feature of
modern Japanese society and can help explain some of the typical behavioural
characteristics of Japanese people today. Looking at such terms from a cross-cultural
perspective, it can be safely assumed that, although the phenomenon is not unique to
1
It is not known whether seikatsu 生活 ‘daily life’ is an abbreviated word composed of the suffix
katsu. It could be an abbreviation of seizon-katsudō ‘activities to live or exist’.
2
Another phrase is used for individuals who have temporarily been out of work; e.g., women who
leave the workforce to have children. When they seek to regain employment, their engagement in
job hunting is referred to as sai-shūshoku katsudō.
2 In Staunch Pursuit: The Semantics of the … 19
Japanese culture and society, there are no exactly equivalent words in many other
languages. A literal translation does not convey the layers of embedded cultural
meaning; the latter are contextual and reflect the social, political and cultural pres-
sures that weigh on Japanese people today.
This chapter examines the meaning of shūkatsu and konkatsu, using the Natural
Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. The semantic analysis will pinpoint the
cognitive states associated with each of the terms and emphasize an important
aspect of modern Japanese culture, namely the preoccupation of many people with
the idea that they must be fully engaged in an activity in order to achieve the desired
result. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2.2 gives a brief historical
background of katsu used in shūkatsu. Section 2.3 describes the methodology
adopted for the present analysis and includes information on the emergence and
frequency of the two words selected for scrutiny. Section 2.4 starts with the
examination of shūkatsu, followed by an analysis of konkatsu. Finally, Sect. 2.5
summarizes the findings and provides a conclusion.
2.2 Socio-Cultural Background of Shūkatsu and Konkatsu
Yamada (2010) states that the expression shūshoku-katsudō reflects the freedom of
choice with respect to one’s occupation in modern Japanese society, which only
became possible after the Meiji Restoration (1868). Previously, Japanese people
used to continue the family business. Those born into a tradesman’s family, for
instance, had little choice but to inherit the parental business. Basically, this meant
that no effort was required to find a job during the feudal era in Japan. After the
Second World War, however, Japan underwent major socio-economic change.
Rapid industrialization in the 1950s brought with it a dramatic growth in the
number of white-collar workers and widespread urbanization. An increasing
number of people moved to large cities and chose to be employed as office workers
(Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare 2006). With the modernization of society,
Japanese people began to experience more freedom of choice in relation to their
occupation (Kosugi 2002; Yamada and Shirakawa 2008). Another significant
change associated with job hunting occurred around the time when the Japanese
economy collapsed in the late 1990s, which at the time was referred to as the
bursting of the bubble economy (Yamada and Shirakawa 2008). Before the eco-
nomic collapse, Japan had been on a consistent trajectory of growth, which meant
that job hunting was not as intensely competitive as it is at present. Now, many
people work part-time or are employed in temporary positions (Ministry of Health,
Labour and Welfare 2017). Job seekers, today, must be totally dedicated to the act
of job hunting if they wish to find a full-time position and long-term employment.
Similarly, socio-cultural changes after the Second World War influenced people’s
attitude towards marriage in general. Under the traditional family system, people had
little choice but to marry someone whom their parents had chosen for them (Yamada
and Shirakawa 2008; Sugimoto 2014). It was also the cultural norm for people to
marry before turning thirty (Imamura 2009), having most likely met their marriage
partner through an introduction by a third party. However, since the 1970s, with the
significant economic growth of the country, the number of nuclear families has risen
sharply, and the marriage rate has declined (Statistics Bureau 2017). More people
consider marriage to be something that is not entirely necessary (Ministry of Health,
Labour and Welfare 2013). However, concurrently, people have started to approach
the act of finding a marriage partner with a higher degree of seriousness. In fact, the
increased freedom around marriage has made it more difficult to get married (Yamada
and Shirakawa 2008). Reflecting this fact, the konkatsu industry has been growing
rapidly in Japan. The Japanese government has even made a commitment in relation
to assisting people with konkatsu, in order to help solve the issues of an ageing
population and a falling birth rate (Cabinet Office 2014a).
The words shūkatsu and konkatsu reflect culturally specific undertakings and
ways of thinking that are characteristic of Japanese society, due to the socio-cultural
changes that have occurred in the country over the last couple of decades. Both
words imply a sense of compulsion and competition as people are aware of the risk
that, if they are not fully committed, others will achieve the desired result before or
instead of them. Therefore, they cannot be translated simply as ‘job hunting’ and
‘marriage partner hunting’, respectively. The intense thoughts and feelings of the
speaker are embedded in the complex meanings of these compound words. The role
of the semanticist is to pinpoint these thoughts and feelings as well as the semantic
contribution of the suffix katsu.
2.3 Methodology and Data
This study employs the NSM approach (Goddard 2008, 2011; Peeters 2006;
Wierzbicka 1996, 2006; Wierzbicka and Goddard 2014) to explicate the meaning of
shūkatsu and konkatsu. The examples adduced in this chapter are taken from online
sources including newspapers, advertisements, magazines and blogs, and were
collected between 2007 and 2018. Websites, in particular, constitute a huge
repository of various discourse genres, revealing aspects of contemporary culture
(Kondo 2007; Pauwels 2012). The examples taken from the corpus illustrate how
the Japanese people use the expressions shūkatsu and konkatsu in everyday dis-
course. Table 2.1 indicates the approximate prevalence of shūkatsu and konkatsu on
the Internet between January 2007 and December 2017. Although Google fre-
quencies are not entirely reliable, in the sense that the number of indexed web pages
changes daily (Lüdeling et al. 2007), the data illustrates a distinct increase in the
prevalence of shūkatsu and konkatsu in current Japanese discourse.
Table 2.1 Frequency of occurrence of shūkatsu and konkatsu on the Internet

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Shūkatsu 234 243 240 301 431 548 637 562 607 629 602
Konkatsu 0 55 384 338 414 514 574 619 763 1062 1159
Source http://www.google.co.jp/trends/ (accessed 8 November 2018)
2.4 Semantic Analysis
2.4.1 Shūkatsu
When people grow up, they seek work because they need an income. The incentive
to shūkatsu is therefore more or less the same as the one implied in the English
phrase job hunting, as illustrated in (1):
(1) 『なぜ働くのか』『何のために働くのか』就活が始まったばかりの学生女です。先日
あった行内面接でこのような質問をされました。その質問に対し『収入を得るためで
す。収入がないと生活できないし、親元を離れて自立したいからです』と答えました。
“‘Why do we work?’ ‘What for do we work?’ I am a female student who just started
shūkatsu. At the mock job interview which was held at my university, I was asked
these kinds of questions. I replied ‘In order to obtain an income. I cannot live without
an income, and I would like to leave my parents’ house and be independent.’”
(https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q11167838436 [2016]).
Unless people have enough money to support themselves, they have no choice but
to commit to job hunting. There are of course other reasons for seeking employ-
ment, such as the wish to contribute to society, to gain diverse work experience, or
to help others in some way. However, as example (1) indicates, people are often
engaged in shūkatsu in order to earn a living for themselves.
Shūkatsu means more than this, however. It refers to carrying out a series of
activities and remaining dedicated to the task, usually within a specific, widely
accepted timeframe (Shimomura and Kimura 1994; Fujisato and Kodama 2011).
Jobs for new recruits and corporate trainees conventionally begin on April 1st,
which is the start of the Japanese financial year. Therefore, applicants must give the
best possible impression to any prospective employer in order to be selected within
the required timeframe. Due to the current and prolonged economic recession in
Japan, job seekers will not be successful if they present themselves as ordinary
graduates. In fact, some university students go to great lengths, joining a high
standard athletics club (taiikukai), taking on additional postgraduate courses, or
travelling overseas as backpackers, specifically to prepare for and present well at
job interviews. This is illustrated in example (2):
(2) 再挑戦のため、企業の評価が高い有名国立大の大学院に進んだ。学問や研究の

道を究めるためではなかったが、就活の準備は怠らなかった。就職試験の面接で使う
話題にもなると、バックパックを背負って海外を旅した。
‘In order to take on the challenge again he enrolled in a postgraduate course at a
national university that has a good reputation amongst companies. This was not to
further his study or to engage in research, but because he would go to any length to
prepare for shūkatsu. He even went overseas as a backpacker so that he could talk
about his trip at a job interview.’
(http://www.asahi.com/edu/articles/TKY201305160278.html [2013]).
As illustrated in the above example, shūkatsu requires students to have foresight.

They need to plan and take deliberate action while they are still at school or
university, in order to improve their employability. However, knowledge, profes-
sional skills or work experience are not generally considered the top priority, except
in cases where a company is deliberately recruiting graduates with specific
knowledge or skills. In fact, Japanese companies prefer recruiting batches of new
graduates directly from school or university and providing them with training and
professional development in a systematic way, all for the purpose of long-term
employment (Shimomura and Kimura 1994):
(3) 新卒にこだわる理由は様々でしょうが、よく聞くのは「他の会社の常識にとらわれてな
い、まっさらな人材を一から育てた方が将来企業にプラスになる」という理由です。
‘Although there are various reasons why Japanese companies are particular about
recruiting new graduates, people often say: “It is better for the company’s future to
train fresh graduates who are not already tied up with the corporate values or expected
conduct learned at other companies”.’
Applicants are therefore advised to show a passion for and willingness towards
learning new things, rather than to attempt to sell themselves solely on their
acquired knowledge or skills. Example (4) illustrates the aspects an interview panel
is generally looking for in an applicant:
(4) ポイントとしては
• 自分の会社に対する熱意があるかどうか
• 新しいことでも積極的に吸収チャレンジしようとするガッツがあるかどうか
• 面接官自信が「一緒に働いて見たいな」と思えるような人柄かをうまくアピールすることと
思います。どんな職種でも上記は共通して求められる事項だと思います。
‘Important aspects are:

• Whether or not the applicant has a passion to work for the company;
• Whether or not the applicant has the courage and willingness to learn, absorb, and
challenge themselves in new ways; and
• Whether or not the applicant portrays his/her personality well so that the members of
the interview panel feel like they would like to work with the applicant. Regardless of
the industry, these points are commonly considered desirable.’
In short, candidates need to emphasize their potential to be of use to the employer,

based on the experience gained during their university or school life.
Shūkatsu, in Japan, also includes a long and complicated process of meeting
with numerous people (Shimomura and Kimura 1994; Fujisato and Kodama 2011).
Job hunters must first of all attend corporate seminars and submit their resume as
well as a completed ‘entry sheet’ (which contains details about their accomplish-
ments, strengths and weaknesses).3 After passing the document screening stage,
they can move on to complete not only written exams but also aptitude and per-
sonality tests, to partake in group work, and to participate in multiple rounds of
interviews. This, then, is the process of shūkatsu in its entirety; it is the process that
needs to be followed for each of the jobs for which a person applies. See examples
(5) and (6):
(5) ずっと就活している学生です。はや140社近く受けて内定はゼロ。一次面接すら10社ぐ
らいしか通らないダメ人間です。
‘I am a student who has been engaged in shūkatsu for a long time. I have already
applied at 140 companies, but I haven’t even received one informal job offers. I am a
hopeless individual as I have only gotten to the first round of interviews in about 10
companies.’
(6) 就職活動で面接って何次(何回)まで最高あるもんですか?私の場合、最高でも4次
面接までだったのですが、友人が7次面接まであったとか・・・。
‘How many interviews are people compelled to go through during shūkatsu (to get a
job offer)? I, for one, have been through four rounds of interviews so far, but a friend
has been through seven of them.’
As shown in these examples, participants in shūkatsu are required to send job

applications to a vast number of companies, go through several stages of interviews
and meet with numerous people to obtain even one job offer.
Furthermore, conformity with social norms is a particularly salient part of
Japanese culture (Clancy 1986; Davies and Ikeno 2002). As Dalton and Dales
(2016) point out, job applicants need to comply with strictly defined norms relating
to their appearance and behaviour, including norms associated with shūkatsu.
Participants in shūkatsu are advised to wear the appropriate coloured business suit
and shoes:
(7) 本当の就職活動のスーツの色と柄は、紺無地やグレー無地のスーツです。
‘The real colour and design for the job interview process is a navy blue or grey suit
without any pattern or design.’
3
According to a survey conducted by DISCO (2017), the average number of entry sheets submitted
during shūkatsu in 2017 was 47.1 per candidate.
In other words, shūkatsu involves paying full attention to appearance according to

widely understood and accepted social norms. Although applicants need to stand
out in terms of their willingness and passion, their appearance and attitude should
comply with widely accepted conventions.
Last but not least, shūkatsu is analogous to a serious game of win or lose. The
idea is that those who are not actively and fully engaged in it will miss out. In
example (8), students attend a formal ceremony to start their shūkatsu. In a passage
not reproduced here, the ceremony is being likened to the departure for the front in
times of war, or the tension created by the start of an election campaign.
(8) 「内定勝ち取るぞ!」専門学校生が「出陣式」名古屋
‘“I am determined to win an informal offer of employment!” Vocational college stu-
dents in Nagoya City attended the kick-off ceremony for their shūkatsu.’
(http://www.job.chunichi.co.jp/news/detail.php?nid=2701&ts=1425490687 [2015]).
For many participants, not receiving an offer of employment before graduation in

March equates to a significant failure in life (Karube et al. 2014). Naturally, the
amount of stamina and capability required for shūkatsu is intense and the process is
very stressful (Shimomura and Kimura 1994, 2004). Those involved in shūkatsu are
likely to feel very insecure or apprehensive about their future:
(9) 大学3年生です。就活が不安でつらいです。夜も眠れません。
‘I am a third-year university student. I am painfully worried about shūkatsu. I cannot
sleep at night.’
Shūkatsu often causes fear and anxiety. However, there is no other option for
soon-to-be graduates but to take part and persist. Shūkatsu is a compulsory activity
for whoever seeks employment. Those involved in it are fearful because not finding
a job means they have no way of making a living. The process has to be repeated
until a job offer is received:
(10) 早くこんな辛い状況打破するには就職決めるしかないんです。
‘The fastest and only way to escape the painful situation is to find and decide on a job.’
In summary, engaging in shūkatsu means carrying out job-seeking activities with

single-mindedness and wholehearted dedication. The meaning of the word can be
explicated as follows:
[A] shūkatsu
a. it can be like this:
someone thinks like this:
b. “I am not a child [m] anymore
c. I want to do something of one kind now, like many people do when it is like this:
they are not children anymore
they want to live well, they want some other people to live well
because of this, they can’t not do things of some kinds for a long time
d. if I don’t do it, I can’t live well
e. because of this, I want someone else to think about me like this:
‘this someone is very good
this someone did many good things before
this someone can do many good things now, I know it’
f. if this other someone can think like this about me,
I can do something of one kind for a long time, as I want
g. I want it to be like this
h. I don’t know where this other someone is
i. I want to know
j. because of this, I think like this:
“I can’t not do some things now like many people do
I can’t not think about these things, I can’t think about anything else
it can be very bad for me if I don’t do these things, I know this well
if I don’t do these things, someone else will do these things; I don’t want this”
The final section of the explication captures the element of ‘anxiety’ that is inherent
in the meaning of shūkatsu. The cognitive scenario also includes the speaker’s
awareness of the fact that if they do not take action and do certain things, a negative
or undesirable outcome will be inevitable and consequently others may benefit from
the available opportunity. The explication furthermore captures the idea of ‘prior-
itized effort’ emphasized by Dalton and Dales (2016). The component ‘I can’t not
do some things now like many people do’ is vague on purpose and does not specify
what the speaker commits to. The activities related to the practice of shūkatsu are
unique in nature and scope; it is unnecessary to specify them in the explication. The
idea of having to do certain things was the key element that needed to be included
in this cognitive scenario.
2.4.2 Konkatsu
People who engage in konkatsu are grown-up adults who are ready to tie the knot.
As previously mentioned, konkatsu refers to the various activities that are part of a
dedicated search for a marriage partner. Example (11) demonstrates how hectic the
search can get; it is a statement by a woman who found a husband after being
engaged in konkatsu for several months.
(11) 最初は土日のみ、お見合いをしてましたが、効率の悪さにこのままでは35歳には結婚
できないと思い、スケジュールの改善。出勤前に朝活でアプローチ、昼休みはネット婚
活、終業後にスポーツ婚活、打ち上げ、または婚活バーへ寄って終電で帰宅、とい
う怒涛のスケジュールを2ヶ月こなしたところで今の旦那様と出会い、両親を連れて挨拶
に行き、私の誕生日にスピード入籍しました。
‘At the beginning, I used to have formal marriage interviews only on Saturdays and
Sundays. But it was not effective. I decided to change my schedule as I thought I
would not be able to get married by the age of 35, if I continued in this way. First, I
approached men in the morning, before work. Then I did konkatsu activities on the
net during lunch breaks. After work, I joined sports konkatsu, participated in konkatsu
parties, and dropped by konkatsu bars, returning home on the last train. After two
months of this kind of very hectic schedule, I met my current husband. We went to
greet my parents and got married immediately afterwards, on my birthday.’
(http://komachi.yomiuri.co.jp/t/2016/0509/761487.htm [2016]).
A recent survey (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research

2015) answers the question why konkatsu is such serious business in Japan. One of
the main reasons why people remain single (unless they engage in serious konkatsu)
is that, in their daily lives, they do not have the opportunity to meet a suitable
partner:
(12) 婚活中の自営業で29歳男です。家族で自営業ということもあり出会いに乏しく、最
近ネット婚活を始めました。
‘I am a 29-year-old man who is self-employed and in the midst of konkatsu. Since I
am involved with running our family business, I rarely meet anyone. So, I recently
started internet konkatsu.’
Like the 29-year-old male in example (12), people who commit to konkatsu gen-
erally do so because they believe that marrying someone will be beneficial to them
in some way. Not everyone shares that belief: it has been reported that people
become less interested in marriage if they are financially and psychologically
independent, self-sufficient and content to remain on their own (Cabinet Office
2004).4 Still, the underlying motivation for people who do engage in konkatsu is an
often acute awareness that life as a single, unmarried person is not for them: they
stand to gain from getting married, and their aim is to find someone they can live
with for the rest of their lives, comfortably and happily (Cabinet Office 2014b). The
individual engaged in konkatsu in example (13) is a female who believes that
having a family will bring her the kind of happiness she cannot achieve by herself:
4
The percentage of unmarried men and women reaching the age of fifty has continued to rise since
1960; a study carried out in 2015 (Statistics Bureau 2017) found that 23.37% of men and 14.06%
of women aged fifty were not married.
(13) 私も婚活中です。(略)私も結構お金使いました。金の無駄だし何度か辞めようかと思い

ましたが、まだ頑張ってます。なぜ辞めないのか?私も家族を持って普通の幸せな暮らし
をしたいからです。
‘I am in the midst of konkatsu as well. (Abbrev.) I have spent a lot of money, too.
I thought of giving up several times as it was a waste of money. However, I am still
trying. Why am I not quitting? Because I want to have a family and to lead a happy life.’
Those committed to konkatsu usually look forward to having children of their own.
The general expectation for engaged in konkatsu is that having children will be an
aspect of their married lives, since marriage is still commonly associated with the
desire to become a parent (Cabinet Office 2014b):
(14) 婚活をしている39歳、男です。子供が欲しく、20代の女性と結婚したいと考えているの
ですが、なかなか良縁に恵まれません。
‘I am a 39-year-old man who is engaged in konkatsu. I would like to have children so
I wish to marry someone in her twenties, but I am just not lucky enough to find
anyone.’
Admittedly, not everyone who wishes to marry in Japan looks forward to having one
or more children. However, it is uncommon for someone who is not ready to have
children to engage in konkatsu, and it is considered highly disadvantageous for
someone to reveal in the course of konkatsu that raising children is not their aim in life.
(15) 結婚相談所の男性は、ほぼ、子どもを望んでいる方ばかりです。(略)逆に、最初か
ら子供いらないと言ってしまうのは、婚活では非常に不利ですよ。
‘Most men who are registered with marriage agencies wish to have children.
(Abbrev.). In fact, it is extremely disadvantageous during konkatsu to say, from the
outset, that you don’t want to have children.’
For those who do not wish to become parents, it is not even deemed necessary to
commit to konkatsu, as the search for a marriage partner does not need to conclude
at a predetermined time (the end of the child-bearing age for females). Research
suggests, though, that most people who get seriously engaged in konkatsu do so
after they reach their late 20s. This is presumably because they have not met anyone
suitable up until that time or they were not interested in marriage previously. But as
they grow older, their priorities change. They increasingly feel they need to become
proactive. They are under significant pressure and aware they need to act fast since,
for whatever reason, they have not found a partner now that the time has come to
get married, and they are therefore at risk of remaining single:
(16) 出会いがない上場会社の30歳の男です。今春に海外勤務から戻った後に辞令が

下りて地方勤務しています。戻ってみると国内に残っていた同期含めた友人・知人達は
皆結婚してしまいましたので少し焦り始めました。
‘I have no opportunities to meet someone. I am a thirty-year-old man who works at a
listed company on the stock exchange. I am now working in a rural area, since being
transferred after coming back from overseas this spring. When I came back to Japan, I
found out that my friends and acquaintances all got married and I started to feel a bit
impatient.’
(http://komachi.yomiuri.co.jp/t/2013/0727/607760.htm?g=04 [2013]).
People engaged in konkatsu are typically worried about remaining unmarried for
the rest of their lives, which is one of the reasons why they become involved in it. In
general, those who have decided to go through the process are otherwise simply
unable to meet anyone in their daily lives. They have no other alternative but to rely
on konkatsu if they wish to get married. As noted by Yamada and Shirakawa (2008:
176), failure to act will in all likelihood result in married life remaining an
unattainable goal. Consider example (17):
(17) 婚活がおっくうなのは凄く!わかります。でもやっぱり待ってるだけじゃ出会えないですよ。
‘I understand that konkatsu can be troublesome. But you won’t meet someone by just
waiting for it to happen.’
In other words, waiting for someone to just walk into your life, without taking any
steps to make it possible, is not a viable option. There is likely to be a perfect match
out there, but to find that person requires a lot of hard work and conscious effort.
To be successful in konkatsu, people must be able to demonstrate exactly what
they can offer as a prospective husband or wife. It is one thing to check out another
party’s profile and description and to be favourably impressed; it is quite another to
ensure one’s own profile (age, personality, appearance, skills, academic back-
ground, occupation, income…) is of the highest possible standard. People who are
looking for a marriage partner need to appeal to the other party as much as the other
party appeals to them. Consider example (18):
(18) 私は婚活して、昨年結婚した30代女性です。婚活だと男女ともに条件から先に入るの
で、スペックが悪いと、おそらく誰からも相手にされません。
‘I am a woman in my 30s who got married last year after engaging in konkatsu. In
konkatsu, both men and women first check each other’s profile. So, if your profile is
not good, no one will take you seriously.’
It is hard work to portray oneself in the best possible way, with a view to being
selected ahead of other candidates. This is something shūkatsu and konkatsu have in
common, as pointed out in (19):
(19) 就活と婚活は似てます。どちらも自分の良い点を売り、相手に気に入ってもらう。気に
入ってもらえなかったら二番、三番候補で考えないといけない。
‘Shūkatsu and konkatsu are similar as you need to sell yourself and be accepted by the
other party. If not, you will need to consider your second or third preferences.’
Like shūkatsu, konkatsu requires absolute dedication (Dalton & Dales 2016) and is
similar to a game of chance. In both instances, it is necessary to convince the other
party of one’s excellent overall profile: one that has all the qualities required to be
preferred over others. But there is a difference as well. Compatibility is a factor in
konkatsu, but not in shūkatsu. From the outset, the two parties need to make sure
that they are similarly disposed towards one another, that there are shared affinities,
that they are ready to share their lives together. Consider example (20):
(20) それなりにメールをいただき、数名の方とメールやりとりしてたのですが、一人、メールの
時点で自分と感覚や波長がぴったり合う方がいて・・・しばらくして会うことになり、一年半
の交際を経て、無事に結婚することができました。
‘After receiving various emails, I continued to communicate with several people via
email. Among them, I found someone who had a similar outlook and similar values.
After a while, we met. We dated for one and a half years and at last were safely
married.’
The primary aim of konkatsu is to find the best possible match amongst the options
available, in the best possible timeframe. Decisions about whether another party
matches one’s own preferences and meets one’s requirements or conditions must be
made quickly to ensure that no valuable opportunities are missed. In the course of
konkatsu, it is in one’s interest to multiply the number of social events attended and
to meet as many potentially suitable parties as possible:
(21) 婚活で一番重要な事は、とにかくたくさんの人と出会う事。そして、自分の魅力を高
める事。この2点です。
‘The most important thing during konkatsu is to meet as many people as possible. The
second priority is to enhance your own attractiveness. Just these two.’
(22) 31歳のときに婚活を始め、ありとあらゆる活動をし、100人は出会いました。
‘I started konkatsu at the age of 31. I participated in all sorts of activities and I met
more than 100 people.’
There are known instances of konkatsu agencies holding screenings of important

sports events such as the Soccer World Cup, so that people who are in the hunt for a
marriage partner can watch one or more matches together and socialize. The
screenings can be advertised as in (23), where konkatsu itself is explicitly likened to
a competition:
(23) 絶対に負けられない婚活がそこにはある W杯PVで企画

‘This konkatsu you definitely cannot lose. We stage public screenings of the Soccer
World Cup.’
(http://digital.asahi.com/articles/ASG6275D6G62PTIL02R.html?iref=comkiji_txt_
end_s_kjid_ASG6275D6G62PTIL02R [2014]).
Competitions are normally events where there is bound to be a winner and one or
more losers. This competition, though, is different: the agency defiantly promises
there will not be any losers.
On the basis of the above observations, the meaning of konkatsu can be spelled
out as follows:
[B] konkatsu
a. it can be like this:

someone thinks like this:
b. I am not a child [m] anymore
c. I want to live with someone for a very long time
d. I want to feel something very good when I am with this someone
e. I want to do many things with this someone
f. after I have lived with this someone for some time, I want there to be children [m]
g. I want to think about these children [m] like this: “these children [m] are mine”
h. because of this, I want someone else to think about me like this:
“this someone is very good
I feel something very good when I am with this someone
because of this, I want to live with this someone for a very long time”
i. if I think the same about this other someone,
I can live with this other someone for a long time
j. I don’t know where this other someone is
k. I want to know
l. because of this, I think like this:
“I can’t not do some things now like many people do
I can’t not think about these things, I can’t think about anything else
it will be very bad for me if I don’t do these things, I know this well
if I don’t do these things, someone else will do these things; I don’t want this”
2.5 Conclusion
It has been pointed out that the meaning of a compound is not necessarily com-
positional, i.e. that it does not equate to the sum of its parts (Kageyama and Yumoto
1997; Ito and Sugioka 2002). However, as illustrated in the analysis, examples of
usage strongly suggest that, in the case of katsu compounds, the semantic com-
ponents of the two lexical constituents are retained and that the meaning of a katsu
compound is a straightforward combination of the meanings of its parts. Katsu
compounds in modern Japanese discourse carry a presumption of vigorous
engagement, with a view to gaining the best possible outcome. It is because their
peers seem to be so committed to pursuing a job or a marriage partner that indi-
viduals will automatically and unconsciously respond to the obligation to do
likewise and be fully engaged in the activity. Many people in Japan feel pressured
into complying with protocols and social norms. Those engaged in the activities
described here can therefore be said to be motivated by their fears or anxiety in the
face of alternative outcomes. At the same time, shūkatsu and konkatsu in Japanese
discourse reflect some of the wider issues Japanese society is currently facing, such
as the lingering economic stagnation, the lack of job security, and the growing
number of unmarried people. The fact that many people sincerely and earnestly
engage in shūkatsu and konkatsu indicates that many Japanese people still adhere to
traditional values. Rather than embracing other options and lifestyles available in a
modern society, many Japanese people are concerned about their status, which
includes their job and family.
Both terms, shūkatsu and konkatsu, reflect intense and important thoughts and
feelings pertaining to the activity being carried out. The two explications that have
been provided in this chapter can be easily compared, and any differences can be
identified by looking at individual components. On the other hand, the comparison
highlights the presence of a shared semantic core, which is likely to turn up as well
in the semantic analysis of other katsu compounds. A shared semantic core indi-
cates a common conceptual denominator, as well as semantic compatibility between
different words that denote proactive, concentrated and deliberate engagement in an
activity, for the purpose of achieving a goal dictated by the need to conform to
perceived societal pressures.
Acknowledgements We would like to express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their
comments. In addition, we thank Bert Peeters and Elizabeth Miller for their assistance in editing
the text.
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phenomenon). Tokyo: Tōyōkeizaishinpōsha.
Yuko Asano-Cavanagh is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Curtin University,

Perth, where she teaches advanced Japanese and Japanese semantics. Her research focuses on the
semantics and pragmatics of Japanese as well as on cross-cultural communication. She is the
author of several semantic analyses of Japanese cultural keywords using the NSM approach. Her
most recent publications include ‘Inochi and tamashii: Incursion into Japanese ethnopsychology’
(2019) and ‘Kawaii discourse: The semantics of a Japanese cultural keyword and its social
elaboration’ (2017).
Gian Marco Farese is an Honorary Lecturer at the Australian National University, Canberra, and
a Research Associate in the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman
University, CA. He carries out research in Italian, English and Japanese linguistics, specifically in
the fields of cultural semantics, cognitive semantics and linguistic anthropology. He is the author
of The cultural semantics of address practices (2018) and of several other publications dealing
with the interface between semantics and law, semantics and epistemology, semantics and
psychology, semantics and musicology. His latest papers on Japanese semantics include ‘The
cultural semantics of the Japanese emotion terms haji and hazukashii’ (2016) and ‘Is KNOW a
semantic universal? Shiru, wakaru and Japanese ethno-epistemology’ (2018).
Chapter 3
Cultural Keywords in Porteño Spanish:
Viveza Criolla, Vivo and Boludo
Jan Hein
Abstract Viveza criolla, vivo and boludo are three interrelated cultural keywords in
Porteño Spanish, the variety of Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They
have been loosely translated as “native wit and cunning”, “clever, vivacious” and
“moron”, respectively. However, these translations fail to capture the exact mean-
ings and implied logic that guide Porteños—the residents of Buenos Aires—when
they use these words. In this paper, I first look at the historical context that saw the
emergence of viveza criolla in Buenos Aires, pointing out its link to local criollo
culture. Then, I study how the three words have been defined in a varied sample of
monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. I claim that, besides issues of ethnocentric
framing and circularity, viveza is not sufficiently described as an expression of local
culture and sociality, and neither vivo nor boludo are appropriately captured as social
categories. Finally, I use the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to capture
and explore the keywords’ meanings in simple, cross-translatable terms. Semantic
explications are supported with discursive evidence from common sayings, fixed
expressions, news articles, tango lyrics and tweets.
Keywords Porteño Spanish Viveza criolla Vivo Boludo Natural Semantic

Metalanguage
3.1 Introduction
This paper explores the semantics of viveza criolla, vivo and boludo, cultural
keywords (Wierzbicka 1997) in Porteño Spanish, which is the dialect spoken by
Porteños, the residents of the Argentine capital (and port) city of Buenos Aires.
Viveza criolla has been variously translated as “native wit” (Wilson 2007: 38),
J. Hein (&)
Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
e-mail: jan.hein@griffithuni.edu.au

36 J. Hein
“native wit and cunning” (Persico 2016: 91), “creole cunning” and “artful lying or
cheating” (France 1999: 27); the keyword vivo as “clever, vivacious” (Wilson 2007:
38); and boludo as “moron” and “dumb-ass” (Persico 2016: 16). However, it will
become evident throughout this paper that none of these glosses can capture the
exact meanings and logic that guide local Porteños when they use these words. To
capture these meanings and logic, I will use the NSM approach to cultural and
linguistic analysis and its metalanguage of simple, cross-translatable terms
(Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014; Goddard 2018; Levisen and Waters 2017; Ye
2017).
In Argentina, viveza criolla is both despised as a national curse and embraced as
an exceptional Argentine quality. One can encounter it anywhere in the country, but
it manifests in everyday interaction primarily in Buenos Aires, where it first
emerged. Anything in this city, from verbal exchanges to drivers’ behaviour in
traffic jams to tango and football, may contain traces of viveza (the form the
keyword is often shortened to). Yet despite the pervasiveness of viveza criolla in so
many disparate domains, or rather by virtue of it, the concept remains elusive for
cultural outsiders, as it already was over a hundred years ago, when it was devised
against the immigrant.
Wherever there is viveza criolla, there are people of two complementary kinds
implied. Among the vast number of words that Porteños have devised to identify
the two kinds, the social categories vivo and boludo stand out as the most promi-
nent. It is not an exaggeration to assert, as Porteños often do, that vivos and boludos
abound in Buenos Aires, or rather, as the logic in those words dictates, that people
have no choice but to be one or the other.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 3.2 deals with viveza criolla. In
Sect. 3.2.1, I put viveza in historical context, pointing out its links to Porteños and
criollo culture. In Sect. 3.2.2, I look critically at definitions of viveza in dictionaries.
I show that these definitions are conceptually inaccurate and circular, if not alto-
gether absent. By discussing them, however, I pave the way for a more detailed
semantic analysis in Sect. 3.2.3, which attends to word usage in paradigmatic
examples of viveza. In Sect. 3.2.4, I propose NSM explications for two meanings of
the term viveza criolla that emerge from the analysis. In Sect. 3.3, I turn to boludo
and vivo. In Sect. 3.3.1, I note a couple of caveats and set the scope for the study of
those words. In Sect. 3.3.2, I look critically at definitions in dictionaries. In
Sect. 3.3.3, I present a semantic analysis of boludo, followed by an NSM expli-
cation in Sect. 3.3.4. In Sect. 3.3.5, I present a semantic analysis of vivo, followed
by an NSM explication in Sect. 3.3.6. This is followed by some concluding
remarks.
3 Cultural Keywords in Porteño … 37
3.2 Viveza Criolla
3.2.1 Porteña and Criolla: A Long-Standing Tradition
To understand viveza criolla, one must work backwards to late nineteenth-century

Buenos Aires. The Argentine state had opened its doors to massive immigration in
pursuit of the Porteño ruling elite’s dream of a nation with European values and
people (Shumway 1991). Between 1871 and 1914, nearly 6 million immigrants
flooded Argentina, and Buenos Aires became the largest metropolis in Latin
America as its population multiplied nine times (Lewis 2003: 54–55). But the
Porteño dominant classes’ dream of a civilized European nation in South America
did not quite realize: the much-desired “civilized” (i.e. German and Swiss) workers
were vastly outnumbered by a majority of Southern and Eastern Europeans, mostly
Italians of peasant background (Shumway 1991; Cara 2011). They had fled from
war, poverty and political turmoil, and, to the elite’s dismay, seemed to bring
anything but the seeds of unified national harmony. The work culture and skills of
the newcomers were nevertheless valued, so discontent in the Porteño working
classes grew as well: now, they had to compete against the overwhelmingly male
immigrants for jobs, housing and women (Cara 2011).
Fearing disintegration, the Porteño society sought unity by embracing—and
constructing—a criollo culture, that is, a national culture rooted in local traditions,
to be distinguished from the alien culture of the immigrants. The unifying descriptor
criollo began to be applied to a variety of cultural forms, from tango to popular
literature to traditional aspects of rural life, including the figure of the hitherto
relegated gaucho (‘rural man’), and, in doing so, these forms were marked as
expressions of the local culture and way of life (Cara 2011; Pite 2016: 101–102).1
One such expression of criollo culture that strongly emerged in the popular
sectors was viveza criolla, which was performed against the immigrant in particular.
In Psicología de la viveza criolla, the only in-depth study on the topic, sociologist
Julio Mafud (1965: 113–114) relates:
Faced with that social and economic oppression, the men from here had to react in some
way and they reacted through viveza. Unable to compete, the native drew on viveza criolla
as a weapon against those who kept coming from across the pond, which is the ocean. This
explains also why the psychological reaction expressed itself at its strongest in Buenos
Aires, where the new way of life was more total and the struggle for existence more acute.
[…] [Viveza criolla] didn’t have the same validity in the interior regions of the country.
1
The word criollo/a had enjoyed a wide range of senses across Spanish America throughout the
colonial period. Primarily, it had been used to describe a person as born in the New World from
European or African parents, and as therefore belonging to a lower rank. The term was also applied
to animals or plants of European origin that thrived on American soil. With the emergence of
Latin-American states in the 1800s, criollo/a became a way of saying that someone or something
is national (Cara 2011; Pite 2016: 101–102).
38 J. Hein
Even today, in the provinces of the interior, they call it viveza porteña and not criolla
because they regard the latter as peculiar to the capital.2
Now, viveza criolla was not an exclusive patrimony of those who were Porteño by
birth, but a transmissible and learnable cultural form, just like other forms of criollo
culture (Cara 2011). Immigrants who sought to thrive in the new society could
likewise perform and display viveza, and, in doing so, prove they had become
criollo or, as Argentines have it, had been able to “acriollarse”:
They did it impelled by an intrinsic need: the bridges that linked them with their parents
were burning right in front of them. With nothing behind them and only emptiness ahead,
they had to shove their neighbors aside. Therefore, they didn’t worry about their methods or
their means. It was viveza that tunneled them faster towards their goal. It was viveza that
put them on an equal footing with others, and not inferior to the others. Being vivo was the
best way of becoming criollo [acriollarse] and acquiring prestige. (Mafud 1965: 118;
italics as per the original)3
Before long, viveza criolla crossed the city boundaries and penetrated in the
country’s provinces, where it became widely practiced. The Porteño provenance of
viveza, however, has never been a matter in dispute. In his book-length essay El
atroz encanto de ser argentinos (‘The atrocious charm of being Argentine’), public
intellectual Marcos Aguinis devotes a whole chapter to viveza; even if he considers
it as one of the traits of the Argentine mentality, he stresses from the outset where
that trait is originally from:
It is known as viveza criolla, but it is the Argentine viveza common to all psychosocial
strata and extending to the entire territory of the nation, although in origin it was pre-
dominant in Buenos Aires. It is an incomprehensible expression for anyone who has not
experienced it—or suffered from it. It reflects and covers up abilities and miseries. It plays
with equivocation, it makes us laugh and cry; on the one hand, it elevates, on the other, it
humiliates. (Aguinis 2002: 81; italics as per the original)4
2
The original Spanish reads as follows: “Ante esa opresión social y económica los hombres de aquí
tenían que reaccionar de algún modo y reaccionaron a través de la viveza. Al quedar fuera de
competencia, el nativo recurrió a la viveza criolla como arma de lucha contra los que venían mas
allá del charco grande, que es el océano. Esto explica también el por qué la reacción psicológica se
expresó con toda su violencia en Buenos Aires, donde el nuevo tipo de vida fue mas total y la
lucha por la existencia mas aguda. […] [La viveza criolla] tampoco casi tuvo vigencia en las zonas
del interior. Todavía hoy en las provincias del interior la llaman viveza porteña y no criolla por
considerarla peculiar de la capital.” Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.
3
Original Spanish version: “Lo hacían impelidos por una necesidad intrínseca: en sus espaldas se
iban quemando las naves que los vinculaban con sus padres. Sin nada detrás y empedrado de
vacíos su adelante, tenían que conquistar a codazos su espacio vital. Entonces, no pensaban en los
medios. Ni tampoco en las formas. La viveza siempre era el camino que los entubaba más rápido
hacia su fin. En última instancia, la viveza los ponía en pie de igualdad con los otros y no los
inferiorizaba. Ser vivo era la mejor forma de acriollarse y adquirir prestigio.”
4
Original Spanish version: “Se la conoce como viveza criolla, pero es la viveza argentina fre-
cuentada por todas las capas psicosociales y extendida a la totalidad del territorio nacional, aunque
en sus comienzos haya predominado en Buenos Aires. Resulta una expresión incomprensible para
Argentines lay claim to viveza criolla, but rightly so do Venezuelans, in whose

country the same word with a similar meaning has wide currency. In Brazil,
viveza’s counterpart takes the form of jeitinho, in Peru, of criollada, and, in
Colombia, of malicia indígena. Space precludes contrastive examination to deter-
mine the extent to which the semantics of viveza and these other terms overlap. It is
nevertheless safe to posit that all these keywords are culture-specific, insofar as the
places and people captured in their respective meanings are not the same.
3.2.2 Viveza in Dictionaries
The Academia Argentina de Letras’ (2008) Diccionario del habla de los argentinos
(hereafter AAL) aims to be the most comprehensive register of the Argentine
Spanish lexical repertoire, and yet viveza criolla does not have an entry in it. But
when dictionaries do grant viveza the place it deserves, definitions often leave much
to be desired. To back up this statement, and also to pave the way for a sound
analysis of viveza, I will explore definitions of the word in three prestigious dic-
tionaries: Gobello and Oliveri’s (2013) Novísimo diccionario lunfardo (hereafter
NDL), the Real Academia Española’s (2014) Diccionario de la lengua española5
(hereafter RAE) and the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española’s (2010)
Diccionario de americanismos6 (hereafter ASALE). The first of these dictionaries
specializes in the vocabulary of Buenos Aires, or what Porteños call lunfardo, and
the second and third zoom out to focus on words used in Spain and
Spanish-speaking countries, and in the Spanish-American world, respectively.
Discussing viveza in the context of the NDL requires that I briefly touch upon
the subject of lunfardo. Today the term refers to the speech ways and vocabulary of
Porteños. Originally, in the late nineteenth-century, however, the term was used to
designate language purportedly used by criminals and prisoners in Buenos Aires
(see Iribarren Castilla 2009: 1–60). These marginal antecedents may explain why
lunfardo hosts a vast number of words related to semantic fields such as engaño
“deceit”, delincuencia “crime”, broma “prank”, burla “mockery”, and maldad
“malice” (ibid.). The languages brought by European immigrants—in particular, the
languages of Italy—have also greatly contributed to the constitution of lunfardo.
The lyrics of tango, a musical genre created by both immigrants and local criollos,
also features many lunfardo words, and many authors describe lunfardo as, simply,
the language of tango (ibid.).
Given their shared background, lunfardo and viveza appear to be strongly
associated with one another. One would therefore expect viveza to have an equal, if
quien no la haya experimentado—o sufrido—. Refleja o encumbre habilidades y miserias. Juega

con los equívocos, hace reír y hace llorar, por un lado eleva y por el otro humilla.”
5
http://www.rae.es. Accessed 28 February 2018.
6
http://www.asale.org. Accessed 28 February 2018.
40 J. Hein
not special, treatment among words of a lunfardo dictionary. It comes as a surprise

that this is not the case in NDL, where the word is not given its own entry. It is
instead treated within the entry for vivo (Gobello and Oliveri 2013: 329; bold and
italics as per the original, numbering added), and its different senses are claimed to
be Spanish- rather than lunfardo- or Argentine-specific:
Corre también viveza, pero sus acepciones corresponden al cast. [1] agudeza de ingenio,
[2] dicho pronto e ingenioso; [3] por antífrasis acción o palabra irreflexiva. [‘Viveza is also
used, but its senses correspond to Peninsular Spanish [1] acuteness of mind, [2] quick and
ingenious remark; [3] by antiphrasis, thoughtless action or word.’]
As a matter of fact, these definitions are almost exact reproductions of the RAE
definitions given for viveza. In the first sense above ([1]), viveza loosely translates
as “wits” or “ingenuity”. The corresponding RAE definition reads: “agudeza o
perspicacia de ingenio” (roughly, “acuteness or perspicacity of mind”). However, if
we then look up agudeza and perspicacia (in the same dictionary), the meaning
differences between these two words and viveza become blurred, as we get caught
up in a web of definitional circularities. Agudeza is defined as “perspicacia o viveza
de ingenio”, but this is practically the same as the definition for viveza, the dif-
ference being that those two words, agudeza and viveza, have swapped places.
If the RAE definitions of viveza and agudeza leave us going in circles, its
definition of perspicacia as “penetración de ingenio o entendimiento” (roughly,
“penetration of mind or understanding”) is no less problematic. For example, it
follows that, if we replace perspicacia with its definiens, the definition for viveza
would read “agudeza o (penetración de ingenio o entendimiento) de ingenio”. The
repetition of ingenio in this definition implies additional circularities, whereas that
of the conjunction o (‘or’) reveals a failure to posit the invariant meaning of the
term viveza.
The RAE definition of ingenio reads as follows:
facultad del ser humano para discurrir o inventar con prontitud y facilidad. [‘the human
being’s faculty of thinking or inventing quickly and easily.’]
While this definition offers a way out of the circular web in which agudeza, viveza
and perspicacia are nodes, it introduces other equally complex and hardly
circular-free nodes, such as facultad, discurrir and prontitud. No further consul-
tation is necessary to affirm that the first definition of viveza in NDL, and also the
one in RAE on which it is based, do not account for the Argentine viveza criolla.
Both definitions aim to capture culture-neutral, universal faculties of human beings
as individuals. However, as the examples in the next section will show, viveza
criolla always construes events and situations as primarily social and
culture-specific actions: it positions people in relation to other people—crucially,
viveza is always bad for other people—, and it entails a claim about Argentine
society and culture.
The second sense attributed to viveza in NDL corresponds to RAE’s “dicho
agudo, pronto o ingenioso” (roughly, “acute, quick or ingenious remark”). If we
look up the terms in this definition, we immediately lose ourselves in vicious circles
of the kind shown above. Space limitations make it impossible to provide illus-
tration. In what follows, a second sense for viveza criolla will be acknowledged, but
it will again be argued that it cannot be framed in terms of acuteness, ingenuity, etc.,
because these terms miss the point of the Argentine meaning of the word, where
events and situations are construed as social and culture-specific actions.
Furthermore, as the examples shall show, many things that are not dichos “remarks”
can nevertheless be likewise conceptualized as vivezas in this second sense of the
word. The definitions in RAE and NDL are therefore over-specific.
The third sense suggested by NDL clearly results from gluing together two other
senses given by RAE: “acción poco considerada” (‘thoughtless action’) and
“palabra que se suelta sin reflexión” (‘word that one thoughtlessly comes out
with’). These senses seem unjustified: it is rather the rhetorical device—the
“ethnopragmatic form”—of antiphrasis mentioned in NDL’s definition that calls for
semantic explication. It is by virtue of that form that viveza, but many other words
also, can take their opposite meaning.
This brings us to the third of our dictionaries, ASALE, where viveza criolla is
portrayed as an idiomatic expression used in Argentina, but also in Venezuela,
Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia and Uruguay. Its definition reads as follows:
Picardía para obtener provecho sin ningún esfuerzo o a expensas de los demás. [‘Cunning
that is used to take advantage without any effort or at the expense of others.’]
The word picardía does not mean the same as viveza criolla, but it is semantically
closer to it than perspicacia, agudeza, ingenio (or combinations of those words).
Unlike those words, both viveza criolla and picardía are personified in words for
social categories, namely vivo and pícaro (roughly, “rogue”). The latter is the
central character of the Spanish 16th–17th centuries novela picaresca (‘picaresque
novel’). The pícaro is a social outsider who resorts to lying, stealing and fraudulent
cheating, or rather to his picardías (‘rogueries’). In Psicología de la viveza criolla,
Mafud (1965: 105–112) presents the pícaro as the forerunner of the Argentine vivo
and draws an extensive parallel between those two kinds of people. Like viveza
criolla, picardía could therefore also be said to be rich in social meaning, in that it,
too, establishes specific relations between people, as correctly captured in the above
component “at the expense of others”. However, the component “without any
effort” in the definition above is inadequate; for further discussion, with examples,
see Sect. 3.2.3.
An important difference between viveza criolla and picardía is that the latter
lacks any reference to a national culture. This explains why picardía may be
attributed to any person, irrespective of his/her cultural background, as long as his/
her deeds call for that attribution. Viveza criolla, on the other hand, insofar as it
belongs exclusively in the stock of Argentine criollo culture, is available and
ascribable to the cultural insider only.
42 J. Hein
3.2.3 The Ubiquity of Viveza Criolla
In this section, I analyse paradigmatic examples of viveza criolla. The analysis will
shed light on the exact meanings that guide Porteños when they use that word, and
show how these meanings are in conflict with those proposed by dictionaries.
3.2.3.1 La Mano de Dios
In the Mexico 1986 World Cup, Diego Maradona scored one of the most (in)fa-
mous goals in soccer history. The great Argentine legend, a little Porteño of 1.65
metres, had outjumped the 1.83-metre-tall English goalkeeper to gloriously head
the ball into the back of the net—or so believed a majority of people in the Aztec
stadium, including referees. The Argentine had in fact punched the ball in such
skilled manner that the foul went unnoticed. The validated goal, later baptized by
Maradona himself as La Mano de Dios (‘The Hand of God’), is a national trophy
that remains indelible in the Argentine memory.
The Argentine speaker can say that Maradona could do his Mano de Dios
because “él tiene viveza criolla” (‘he has viveza criolla’). In this sense, viveza
criolla designates something by virtue of which many people in Argentina, but not
in other countries, can do things of a particular kind. The speaker may also construe
the event of La Mano de Dios as precisely one thing of such kind, and then say
about that thing: “esto es una viveza criolla” (‘this is a viveza criolla’); this is the
second sense of the word. I will refer to the first and second senses as viveza criolla1
and viveza criolla2, respectively; I will not use any numbers in subscript in cases
when what is said applies to both senses, or when it is obvious which of the two
senses is being referred to.
Three observations about La Mano de Dios are in order. First, it is regarded as a
viveza criolla2 par excellence, and yet Maradona used no words to accomplish it.
Therefore, the category dichos “remarks” used by dictionary definitions (see
Sect. 3.2.2) over-specifies the range of applicability of viveza criolla2. For some-
thing to be called a viveza criolla2, what is crucial is that “someone does some-
thing”, and this may or may not be done with words.
Second, La Mano de Dios shows that a viveza criolla2 is done “at the expense of
others”—as rightly stated in ASALE—or, to put it in cross-translatable terms,
viveza criolla2 “is bad for other people”. In this example, the people for whom it is
bad are the English team, their supporters, etc.
Third, the example shows that a viveza2 is not something necessarily done
“without any effort”, as is also stated in that dictionary. A lack of effort is not what
Argentines wish to pinpoint when they refer to La Mano de Dios as a viveza2. In

fact, it is clear to all that it must have demanded a great effort from the little man to
outjump the 1.83 tall English goalkeeper.
The claim that a viveza2 is done “without any effort” does not come as a surprise,
though: the Argentine vivo is often portrayed as someone who has other people—
known as boludos, giles, zonzos, to name a few labels—making the effort that he is
not willing to make (see, e.g., Aguinis 2002: 90). This trait is reflected in the
common saying “El vivo vive del zonzo, y el zonzo de su trabajo” (roughly, “The
vivo lives off the fool, and the fool off his job”).
Maradona is a full-fledged vivo, “the supreme embodiment of viveza criolla”—
as the travelogue Bad times in Buenos Aires (France 1999: 27) puts it. He can often
surprise Argentines with truly original, novel displays of viveza criolla1, as he did
back then with his Mano de Dios. But something need not be regarded as original,
new, or unique to be considered a viveza criolla2. In fact, Maradona’s Mano de
Dios has been replicated by other players after him, and, deservedly so, viveza
criolla was attributed in those cases as well. The examples that follow will show
that, in the eyes of Argentines, the mundane can also be regarded as viveza.
3.2.3.2 Behind the Wheel
Time-honoured vivezas2 abound and are known to most Porteños. At the bank,
there is viveza when someone jumps the long queue with the excuse that “es una
preguntita nada más” (‘it’s just a question I want to ask’). In a traffic jam, a
motorist will use some viveza1 to overtake on the hard shoulder, and then again to
park in a prohibited space. To succeed in the latter, some extra viveza1 may be
crucial, though. As reported, not without irony, in one of Argentina’s major
newspapers, La Nación (7 June 2014):
(1) Se trata de un Mini Cooper estacionado en la avenida Scalabrini Ortiz, entre Córdoba y
Cabrera, sobre las marcas amarillas correspondientes al espacio para ubicar contene-
dores de basura. Además, el propietario, utilizando su viveza criolla al máximo, tomó
la precaución de taparle la patente con papel para evitar multas a través de fotografías.
Un vivo con todas las letras.
‘It’s a Mini Cooper parked in Scalabrini Ortiz Avenue, between Córdoba and Cabrera,
on the yellow marking indicating space reserved for rubbish skips. Furthermore, the
owner of the car, using his viveza criolla to the max, took the precaution of covering
his number plate to avoid fines from traffic cameras. A fully-fledged vivo.’7
7
Unless otherwise indicated, all newspaper examples were taken from https://www.lanacion.com.
ar/ and accessed on 26 November 2018.
44 J. Hein
Covering the number plate in prohibited parking, like jumping a queue or over-
taking the hard shoulder, is a long-established, everyday viveza2. Unlike La Mano
de Dios, its execution does not require any exceptional quality or dexterity. In
construing any of these as a viveza2, however, the vivo in question is automatically
attributed a kind of exceptionality, paraphrasable in NSM terms as “this someone
did something very well, not everyone can do something like this”. At the same
time, and to many Argentines’ pride, viveza criolla implies that such an exceptional
behaviour is in fact a habitual practice in their country: “in Argentina we often do
things like this”.
3.2.3.3 Underground Viveza
In 2012, an underground fare increase from $1.10 to $2.50 was announced in

Buenos Aires. The ever-present vivos seized their opportunity like only vivos can,
or, to put it in local terms, “se avivaron”. If they could buy $1.10 tickets, then they
could resell them at a competitive price once the fare increase had been put into
effect. So it happened, and a newspaper’s headline published the day after (6
January 2012) read:
(2) Viveza criolla: venden por internet viajes en subte a $2
‘Viveza criolla: underground tickets sold on the internet for $2’
A reader who did not agree with the headline’s wording commented: “No es una
viveza. Es un mercado secundario, legítimo y conveniente para todas las partes.”
[‘This is not a viveza. It is a secondary, legitimate market, convenient for all
parties.’] If a business is regarded as convenient for all parties, then it cannot be
called viveza2 at the same time because the latter implies, by definition, “something
bad for other people”. Whether something is or is not bad is, however, up for
discussion, and it is therefore arguable also whether something can be called
viveza2.
3.2.4 Semantic Explications of Viveza Criolla
I propose the following NSM explications for the two senses of viveza criolla:
[A] viveza criolla1 (e.g. We Argentines have viveza criolla1)

a. something
people can say what this something is with this word: viveza criolla
people can say something about something with this word when they think like this:
b. “in Argentina [m] many people can do things of one kind, not like in other countries [m]
c. when someone does something of this kind, it is like this:
d. - this someone does something because this someone thinks like this:
‘if I do this in this way, something can happen because of it, it will be good for me’
e. - people can know that this is bad for other people
f. - at the same time, they can think about it like this:
‘this someone did something very well, not everyone can do something like this,
in Argentina [m] we [m] often do things like this’
g. - when they think like this, they can feel something good because of this”
[B] viveza criolla2 (e.g. This is a viveza criolla2)

a. (this is) something of one kind
b. in Argentina [m] many people can do things of this kind, not like in other countries [m]
c. when someone does something of this kind, it is like this:
d. - this someone does something because this someone thinks like this:
“if I do this in this way, something can happen because of it, it will be good for me”
e. - people can know that this is bad for other people
f. - at the same time, they can think about it like this:
“this someone did something very well, not everyone can do something like this
in Argentina [m] we [m] often do things like this”
g. - when they think like this, they can feel something good because of this
Viveza criolla1 and viveza criolla2 only differ in their opening components (iden-
tified as “a”). These are based on templates proposed by Goddard and Wierzbicka
(2014: 205–237) for the explication of “abstract” and “concrete” nouns, respec-
tively. In viveza criolla2, i.e. the “concrete” sense of the word, component
(a) suggests that the word is used to speak about something, and that this something
spoken about can, in principle, be jointly identified and pointed at. In viveza
criolla1, the “abstract” sense, component (a) indicates that speakers say something
with the word viveza criolla, not about something identified with that word. Rather
than designating something tangible or localizable “out there”, viveza criolla1
functions here as a lexical and discursive tool with which speakers can construe a
particular complex scenario—namely components (b) to (g)—as “something”.
Component (b) establishes a special connection between Argentina and viveza,
namely that it is in Argentina specifically that many people can do vivezas.
Component (c) presents the agent of a viveza and introduces components (d) to
(g) as the putative scenario for anything construed as something of that kind. The
first component in this scenario captures minimally the goal-directed thought that
takes someone to engage in viveza. It is a self-centred plan and, as such, it does not
necessarily contemplate its bad consequences for other people, even if these may be
evident to other people (see component “e”).
46 J. Hein
The “celebratory” compound in components (f) and (g) conveys, in the form of a
thought and an associated good feeling, the evaluative stance towards viveza that is
shared by a collective subjectivity “they” (which refers back to “people” in com-
ponent “e”). It singles out the person behind viveza form the larger group for having
done something very well, but, at the same time, it regards what is done as habitual
practice in Argentina.
Something components (f) and (g) do not predict is that the celebratory attitude
of the larger group is shared also by the speaking subject: the speaker’s personal
attitude towards viveza is not, at least in today’s use of the word, a built-in com-
ponent in the semantics of that word. More often than not, however, people using
the word will leave no doubt as to what their own stance is. When criticizing viveza,
speakers will normally “take responsibility” for it by acknowledging being them-
selves members of the society that celebrates it. The 1st person plural pronoun
nosotros and possessive adjective nuestra are often used to this end:
(3) Los argentinos somos conocidos por vivos. Pero lamentablemente en muchos casos
esta cualidad no se refiere a pensamiento veloz o agudeza mental, sino a nuestra
tristemente famosa viveza criolla, que tanto nos perjudica fuera de nuestras fronteras.
(19 April 2003)
‘We argentines are well-known for being vivos. In many cases, unfortunately, this trait
does not refer to quick-wittedness or acuteness of mind, but to our sadly famous viveza
criolla, which does so much harm to us when we are abroad.’
(4) La famosa viveza nuestra que no nos lleva a ningún lugar. (2 September 2015)
‘Our famous viveza that leads us nowhere.’
(5) Nosotros pensamos que nuestra viveza criolla nos hace más grandes, y la verdad es que
nos empobrece. (22 February 2017)
‘We think that our viveza criolla makes us greater, and truth is that it makes us poorer.’
Example (6) is from an interview with the renowned neuroscientist Facundo Manes,
conducted by Alejandro Fantino, host of a popular late-night talk show in
Argentina. The interlocutors exchange different views on viveza:
(6) Manes: Nosotros [los argentinos] nos jactamos de la viveza criolla. Para mi la viveza
criolla es parte del problema de este país.
Fantino: Me gusta eso, che. ¿Es parte del problema de este país la viveza criolla? Yo
pensé que era un…
Manes: Obvio.
Fantino: Perdón, yo pensé que me tenía que golpear el pecho porque, al ser vivo y al
tener esa viveza criolla, sobrevivo si me voy a vivir a Estados Unidos, sobrevivo en
Francia. Esa viveza criolla me permite, eh, entro como lavabaños y termino como
gerente general de Coca Cola si me voy a Estados Unidos.8
‘Manes: We [Argentines] boast about viveza criolla. For me, viveza criolla is part of
the problem with this country.
8
The full interview is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPO-T9xImko (posted on
30 November 2016).
Fantino: Is it? I like that idea. Viveza criolla is part of the problem of this country?
Manes: Yes, obviously.
Fantino: I thought I had to thump my chest because, being vivo, and having that viveza
criolla, I can survive if I go to live in the USA, I can survive in France. That viveza
criolla enables me to, er, I start a job as a toilet cleaner and end up as CEO of
Coca-Cola if I go to the USA.’
An openly praising stance like Fantino’s is less common in the public sphere today;
he may well be playing devil’s advocate here. Repudiation of viveza criolla in the
vein of Manes is instead the norm. As a matter of fact, a central element in the
effective rhetoric of Argentina’s ruling political party Cambiemos (‘Let’s change’)
—of which Manes was a supporter at the time of the exchange above—consists
precisely in the condemnation of viveza criolla, which they see epitomized by the
corrupt Kirchner presidencies that preceded them.
In the private sphere, a common but not altogether unexpected attitude is to
judge vivezas on a case-by-case basis according to whether they work or not in
one’s favour: if it is La Mano de Dios, then one’s in-group favouritism for
Argentina will be an overriding factor; if it is corruption by politicians, viveza is the
curse that dooms Argentines to failure.
3.3 Boludo and Vivo
3.3.1 Introduction
In his prologue to Che Boludo! A Gringo’s guide to understanding the Argentines,

American author James Bracken (2005: 7–8) observes:
Argentines in particular ways seem to be just as aware of their own shortcomings as well as
they are of other’s. This keen sense of discernment is illustrated by the vast quantity of
words used to accurately describe an idiot, a braggart, a liar, a scam or the quality of
anything from personal character to household appliances. The Argentines use these words
with such frequency and passion that the unsuspecting foreigner will eventually have to ask
“What is a ‘boludo’ and why can’t I find it in my Spanish dictionary?”
Bracken’s observation is well intentioned, but an English word like scam frames the
issue from the perspective of the English language and culture, whereas viveza, like
the “vast quantity of words” the author refers to, does it from the insiders’ per-
spective. Similarly, while words like braggart, liar and idiot may accurately
describe the beneficiary and victim of a “scam”, local categories, tailored by and for
Argentines, can best capture the two participants at play in viveza criolla.
The words vivo and boludo—the latter of which Bracken brings up—are the
most prominent among such local categories, as the analyses in this section will
show. But surely not the only ones: in Psicología de la viveza criolla, Mafud (1965:
124–125) notes 24 words used for designating the beneficiary of viveza, and 55
words for designating the victim, and his list does not aim to be exhaustive.
48 J. Hein
Before exploring definitions of boludo and vivo in dictionaries, a couple of

caveats need to be noted. The first one is that while both boludo and vivo are highly
polysemous, I am only interested here in one sense of each of these words, namely
the one that is most directly relevant to viveza criolla. In these senses, vivo and
boludo designate two opposite social categories. Words for social categories, I will
propose, position people in relation to other people by virtue of a categorization into
kinds with identifying traits, and NSM explications are able to capture this. If
someone is said to be a boludo, and someone else a vivo, each of them is being
categorized as a different “someone of one kind”, and the corresponding identifying
traits for one and the other kind are being thereby attributed. The NSM explications
in this section will capture radically opposite ways of thinking and acting that are
the identifying traits of vivos and boludos, and at the same time predict the special
relations these two kinds of people hold with each other, with viveza criolla, and
with the larger Argentine society.
The second caveat is that while the social categories boluda and viva applied to
women do exist, their meanings cannot be thought of as exact female counterparts
of the male vivo and boludo. Their analysis is needed but lies outside the scope of
this study. The focus here is only on the more frequent meanings vivo and boludo,
originally conceived for men. Like viveza, these meanings have played an active
part in the definition of gender stereotypes in the male chauvinist Argentine society.
This becomes evident from the literature and word-usage examples covered in this
paper, but space precludes further discussion on the matter.
3.3.2 Boludo and Vivo in Dictionaries
3.3.2.1 Boludo
Boludo is a word pervasively used by Porteños, and by a majority of Argentines

today. At the 6th International Congress of the Spanish Language, it was selected as
the word that best represented Argentine Spanish. Porteño poet and Cervantes Prize
awardee Juan Gelman, who was entrusted with the selection, was quoted in La
Nación as saying:
(7) Es un término muy popular y dueño de una gran ambivalencia hoy. Entraña la
referencia a una persona tonta, estúpida o idiota; pero no siempre implica esa
connotación de insulto o despectiva. En los últimos años me ha sorprendido la
acepción o su empleo entre amigos, casi como un comodín de complicidad. Ha venido
perdiendo el sentido insultante. Ha mutado a un lado más desenfadado, pero sin perder
su origen. (23 October 2013)
‘It is a very popular term that possesses great ambivalence today. It involves reference
to a dumb, stupid or idiotic person, but it does not always imply this derogatory or
insulting connotation. In recent years, what has surprised me is its meaning or usage
among friends as a wildcard for fellow-feeling. It has been gradually losing its
insulting sense. It has mutated into a more lightweight term, but without losing its
origin.’
Gelman is touching here on the two most frequent senses of boludo, each of which
constitutes, in its own way, an indispensable conceptual tool in Argentina. In the
first sense, boludo is an insult, or rather the Porteño insult par excellence. In the
second, boludo is a term of address used in friendly interaction, as in “¿Cómo estás,
boludo?” (‘How are you doing, boludo?’).
Persico’s Porteño Spanish-English dictionary (Persico 2016: 16) glosses the first
of these senses via various words, among these “moron”, “dumb-ass”, and “dip-
shit”, but these words have all different meanings. Monolingual Spanish dic-
tionaries (e.g. RAE; AAL; NDL) do the same, using words as different as necio,
estúpido, tonto, gilipollas and imbécil (roughly, “foolish”, “stupid”, “silly”,
“dickhead” and “idiot”), to name but a few.
As for the second sense of boludo, ASALE merely states that it is used among
young Argentines to address a friend. Bracken’s dictionary points out that it is
“used casually among friends” and that it has the “same definition” as the first
sense, which is defined as “fool, idiot” (Bracken 2005: 17). But if both senses have
the same definition, then positing two senses is hardly justified. Bracken concludes,
not without resignation, that the common expression che boludo “could be anything
from ‘you idiot’ to ‘hey buddy’ depending on the context of the situation” (ibid.).
However, to say that the meaning of an expression “could be anything depending
on the context” is to throw the whole issue into the pragmatics wastebasket.
3.3.2.2 Vivo
If boludo is highly polysemous, vivo is even more so. For the purposes of this study,
a distinction must be made between two senses. The first sense, often overlooked by
dictionaries, corresponds to the noun vivo and designates a social category; this is
the sense I want to explicate. It is used, for example, in the following excerpt of El
atroz encanto de ser argentinos (Aguinis 2002: 83; italics as per the original):
(8) La viveza criolla nació en Buenos Aires. El resto del país no la aceptó como propia
hasta que sus hazañas cundieron. Quien la ejerce se llama vivo. El vivo de Buenos
Aires, después el vivo de cualquier localidad argentina.
‘Viveza criolla came into being in Buenos Aires. The rest of the country did not accept
it as such until its feats started spreading. The one who practises it is called vivo. First
the vivo from Buenos Aires, then the vivo from any Argentine locality.’
50 J. Hein
The second sense corresponds to the frequently used adjective vivo and is used to
describe a socio-cognitive trait. Dictionaries define this sense via near-synonyms
like ingenioso (‘ingenious’), listo (‘clever’), and astuto (‘astute’) (see, e.g., RAE;
NDL).
NDL offers three senses for vivo (Gobello and Oliveri 2013: 329). The first two
are as follows:
1. Astuto, hábil para engañar o evitar el engaño, o para lograr artificiosamente cualquier
fin [‘Astute, skilled in deceiving or avoiding deceit, or in achieving with artifice any
goal’]
2. Bribón, doloso, pícaro. Por extensión del significado del cast. vivo, ingenioso, sutil
[‘Lazy, deceitful, rogue. Meaning extension from Peninsular Spanish vivo, ingenious,
subtle’]
The multiple, mutually non-substitutable glosses within each of the posited senses
reveal a failure to capture the semantic invariant in each of those senses.
Furthermore, the first definiens is an almost exact reproduction of RAE’s definition
of astuto “astute”, the only difference being that the word agudo in RAE’s original
has been here replaced with astuto. For reasons of space, I will leave aside the
problem of circularity this introduces, and will look at the third sense proposed by
NDL:
3. Ladrón [Por oposición al gil u otario, que es la víctima del robo] [‘Thief [As opposed to
gil or otario, who is the victim of the theft’]
This is the ladrón sense of vivo, frequent in lunfardo literature and tango lyrics; it
designates a social category that could be thought of as the forerunner of the
modern vivo. As the definition suggests, if I say that someone is a vivo, I am not
only saying that he is a ladrón (‘thief’), and that, as such, he often engages in robo
(‘theft’). I am also making a crucial distinction between two mutually exclusive
kinds of people: on the one hand, those who, like the vivos, engage in theft, and, on
the other, those who, like the giles and the otarios (roughly, “suckers, mugs,
fools”), are often the victims of that theft. Both giles and otarios are also charac-
terized by their incapability or unwillingness to commit theft. This means that a
person who does not take an opportunity to commit theft may well earn the label of
otario or gil, independently of whether he has or has not fallen victim of theft.
Porteños are reminded about this in many tangos, one of which is Enrique Santos
Discépelo’s famous 1934 Cambalache with its no less famous dictum “El que no
afana es un gil” (roughly, “The one who does not steal is a fool”).9
9
http://www.todotango.com. Accessed 26 November 2018.
3.3.3 The Argentine Boludo: A Social Category
Vivo, boludo, and viveza criolla relate to each other much like vivo, gil, and robo
relate in NDL’s third definition. If someone is said to be a vivo, a distinction is being
introduced between people like him, who often engage in behaviour of a certain
kind—most notably viveza—, and people who must suffer the consequences of that
behaviour—most notably boludos. In turn, someone may be called boludo if he
falls victim to a viveza, but also if he does not take the opportunity to engage in
viveza for his own benefit. Or, what is worse, if both of these things are true of
someone, as is the case with the author of this tweet:
(9) Porque no estaciono en cualquier lado, y menos enfrente de los garages ajenos.
Que BOLUDO, no pude sacar mi auto por un vivo.10
‘[I am a boludo] because I don’t park just anywhere, let alone in front of someone
else’s garage. What a BOLUDO! I could not take my car because of a vivo.’
Clearly, it is for ethical reasons that the tweeter in (9) does not engage in viveza. He
knows that he could park in front of other people’s garage, but he just doesn’t want
to, and thus he earns his status as a boludo. He is an example of the not uncommon
right-minded boludo who would rather earn that label than to do wrong. More
frequently, however, the boludo earns his status out of ineptitude: he would engage
in viveza, but he misses the opportunities. This is the boludo who exclaims
regretfully: “¡Qué boludo! ¿¡Cómo no me avivé!?” (roughly, “What a boludo! How
come I didn’t notice (like a vivo can)!?”). It is also the boludo most typically
described in opinion pieces, e.g. in La Nación:
(10) El argentino, acompañado de un sensible sentido del ridículo, revela que su temor
más profundo es el ser o parecer un tonto, pierde su estima si se siente por debajo del
estándar de viveza que el medio parece reclamarle y alcanza la cumbre de su enojo
cuando cree que se lo está tomando por tonto. Tal vez ponga en descubierto este
temor el hecho de que nuestro insulto nacional y popular es el de b… El término
indica, al menos en su origen, la falta, ausencia, carencia o déficit de viveza.
(19 August 2002)
‘The Argentine, with a sensitive sense of the ridiculous, reveals that his deepest fear is
to be or appear to be a fool, and loses esteem if he feels below the standard of viveza
that the situation seems to require, and his anger peaks when he believes he is being
taken for a fool. Perhaps this fear is revealed most clearly by the fact that our national
and most popular insult is that of b… The term indicates, at least in its origin, the
lack, absence, shortfall or deficit of viveza.’
A “lack” or “deficit” of viveza may explain the behaviour of the inept boludo, but
not of the right-minded, self-proclaimed boludo, who may contend that he does
have viveza, but simply does not put it to use. Whether inept or right-minded, what
10
https://twitter.com/diadelboludo/status/2332789279. Posted 25 June 2009, 2:46 p.m.
52 J. Hein
is common to all specimens of the boludo kind is that they do not carry out vivezas.
This, together with the fact that boludos fall prey to vivezas, is the semantic
invariant the explication of boludo must capture to achieve full predictive power.
Attributions of ineptitude, right-mindedness, etc. are made by speakers on a
case-by-case basis.
Now, in saying that someone is a boludo, one is passing judgment on that
person, as well as saying that there is a widely shared negative attitude towards
people of that kind. But Argentines are becoming increasingly reflective about, and
intolerant of, the negative and often long-lasting consequences that thinking in
terms of boludos, vivos and viveza has for their community. One of the effects of
this cultural turn is a recent campaign called Día Nacional del Boludo (‘Boludo
National Day’). Its staunch proponents actively advocate a change in the meaning
of the word boludo, declaring on their Twitter account:
(11) Ser BOLUDO cobra un nuevo significado. Ante los resultados de tanta “viveza
criolla”, más que un insulto, es un elogio.11
‘Being BOLUDO takes on a new meaning. Given the outcomes of so much “viveza
criolla”, rather than an insult, it is a praise.’
An Argentine society in which boludo takes on this new meaning—in which

boludos and not vivos are celebrated, where viveza is discouraged—would be a
different place altogether.
3.3.4 Semantic Explication of Boludo
I propose the following NSM explication for boludo:
[C] This someone is a “boludo”

a. (this someone is) a man [m] of one kind
b. if someone is someone of this kind, it is like this:
c. - bad things often happen to this someone because many people think like this:
“I want to do something
it will be good for me if I do it
it will be bad for some other people
I don’t want not to do it because of this”
d. - good things don’t happen to this someone because this someone doesn’t think like this
e. people don’t want to be someone like this
f. it is bad if someone is someone like this
11
https://twitter.com/diadelboludo/status/879712439801085952. Posted 27 June 2017, 7:46 a.m.
When someone is said to be a boludo, he is being assigned to a specific category of

men, as reflected in component (a). Component (b) introduces the two traits that are
characteristic of people who fall into this category; these traits are captured in
(c) and (d), respectively.
Component (c) states that bad things often happen to boludos. The reason for
this is a self-serving thought pattern exhibited by many people (captured in the lines
between inverted commas). This thought pattern is typically—but not necessarily—
conducive to viveza criolla, and is typically—but not exclusively—entertained by
the vivos. The close relations that exist between boludos, viveza, and vivos are thus
implied in component (c), and yet not presented as exclusive, i.e. the thought
pattern that harms boludos may not only lead to viveza, and it may not only be
exhibited by vivos. The second identifying trait, captured in (d), dictates that good
things don’t happen to boludos, and the cause of this is that they do not exhibit the
thought pattern presented in (c).
Component (e) captures a widely shared attitude towards being a boludo, and
(f) is a negative judgement about the person referred to as such.
3.3.5 The Argentine Vivo: A Social Category
The Argentine vivo is convinced of his own exceptionality and of his unusual
cognition (Mafud 1965; Aguinis 2002). Along with this conviction there is always a
strong desire to be recognized by others, as noted by Aguinis (2002: 85): “The vivo
needs the clique [barra]. Clique [barra] is the audience that celebrates his witti-
cisms. He acts to be seen and applauded, to be cheered in amazement.”12 Whatever
his intentions are, the vivo finds justification in the maxim “If I don’t do this,
someone else will”. Mafud (1965: 125, 128) articulates this maxim in various ways,
including the following:
(12) Total, si no robo yo, robará otro.

‘After all, if I don’t steal, someone else will.’
(13) Antes de que me jodan yo jodo.
‘Before they fuck me over, I fuck them over.’
(14) Hay que avivarse antes de le ganen de mano.
‘One should notice things before other people beat one to the punch.’
A lunfardo variant of the maxim is “madrugar antes de que te madruguen”

(Aguinis 2002: 95), roughly “attack first before they attack you”. It profiles yet
another aspect of the vivo’s psychology, namely the conviction of his own mental
agility. A cultural guide to Buenos Aires draws attention on this aspect:
12
Original Spanish version: “El vivo necesita de la barra. Barra es el auditorio que le festeja sus
gracias. Actúa para que lo vean y lo aplaudan, para que lo festejen con asombro.”
54 J. Hein
In my experience, though, the terms vivo (clever, vivacious) and viveza criolla (native wit)
stand for what is most peculiar to the city. To be vivo is to be street-wise, agile, cunning—
all desirable, if arguably anti-social, attributes. Florencio Escardó (1904–92), a medical
doctor and popular writer, saw the vivo’s “mental agility” and “rapid communication” as
typical of the porteño. (Wilson 2007: 38; italics and bracketed translations as per the
original)
Convinced of his own exceptionality and agile cognition, the vivo thinks himself
capable of doing whatever he pleases.
3.3.6 Semantic Explication of Vivo
I propose the following semantic explication for vivo:
[D] This someone is a “vivo”

a. (this someone is) a man [m] of one kind
b. someone of this kind often does something because he thinks like this:
“it will be good for me if something happens,
it can happen if I do something before
if I do it, it will be bad for some other people
I don’t want not to do it because of this
if I don’t do it, someone else will do it”
c. someone of this kind often thinks like this:
“I can think quickly [m], I can think well
many other people are not like me,
because of this, I can do many things as I want
I want people to know this”
Component (a) states that, when someone is said to be a vivo, he is being assigned
to a specific category of men. The traits that are characteristic of people in this
category are outlined in components (b) and (c).
Component (b) begins by acknowledging the vivo’s always active role: he often
does something. This active role for the vivo is in sharp contrast with the passive
role identified for the boludo. Bad things happen to the boludo, good things do not;
the boludo does not think about doing certain things, other people do.
The lines between inverted commas capture the thought pattern the vivo is
guided by. The first line of this pattern concerns a self-serving thought (‘it will be
good for me if something happens’). With the second line (‘it can happen if I do
something before’), a sequence of events is formulated that evokes the
goal-directed, planned nature of the vivo’s behaviour. The third line introduces the
vivo’s awareness that his plan is socially deviant (‘if I do it, it will be bad for some
other people’), and the fourth captures the fact that this does not deter him from
taking action (‘I don’t want not to do it because of this’). The fifth line (‘if I don’t
do it, someone else will do it’) expresses the “maxim” with which the vivo justifies
his action. Altogether, the thought pattern formulated in (b) predicts the special
relationship there is between vivos and boludos.
Component (c) captures the self-perception model attributed to someone who is
said to be a vivo. It includes the conviction of his superior cognition (‘I can think
quickly, I can think well’) and exceptionality (‘many other people are not like me’).
In his eyes, these traits explain his prepotent behaviour (‘because of this, I can do
many things as I want’). The final line (‘I want people to know this’) expresses his
desire to be recognized by others.
3.4 Concluding Remarks
Viveza criolla, vivo and boludo are cultural keywords in Porteño discourse, and in
Argentine discourse more broadly. In this paper, I have discussed and criticized the
definitions of these words found in a varied sample of monolingual and bilingual
dictionaries, pointing at issues of conceptual inaccuracy, ethnocentric framing and
circularity. These shortcomings provided the starting point for elucidating the
precise meanings that guide local Porteños when they use these words.
Using the NSM approach of simple, cross-translatable terms and grammar
(Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014; Goddard 2018; Levisen and Waters 2017; Ye
2017), I have represented the meanings of viveza criolla, vivo and boludo from the
vantage point of the cultural insider. In short, by labelling an action or way of
thinking as viveza, speakers wish to construe it as an expression of a widely
celebrated form of sociality in the local culture. Vivo and boludo are culture-specific
frames for categorizing and evaluating someone as one of two kinds of people with
radically opposite ways of thinking and acting.
As discussed, Argentines seem to be increasingly aware of the potential negative
and long-lasting consequences of viewing reality through the lens of viveza, vivos
and boludos. An area of interest for future cultural keyword research is the semantic
renegotiation and redefinition of these terms, perceivable in political discourse, civil
society campaigning and social-media commentary.
References
Academia Argentina de Letras (2008). Diccionario del habla de los argentinos. Buenos Aires:
Emecé. 2nd edition.
Aguinis, M. (2002). El atroz encanto de ser argentinos: Vol. 1. Buenos Aires: Planeta.
Bracken, J. (2005). ¡Che Boludo! A gringo’s guide to understanding the Argentines. Bariloche:
Caleuche.
Cara, A. C. (2011). Creole talk: The poetics and politics of Argentine verbal art. In R. Baron, & A.
C. Cara (Eds.), Creolization as cultural creativity (pp. 198–227). Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi. https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781617031069.003.0008.
France, M. (1999). Bad times in Buenos Aires. New York: Ecco/HarperCollins.
56 J. Hein
Gobello, J., & Oliveri, M. H. (2013). Novísimo diccionario lunfardo. Buenos Aires: Corregidor.
Goddard, C. (2018). Ten lectures on natural semantic metalanguage: exploring language, thought
and culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/
9789004357723.
Iribarren Castilla, V. G. (2009). Investigación de las hablas populares bonaerenses: El lunfardo.
PhD tesis: Universidad complutense de Madrid.
Levisen, C., & Waters, S. (Eds.). (2017). Cultural keywords in discourse. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.277.
Lewis, D. K. (2003). The history of Argentina. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mafud, J. (1965). Psicología de la viveza criolla: Contribuciones para una interpretación de la
realidad social argentina y americana. Buenos Aires: Americalee. 2nd edition.
Persico, J. D. (2016). Persico’s lexical companion to Argentine Spanish: Diccionario bilingüe de
regionalismos porteños. Buenos Aires: Casano Gráfica.
Pite, R. E. (2016). La cocina criolla: A history of food and race in twentieth-century Argentina.
In P. L. Alberto, & E. Elena (Eds.), Rethinking race in modern Argentina (pp. 99–125). New
York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316228050.006.
Shumway, N. (1991). The invention of Argentina. Berkeley: University of California Press.
German, and Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wilson, J. (2007). Buenos Aires: a cultural and literary history. Oxford: Signal Books.
Ye, Z. (Ed.). (2017). The semantics of nouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.
1093/oso/9780198736721.001.0001.
Jan Hein is a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia). His
research interests lie at the intersection of meaning, culture and cognition. His current project uses
the NSM approach to explore Porteño cultural keywords and values.
Chapter 4
The “Aussie” Bogan: An Occasioned
Semantics Analysis
Roslyn Rowen
Abstract This chapter explores the meaning and social use of the word bogan in
Australian English. Although bogan is arguably a term that is currently trending in
use and has been parodied in television series such as Bogan Pride and Upper
Middle Bogan, it has so far been examined predominantly by sociologists, media
scholars and social commentators (e.g. Nichols in The Bogan delusion. Affirm,
Mulgrave, VIC, 2011; Gibson in Journal of Australian Studies 37(1):62–75, 2013;
Pini et al. in Sociology 46(1):142–158, 2012), with little to no semantic research to
date into bogan as a personal descriptor in colloquial Australian English. This study
contributes to filling this gap by providing a foundation based on which the
meaning(s) of the term and its current widespread use in social interactions can be
understood. In the process, it demonstrates that bogan is more than a term that
asserts middle class hegemony, a label it has been repeatedly branded with; rather,
it has a strong semantic core to which its meaning across various Australian dis-
courses can be traced back (Rowen in Cultural keywords in discourse. John
Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 55–82, 2017). I will draw on interactional pragmatics
to analyse the interactional achievement of locally situated meanings of bogan in
conversational data. I will then provide comment on the role of Natural Semantic
Metalanguage in dealing with participants’ interactionally specific meaning(s) of
bogan. Data on usage comes from a corpus of naturally occurring examples of use
of bogan in social interaction.

Keywords Australian culture Australian English Social interaction Bogan

Occasioned semantics Ethnomethodology
R. Rowen (&)
Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia
e-mail: roz.rowen@cdu.edu.au

58 R. Rowen
4.1 Introduction
In the past fifteen years, the figure of the bogan has risen to cult status, with
burgeoning usage and viral media attention suggesting that it has significant cultural
importance (cf. Nichols 2011; Pini et al. 2012; Gibson 2013). This chapter provides
a semantic study of bogan in contemporary Australian English, showing how its
meaning or meanings reflect cultural nuances, values and attitudes that surface
predominantly in social discourse1 where people openly express their thoughts and
feelings about themselves and others. To better contextualize its use and to provide
a snapshot of its current meaning(s), I will rely on an interactional pragmatic
approach that draws on ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA). NSM
will be used towards the end as a descriptive tool to explicate in a tentative manner
the common conceptual properties used by people when talking about bogans in
different social contexts.
4.1.1 The Rise of Bogan in Australian English
The early 1980s saw the term bogan enter the Australian English lexicon, most
commonly as a reference to a person who could be classified solely by their
physical appearance and place of residence (Huynh 2009: 127).2 At the time, the
term bogan was used across most populated sections of the continent, particularly
in the Eastern states (Nichols 2011). According to lexicographer Bruce Moore and
historian John Hirst, the term evolved in the outer western suburbs of Sydney and in
similar metropolitan areas, such as Melbourne and Adelaide (Moore 2010: 21–23;
Hirst 2006: 301). Its emergence is claimed to have been triggered by the concen-
tration of lower socio-economic families in these areas taking up residence in
low-cost housing provided under local government housing schemes. During this
period, people began using the word bogan to refer to individuals who resided in
this type of housing and sported a mullet hair-cut, drove a Holden Commodore, and
were of lower socio-economic status (Nichols 2011: 9–13). Over the 1980s and
1990s, bogan began to displace other similar social descriptors, such as westie and
bevan, terms that are now rarely used in the Australian lexicon. Subsequently, as
noted by Moore (2010: 23), the term bogan has subtly shifted in meaning under the
influence of broader cultural values and attitudes. In this regard, Moore (2010)
compares bogan to another notably Australian term, larrikin, which was once
1
The term social discourse is used to refer to contexts in which people speak about other people in
informal social settings, including online.
2
In this chapter the term bogan is understood as a personal identifier noun referring to a person or a
group of people and excluding its use as an adjective, for example in expressions like he’s being
bogan, bogan attitude etc.
4 The “Aussie” Bogan: An Occasioned Semantics Analysis 59
unambiguously negative, suggesting that elements of social acceptability and

humour have entered the latter’s meaning.
Bogan has been investigated in the literature from predominantly anecdotal
(McSween et al. 2011) and cultural theory perspectives (Nichols 2011), with the
exception of Rowen (2017) who explored the lexical and cultural semantics of
bogan. Nichols (2011: 11–12) goes as far as to claim that the bogan is simply an
illusion that masks racism and prejudice:
Believing in the bogan creates a rift in society where old racist rhetoric is resurrected to
describe and demonise places, people and practices in a way that sanctions inter-class
hostility and neglect […] ‘bogans don’t exist’ […]. [T]his is my guide to recognising the
bogan and seeing right through him/her/it. It’s also a method for eliminating the ‘bogan’
once and for all […]. [T]he creeping bogan delusion is oppressive, rather than liberating.
While such claims are not without warrant, the question remains as to whether we
can simply dismiss bogan as a culturally oppressive term without trying to
understand its lexical semantic meaning and larger cultural significance. In my
view, fully understanding the role of bogan in Australian English involves
understanding how it functions as a means of identity ascription across social
interactions. Social identity and community membership are paramount, because
they are embedded in culture and its associated linguistic communities. Literature in
the fields of linguistics, sociology, psychology (among others) suggests that indi-
viduals construct their identity through their interactions with people, places and
objects (Gusfield 2003). People’s experiences and interactions contribute to their
ideological construction of identities in interaction; they help them make sense of
their “everyday world” (Jovchelovitch 2007). It is also suggested that within a
linguistic community, there are strong cultural values that align with empirical
cultural norms, and that people ascribe non-concrete identities to people to convey
such norms. Emerging “social identity” terms evolve in the service of pre-linguistic
cultural norms and values, and influence how people talk about themselves and
others (Dixson 1999). Bogan is one of these emerging Australian identities, which
are used frequently in social interactions.
4.1.2 Literature on Australian Identity Construction

and National Discourses
Australian social identity terms often undergo significant shifts in meaning over
time to align with the culture’s values and attitudes, which are reflected in language
use. Terms that do not undergo this shift tend to fade out of use. Larrikin and ocker
are two examples of social identity terms that have undergone such a shift and are
now prevalent in Australian English. Historian Bellanta (2012) notes that prior to
1910 larrikin was used as an abusive epithet and held negative connotations related
to defiance and poor social behaviour. More recently it has been used to classify
people who are outwardly irreverent and display poor behaviours, but this
60 R. Rowen
behaviour is often excused under the banner of it capturing the Australian “way of
life” or “taking the piss” (Haugh and Weinglass 2019). What is interesting to note
in Bellanta’s (2012) history of larrikins is the point that the term’s use as a ref-
erence to a person is strongly linked to the expression of Australian cultural
practices and behaviours, but that the term ocker tends to be favoured when
describing a person’s way of speaking.
These perspectives run counter to a common assumption in linguistics that
personal descriptor nouns do not contain any culturally nuanced semantic content.
Research therefore tends to focus on standard semantic relations (word sense
relations) and not on how meaning can function within the pragmatic sphere during
interaction (Goddard 2014a, b; Haugh 2012; Rowen 2017; Rowen and Haugh
2017).
The following section comments on the current dictionary definitions of bogan.
Here I intend to highlight the complexities of abstracting meaning from context,
particularly in the case of extended social interaction, where meaning does not
always unfold in a single turn of talk, but rather develops over multiple turns by
participants, and is relevant to the interactional context.
4.1.3 Dictionary Definitions of Bogan
A quick look at how bogan is treated in Australian dictionaries will be helpful in

raising issues, both in terms of the content of the definitions and the defining
language used. Definitions from the Macquarie Dictionary (https://www.
macquariedictionary.com.au/) and the Oxford English Dictionary (http://www.
oed.com/; henceforth OED) are given below.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED): (colloq.) (derogative) An unfashionable, uncouth, or
unsophisticated person, esp. regarded as being of low social status.
Macquarie Dictionary: Colloquial (mildly derogatory) a person, generally from an outer
suburb of a city or town and from a lower socio-economic background, viewed as
uncultured; originally typified as wearing a flannelette shirt, black jeans and boots, and
having a mullet hairstyle.3
The similarities and differences between these two definitions are interesting. Both
capture bogan as derogatory, but the Macquarie Dictionary adds to this classifi-
cation the adverb mildly. Both include some element of “low” social standing, but
while the OED references this explicitly as low “social status”, the Macquarie
Dictionary uses the expression lower socio-economic background, not mentioning
social status as such, but adding “viewed as uncultured”. The OED uses the
3
A mullet hairstyle is one where the hair is short at the front and sides of the head and long at the
back. It was a fashion trend in the 1980s.
descriptors unfashionable, a reference to clothing and visual appearance, and un-

couth, presumably as an indicator of behaviour and, possibly, attitude. It also uses
the adjective unsophisticated. By coordinating its three descriptors with a dis-
junctive or, the OED suggests that a bogan need not necessarily combine all three
features, but one or the other may be enough. The OED does not mention any
typical location. The Macquarie Dictionary, in contrast, mentions location first
(‘generally from an outer suburb’) and, after its reference to lower socio-economic
background, lists specific features of clothing, footwear and hairstyle as “originally
typified”. The wording in the definition suggests that there has been some change
over time in this aspect, though this is not stated explicitly, nor is there any explicit
comment about these appearance items being “unfashionable”.
Defining a word is challenging, and the Macquarie and OED definitions man-
ifest many of the typical failings of dictionary entries (Goddard 2011; Wierzbicka
1996: Chap. 9), such as the use of complex and obscure terms (uncouth, unso-
phisticated, etc.) and reliance on “hedges” (such as esp. and generally). Due to the
uncontrolled use of complex defining words in both dictionaries, it is unclear what,
if anything, hinges on differences between words such as unsophisticated
(OED) and uncultured (Macquarie), and in either case the exact intended meaning
is far from clear, given they are abstracted from context. Words such as these, not to
mention uncouth and unfashionable, could also have very little claim to plausibly
represent aspects of the general “folk concept” of bogan because, as I will detail
later, they do not correspond to the commonly used descriptions of bogans in
ordinary Australian English usage. As will become clear, these dictionary defini-
tions also provide no way of detecting, let alone understanding, the social and
cultural aspects of its meaning in varied contexts of use. In this study I provide a
more interactionally grounded account of the meaning of bogan. As far as I know,
the only partially comparable study of specifically Australian English social cate-
gory terms is Stollznow’s (2004) exploration of the terms wanker, whinger and
wowser.
4.2 Dataset
This chapter uses data from naturally occurring conversations between speakers of
Australian English. A corpus of social interactions was established to provide a
snapshot of current Australian English usage across Australia reflecting the cultural
nuances of the term. Naturally occurring data was collected by the author over a
12-month period (June 2014 to June 2015). A total of 65 participants were recorded
totalling 35 conversations across 27.2 h. Participants were from a broad age range
(18–75 years), representing all states and territories across Australia, and were from
diverse social and economic demographics. They were asked to be recorded in a
62 R. Rowen
series of naturally occurring settings when they would be with a group consisting of
2–5 participants. Each group of participants were audio/video-recorded in natural
and relatively informal settings (while enjoying a barbecue, playing a game of
football, watching a sports event, talking to housemates, etc.) for up to 5 h or for the
length of their social event if it exceeded this time frame. Participants were advised
of the audio/video device and the recorder was placed out of close visual range so
as not to distract the participants from behaving as naturally as possible in the social
environment. The researcher was never in the location where the conversation
occurred, except to set up the recording tools, brief the participants, pack up the
equipment and do a debrief. A total of 117 tokens of the word bogan were identified
in the corpus. There were 14 interactional episodes in which participants were
actively engaged in negotiating the meaning of bogan. Table 4.1 captures the key
attributes used by participants (i.e. spoken in the interactions) to construct a
localized meaning in each of these interactions, the first two of which will be
analysed in detail in Sect. 4. The attributes are grouped under the six categories
proposed by Rowen (2017), who looked at the culture-laden attributes underpinning
bogan, specifically when used by speakers in single turns of talk. In the context of
extended interaction, the table shows that across several examples not all categories
of attributes are drawn on by participants when negotiating a locally contingent
meaning of bogan. Similarly, within each category, no single attribute was con-
ceptualized in the same way by all participants. This incongruity forms the basis of
my analysis arguing that in the context of interaction, in order to understand the
meaning of a term, the full context of the interaction and sequential organization of
the interaction must be examined to optimally understand how the participants
(co)construct meaning relevant to each interaction.
4.3 Occasioned Semantics
In this chapter, the process of participants co-constructing a locally situated and

interactionally achieved meaning will be referred to as “occasioned semantics”. The
occasioned semantics approach (see Bilmes 2011; Hayashi 2016; Rowen and
Haugh 2017) examines the meanings of a word (in this case, the word bogan)
across multiple interactions. The concept of meaning in interaction is not new to the
fields of pragmatics or semantics. For interactional pragmaticists, meaning is
regarded as something that can be negotiated and shaped by participants
(Deppermann 2011; Bilmes 2011; Haugh 2013, 2016). On the other hand, in
semantics, the view remains divided. NSM scholars have explored the relationship
of ethnopragmatics and semantics when explaining speakers’ internal
Table 4.1 Attributes of bogan
Lexical Appearance Socio-economic Attitudes Descriptions of Geographic Cognitive abilities
category status behaviour location
Example 1 Sleeve tattoos Cultured Racist Conservative People from
Educated Perth
Example 2 Wealthy Idiots Dumb
Incompetent Can’t read
Violent
Example 3 Accent Born and bred Simple lifestyle Farm people Simple
Rural
Not from city
Example 4 No shoes Educated Live outside society’s bounds Rough
Have money Rude
Example 5 Loaded Laid back Harmless
Educated “she’ll be right”
Good job Plans for the future
Example 6 No shirt Don’t care about political Giving
correctness
Example 7 Crass speaking Kind
Example 8 Hold barbecues
4 The “Aussie” Bogan: An Occasioned Semantics Analysis
Loud
Obnoxious
Swearing
Hang out in packs
Example 9 Trailer trash Drunk Assault
Example 10 Model citizens Real Aussies Local town
Example 11 No fashion sense Up north
Example 12 Wear ugg boots to a business Toowoomba
meeting
Example 13 Everyday blokes Laid back Live off the land Ingenuity like Bear
Grylls
Example 14 Suit and tie Never phased by anything Genius
63
Speak with a drawl

64 R. Rowen
understanding of speech practices in terms of values, attitudes, beliefs, social cat-

egories, etc. (Goddard 2006); they have shown that an understanding of these
ethnopragmatic perspectives allows for meaning to be more easily explicated,
particularly when exploring cultural keywords (such as bogan) (Goddard 2006;
Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014). The semantic and ethnopragmatic capabilities of
NSM are extremely useful in understanding how core cultural values influence
meanings underlying discourse structure across cultures. In the context of social
interaction, when exploring meaning, pragmatic practices tend not to enter into a
semantically inspired investigation, except in a limited number of cases, given that
in creating semantic explications one must generally favour a more abstracted
treatment of lexical meanings as relatively stable and context-free, and reflective of
core cultural values, practices that are inherent across all uses of its meaning.
However, when exploring meaning from an occasioned semantics standpoint, the
entire context of the interaction needs to be taken into consideration, with meaning
being necessarily fitted to the social and cultural circumstances that are current at
the moment of interaction for the participants involved in it (Rowen and Haugh
2017). This chapter will explore the meaning of bogan from an interactional
pragmatics standpoint, analysing the practices participants across different inter-
actional settings employ when negotiating semantic fields and co-constructing
localized and interactionally relevant meaning(s). It will pay particular attention to
the extent to which pragmatics can inform semantics (specifically NSM semantics),
by providing a better understanding of the resources drawn on by interlocutors
within the sequential constraints and affordances of conversation, and by demon-
strating how this gives rise to locally contingent meaning(s).
Given that the disciplinary foundations of interactional pragmatics are manifold
(Sacks 1995; Garfinkel 1964, 1967; Goffman 1981; Schegloff 2007 among others),
this chapter will concentrate on how meaning as a part of social action is interac-
tionally accomplished. I will begin with a brief discussion of the role of the Dynamic
Model of Meaning (DMM) as a useful theoretical framework for understanding the
dialogic and dynamic nature of meaning in interaction. The meaning of bogan will
then be explored in relation to the interactional organization of talk; the focus will be
on the sequential, cultural and social practices couched in understanding
how interlocutors construct the lexical meaning of a term such as bogan.
Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (EMCA) will provide the building
blocks for the analysis. It provides a means for apprehending how members of
society can accomplish and co-ordinate social life and interaction. EMCA achieves
its aim by studying the ways in which members of society draw on and organize
social categories as resources for creating and managing social order in everyday life
(Housley and Fitzgerald 2015). The sequential nature of how participants
co-construct a locally situated meaning across interaction is captured by the use of

Conversation Analysis as an analytical tool able to demonstrate how participants go
about systematically building a meaning of bogan fit for localized purposes.
The DMM (Kecskes 2003, 2008) claims that lexical meaning is heavily
underpinned by “full” context. Meaning therefore emerges through an interplay
between “coresense”, “consense/s” and “actual situational context”. In this model
coresense refers to the “denotational, diachronic, relatively constant, and […]
objective feature that reflects changes in the speech community”, while consense
encompasses meaning that is “actual, subjective, referential, and connotational, and
changed by actual situational context” (Kecskes 2008: 393). Consense, then, refers
to the individualized understandings of word meanings, which are constructed
through this interplay of coresense, actual situational context and conceptual and
lexical properties of the word.
Consider the use of bogan in examples (1) and (2):
(1) I have said it all along. If the world were to end it won’t be the doctors, lawyers and
bankers who can rock an Excel spreadsheet and a Chi Square test who survive. It will
be the bogans who conquer coz of their ingenuity to make something from nothing and
they would be able to live off the land. They are the Aussie equivalent of Bear Grylls.
(2) Our dads are bogans through and through. They know tonnes about making car parts
or fixing odd things and get angry as fuck on the grog. I wish I’d ‘ave inherited more of
the bogan practical genes.
The coresense of bogan in each case is arguably easily accessible to speakers of

Australian English, and potentially discernible by speakers of other English vari-
eties as well. However, what is especially challenging for a word like bogan is that
it is already a culturally enshrined term and that the way in which it is subjectively
understood by different speakers may well differ across different users, depending
on their own personal-cultural experience of the word. The DMM therefore takes
into account individual speakers’ experiences in using a word, i.e. experiences that
can shape an individual speaker’s own hypotheses with respect to what that word
means, leading to the construction of a locally situated meaning. The DMM
advocates that context must always be considered to understand the full power of
salience encoded in the lexical unit and its meaning(s): without context there is no
meaning (Kecskes 2008: 388). This is how each participant is able to articulate his/
her own experiences and cultural understanding as required in the context of the
interaction, for the purpose of negotiating and understanding a localized meaning.
The DMM identifies a rich set of cognitive processes by which word meaning(s)
can be achieved, including processes such as blending, mapping and framing
(Kecskes 2008: 386). Such processes systematically afford a constrained range of
possible meanings. The meaning of cultural keywords (Levisen and Waters 2017;
66 R. Rowen
Rowen 2017; Wierzbicka 1996) such as bogan are thus arguably embedded within
speakers’ own social and cultural experiences. How these interactional nuances of
word meaning can be captured using the NSM approach will be discussed in
Sect. 4.5.
4.4 What It Means to Be a Bogan—An Occasioned

Semantics Perspective
The following subsections analyse the meaning of bogan across two core examples
from the data. The analysis of each example will show how locally situated or
occasioned meanings of bogan are accomplished through participants proposing
and negotiating specific attributes in the course of particular interactional
sequences.
4.4.1 Perth People Are Bogans
In the first example, James (J), Sarah (S), Tim (T) and Craig (C) are having a
discussion over a barbecue dinner. James, Sarah and Tim are old school friends.
Craig and Tim play football together in Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern
Territory. In this interaction Craig is getting acquainted with Sarah and James; it is
their first time together. While getting acquainted is the primary activity of this
interaction, which is sequentially accomplished (Maynard and Zimmerman 1984;
Schneider 1987; 2012), embedded in it is the interactional negotiation of a localized
meaning of bogan. Earlier in the interaction the participants have been discussing
where they will be for Christmas, which triggers further discussion about Craig
being from Perth, the state capital of Western Australia. The analysis begins in lines
54–55, where James declares that Craig is “very different to anyone else” he has
met from Perth, a claim that prefaces the Extreme Case Formulation (ECF;
Pomerantz 1986) he subsequently uses in line 58. This initial assessment lays the
groundwork for the negative appraisal that follows, in which James offers his view
on people from Perth, thus initiating the negotiation of what bogan means in this
context.
Example 1: Perth People are Bogans
54 J: CAN I SAY that you’re? very different to anyone

55 else I’ve ever met who’s from Per↑th
56 C: [yeah how so]
57 T: [◦hahaha◦]
58 J: they’re the biggest BOGANS in the wor↑ld.
59 T: [hahahah]
60 S: [.hin a good way?]
61 J: MY OLD MAN’S got family over? there as well.
62 C: ye:ah where? abou↓ts in Perth are they?
63 J: I’m not really sure actually u:m (1.2)
64 both FIFO’s they’re ◦FIFO’s◦=
65 C: =mm
66 J: >cover↑ed in sleeve tattoo↓s and hate anyone
67 who’s not WHI↑TE
68 T: £mmhhha£
69 J: yeah full bogan↓s (.) well they are ◦full◦
70 bogan↓s.=
71 S: =mm they are
72 J: and then I had mates up here from Per↑th and
73 they are the sa:↑me (0.4) but a bit more
74 conserv↓ative.=
75 T: =didn’t? you say y’old mate used to smoke? ice.=
76 J: =YEAH he did? (.) so he wasn’t too
77 conserv↑[ative]
78 T: [hhahahh]£hahaha£
79 J: well on those poin↓ts he was↓n’t ehh yeah
80 hun↓dred per↑cent.
81 C: ehh well I know that these people↓ do exist in
82 Per↓th (.) we met I’ve met [more than I wou↓ld
83 have li↓ked to] but.
84 T: [ehhhahah]
85 C: but the↑re are some more cultured and educated
86 peo↓ple there as well.
87 S: haha
88 J: so THEY are from? (.) nuggets was from Woodvale
89 C: ◦yeah◦
As mentioned before, James uses an ECF (line 58) to produce his anticipated neg-
ative assessment about “people from Perth”, evaluating them through invocation of
the category bogans and asserting that Perth people are the “biggest bogans in the
world”. This is receipted by Tim with overlapping laughter (line 59). James’ partner
68 R. Rowen
Sarah orients to James’ initial assessment, deeming it potentially offensive to Craig

and using what Coupler-Kuhlen and Ono (2010) describe as a “glue-on” comment
(line 60). Sarah emphasizes that Craig is not like these people (bogans) “in a good
way”, to counter the potential offence (Haugh 2015) that Craig could take.
In line 61, James introduces further justifications for his evaluation of people
from Perth as bogans, claiming to have family who also live in Perth. This could
also be seen as a strategy to mitigate the potential for offence. Craig pursues the
question, seeking further information about where they live, which grounds James’
response in which he introduces another category, “FIFOs” (line 64).4 This serves
as an additional category within the membership device of “people from Perth”, but
more specifically, in the bounds of this interaction, it backgrounds “people from
Perth” and foregrounds a set of locally contingent attributes related to the occu-
pation of bogans who are at the same time people from Perth. Across these series of
turns, the participants orient to an overarching membership device “people from
Perth” and to the associated categories “FIFO” and “bogan”. The participants have
invoked these categories by reduplicating the syntactic construction “they are X” to
introduce each new category into the meaning being built.
As he continues (line 66), James lists the additional category-tied predicates
“covered in sleeve tattoos” and “hate anyone who’s not white”. The use of and
links a descriptive attribute to an implied action. James’ pronouncement implies
aggression while also indexing racist attitudes—namely that bogans from Perth are
racists who have tattoos. These predicates are then qualified as belonging to the
category “full bogan” (line 69), a stance affirmed by Sarah in her latched turn (line
71). The contrast between bogan and full bogan enacts a scalar implicature (Horn
1972): namely, that in Perth there are not just people who are bogans but also
people who are full bogans. Being labelled a full bogan entails that you are also a
bogan, while being labelled a bogan only implicates not being a full bogan. This is
what Horn (1989: 318) describes as the “outer-neg reading”. James then asserts
(lines 72–74) that he has friends who are also from Perth and who are the same as
his family, but just “more conservative”. Here James invokes the “not X but could
be thought of as X” construct (i.e. not full bogans but could be thought of as
bogans), claiming that his mates are not full bogans because they are more con-
servative than others who possess the same characteristics. This line of reasoning is
further developed by James in the subsequent turns.
James’ responses in these turns show that he is continually building on his
assessment of “people from Perth”, but that the latter is not the main membership
device; rather, it acts as an “omnirelevant device” (Rintel 2015). In other words, the
responses highlight the omnirelevance of people who are from Perth as the over-
arching sense-making device and the object that is being evaluated, but it is
achieved under that of “bogan”, which James has now foregrounded as it becomes
the semantic anchor term that the participants use to co-construct a locally
4
FIFO is an acronym for ‘fly-in fly-out’ and is used to refer to people who fly to a location to work
temporarily and then fly out to return to their permanent place of residence.
contingent meaning understood by all. If we look at the semantic features of bogan

emerging in this interaction, it is clear the participants are drawing on properties
across all six of the lexical attributes (appearance, socio-economic status, attitudes,
descriptions of behaviour, geographic location, cognitive abilities; see Table 4.1).
Here the participants’ mental representation of bogan consists of their world
knowledge and experiences realized in the culture-specific conceptual properties
encoded in the lexical unit; the word bogan, for them (in this interaction), refers to
someone who has sleeve tattoos, is cultured and educated but racist and conser-
vative. The participants’ conceptual features, which they have put forward through
the repetition of syntactic structures and proposed attributes of meaning, have
become compositionally related to the lexical item in the context of the interaction.
The participants have established a locally contingent consense related to the
broader coresense, which in this example is drawing on all broad lexical categories
outlined in Table 4.1.
In response, Tim challenges James, latching on to the latter’s scalar contrast of
full bogan versus not full bogan with a loaded tease: he points towards a factually
untrue remark that James has just made about his friends being “conservative”. This
indicates that a possible challenge of James’ assessment will ensue. The tease arises
when Tim (line 75) questions James’ use of the predicate conservative in relation to
bogans, who have already been characterized as racist and aggressive. Tim seeks
clarification on whether James’ friends “smoked ice” or not (line 75), implying that
you cannot both be conservative and take illicit substances (smoke ice). Here Tim is
setting up the tease through the delivery of a question that is treated as ostensibly
serious by James (line 76) but revealed to be non-serious when Tim (line 78)
initiates concurrent laughter (Haugh 2016). James, however, continues to treat the
question as (mostly) serious and again agrees with Tim’s assessment that you
cannot be both conservative and smoke ice. However, the tease also prompts James
to reassess his evaluation of bogans as “conservative”. Tim’s repeated overlapping
laughter in line 78 sees James re-attempt his response using a more ironic footing
(line 79). In this interaction the term conservative has become tied to the scalar
contrast between bogan and full bogan, and Tim’s claim that you cannot be both
conservative and a full bogan.
For the first time, in lines 81–86, Craig finally takes up a speaking turn and
attempts to counter the assessment of everyone “from Perth”, except for Craig, being
bogan. He does this by invoking the “not X but could be thought of as X” syntactic
construction. Craig offers partial agreement by claiming that he knows that “these
people do exist in Perth”. As such he indexes that James’ assessment (namely, that
people from Perth are bogans) does hold a level of truth and is not insignificant (e.g.
“met more than I would have liked to”, line 82). However, using a “but” prefaced
turn, he goes on to disagree with James’ assessment, using the scalar contrast “some”
to imply that “some but not all” people from Perth are both “cultured” and “edu-
cated”. Craig has recast the initial assessment by saying that people from Perth are
not bogans but could be thought of as such, based on James’ assessment, and in
doing so implicitly disagrees that all people in Perth are bogans by taking the stance
that “there are more cultured and educated people as well” (line 85).
70 R. Rowen
The participants’ invocation of linguistic and world knowledge is evident as they

draw on prior experiences, such as friends who are from Perth, are “not conser-
vative” and “smoke ice” (line 74–75), or, in Craig’s case, people he knows who are
“cultured and educated” (line 85), to attribute locally relevant meanings and thereby
arrive at a consense. This is not to say it may also be a meaning that holds semantic
value in a more abstracted sense. What it does indicate is that this locally situated
meaning co-constructed by the participants is not entirely substitutable with the
same meaning value into any other context in which it may be used. It is just that: a
locally contingent meaning. There is also evidence to suggest that participants are
drawing from culture-specific conceptual semantic properties of bogan that can be
likened to the coresense (Kecskes 2008). The coresense of bogan is arguably
heavily culture-laden and imbued with prototypical behavioural (violent), physical
(tattooed), socioeconomic (uneducated) and attitudinal features (racist) (Rowen
2017).
Kecskes (2008: 395) claims that “word-specific semantic properties [WSSPs] are
the result of the recurrent use of words in particular contexts” and emerge over time
as they become lexicalized and conventionalized. The challenge with identifying
the WSSPs of cultural keywords such as bogan is that their relevance and survival
in language is dependent on the keyword’s ability to adapt to the ever-changing
social and cultural environment or risk being cast aside for the next best keyword of
the moment. The meaning of bogan as used in this example suggests that the word
has minimal WSSPs and that its meaning is shaped more by cultural-specific
conceptual properties and the actual situational context in which it is used and
co-constructed by speakers to make it interactionally fit for purpose. Thus, the
characteristics that participants have attributed to being bogan in the example
illustrate aspects of this coresense that are foregrounded in the actual situational
context, thus making it part of the localized meaning and consense, i.e. the par-
ticipants’ reference to bogans as having tattoos and being racist (lines 66–
67). Overall, what is taking shape here is that bogan is a heavily culturally con-
ceptualized term that has a small core of lexical attributes, which can be drawn upon
to make bogan a relevant fit-for-purpose term in social interactions.
4.4.2 Bogans on Reality TV
The second example is taken from a conversation between two friends, Mark
(M) and Fiona (F). They are talking in a café after work about Mark’s job. He has
recently received a promotion at work, which has brought with it new challenges
and new people he has to work with.
Example 2: Bogans on reality TV
20 M: =But that aside (0.3) it’s goin really well(.)

21 considering the added bonus of all tha extra
22 bureaucracy(.) I now get ta deal with an[d be
23 dealt.]
24 F: [You’ve
25 always rel]ished in dealin with a bit of office
26 Politics [and the big wigs] behind it.
27 M: [Yeah I know.] (1.0) but(.) let me
28 tell you there is office? politics and then
29 there is OFF↑ICE POLITICS (0.3) Let me tell ya
30 sometimes it just really does my head in(.) the
31 utter bullshit ya have to put up wit-, just to
32 try an’ get ahead an’ make your mark in this
33 industry
34 (1.2)
35 F: Sounds like you have got some real interestin↑
36 sorts to hav ta [deal Wit?]
37 M: [That’s an und]erstatement
38 (0.2) half of my day is spent arguin with
39 morons about why I DON’T WANNA TO HEAR anotha
40 reality TV show pitch(.) like I said ta one of
41 my employees, th’ otha day(.) if I wanted to
42 hear from a fuckin- asshole I wud- ave
43 f a r [ted].
44 F: [hhh[ahaha]]
45 M: [hhhahaha]
46 do:n’t laugh(.)
47 F: It’s .hha[rd not too]
48 M: [sometimes I think] if only I knew
49 with higher paying jobs(.) and more
50 responsibility, came havin to people manage
51 some of THE DUMBEST MOST INCOMPETENT plebs on
52 earth.
53 F: Wow don’t hold back will you .hhha (0.5)
54 M: >You laugh at me, but if you had ta listen to
55 these fu↑cking idiots on a daily basis like
56 me(.) you would be consoling ᵒmeᵒ.<
57 F: I thought my fellow well educated, intelligent
58 ear was doing a fantastic job?
59 M: haha [smart-ass]
60 F: [.hhaha](0.2)
61 M: do you want to hear the reason why I’m s:o
62 fuck↓ed off.
72 R. Rowen
63 F: ov course? (0.3)
64 M: >I'm sick to death of all the bogan reality TV
65 shows(.) every time I turn the box on, it's a
66 reality show. I hate it, can't bogans try
67 reading literary classics (0.1) assuming bogans
68 know how to read instead of watching TV, then
69 the rest of us might actually get to watch
70 quality programming [every once in a while].<
71 F: [Are you saying this]
72 because you are sick of workin on the sets of
73 these shows or becoz you are a concerned
74 viewer?
75 (0.4)
76 M: BOth (.) I’m strugglin’ to understand why(.)
77 year afta year(.) we take on another reality TV
78 show whereby, we cast these people who are s:o
79 dumb(.) an’ out ov touch with reality(.) Since
80 when was it OK to pay someone for bei↑ng a
81 fucking bogan? (0.3)
82 F: I definitely agree that we shouldn’ be paying
83 these people ri:diculous amounts ov money(.)
84 just because their lack of intelligence gets
85 ratings(.) but, I must admit an’ you’re
86 probably not gunna want ta hear this (.) I but
87 enjoy watching them on [ᵒoccasionᵒ]
88 M: [<Why? dear god
89 why.>]>
90 (0.5)
91 F: I like ta reassure myself that I’m not a bogan
92 like them(.) It’s nice ta know that there are
93 always otha people who will always be less-
94 intelligent(.) foul mouthed slappers, like
95 those on your shows(.) In some weird way it’s
96 nice ta know you have it somewhat more togetha’
97 than these bogans ever will.
98 M: haha if only you got paid as much as them
99 then that would be even more reassuring-.
100 F: haha true but for now I’ll settl- for
101 intelligence and no restraining orders.
102 M: hahaha
The broader occasioned semantics sequence begins in line 20 where, following a

question from Fiona as to how his new job is going, Mark responds that it is going
well. He then shifts topic, complaining about now having to deal with office
bureaucracy. Fiona’s response is non-affiliative: she replies that Mark in fact likes
this type of “office politics” (lines 24–26). Mark agrees but nonetheless, following a
short pause, proceeds to upgrade his complaint. The subsequent meaning negoti-
ation sequence tied to bogans is part of the ongoing complaint sequence between
Mark and Fiona. The complaint sequence begins following the use of an idiomatic
expression (“if I want to hear from an asshole I would’ve farted”) as an attempt to
enhance and further legitimize Mark’s complaint and to elicit a more affiliative and
sympathetic response (Drew and Holt 1988) from Fiona. This appears to be suc-
cessful and is receipted with overlapping laughter (lines 44–46), presumably
occasioned by Mark’s idiomatic formulation, which is an attempt to defuse his
complaint. However, Mark’s response “don’t laugh” (line 46) suggests that Fiona is
laughing at Mark’s complaint rather than affiliating with it (Edwards 2005). From
this point forward, Mark continues to escalate his complaint.
To do so, he describes a hypothetical situation in which he takes centre stage:
namely that, had he known in advance about the extremely unintelligent and
incompetent people he would have to manage, he might not have accepted the
promotion. Mark describes these people as “the dumbest, most incompetent plebs”,
using an extreme case formulation (Pomerantz 1986). The extreme case formulation
also invokes a new category, pleb, as a referent for the type of people he is
complaining about. The upgrade from moron to pleb links the predicates dumb and
incompetent to this new category. Fiona acknowledges the extremity of his com-
plaint (line 53) and again downplays it with laughter (Holt 2012). So far in the
interaction there is no particular lexical item for the participants to make a con-
clusive assessment. This is primarily because Mark is yet to clarify exactly who his
ongoing complaint is really about. While they are proposing possible options
(“moron” and “pleb”), neither is taken up by the participants. This is evident in that,
each time a new category is proposed, so too are new associated predicates and
activities.
Mark makes direct reference to Fiona’s laughter and continues to justify his
complaint by saying that if she was in the same situation, she would feel the same
(lines 54–56). Fiona frames her response as a tease to signal that Mark is perhaps
overdoing his complaint (Drew 1987). Fiona claims that although she is not con-
soling him, her “fellow well-educated, intelligent ear” was sympathetic enough
(lines 57–58). Fiona also plays on Mark’s complaint that he works with uneducated
and unintelligent people, imitating and exploiting this to further disaffiliate with his
complaint (Lindström and Sorjonen 2013). These turns are delivered dead-pan
through compressed pitch and markedly flat intonation (Attardo et al. 2003; Drew
1987). Mark receipts this as non-serious and both respond with shared laughter that
leads to a topic termination (line 60).
Mark then offers to provide “the reason” (line 61) for his anger and complaint,
with Fiona immediately signalling her interest (line 63). Lines 64–70 show Mark
offering yet another account for his frustration, but this time it is clear that Mark’s
ongoing unhappiness has really been in relation to the “reality TV” stars he works
with as a television producer. This account initially sees Mark, and then Fiona,
repeatedly invoke the category term bogan, using additive reduplication and each
time building additional categorical features into their assessment of reality TV stars
as bogans. Now that the participants have established the object of the complaint
74 R. Rowen
(reality TV stars), they begin co-constructing a localized meaning of reality TV

stars as “bogans”.
Bogan is repeated five times, each turn allowing for more characteristic linguistic
features to be ascribed to the term. As each turn reveals more associated charac-
teristics of reality TV bogans, it also reveals the participants have begun to establish
various lexical associations related to the term, bolstered by the repeated placement
of the lexical item bogan in the syntactic structure of each speaker’s utterances.
Arguably, the participants could have drawn their assessment of bogans to a close
over a much more limited number of turns. However, the repeated use of the term
suggests they are involved in a broader pragmatic project of meaning negotiation.
In addition to this, by placing the term bogan in different co-texts, they progres-
sively add to the characteristics that constitute bogans as reality TV stars, as the
participants are using format tying to co-construct an overall assessment and
meaning of “these people” as bogans (Du Bois 2014; Goodwin 1990). Throughout
the interaction, the participants have used bogan as both an adjective and noun as
they have recycled parts of previous utterances. This variation was used across lines
63–65 by participants to demonstrate and introduce new features of bogan, once by
using an interrogative utterance to elicit a response, and once by means of a
declarative to ascribe a behavioural trait.
As the interaction continues (lines 72–74), Fiona questions whether Mark is in
fact complaining about his job or whether this is a more specific complaint about
reality TV stars who are bogans. In Mark’s response, his use of the category
“bogan” is sustained and alternates interchangeably with references to “these
people”. According to Sacks (1995: 246–248), when a duplicatively organized
category has been identified,
if two or more categories are used to categorize two or more members of some population,
and those categories can be heard as categories from the same collection, then: hear them
that way.
Therefore, it can be assumed that these people can be considered as members of the
same category “bogan”. Taking these functions of parallelism and resonance cre-
ated by the participants into account, it can be seen how they are establishing
consequences between form and meaning, allowing a locally contingent meaning to
be interpreted and creatively produced by all participants. In negotiating and
organizing linguistic structures around bogans as reality TV stars, they are bringing
together each other’s understandings and knowledge of bogan relevant to the
context of the interaction and the broader complaint sequence in which it is situated.
Notably, the speakers have also invoked the “they are Y” frame to establish a
number of locally tied predicates and activities intended to show how and why
these people are bogans. Mark’s use of the tied predicate “who are so dumb”,
extended by his reference to bogan in line 81, suggests that there is an implicit
categorical association between being dumb and being a bogan. What is also used
across turns is the “not X but could be thought of as X” interpretive frame. In
describing these people as plebs, which is then substituted for bogan or these people
in subsequent turns, it is suggested that lack of intelligence is an overlapping
characteristic of pleb and bogan. This is apparent from Mark’s reference to the
assumed illiteracy of bogans and their control of television programming choices
(lines 84–87). The use of the word assuming in Mark’s turn suggests that a bogan’s
(il)literacy is equivocal and therefore not explicit, which is supported by his earlier
turn where he used an extreme case formulation to stress the lack of intelligence of
these plebs, who aren’t bogans (X), but could be thought of as such (X). Mark
transitions between the use of a category referent (bogan) and a proposed predicate
(lines 78–83) of that category (dumb, uneducated).
Mark also claims that bogans “get paid for being bogan” (line 80), complaining
that this should not occur. This contrast, between the use of bogan as a category and
a category activity, suggests that, specific to this interaction, a category-bound
activity has been applied, where reflexively bogans get paid for “being bogan”.
Here, based on his own commonsense reasoning, Mark complains that being a
bogan is not a job; therefore, paying bogans for being bogans is not an appropriate
thing to do. This deviation from his own understanding warrants negotiation with
Fiona, who has a conflicting understanding. Fiona does agree (line 82) and rein-
forces that being paid for being a bogan is a breach of norms of what may
stereotypically be considered a category-bound characteristic of bogan. However,
in this turn, she uses the category-bound activity “entertaining to watch”, to par-
tially disagree with Mark’s complaint in the previous turn, thus proffering a dis-
preferred response (Pomerantz 1985). Line 88 sees Mark seek an account for her
dispreferred response. Fiona claims that she watches them on TV as she finds it
reassuring to know that she is not a bogan like these people. Fiona indexes bogan
using the predicate less intelligent, which is followed by a reference to
“foul-mouthed slapper” (line 94). Fiona is drawing here on her knowledge of what
she understands a foul-mouthed slapper to be: namely a person who uses excessive
profanities when speaking.5 In doing so, she is drawing on both a coresense
associated with “foul-mouthed slapper” and her own consense of the term to further
build a locally contingent meaning (Kecskes 2008) of reality TV stars as bogans.
This indicates that there is some correlation in characteristics between a pleb and a
foul-mouthed slapper (lack of intelligence, use of bad language and getting paid to
be this way) and the bogans being discussed here.
Mark’s response (lines 98–99) that earning more than them would be ideal,
whereas he does not, is constructed as jocular irony: he frames it as (ostensibly)
serious. He puts forward characteristics of bogans, and in doing so deliberately
asserts untruthful claims that he does not earn as much as these bogans do. The
falsity in these claims is apparently intended to be understood by Fiona as ironic
(Dynel 2013, 2014). Her immediate response, which is also framed as ironic,
suggests she has recognized the irony in his previous turn. The irony is implicit in
her indexing of bogans as violent and requiring restraining orders to be taken out
against them, and also in the fact that, although they may earn more than her, her
5
Slapper is a colloquial term that is often used to refer to people as vulgar and promiscuous. It is
usually a referent for females only.
76 R. Rowen
own lack of violence is just as rewarding. While it may be true that bogans are
violent, in this interaction there has been no other mention that reality TV bogans
are violent, making Fiona’s response both ironic and jocular in nature. This also
signals the termination of the assessment and complaint sequence between the
participants.
In this example, the meaning of bogan has been negotiated by the participants in
their co-construction of a locally situated meaning of reality TV stars as bogans.
This has been accomplished through the co-construction of a localized field of
meaning, different to that of example 1. It is clear that the meaning of bogan
ascribed in this excerpt has been actively fitted by the participants to the overall
interactional project at hand, namely, complaining about Mark’s employees.
In this complaint sequence, the participants have co-constructed a somewhat
negative meaning of bogans as dumb, wealthy and violent. While this is different
from the previous example in relation to the localized meaning that is negotiated,
the interactional processes and the semantic and conceptual properties drawn on by
participants are evidently the same across both examples. The participants across
these interactions converge on an understanding that a bogan constitutes a kind of
person, with either positive or negative attributes, and there are conceptual simi-
larities that participants draw on to make the locally accomplished meaning fit for
purpose. Only the participants themselves can determine what constitutes these
shared attributes and which of them become most relevant and salient to the
interaction at hand. It is clear that participants draw from a lexical and cultural
knowledge repository that in each example allows the meaning of bogan to be
locally contingent but still associated to the broader related lexical categories
identified in Rowen (2017) (appearance, socio-economic status, attitudes, descrip-
tion of behaviour, geographic location and cognitive abilities). This allows speakers
to ascribe culture-specific conceptual properties more systematically and in a way
that can only be determined by the speakers throughout the interaction.
4.4.3 Bogan as a Locally Contingent Meaning
In the two examples discussed, I have highlighted the way in which the meaning of
bogan is fitted to each locally situated interactional context and aligned to its
particular action trajectory (categorization and complaint) by the participants.
Through foregrounding and backgrounding particular characteristics within each
interaction, a more granular, locally fitted meaning emerges in each example. This
does not discount the proposed lexical meaning of bogan (Rowan 2017), but rather
demonstrates that in talk-in-interaction abstracted lexical meaning cannot be relied
upon as determinate of the meaning constructed by participants as most relevant to
the interaction at hand and of their understanding of what bogan means in a specific
context. The proposed lexical meaning of bogan (Rowen 2017) rather captures the
broader discourse categories of bogan onto which interactionally relevant and thus
occasioned semantic meaning can be built. In the context of interaction, the entire
interactional context is required to ascertain the occasioned meaning that has been
constructed and made interactionally relevant by the participants. The attributes and
thus the meaning of bogan in each example appear, at first glance, to have little in
common, but draw on the participants’ own values, beliefs and cultural under-
standing relevant to the context of the interaction:
Example 1: racist, tattoo wearing, not conservative, FIFOs, (sometimes) cultured
and educated.
Example 2: overpaid reality TV stars, dumb, incompetent, (very) violent.
What is also clear is that there are underlying interactional processes, and social and
cultural understandings, that participants draw on to allow for these locally situated
attributes to be accomplished. An important feature of these examples is that par-
ticipants draw on various interactional resources in order to co-construct a meaning
that is fitted to the current action trajectory or overall activity of that interaction. The
use of recurrent syntactic constructions and linguistic features links the emerging
utterances with the participants’ prior knowledge, thereby accomplishing a new and
locally contingent meaning within the interaction at hand. This, in turn, highlights
that alongside the interactional and linguistic level, participants draw on their own
experiences and knowledge as a strategy for interpreting and accomplishing a
locally situated meaning.
By continually drawing on these attributes, participants can co-construct locally
contingent meaning fields for the term bogan. The examples clearly demonstrate
that it is the sequential nature of interaction that affords an occasioned meaning to
be co-constructed by participants; they also show that this occurs in similar ways
across different interactions with different participants. In each interaction, when
participants identify each characteristic relevant to the meaning of bogan in that
moment, they invoke an aspect of coresense that is made contingently relevant to
what comes both before and after in the interaction: they have negotiated a con-
sense. Therefore, the meanings of bogan attained by the participants are directly
linked to one or more of these invoked aspects. Understanding what meaning is
achieved through the invocation of these frames is only possible when they are
examined in the local sequential environment in which they occur.
The attributes participants associate with bogans have been grouped according
to the corresponding social discourse they are related to: appearance, social status,
attitudes, behaviours, geographic location and cognitive ability (Rowen 2017). In
most instances, these will either inform or being informed by each other, and
therefore allow a locally achieved meaning of bogan to emerge. Across the
examples in this chapter, participants have also used the syntactic patterning of
utterances to attribute attitudinal valence to the various predicates and activities
they have tied to the category bogan. This then allows for various attributes and
evaluations to be foregrounded over others in order to give rise to a meaning of
bogan that is fitted to the current interaction.
In example 1, the focus is on one participant justifying his assessment of Perth
people as bogans. Across a number of extended turns, James attempts to explain
78 R. Rowen
what he meant by his assessment of people from Perth as bogans. This was
achieved through use of the frame “bogans are Y”. The recurrent use of this frame,
along with its negation “bogans are not Y”, was used to challenge the attributes
proposed by participants as being indicative of people from Perth being bogans.
The locally situated meaning of bogan that is negotiated in this example draws on
attributes from all six of the discourse categories found across the examples (see
Table 4.1).
In example 2, where a strikingly different localized meaning of bogan emerges,
the participants nevertheless identified similar qualities of bogans to those in
example 1, namely, culture and education (see Table 4.1). Across these two
examples, the categories produced by participants provide the interactional
grounding for the fact that recurrent syntactic constructions and consequently
dialogic resonance can be fitted to participants’ utterances within the sequential
organization of talk, so as to accomplish an interactionally relevant meaning. For
example, in the “people from Perth” extract, participant responses elicited by
James’ initial assessment of Perth people as bogans allowed for each participant to
demonstrate his/her understanding of his assessment, and then propose his/her own
evaluative characteristics of Perth people, leading them to work towards a localized
meaning. In this case, it was subject to varying degrees of acceptance and challenge
from other participants, but they were nevertheless able to co-construct a meaning
of “bogan”.
Example 2 invoked another variation of bogan, in the context of an extended
complaint sequence. This example saw participants use recurrent frames to nego-
tiate the various negative categories offered (moron, pleb, foul-mouthed slapper).
This is arguably linked to the negative qualities that are attributed to “reality TV
bogans”.
Across both examples, participants can be seen to draw on a diverse range of
resources to negotiate their assessment of another person as bogan. The analysis
thus did not focus on meanings as part of an abstract system of linguistic forms, but
rather on the interactional setting and the social action trajectory to which the
localized understanding of the object (bogan) was fitted. Participants within the
sequential bounds of interaction, using membership categories, were able to decide
on a semantic anchor that then accommodated the various characteristics they
proposed to be tied to it as it emerged in the talk. In doing so, they used syntactic
frames that were structurally similar to other participants’ utterances, allowing them
to engage dialogically and co-construct a localized meaning (Du Bois 2007, 2014;
White 2003). Analysis of this dialogic patterning of utterances reveals the prag-
matic process involved in negotiating a locally situated meaning and shows how it
can differ across different action sequences that have different interactional
purposes.
4.5 NSM as a Tool for Understanding Occasioned

Semantics of Cultural Keywords in Interaction
The culture-specific conceptual properties participants ascribe to bogan are very

dynamic and are constantly adapted, as shown in the interactional examples pro-
vided, and highlighted in Table 4.1. Bogan appears to be sensitive to socio-cultural
changes in the language communities in which it is used. Examples of use from the
early 1980s and 1990s predominantly refer to the stereotypical car, hairstyle,
location and appearance, whereas now there is a clear shift towards bogan being
used variably to address six primary lexical categories (appearance, social status,
attitudes, behaviours, location and cognitive abilities) (Rowen 2017). Given bo-
gan’s popularity as a personal referent term, to definitively claim that all these
features are completely lexicalized as word-specific semantic properties, would be
presumptuous. There is obviously no clear-cut formula within these categories in
terms of which invoking one then triggers the invocation of one or more of the
others. This, I would like to argue, creates a challenge for the construction of lexical
explications using Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM).
In terms of using NSM as a tool for semantic explication and the mapping of
meaning across utterances, there is a useful correlation. The examples and the
analysis have highlighted that, in each instance, the participants have discursively
selected characteristics of bogan, using the recurrent syntactic constructions “they
are Y” and “they are X” to allow participants to systematically prioritize what they
propose to be the most relevant characteristics tied to the emergent meaning of
bogan for the purpose of occasioning a meaning relevant in that instance. Where
characteristics are foregrounded, participants tend to use the negated frames “are
not Y” and “not X but could be thought of as X” to explain why, in the given
context, other relevant characteristics are not suitable and why they are therefore
instead backgrounding them in the current interaction. As highlighted in Table 4.1,
there are key semantic elements that make up the coresense or connotational
meaning of bogan across all fourteen examples; however, in each interaction,
participants choose to make some of them more relevant to the interaction than
others, in order to co-construct the most appropriate consense. In other words, they
create an occasioned meaning of bogan for each interaction.
Interestingly, while the characteristics ascribed vary across all fourteen exam-
ples, the patterning of characteristics alongside the repeated syntactic constructions
gives valuable insight into how the components of the reductive paraphrase should
be syntactically formed, based on interactional examples of bogan in action. I argue
that to prescribe an abstracted lexical meaning to bogan is not only presumptuous
given its current heightened use and cult fascination, but in the context of social
interaction it does not accurately reflect how speakers use it in impulsive and
dynamic ways in their interactions. The present study has highlighted that there are
six core lexical categories from which the variant meanings of bogan are drawn.
I propose that, in relation to bogan, these categories could be explicated as a
semantic “road map” for how one might construct a meaning of bogan that is both
80 R. Rowen
culturally and linguistically comprehensible and interactionally relevant to

participants.
Similar to the “metalexical awareness” components attached to Goddard’s
(2014) analysis of interjections, I propose a series of metapragmatic lexical anno-
tations that depict speakers’ general awareness of the use and status of the term
bogan. For example:
People often think about this word like this: Metalexical

“I can say this word to someone if I think this someone is very awareness
Australian [m]
I can say this word about someone if I think this someone is very
Australian [m]
I can say this word about me“
People often think about this word like this: Metalexical
“some people can feel something good when they hear this word awareness
these people think like this: ‘it is very good to be someone of this
kind’
other people can feel something bad when they hear this word
these other people think like this: ‘it is very bad to be someone of this
kind’”
In the case of bogan, this awareness concerns the differing positive and negative
status of being labelled bogan and the specific differentiation of bogan used as a
personal referent, or a present or non-present other referent. Both metalexical
components are introduced identically (‘people often think about this word like
this’), with the specific content in each case capturing when it is commonly used
and how its use is perceived. These components serve as a useful tool in the
interactional analysis of locally situated meaning as a way of capturing participants’
metalexical use and understanding of bogan within and across interactions.
Secondary to this is the fact that these components serve as an educational tool to
demonstrate how Australian English speakers conceptualize bogan and its potential
use as a personal descriptor of themselves or others. Given that the NSM approach
views words and their meaning as a central tenant of language study (Goddard and
Wierzbicka 2014), a better understanding of how this conceptualization unfolds in
the interactional domain over extended turns of talk could further strengthen
speakers’ reflexive awareness of language and meaning as it is used and perceived
in interaction.
4.6 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have analysed two instances where localized meanings of bogan are
interactionally accomplished. In the process, I have shown how the meaning of
bogan is co-constructed by participants across a sequence of interactions and how it
turns out to be locally contingent. Through detailed analysis of two interactions
where participants are invoking the term bogan in talking about others, I have argued
in favour of a view that supports a pragmatics-rich and sequentially tied approach to
analysing and understanding the meaning of bogan. I have also discussed the extent
to which the identity of the speech participant who is using the word in question, and
the meaning field in which it resides, play a role in the interactional accomplishment
of locally situated word meanings. What has emerged from the analysis is that when
participants talk about both others and themselves, they ascribe particular categories
to those persons, they co-construct locally situated meanings that are relevant to the
ongoing action sequence of the participants and to the actual situational context of
the interaction. Through these practices, participants bring together both linguistic
and world knowledge, along with their own private experiences, to arrive at a locally
relevant meaning of the word in question. In trying to bed down the meaning of
bogan in talk-in-interaction, I have also highlighted the challenges faced by solely
adopting the NSM approach while at the same time drawing attention to the potential
merits for using the approach alongside pragmatics, as a tool for understanding
dynamic cultural discourses and their keywords.
Appendix—Transcription Key
(0.5) pause measured by 1/10 of a second
(.) pause under 0.2 s
(word) uncertain word
[ overlap starts
] overlap ends
= lines latch onto one another without hearable pause
<> slower than the surrounding talk
>< faster than the surrounding talk
- break-off or stuttering speech
/ pitch upstep
\ pitch downstep
# falling pitch
" rising pitch
. falling final tone
? tone clearly rises towards the end
£ smiley voice, or suppressed laughter
ja emphasized syllable
JA louder than the surrounding speech
°° sotto voce
.h exhalation
.h inhalation
(h) laughter in the conversation/speech
::: colons indicate stretched sound.
82 R. Rowen
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Chapter 5
The Comfort of Home as an Ethical
Value in Mike Packer’s Inheritance
Stella Butter and Zuzanna Bułat Silva
Abstract The loss of, and search for, comfort is at the heart of the 2010 social
realist play Inheritance, in which the English dramatist Mike Packer explores the
burst of the housing bubble in England by depicting the declining fortunes of a
family. The pensioner Harry decides to buy his council house as an inheritance for
his sons, but when the economic recession hits, the house is lost. This chapter
gauges how the play negotiates meanings and sources of comfort by linking them
with the theme of home. Packer’s play is notable for the way it connects the
characters’ understanding of comfort with specific forms of subjectivity, high-
lighting in particular how comfort may be understood as an ethical value and how
neoliberal subjects reduce such ‘ethical comfort’ to a ‘sensuous appeasement […]
achieved through […] appropriate technological devices’ (Boni in Antropologia
3:133–151, 2016: 138). In order to tease out different dimensions and meanings of
comfort in the play, we adopt an interdisciplinary approach, conjoining literary
studies and linguistics. In presenting our results, we rely heavily on the method of
semantic analysis known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. The
interdisciplinary analysis is presented as a first step towards establishing the
heuristic value of NSM methodology for enriching the study of literary negotiations
of meanings and values while also showing how the inclusion of literary texts in
NSM studies helps trace semantic meaning transformations in the wake of changing
life worlds.
Keywords Comfort Home Drama Inheritance (Mike Packer) NSM
S. Butter
University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany
e-mail: butter@uni-landau.de
Z. Bułat Silva (&)
University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
e-mail: zuzanna.bulat-silva@uwr.edu.pl

86 S. Butter and Z. Bułat Silva
5.1 Introduction
Comfort has become a keyword in contemporary Western accounts of the ideal

home. A quick perusal of interior decoration magazines or websites readily reveals
the importance placed on the creation of comfortable homes, which allow for the
easy relaxation of individuals through a combination of physical and atmospheric
coziness (see, e.g., Langford 2017). Comfort as a desired outcome looms equally
large, for instance, in discourses surrounding the care of the elderly or disabled
within a homely environment (Kolcaba 1994). In the field of philosophy, publi-
cations such as Pezeu-Massabuau’s A Philosophy of Comfort (2012 [2004]) the-
orize ‘discomfort’ in order to explain why some houses ‘simply refus[e] to become
a home’ (Pezeu-Massabuau 2012: 39), whereby a ‘true home’ is posited as a
source of well-being. These examples point to how strongly ‘home’ and ‘comfort’
are conflated in prevalent stereotypes of the ideal home. Literature arguably plays
a seminal role in enriching our understanding of un/comfortable homes by pro-
viding hypothetical scenarios, stories, and images that not only reflect, but also
challenge images and narratives underpinning perceived ‘comforts of home’ (on
literary representations of home, see, e.g., Armstrong 1987; Strehle 2008; Fraiman
2017; see also the forthcoming special issue ‘Imaginative Geographies of Home’
of the open-access journal Literary Geographies).1 After all, sites such as com-
fortable homes are not simply given, but are part of what social geographers
Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling call a ‘spatial imaginary: a set of intersecting
and variable ideas and feelings, which are related to context, and which construct
places’ (2006: 2).
Precisely because constructions of comfort or, more specifically, comfortable
homes vary across different discourses and literary scenarios, the conjunction of
literary studies and linguistic methodology, specifically the Natural Semantic
Metalanguage (henceforth: NSM) approach, offers new impulses for gauging how
‘comfort’ has become an embattled site for establishing specific forms of life as a
norm. Contemporary literary works frequently use a series of contrasts and corre-
spondences in their character constellation to stage different ideals of ‘home
comforts’. These ideals of comfort in turn are shown to be tied to specific models of
home and forms of subjectivity that are imbricated in power hierarchies and
ongoing socio-economic transformations. This can be seen especially well in Mike
Packer’s social realist play Inheritance (2010), which performs a scathing critique
of neoliberal policies and subjectivities by depicting the declining fortunes of a
family in the wake of the burst housing bubble in England. The conflict between
two value systems staged in the play, a neoliberal understanding of ‘home’ and one
1
Although there is a vibrant research tradition on literary representations of home, especially in the
field of gender, postcolonial and transnational studies, ‘comfort’ as a key topic and analytic
concept continues to remain undertheorized in literary studies on home. The recent interdisci-
plinary conference “Challenging Comfort as an Idea(l) in Contemporary Literature and Culture”
(University of Koblenz-Landau, 8 December 2018) addressed this research gap.
5 The Comfort of Home as an Ethical Value … 87
that opposes this, arguably hinges on the characters’ implicit conceptualization of

‘comfort’. NSM methodology helps hone the literary analysis of these conflicting
value systems by unpacking the basic components that feed into the respective
conceptualizations of ‘comfort’, hence providing a sound basis for a concise
comparison.
The working assumption of the NSM framework is ‘the idea that there is a set of
simple, indefinable meanings—universal semantic primes—which have concrete
linguistic exponents in all the world’s languages’ (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002:
1–2). These primes—65 of them have been discovered so far—form a grid that
helps break down complex concepts into their basic components, which cannot be
broken down further (see Goddard 2018). In other words, NSM analysis entails
paraphrasing the meaning in the simplest terms possible. The advantage of working
with primes as an analytic category is that they prompt one to reflect on the building
blocks that underlie given usages of terms or concepts, for example whether
evaluators (GOOD and BAD) play a role or which mental predicates (THINK,
WANT, KNOW, FEEL) are most important. The high level of abstraction in NSM
explications of ‘comfort’ might give rise to the impression that this approach
undermines the ‘feel’ or everyday usage of this word. However, it is this high level
of abstraction that enables one to precisely compare different concepts of ‘comfort’
in a specific corpus.
While the NSM method of lexical semantics has been used extensively in the
analysis of many linguistic phenomena, such as grammatical cases, emotion names,
cultural keywords, cultural scripts, textual genres and whole texts (see Goddard
2006; Wierzbicka 1997, 2003, 2017, in press), it has not been adopted for literary
analysis. One reason for this probably lies in the evocative nature of literary rep-
resentations: meanings of key idea(l)s such as ‘home’ or ‘comfort’ are frequently
only suggested or hinted at, for example through clusters of imagery or analogies,
instead of featuring as a topic in lengthy conversations among characters or in
extensive commentary by narrators. Such a lack of explicit formulation may give
rise to methodological concerns on behalf of linguistic scholars as they see the
looming spectre of speculative literary readings, which are then to serve as a shaky
foundation for NSM explications. Many literary scholars, in turn, are likely to voice
reservations regarding the notion of an ahistorical or a universal analytic grid that
allows for an objective cross-cultural comparison of the meanings of words—
reservations that may be heightened by what is often perceived to be the childish
language of NSM definitions.2 [The universal status of the identified primes in
NSM has also been subject to controversy among the linguistic community, see,
e.g., Evans (1994), Bernàrdez (2008), Khanina (2010) and Nash (2014)].
In what follows, we will not rehearse the controversy surrounding NSM nor the
long-standing research debate on how meaning is made in literature. As a rigorous
2
Goddard and Ye (2016: 12) comment on scholarly prejudices against NSM due to the simple
language used in NSM explications: ‘there is an obvious intertextual dissonance between the
simple wording of NSM and high prestige academic English’ so that scholars find it ‘difficult to
take [NSM explications] seriously’.
discussion of how specific approaches to interpreting literary meaning are sys-

tematically connected to NSM theory goes beyond the scope (or word limit) of this
chapter, our aim is rather modest: we want to show how translating the findings of
literary analysis—the characters’ implicit understanding of ‘comfort’ in Packer’s
Inheritance—into NSM explications helps chart literature’s critical engagement
with hegemonic values in society.3 In order to illuminate how the characters’
understanding of comfort reflects and taps into larger socio-cultural transforma-
tions, we will combine a close reading of the literary text with a wide reading of its
cultural context (on close and wide reading of literary texts, see Hallet 2010). We
see our interdisciplinary analysis as a first step towards establishing the heuristic
value of NSM methodology for enriching the study of the way literature negotiates
meanings and values. At the same time, our analysis of Packer’s play offers pointers
as to how the inclusion of literary texts in the corpus of NSM studies may help
document transformations of lexical meaning in the wake of shifting hegemonic
value systems. We therefore hope that our contribution will invite further research
at the interface of literary studies and NSM theory.
5.2 The Comforts of Home: Setting the Scene in Mike

Packer’s Inheritance
Mike Packer’s play Inheritance is especially well-suited for our interdisciplinary

analysis because of the way it neatly contrasts and evaluates two versions of ‘the
comfort of home’. It champions the idea(l) of the comfortable home as an ethical
sphere where the individual successfully practices self-care and care for others. In
doing so, Packer’s play stages a vehement rejection of the reduction of ‘the comfort
of home’ to merely a ‘sensuous appeasement […] achieved through […] appro-
priate technological devices’ (Boni 2016: 138). This critique is part of the play’s
rejection of neoliberalism’s financialization of space, which transforms the home
into a mere site of investment. Indeed, the ‘distinctive signature of neoliberal
rationality’ is, as the political scientist Wendy Brown explains, its ‘[w]idespread
economization of heretofore noneconomic domains, activities, and subjects’ (2015:
31). By setting all of the scenes within a house or an apartment, the play adopts a
focus on the domestic as a perspective to engage with the state of the nation.
Topical issues such as neoliberalism, housing policies, the welfare state as well as
the negotiation of individual and collective identities are literally brought home.
Home is shown as not only constitutive for the sense of self, but also as a site
3
Our analytic approach to Packer’s play bears affinities to Anna Wierzbicka’s current NSM
research project on the Nicene Creed (Wierzbicka in preparation). Wierzbicka extends lexical
analysis to address how the meanings of the Nicene Creed are shaped by its dialogic relation to
specific cultural contexts or intertexts.
produced by other larger scales, such as the state or the global financial market, and
as a site that is responsive to these scales (cf. Marston 2000).
A brief plot summary of Inheritance already highlights how the changing for-
tunes of the family home in the play function as a seismograph for larger
social-economic transformations; in particular, it exposes the lethal effects of
neoliberal policies. Faced with the prospect of his impending death due to cancer,
the working-class pensioner Harry decides to buy his council house as an inheri-
tance for his sons, Frank and Terry. For a long time, Harry had resisted Thatcher’s
‘Right to Buy’ agenda because he considered this as a break with working-class
solidarity and an undermining of the principles of the welfare state. His wish to
leave something of value to his family, however, is finally stronger. As Harry
cannot get a mortgage due to his old age, his affluent son Frank and his wife Susan,
who is a real estate agent, insist on putting up their own house as security because
they think buying the council house is a good investment. Frank and Susan already
have a high number of mortgages on their luxurious house because they bought
several apartments to rent out in the ‘Buy to Let’ scheme. Neoliberal parlance is
extensively quoted in discussions of the planned business transaction: home owners
feature as entrepreneurial subjects, who use the home as a commodity or lucrative
investment opportunity (on neoliberal subjectivity, cf. Brown 2015: 31–39). Frank
and Susan pay out Terry’s share of the inheritance, but do not immediately sell
Harry’s house because the doctors unexpectedly manage to cure Harry’s cancer.
When the housing bubble bursts, they finally do sell Harry’s house because they
allegedly cannot afford the mortgage payments, and put him up in one of their
claustrophobic buy to let apartments, where he is unhappy and increasingly dis-
orientated—so much, in fact, that he leaves to ‘go home’ and then dies of
hypothermia in the park. As this sketch of the plot indicates, Inheritance hinges on
a conflict between two value systems that are encapsulated in Harry’s and his sons’
approach to the ‘comforts of home’. In the following, we will first discuss Harry’s
perspective on home comforts before contrasting it to that of his sons.
The very beginning of Packer’s text, its careful stage instructions, establish the
comfort of home as a central theme of the play:
The living room of a 1940s-built terraced house in Low Fell, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear.
The wallpaper is twenty years old and corners hang loose. Photographs of family life
stretching back through generations adorn the walls and sit on the mantelpiece above the
defunct 1970s three-bar electric fire. […] Opposite this is Harry’s armchair—battered,
green, and comfortable. Harry, seventy, stands in the centre of the room, eyes closed, body
jerking in rhythm to the music: Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington […]. He then throws
in a bit of pretend trumpet, a little dance with his partner, sings a couple of lines, and fades
the music with the remote.
Harry: I’m ready, Gracie. I’m ready, my love. (Packer 2010: 9)
Gracie is Harry’s deceased wife, who is still very much present for him in their
home. After telling Gracie that he is ready, Harry proceeds to phone up his son
Frank to inform him that he has cancer and will require treatment. The stage
directions of Packer’s play draw on cultural stereotypes of the ideal home by
associating the space Harry calls ‘home’, his 1940s-built house, with ‘being
comfortable’: it is notable how Harry’s armchair is explicitly described as com-
fortable. Indeed, Harry’s armchair comes to embody the ultimate object of homely
comfort for Harry in the course of the play. This is underlined by the stage
directions for the early scenes of the play, which repeatedly specify that Harry ‘sits
in his armchair’ at home (end scene 1, beginning and end scene 2). It is only when
the decision for a high risk transformation of the home into a source of capital has
been taken, i.e. Harry’s family persuading him to take out a huge mortgage on the
house in order to buy it (a decision based on the speculation that property prices
will continue to rise), that Harry is displaced from his favourite seating place, which
is then occupied by one of his sons, Terry (beginning scene 3). This spatial
arrangement foreshadows Harry’s gradual displacement from his home due to the
immense mortgage. The later replacement of his comfortable armchair by ‘a new
leather armchair’ (Packer 2010: 60) in his apartment in Benwell is depicted as part
of an increasingly painful friction between Harry and his material and social
environment, which culminates in Harry likening his new living quarters to hell and
not a home.4 Far from just referring to the physical ease a piece of furniture may
offer, ‘comfort’, then, comes to stand in for the homeliness of a character’s
dwelling.
While this metonymic function of comfort is suggested and not explicitly spelt
out in the play, such an evocative meaning does not preclude NSM analysis.
Instead, the adjective comfortable in the stage directions in combination with the
described leitmotif of the armchair and the plot development provide a solid basis
for linking attributes of Harry’s initial home to his experience of comfort there.
From the perspective of cognitive narratology, the signifier comfortable (poten-
tially) triggers ‘comfort’ as a cognitive frame in readers to understand what pre-
cisely makes Harry’s house a home: comfort or the experience of being comfortable
is something that Harry only experiences within a home. This trigger function of
comfortable is strengthened due to the strong association of a ‘home’ with ‘com-
fort’ in extra-literary discourses. Indeed, we will show how different aspects of
Harry’s perception of home correspond to prevalent meanings of comfort as
expounded in lexicographic definitions. Harry’s understanding and experience of
homely comfort will then be paraphrased in NSM terminology to specify the
precise parameters that make up his understanding of ‘comfort’.5 This specification,
in turn, helps to identify further suggestive representations of comfort throughout
the play.
4
On friction as a source of discomfort, see Pezeu-Massabuau (2012: 15).
5
Ideally, we would have liked to develop our NSM analysis in two steps: first explicating the
lexical meaning of home and the meaning of comfort with the help of NSM primes before bringing
both together in a definition of ‘the comfort of home’ as understood by different characters in
Packer’s play. Unfortunately, such an extended analysis would take us beyond the word limit of
this chapter. For the semantics of ‘home’, albeit in Portuguese and Polish, see Bulat Silva (2018b).
For the NSM definition of English comfort as contrasted with Portuguese conforto, see Bulat Silva
(2018a).
5.3 Home: The Ethical Value of Comfort
The exact description of the realist setting in the stage directions foregrounds the
way comfortable and comforting domestic objects may function as an extension of
the self and how these objects tell a history of the self and its social relations. There
are five main sources of comfort here, as becomes especially clear when one
contrasts this scene with Harry’s later hellishly uncomfortable apartment.6 Firstly,
the private space is arranged in such a way that it supports Harry’s habits and
routines. Comfort is hence not simply a state that is given or not, but instead it is
rooted in specific practices of homemaking. Harry’s exertion of control over space
is manifested, for example, by the arrangement of his furniture and his being able to
regulate technical appliances like his music player (see Boni 2016: 142, who argues
that ‘comfort rests on a […] control of the surroundings’). This dimension ties in
with the meaning of comfort as ‘furnishing physical ease’ (WDEL 1993, s.v.
comfort). In NSM terms this translates as: ‘if I want to do something in this place, I
know I can do it’. The staging of Harry’s comfortable home intertwines comfort
with the agency of the self.
Secondly, a comfortable home helps embed the individual within a past that
supports and strengthens his or her identity by providing a sense of coherence and
community. In Harry’s case, he associates his council house with family commu-
nity and a sense of working-class solidarity. Harry’s old house is ‘Not just a house!
A home!’ (Packer 2010: 58)—all the years spent there, all the memories make this
house Harry’s own place, his home. This aspect of comfort is foregrounded by
Harry’s perception of the soothing presence of Gracie and through the display of
‘[p]hotographs of family life stretching back through generations’ (Packer 2010: 9).
The feelings, memories, and narratives of family life Harry associates with his
house transform the building into more than just a tangible, economic heritage. It
also becomes an intangible heritage of individual and family history. This temporal
and social dimension of a comfortable home can be phrased in NSM terms as
follows:
I have lived in this place with other people for a very long time
[…]
many good things happened to me here
I can think about all these things now
when I think about these things, I feel something very very good
These first two dimensions of comfort connect to the presentation of a comfortable

home as a sensuous space that grants enjoyment and ease. Harry’s home is staged as
a space of heightened aesthetic perception and playful immersion: Harry sways and
6
The different dimensions of comfort that we identify in Packer’s play are also addressed in
research literature from other disciplines, such as nursing studies (see, for example, Kolcaba 1994),
ethnology, anthropology (see Boni 2016) and architecture (e.g. Rybczyński 1996).
sings in rhythm to music. This sensuous enjoyment is not, however, presented as

individual hedonism, but as an aesthetic practice that allows Harry to connect with
significant others, in this case his deceased wife Gracie. More precisely, it is an
aesthetic practice based on sharing (a dance) or at least imagined sharing and caring
for another person. In NSM terms again, the caring or communal side of comfort
may be expressed as ‘I want to do good things for these people’.
A fourth dimension of comfort with regard to home becomes clear when one
continues reading the play: the economic meaning of comfort as in a comfortable
income. At the beginning of the play, Harry is not burdened by financial worries. His
comfortable house is not the site of financial risk, but a haven of stability. In NSM
language this reads as ‘I can do many things here as I want, this place is mine’.
Most important for the play’s later unfolding critique of neoliberalism is the fifth
dimension of comfort established in the opening scenes of the play: its spiritual
dimension. The very first words that Harry utters connect this living tableau of a
comfortable home with the presence of Gracie. This taps into an older meaning of
comfortable as ‘conducive to mental or spiritual ease’ (WDEL 1993, s.v. com-
fortable). As Boni (2016: 138) notes, the theological meaning of comfort pertained
to ‘spiritual consolation’ and support: ‘giving and receiving it was part of the
Christian moral constitution’ (Boni 2016: 137). He goes on to emphasize that
‘comforter was one of the designations of the Holy Spirit’ and that ‘a word of
comfort was used to address the sick, sinners, afflicted’ (Boni 2016: 138). Harry is
afflicted with disease and seeks comfort in his music and the intimate presence of
Gracie, who, as he claims, continues to dwell in this home. A comfortable home is
thus one that enables and fosters spiritual interaction. Harry’s home makes him
calmer and happier, it is comforting for him to be there (see ‘emotional’ comfort 2
in LDOCE (2009): ‘if someone or something gives you comfort, they make you feel
calmer, happier, or more hopeful’). Given the enduring presence of Gracie even
after her death, the implied spiritual dimension establishes the comfortable home as
a sphere of a stabilizing eternal time that may act as a protective bulwark against
threatening change and transitory life. In NSM terms the spiritual dimension of the
comfortable home may be paraphrased as follows:
people in this place did many good things for me when I was a child [m]
I did many good things in this place with some other people
these people are with me all the time
[…]
I feel something very good because of this
The significance of the presence of Gracie (or GRACE) in the family home can be
expounded even further. In theological terms, grace or graciousness may be defined
as a ‘gift from an absolute power’ or as ‘unconditional generosity’ (Melchionne 1998:
198). Whether there is empirically such a thing as an unconditional or pure gift, i.e. a
gift where there is no expectation of reciprocity at all, is a long-standing controversy
in sociology. For the purposes of our argument, we follow the claim of the sociologist
Olly Pyyhtinen: ‘The pure gift may perhaps never be realised in reality, but even the
gifts that actually take place in reality need to be given aspiration by it’ (Pyyhtinen
2016: 154). For a gift to count as a gift it hence needs to be at least guided by the ideal
of pure generosity, i.e. by the expectation that nothing is expected in return. Faced
with his impending death due to cancer, Harry wishes to give his children an inher-
itance, his house, and he does not attach any strings to it. Quite on the contrary, he
keeps insisting that he does not want to be a burden. Therefore, the inheritance he
wishes to leave as a gift to his children is in spirit with the ethical ideal of pure
generosity, even if in practice his motives are more complex, as reflected in the NSM
explication in Sect. 5.4: ‘I want them to think about this place: “this is mine”’. Indeed,
the play Inheritance prompts us to think about how ‘the past […] is at once a gift and a
debt’: ‘It is always inherited, it becomes my past only via inheritance […]. I have not
lived [the past] myself, but it is mine only as a given, as something passed over and
down to me in the chain of generational succession’ (Pyyhtinen 2016: 4). It is pre-
cisely this generational succession that Harry highlights when explaining to his sons
at what high cost their family home came. Previous family generations had died amid
poverty and later in the trenches of the First World War and in the Second World War
‘on the promise of a […] “home fit for heroes”’ (Packer 2010: 59), before—in the
wake of the post-war council housing boom—this ‘home fit for a hero’ (Packer 2010:
60) was obtained.
Harry’s genealogical story of the family council home reflects the history of
social housing in Britain. Although the Homes fit for Heroes campaign, which
Lloyd George famously promised in a speech shortly after armistice, implemented
important steps towards providing decent housing for returning soldiers and the
working classes, it was only after the Second World War that mass council housing
building programmes rose to an unprecedented scale and became a pillar of welfare
state provision. Harry’s council home thus embodies the twin history of his family
and the nation’s development into a welfare state. It was ‘on the back of those men’
like his father, who died in the Second World War, that there was ‘a Labour
landslide and hundreds of thousands of homes were built’ (Packer 2010: 59–60).
Given that the values of the welfare state, which Harry staunchly believes in, are
opposed to neoliberalism’s creed that the individual be self-reliant, the inheritance
Harry feels indebted to and wants to pass on necessarily includes the thorny issue of
political commitments. While Harry’s perception of his home as a value-laden
repository of family and collective memory constitutes an important source of
comfort for him, his sons’ neoliberal outlook redefines the parameters of comfort, as
we will show in the ensuing section.
5.4 The Discomforts of Comforters: Home as a Financial

Value
Harry’s notion of a comfortable home contrasts to his children’s neoliberal com-

modification of the family home and their concomitant different conceptualization of
comfort. For Frank and Terry, ‘comfort’ is clearly ‘a way of living in which you have
all the money and possessions that you need or want’ (comfort 4 in LDOCE 2009).
Their notion of comfort is therefore tied to a cycle of consumption. The play criti-
cally connects this ‘comforting consumption’ to its critique of a habitus that
neoliberalism fosters, namely living on credit and debt instead of restricting your
consumption to what you can afford. The play’s simplistic critique of living on credit
is emphasized through the character constellation. At first glance, Frank and Terry
appear as binary opposites. Frank has a good job whereas Terry lost his job due to
thieving and is scrounging off his family to support his drug addiction while pre-
tending to work as a taxi driver. Terry’s addiction, however, increasingly appears as
a critical mirroring of how Frank and his wife are equally addicted to expensive
consumption, namely consumption in terms of, e.g., luxury holidays or aroma
therapies as part of their upper-class lifestyle. Due to their addiction, Frank and
Susan fall into a high amount of debt. The use of different props or comforters, such
as drugs, alcohol, and aroma-therapy candles, helps Harry’s sons relax, but only for a
short time so that the cycle of comforting consumption has to begin anew.
The NSM grid allows us to break down this notion of comfort into its core
components. In NSM terms, the concept of ‘comfort as sensuous appeasement and
consumption’ can be (partially) defined as follows:
I can feel something good in my body now

I want to feel it all the time
I do many things because of this
I think like this:
when many good things happen to me, I can feel something good
when other people do good things for me, I can feel something good
when many good things are mine, nothing bad can happen to me
I want this
Given that ‘comfort’ and ‘home’ are frequently married in popular discourses, the
absence of the prime PLACE in the above partial NSM explication of ‘comfort’ may
surprise. It is legitimate, though, since among these family members, comfort and
home are clearly not interdependent. Frank and Susan’s fancy family home appears
as just another upper-class lifestyle ‘comforter’ or commodity that may be replaced
with another house. Indeed, they amass ‘Buy to Let Apartments’ or homes in the
belief that this will make them rich and hence ward off the discomforts of financial
worries (‘when many good things are mine, nothing bad can happen to me’). Their
desire to be free of worries and hence not to feel discomfort can be paraphrased in
simple words as follows:
I don’t want bad things to happen to me
when I think about these things, I feel something bad
I don’t want this
When Harry is diagnosed with cancer or when later he loses his home, the only way
his family members can think of comforting him is by giving him those ‘com-
forters’ they use themselves: drugs or lifestyle products. This is fully in keeping
with their idea of what ‘comfort’ means for them. Packer’s play connects this
reduction of ‘comfort’ to things that you can consume to a neoliberal understanding

of home: the family home as a site of ‘investment, as something to put equity into
and take equity from’ (Manuel Aalbers, quoted in Leyda 2016: 160). In NSM
phrasing ‘home’ seen from a neoliberal perspective would rather be a THING with
which ‘I can do some things’ than a PLACE where ‘I can be with other people’.
While Harry’s family members milk him for all that he is worth, the play avoids
a simplistic division into ‘good versus bad characters’ by hinting at challenges
Harry’s sons had to deal with due to Harry’s neglect of parental duties. Harry’s sons
do wish their father well, but only insofar that this does not inconvenience them.
In NSM terms, Frank and Terry’s attitude towards comforting family members may
hence be explicated as follows:
if it is good for me, I want to do something good for some other people
these people are like parts of one thing
I am like part of the same thing
I don’t know what I can do for these people
With this expansion of the NSM explication, the ethical implications of Frank and
Terry’s notion of comfort begin to emerge. The subject’s care for himself or rather
his care for comfort may easily slide into egocentrism. Moreover, the concept of
comfort that Harry’s sons subscribe to renders them helpless to comfort their father.
By equating comfort with material comforts, or ‘things that make life nicer and
more comfortable, especially things that are not necessary’ (see comfort 5 in
LDOCE 2009; italics are ours, SB/ZBS), they are blind to Harry’s emotional needs.
To capture this helplessness, the NSM explication requires ‘I don’t know what I can
do for these people’ as a final (bleak) phrase.
As the contrast of Harry’s and his sons’ notions of comfort has shown,
Inheritance diagnoses a shift from a theological meaning of comfort to the notion of
‘comfort as physical ease’ that can be obtained through buying services and
technological gadgets. This diagnosis is in keeping with Stefano Boni’s analysis of
how comfort shifted from a theological meaning of ‘spiritual consolation’ in
medieval times to ‘sensory contentment’ in modernity (Boni 2016: 138).7 Instead of
offering words or gestures of comfort when he learns of his father’s cancer, Frank
buys him a juicer and goes on about the pleasures of aroma therapy. And there are
more examples along these lines. This idea of buying as therapy or a cure for
everything is part of the neoliberal economization of the world. The economization
of family relations or the domestic sphere is dramatized when Harry’s children take
as much as they can from him. The final scene of the play is a drastic case in point.
Terry ‘breaks down’ after learning that his father died of hypothermia in the park:
7
For the analysis of how meanings of ‘comfort’ shifted historically together with changing living
conditions, see also Rybczyński (1996: 28–32).
As he sobs he picks up Harry’s trousers from the floor. He takes the wallet from the trouser
pocket, opens it and, still sobbing, steals Harry’s last twenty pounds.
Slow fade to black. (Packer 2010: 103).
If social relations are monetized and the maximization of profit is the order of the
day, then ‘the taking will go on, indefinitely, to the end of giving, until there is
nothing more to give’ (Pyyhtinen 2016: 94). Harry begins to realize the lack of
reciprocity in favour of a logic of infinite parasitical taking when he yells at his
sons: ‘You’ve had your inheritance! The cupboard’s bare! Leave me alone!’
(Packer 2010: 52). The nourishing, comfortable home is sucked dry through the
financialization of everything. In sum, Packer’s play aligns the comfortable home
with the value scheme of a gift giving guided by ‘the ideal of the unconditional,
absolute gift’ (Pyyhtinen 2016: 92) that is the antithesis of the depicted financial-
ization of homes and family relations fostered by neoliberalism. In NSM terms, this
contrast can be expressed as follows:
I want to do good things for my children [m]
I want them to think about this place: “this is mine” (Harry)
versus
I want many good things to be mine
I want other people to do good things for me (Frank and Terry)
It is striking how these two NSM statements mirror each other. It looks as if parents
who give their children everything they want, and do everything their children
want, produce adults who want more and more, and expect others constantly ‘to do
good things for them’.
In the light of these findings, the symbolism of Harry’s illness also becomes
blatantly obvious. In ‘finance fiction’ it has become somewhat of a cliché to use
cancer as a symbol of capitalism’s excessive growth of the ever same. Harry’s
cancer may be cured, but the real cancerous growth is the one that surrounds and
finally also infects him when he delightedly states:
I know I’m old, but there are things I would really like to do. […] Have we got any more
equity left we can cash in on our mortgage?
Blackout. (Packer 2010: 42).
This passage also illustrates Packer’s clever use of the lighting. Instead of just
signalling the end of scenes, the ‘light fading’ or the ‘blackouts’ consistently appear
as a critical comment on the unfolding developments. This particular instance is a
blackout of common sense. The play suggests that our common sense should tell us
that at some point an expanding house of debt will come crashing down.
In Harry’s case, the crash means that he is forced to reside in what is depicted as
the epitome of an uncomfortable dwelling: an apartment in Benwell. By staging this
deeply uncomfortable space, Inheritance adds strength to its preferred model of a
comfortable home. The different dimensions of ‘comfort’ are rendered void in the
new setting. Accordingly, Harry is missing, for example, the presence of Gracie,
and this in more senses than one. For one thing, the apartment is not a repository of
memories that let the past feel alive for Harry. The fact that his children squeezed
Harry into a tiny apartment instead of taking him into their homes marks the
absence of Gracie (Grace) in the sense of generosity. Harry living in this apartment
is the result of his family’s egoism. Moreover, Harry is unable to exert control over
this space because the technological gadgets are too complicated for him. He cannot
even play his beloved music. As a result, the apartment feels like prison and even
hell. All in all, neoliberalism’s economization of the world transforms previously
comfortable homes into war zones, as the stage directions render clear: Harry’s new
domicile looks like ‘a bomb site’ (Packer 2010: 87).
5.5 Conclusion
The conjunction of a literary analysis of Inheritance with linguistic methodology

has yielded two different NSM explications. The most important components of
these explications were introduced and discussed above. When reading the full
NSM definitions side by side, differences in the characters’ conceptualization of
comfort can be clearly pinpointed:
[A] ‘comfort as an ethical value’ (Harry)
a. I can feel something good in my body

when I am in this place, nothing bad can happen to me
I can do many things here as I want
this place is mine
b. I know this place very well
if I want to do something in this place, I know I can do it
things here have been mine for a long time
c. I have lived in this place with some people for a very long time
some of these people did many good things for me when I was a child [m]
I did many good things in this place with some other people
these people are with me all the time
we [m] are like parts of one thing
I want to do good things for them now
I feel something very good because of this
d. many good things happened to me here
I can think about all these things now
when I think about these things, I feel something very very good
[B] ‘comfort as sensuous appeasement’ (Frank and Terry)
a. I can feel something good in my body now

I want to feel it all the time
I do many things because of this
b. I think like this:
when many good things happen to me, I can feel something good
when other people do good things for me, I can feel something good
when many good things are mine, nothing bad can happen to me
I want this
c. I don’t want bad things to happen to me
when I think about these things, I feel something bad
I don’t want it
d. if it is good for me, I want to do something good for some other people
these people are like parts of one thing
I am like part of the same thing
I don’t know what I can do for these people
While both conceptualizations of comfort establish ‘feeling something good in my

body’ as a core meaning, this feeling can either be tied to a specific place like home
(‘when I am in this place, nothing bad can happen to me’), as in Harry’s case, or to
constant consumption (‘when many things are mine, nothing bad can happen to
me’), as in Frank and Terry’s case.8 Whereas the neoliberal version of comfort
hinges on ‘wanting good things to be mine’, the ethical model of comfort that
Packer’s play endorses is more about ‘wanting to do good things for other people’.
The NSM explications also draw attention to the way each understanding of
comfort is tied to the privileging of the presence or absence of memories and
people. For Harry, his comfortable home is a house imbued with memories of the
past, which, although not altogether bright, have made Harry who he is now. It is a
house where every single thing, a green battered armchair, an old CD player, even a
view from the window, is full of meaning and comfort for Harry (NSM: ‘I can think
about all these things now’). All those things make him remember; they make him
feel comfortable and at ease. For Frank and Terry, comfort is above all money and
things—those little ‘comforters’ that make them forget rather than remember. They
do not want to think ‘who they are’ neither ‘what they are here for’. Their notion of
comfort is ultimately connected to the absence of the inconveniences of memories
of the past, of uncomfortable feelings and thoughts, of other people who may be a
trouble when they are old. In contrast, Harry’s notion of comfort is all about
presence—of memories (of deceased dear ones), of feelings and thoughts about the
past that make the old man alive. All in all, NSM methodology, by specifying and
strengthening the results literary analysis has yielded, has helped to delineate how
the character constellation in Inheritance serves to stage and contrast different
8
These two NSM lines quite nicely show how both representations of comfort are related to the
notion of ‘safety’, in NSM terms: ‘nothing bad can happen to me’.
notions of comfort, which the play evaluatively codes by means of character and
plot development. Neoliberalism’s redefinition of comfort as a mode of con-
sumption is thereby denigrated as ultimately (self-)destructive.
As we hope to have shown, NSM truly is a ‘framework of inquiry that is capable
of capturing subtle nuances of meaning, and at the same time capable of ‘taking on’
big cultural themes’ (Goddard and Ye 2016: 3), such as that of ‘comfort’. This
literary case study has demonstrated that NSM can be an effective tool for analysing
different meanings culturally specific concepts may have for different people by
reducing the semantic complexity of these concepts. NSM primes such as WANT,
FEEL, BODY, PEOPLE and THINGS can serve as a tertium comparationis to discuss
different value systems encapsulated by complex concepts such as ‘comfort’. It
would be worthwhile to expand the analysis not only in terms of an extended
literary corpus, but also by including examples taken from other cultures and
languages. While the NSM explications appear extremely pared down due to their
use of simple language and categories, the route towards developing these defini-
tions quickly takes one into the intricacies of social practices, cultural fault lines and
the contested hegemony of (ethical) norms.
Acknowledgements We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well as the main editor
of this volume, Bert Peeters, whose insightful comments helped improve the final version.
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Stella Butter is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Koblenz-Landau.
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by Jerzy Bartmiński. Like Stella Butter, she is founding member of the interdisciplinary research
group ‘Scales of Home in Today’s Europe’ (scalesofhome.eu).
Chapter 6
Common Akan Insults on GhanaWeb:
A Semantic Analysis of Kwasea,
Aboa and Gyimii
Rachel Thompson
Abstract Generally, when language- and culture-specific terms are just glossed
into their nearest English equivalents, their cultural significance and social impact
are opaque. This is because such terms normally have more connotations than their
English equivalents. To cultural outsiders who do not share similar background
knowledge with cultural insiders, these terms may reflect a different meaning. Thus,
there is a need to capture the semantic content of such terms. This study employs
the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to state the meaning of three common
culture-specific insults found in the Corpus of GhanaWeb Comments on Ghana’s
2016 Elections (CGCGE16): kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa ‘animal/beast’, and gyimii
‘retard/stupid person’. These insults are used among the Akans to protest against a
person who engages in inappropriate acts that challenge the values of society. The
study establishes that in Akan culture, these insults are not just used for the purpose
of abuse but to evaluate the prudence of human behaviour.
Keywords Insult Akan Kwasea Aboa Gyimii GhanaWeb Natural

Semantic Metalanguage
6.1 Introduction
This study focuses on the meaning of three common Akan insults in the Corpus of
GhanaWeb Comments on Ghana’s 2016 Elections (CGCGE16): kwasea ‘oaf/fool’,
aboa ‘animal/beast’ and gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’. Akan is a member of the Kwa
branch of the Niger-Congo language family of West Africa, spoken by 9.2 million
people in Ghana.1 It is the most widely used local language in different
socio-economic, religious, entertainment and cultural contexts among Ghanaians
(Obeng 2005; Ansah 2014; Thompson and Anderson 2019). Besides its wide use in
1
See http://www.ethnologue.com. Accessed 18 March 2017.
R. Thompson (&)
Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
e-mail: rachel.thompson2@griffithuni.edu.au

104 R. Thompson
face-to-face interactions, it is more common to find participants on English-based

interactive online platforms in Ghana (e.g. GhanaWeb, https://www.ghanaweb.com)
interspersing their comments with lexical items and expressions in Akan than in any
other indigenous Ghanaian language (Thompson, in press). This does not in any way
suggest that the majority of online interactants in Ghana are Akans. It only shows
that these interactants have some level of proficiency in the Akan language.
Akan insults often thrive on emotions as they can be used to hit on sensitive
personal histories of a person or their family, demean a person’s physical charac-
teristics or even question a person’s competence (Forson et al. 2017). Both anec-
dotal and empirical evidence suggest that kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa ‘animal/beast’,
and gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’ are common Akan insults used among Ghanaians.
They are part of the category of insults Sekyi-Baidoo (2009: 13) describes as
‘common everyday insults’ used to evaluate the ‘prudence’ of human behaviour
among Ghanaians. Warren (1975: 18) notes that among the many abusive phrases
used by Akans, the two most common are kwasea ‘fool’ and aboa ‘animal’.
Research has shown that, generally, the meaning of culture-specific terms such
as these Akan insults does not directly match the meaning of their English trans-
lations as they differ in certain respects, which are more congruent with the values
of the people of that particular culture. Gyekye (1996), for instance, states that
although kwasea is usually translated as ‘fool’, kwasea connotes more than that.
The meaning of kwasea in Akan goes beyond one who is not wise and refers to ‘one
who is considered to be “irresponsible”, “worthless”, “good-for-nothing”, and
“contemptible”’ (Gyekye 1996: 78). Accordingly, Mensa-Bonsu (2001) maintains
that any translation of kwasea as ‘fool’ is a loose translation. The implication of just
glossing culture-specific insults, such as kwasea, into their nearest English equiv-
alents is that they cannot reflect to cultural outsiders what they mean to cultural
insiders. That is, their cultural significance and social impact remain opaque to
cultural outsiders. Against this backdrop, this study draws on the NSM (Natural
Semantic Metalanguage) approach, whose leading proponents are Anna Wierzbicka
and Cliff Goddard, to unpack the meaning of the insults kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa
‘animal/beast’ and gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’.
The study is organized as follows. Section 6.2 provides an overview of the data
collection process and the method of semantic explications. Section 6.3 introduces
each of the selected insults and discusses their proposed semantic explications on
the basis of insights from key discussants and their range of use in given contexts.
The conclusion is presented in Sect. 6.4.
6.2 Methodology
Data for this study were obtained from the Corpus of GhanaWeb Comments on
Ghana’s Election 2016 (CGCGE16) as well as from interviews and scholarly
works. CGCGE16 consists of about 2000 reader comments relating to the 2016
elections in Ghana, downloaded from GhanaWeb. Even though the comments in
6 Common Akan Insults on GhanaWeb … 105
the corpus are in English, some of them are interspersed with lexical units from
Akan, Ewe, Ga, and other Ghanaian languages. The quantitative method of
corpus-based searches was combined with qualitative methods of enquiry. With the
aid of the word list tool AntConc 3.4.4w (Windows), a software package developed
by Laurence Anthony, a lexical search was run in the corpus to obtain the frequency
of individual words. It was realized that among the name-calling insult types from
various Ghanaian languages used in CGCGE16, the ones that occurred more than
five times were these three Akan insults, kwasea ‘oaf/fool’ (n = 34), aboa ‘animal/
beast’ (n = 22), and gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’ (n = 6).
Native speakers’ intuitions about the meaning and uses of these common insults
in the corpus were sought through interviews. The responses gathered helped to
inform the meaning of the insults. I consulted Opanyin Kofi Agyekum, a Professor
of Linguistics at the University of Ghana, and ten other native Akan speakers from
the Kumasi Cultural Centre in the Ashanti Region of Ghana who are well versed in
the traditional and cultural systems of the Akans. These other native Akan speakers
have lived in Kumasi since they were born. They were recruited by means of
snowball sampling. Kumasi, in Agyekum’s (2003: 372) words, is ‘the citadel of
Akan culture’. The inhabitants gain mastery of sociocultural norms and practices as
part of their socialization and enculturation.
To describe the lexical meaning of the selected Akan insults, the study employed
the method of semantic explications used in the NSM approach. This method of
semantic explications is intended to provide a universal framework for describing
the meaning of language-specific terms, such as the insults studied here. It aims to
circumvent the problems of ethnocentrism, obscurity, circularity and excessive
abstractness, which hamper other methods of meaning analysis (Goddard and
Wierzbicka 2014: 12). Thus, it guarantees a better understanding of the terms to
cultural outsiders. Meaning, by this method, is rigorously formulated with a set of
well-specified vocabulary items, known as semantic primes, from which reductive
paraphrases can be constructed in a fashion consistent with well-specified gram-
matical rules (Goddard 2010, 2015, 2016; Wierzbicka 1992, 1996, 2003). This set
of highly constrained vocabulary items and its grammar appear to have exact
equivalents in all or most languages. Therefore, the explications of the insults,
although framed in English in this study, can be translated into Akan, or any other
language, without the fear of distortion of meaning. They are not in any way tied to
the English language. More specifically, they are able to capture the semantic
content of the insults as they are used in given contexts.
6.3 Explications of Kwasea, Aboa and Gyimii
This section concentrates on the lexical meanings of kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa

‘animal/beast’ and gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’. Generally, name-calling terms in
Akan come in two formats, identified in the present study as the ‘PRO/
N + be + term’ form and the ‘term only’ form. The ‘PRO/N + be + term’ form
106 R. Thompson
is made up of a pronoun or a noun, followed by the verb ‘to be’—which in this

context is yɛ in Akan—and the name-calling term; the ‘term only’ form, on the
other hand, is made up of the name-calling term only. Kwasea, for instance, is
typically regarded as an insult in both forms:
(1) a. wo yɛ kwasea.
2SG be term
‘You are an oaf/a fool.’
b. kwasea
term only
‘oaf/fool’.
Aboa, unlike kwasea and gyimii, is typically regarded as an insult in the ‘PRO/
N + be + term’ form only: woyɛ aboa ‘you are an animal/a beast’. The reason is
that the terms kwasea and gyimii are inherently abusive while the term aboa is not.
A speaker who utters the words kwasea or gyimii, even without contextual infor-
mation, is most certainly directing an insult at someone; on the other hand, when a
speaker says aboa, again without any contextual information, one cannot conclude
once and for all that the intended referent is a human being. The term becomes an
insult when the speaker directs it at someone in the form woyɛ aboa ‘you are an
animal/a beast’ or mentions the target’s name, as in Viaj yɛ aboa ‘Viaj is an animal/
a beast’. Bearing these forms in mind, the respective meanings of kwasea and
gyimii are captured in the subsections that follow in two different explications,
whereas the meaning of aboa is captured in a single explication.
The subsections involve some background information on the term under dis-
cussion, some naturally occurring examples (drawn from CGCGE16, Akan maxims
or scholarly works) and the explication of the term. The examples from CGCGE16
are mainly presented in this format:
SNR (A summary of the news report commented on)

Comment (The reader comment following a published news report)
Commenter (The name of the commenter)
Date and Time (The date and time the comment was published on
GhanaWeb).
The ‘SNR’ is not presented in some cases where it was considered unnecessary.
Each ‘comment’ is presented in its original form, with the proviso that, where
necessary, the correct forms of words, phrases or sentences are put in square
brackets and inserted into the frame to enhance understanding.
6.3.1 Kwasea ‘Oaf/Fool’
Gyekye (1996) notes that kwasea is a highly abusive word in the Akan culture,
meaning more than what the English word fool conveys. In agreement with
Brokensha’s (2008: 146) assertion that ‘amongst the Ashanti, the death penalty was
formerly exacted if a woman called a man kwasea’, the discussants for this study
emphasized that it is a taboo for a woman to refer to a man as kwasea, irrespective
of his misbehaviour. The rule is yense barima kwasea ‘a man is not referred to as
kwasea’. One of the discussants narrated the following story about a man who
divorced his wife because she insulted him as kwasea.
Not long ago, there was a couple in Bantama (a town in the Ashanti Region) who had an
argument. While they were exchanging words, the woman said woyɛ kwasea paa ‘you are a
fool indeed’. Immediately, the husband went silent and the next thing he did was to visit the
wife’s family to seek a divorce. No amount of pleading from the wife or her family saved
the situation.
The story reveals that, socioculturally, among the Akans, it is unacceptable for a
man to be referred to as kwasea by a woman.
Kwasea is commonly glossed as ‘fool’ (see Boni 2002; Agyekum 2009; Kpogo
and Abrefa 2017). The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary2 defines ‘a fool’ as a
person whom you think behaves or speaks in a way that lacks intelligence or good
judgment (or someone who is a jester). Kwasea, according to Gyekye (1996: 78), is
anyone who ‘refuses to bear his share of social responsibility and thus behaves
antisocially, unfairly, and unethically’. The use of this term against a person denotes
that this person is unfit to be counted among human beings (Mensa-Bonsu 2001).
Consider how the following Akan maxims depict a kwasea:
(2) se anene ye kwasea a anka enwera a egu ne kom mu no aye fi.

‘If the pied crow had been a kwasea, it would have dirtied the white collar around its
neck.’
(It is only a fool that destroys its source of pride.) (Cole and Ross 2010: 166)
(3) kwasea na ɔse, ‘Ye de me yɔnko, yenne me’.
‘It is a kwasea that says, “My neighbour is the butt of the attack, not me”.’
(A foolish person is oblivious to the concerns of others.) (Coetzee and Roux 2004:
342).
(4) kwasea mantam odwan a, ɔnte: wu na awuo.
‘If a kwasea ties a sheep, it cannot free itself: its only choice is to die.’
(A foolish person’s excess of zeal has disastrous results.) (Appiah et al. 2001: 689).
All three expressions indicate that a kwasea is someone who is really contemptible.
In (2), the white collar around the pied crow’s neck is considered among the Akans
2
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/fool_1. Accessed 25
January 2017.
108 R. Thompson
as a symbol of purity. It serves as a source of pride to the bird as it makes the bird
worthy of admiration. Thus, it would be unwise and irresponsible on the part of the
bird to make the collar dirty and lose its admirers. Example (3) focuses on the great
value placed on collectivism rather than individualism in the Akan community.
Anyone who refuses to contribute to this sense of communal belonging is seen as
one who is unfit to be a part of the community. It can be seen in (4) that the kwasea
is a good for nothing whose endeavours yield no positive result.
Belgrave and Allison (2014) confirm Gyekye’s (1996) assertion that, in tradi-
tional and even contemporary Akan communities in Ghana, a man is regarded as
kwasea if he reaches the age at which he is expected to marry but does not make
any attempt to do so. He is not only considered as irresponsible and unwise but as
one who falls short of the ideals and expectations of being a man. The label kwasea
is normally applicable when a person behaves foolishly in a situation under certain
circumstances. Thus, everybody can be a kwasea at some point in time (Kofi
Agyekum, personal communication). Misbehaviours that can cause someone to be
called kwasea include dressing indecently, spitting in public for no reason, using
the wrong address term for someone, using non-verbal forms of communication
inappropriately, refusing to greet (especially an elderly person) and not greeting in
the right manner. Among the Akans, in any gathering—be it a funeral, marriage or
naming ceremony—greeting is normally done with a handshake. A person who
wants to greet others must move from right to left (i.e. in a clockwise manner) and
not the other way around. If this norm is not observed, the person can be called
kwasea (Kofi Agyekum, personal communication). Calling someone kwasea shows
a strong disapproval of that individual’s behaviour or action (Sekyi-Baidoo 2009).
Let us consider some examples of the use of kwasea in CGCGE16.
SNR [I]
It was reported that H. E. John Dramani Mahama (the incumbent president,
who was seeking a second term during the 2016 elections) stated in one of his
campaign messages that his ambition was to develop the country to a standard
that would be of greater benefit to present and future generations. Due to this,
the government had initiated and implemented lots of projects in areas such as
health, education and security. There was therefore a need for him to be
retained in office, so that he could complete the developmental projects. This
news report was published on GhanaWeb with the headline, ‘I will develop
the country for all to benefit – Mahama’.
Comments
(5) President who goes to Facebook to admire the number of ‘likes’ very silly and
petty. Graduates have no jobs and corruption is very where [everywhere] and
the President is saying ‘I will develop’ cheek of it and your development.
Kwasia
Commenter: KOO
Date and Time: 09-09-16 20:20
(6) SHUT UP KWASEAMPANI [kwaseapanyin] Useless and clueless idiot presi-

dent
Commenter: Otanii ba
Date and Time: 09-09-16 19:54.
In (5), it can be seen that before the commenter refers to the president as kwasea,
he3 provides some form of background that justifies the use of the term. He
describes Mahama as ‘very silly and petty’ because, in his opinion, the president
engages in things that run converse to his mandate as the leader of the nation. His
expression of contempt for the president is a reaction to the latter’s statement, in the
future tense, ‘I will develop’, which is not anticipated from a presidential candidate
who already holds office. The commenter claims that instead of dealing with the
issue of corruption and creating job opportunities for citizens, the president spends
time appreciating the number of ‘likes’ his comments and photographs obtain on
Facebook.
The second commenter uses the term kwaseapanyin, a combination of kwasea
‘fool’ and opanyin ‘elder’ that can be translated as ‘elderly fool’. It expresses
foolishness on the part of a target who is older than the speaker. Among Akans, the
term opanyin does not just refer to an elderly person but it connotes much prestige
and respect for the target because elders are considered to be wise and responsible
(van der Geest 1998).
According to my discussants, kwaseapanyin ‘elderly fool’ is a severe and more
offensive variant of kwasea. Its use signals that the speaker acknowledges the social
status of the target while at the same time declaring the target contemptible. It can
therefore be deduced that calling the president kwaseapanyin and describing him as
a ‘useless and clueless idiot’ is the commenter’s way of vividly highlighting the fact
that the president falls short of the ideals of his social status. Considering the above,
one can conclude that both commenters’ use of kwasea is aimed at making readers
understand that the president’s behaviour or actions are contrary to the social
expectations placed on him. Explication [A1] is proposed for kwasea:
[A1] Kwasea ‘oaf/fool’
a. this someone can think well, this someone can know how to do things well
b. at the same time, it is like this:
when this someone wants to do something, this someone does not do it well
c. people often feel something bad because of this
d. it is very bad if someone is like this
3
The use of the pronoun ‘he’ in the analysis is for the sake of convenience and does not in any way
suggest that all the commenters on GhanaWeb are males.
110 R. Thompson
Component (a) of explication [A1] shows that someone who is referred to as a

kwasea does not lack cognitive abilities, unlike fools in English. This is evident in
the maxim kwasea mpo nyansa wo ne trimu, which literally means ‘even the
kwasea has wisdom in his head’. However, a kwasea generally does not make use
of the nyansa ‘wisdom’ that they have and fail, as per component (b), to apply the
cognitive abilities they do have. Component (c) describes the effect of the kwasea’s
failure to behave as is expected of someone who has the ability to act in line with
social expectations. Since it is only natural that when someone wants to do or say
something, they would try to do or say it in a way that conforms to such expec-
tations, people tend to react negatively. Not only do they react negatively: irre-
spective of current circumstances, they judge anyone who, in spite of their cognitive
abilities, does not conform to expectation, in the harshest possible terms. The Akan
proverb wo ne kwasea goru a, ne kwasea san wo ‘if you play with a fool, their folly
rubs off on you’ implies that people should desist from associating with a kwasea or
avoid a kwasea’s company.
Let us now consider the explication of woyɛ kwasea:
[A2] Woyɛ kwasea ‘you are an oaf/fool’
a. I know: you did something very bad
b. I think something very bad about you because of it
at the same time, I feel something bad towards you
c. I want to say something very bad to you now
d. I say this word: [kwasea]
e. I say this word to you because I want you to feel something very bad at this moment
Component (a) in explication [A2] shows that in using woyɛ kwasea ‘you are
kwasea’, speakers are aware of their target’s wrongdoing (either in deed or in
speech). Component (b) captures the idea that reactions to bad behaviour exhibited
by the target involve, firstly, a bad thought about and, secondly, a bad feeling
directed to the target. Subsequently, as reflected in component (c), speakers feel the
urge to immediately express their thoughts and feelings indicating their disapproval.
Component (d) shows a specific insult is used in order to satisfy this urge. The goal
for using kwasea, as expressed in component (e), is to inflict pain (i.e. something
very bad) on the target.
6.3.2 Aboa ‘Animal/Beast’
The generic term for all animals, including beasts, in Akan is aboa (Agyekum
2010). Naturally, aboa have feelings and can do some things as humans, but they
lack the ability to speak or think and also lack the sense to distinguish between right
and wrong. Akans believe that there is a distinction between human beings and
animals, because human beings have what is called tiboa. Tiboa can be translated as
‘conscience’ or ‘moral sense’; it is the ability that allows a person to distinguish

between what is good/right and what is bad/wrong/evil. In this regard, Gyekye
(1995: 126) maintains that among the Akans, ‘the comparison between man and
beast is intended as a distinction between moral sense and amoral sense on the one
hand and between rationality (intelligence) and irrationality (non-intelligence) on
the other hand’. He adds that tiboa is ‘acquired through socialization, through
habituation, through moral experience’; it is not something that is necessarily innate
to humans.
The idea that tiboa is acquired forms the basis for the derogatory phrase
ɔmanfrani aboa ‘foreigner’s animal/beast’. This phrase can be used when
addressing a person whose actions (e.g. stealing) contravene the social norms and
values of the Akans. Referring to the target as an aboa belonging to an ɔmanfrani is
tantamount to saying that the target has behaved inappropriately, like an animal,
because the target’s parents are ‘alien’ to the Akan culture and, thus, have not taken
the target through the Akan socialization processes [see Fretheim and Amfo (2008)
for details on ɔmanfrani]. The insult ɔmanfrani aboa extends beyond the target,
embracing the target’s parents as well.
Keeping pets for companionship is not common in traditional Akan households,
which are unlike Western households in that respect. Cats are kept for rodent
control, while dogs are kept for hunting and to provide security. It is also
uncommon to find animals with human names in Ghana. The use of a human name
for pets is normally frowned upon, even when observed among expatriates. The
reason, according to the discussants, is that it is considered a form of denigration
towards any person who bears that name. In the section Odds ‘n bits of sociologist
Phil Bartles Akan Studies, it is noted that Akans do not recognize Homo sapiens as
just another species of primates.4 This is echoed in the use of aboa as one of the
most insulting names to call a person. It is said that when the Akwapems (an Akan
ethnic group known to be excessively or exceptionally polite) want to insult
someone, they say ‘mepa wo kyɛw se, woyɛ aboa’, meaning ‘please, you are an
animal/beast’. Calling someone aboa does not suggest that the person has devel-
oped the physical characteristics of a creature. Instead, it simply means the person is
not behaving like a human being (Agyekum 2004).
The insult form woyɛ aboa ‘you are an animal/beast’ means the speaker has
considered the negative qualities of animals and bestowed them on the person
(Agyekum 2010). Consider the following incident (cf. Perbi 2007: 22; emphasis
added), which took place on March 31, 1945, at Seikwa, a town in the Brong Ahafo
Region of Ghana.
Source: Regional Archives Sunyani: WDC I/17

Place and Date: In the Native Court of Seikwa on 31/3/45.
Plaintiff: Akosua Korome
4
http://cec.vcn.bc.ca/rdi/kw-odds.htm. Accessed 27 April 2019.
112 R. Thompson
Defendant: Kwabena Broni

Case: Plaintiff asserts that defendant’s statement ‘woyɛ oboofo
dadew fa, aboa ba’ (‘You are half a slave horn, half a
daughter of an animal/beast’) exposed plaintiff to ridicule
or contempt and therefore claimed £5 damages from
defendant. Defendant pleaded guilty.
Judgement: £1.11 awarded in damages to plaintiff, with costs assessed
at £2.5 to be borne by defendant.
The scenario recorded in Perbi (2007) is that Akosua Korome had filed a suit against
Kwabena Broni for calling her names, including aboa ba ‘a daughter of an animal/
beast’, which implies that she, too, is an animal/beast. She therefore claimed financial
compensation. As evident in the report, Akosua won the case, even though she was
not awarded all the damages she had claimed. This portrays how, traditionally, in
Akan society, it is unjustifiable and unpardonable to refer to a person as aboa.
Regardless of the fact that calling someone aboa is not tolerated, its use against
people who may even be considered higher-placed than the speaker in terms of
social status is common on GhanaWeb. Consider examples (7), (8) and (9) from
CGCGE16 in which aboa occurs.
SNR [II]
Dr. Edward Mahama, the presidential candidate of the People’s Congress
Party, during one of his campaign speeches, mentioned that the victory of
Donald Trump inspired him that he will be the victor in Ghana’s presidential
election. He is reported to have said that ‘Donald Trump has never been in
politics but upon his first contest he won. God did it for him and it is likely he
will do it for me too to win this presidential election’.
Comment
RE: Trump’s victory has given me more vim – Edward Mahama
(7) YOU MUST BE A FOOL LIKE HIM!!! ABOAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Commenter: JJ
Date and Time: 11-10-16 20:03.
It is evident that, for some reason, the commenter, JJ, is not a supporter of Trump,
and he expects that other people will also disregard the American president. As it
appears that Edward Mahama is doing something different than expected by saying
that Trump’s victory serves as an assurance to him, the commenter considers him an
animal. The commenter’s choice of capital letters, multiple exclamation marks and
an elongated form of the insult aboa shows the magnitude of the negative feelings
he expresses towards the target.
SNR [III]
In an interview, Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, a former first lady and
the 2016 presidential candidate of the National Democratic Party, said that ‘I
don’t see what the president is talking about because he is lying to us and we
won’t accept it’. To her, the president and his party’s claim of unprecedented
infrastructural development in the country was a sham so Ghanaians should
vote him out in the upcoming election.
Comment
Re: I can’t see Mahama’s achievements – Konadu
(8) … ABOA … YOU CAN NEVER BEE LIKE OUR HARD WORKING
PRESIDENT MAHAMA …
Commenter: maslarry
Date and Time: 10-04-16 00:50.
In this example, the commenter completely disagrees with the former first lady. By
referring to Konadu as aboa, Maslarry indicates that she is out of touch for sug-
gesting that the president has not achieved anything. Describing President Mahama
as hard-working and declaring that Konadu can never be like him implies that
Maslarry sees her as one who lacks the merit to work as hard as the president does.
To describe or represent someone as aboa is to say, in Ofori’s (2017: 139)
words, ‘they have broken the social contract of how normal human beings should
behave and do not have to exist alongside humans’. This means their behaviour
does not conform to that of humans and therefore they deserve to live in the bush
with animals. A variant of the term aboa is aboafunu ‘dead animal’. It is considered
the most offensive way of describing someone because the speaker, in that case, is
indicating that not only does the target lack the qualities and features of a human
being, they also lack those of a living animal/beast (Agyekum 2004). That is, the
target is irrational and useless. Consider example (9):
Refer to SNR [I]

Comment
Re: I will develop the country for all to benefit
(9) … aimless and senseless incompetent president … aboafunu

Commenter: shakamora
Date and Time: 09-10-16 06:03.
114 R. Thompson
The use of aboafunu ‘dead animal’ in (9) places emphasis on what the com-
menter has said in English. It embodies a lot more and conveys a stronger statement
of disapproval compared to the English derogatory adjectives used. The com-
menter’s choice of aboafunu expresses the degree of his contempt towards the
president much better, especially to cultural insiders.
The explication of woyɛ aboa is presented in [B]:
[B] Woyɛ aboa ‘You are an animal/beast!’
everyone knows this:
people don’t do something like this
other people can feel something bad because of it
b. I think like this:
you are doing something like animals [m] do
other people can’t not think the same
c. I want to say something very bad to you
d. I say this word: [aboa]
Explication [B] starts with the idea that a person referred to as aboa must have done
something or must have engaged in acts that are considered as unacceptable among
the Akans, such as theft, adultery, lying, backbiting, cheating and betrayal (see
Asante and Mazama 2009). Component (a) embodies the claim that it is common
knowledge that what the target did is unacceptable and offensive. The assumption is
that, at a very tender age, people have been socialized into culturally acceptable and
non-acceptable behaviours, and they are expected to be attentive to and abide by
such tenets till they die in order to have harmonious interpersonal relationships.
That is why, as previously mentioned, people can be insulted as ɔmanfrani aboa
‘foreigner’s animal/beast’ if they do things contrary to social principles.
As reflected in component (b), once a person’s behaviour or characteristics
appear to be incompatible with those of other human beings in the society, gen-
erally speaking, the likely interpretation based on sociocultural knowledge is that
this person is exhibiting the characteristics of an animal (Agyekum 2004; Ofori
2017). As shown in the third line of component (b), this interpretation cannot be
disputed by others. The purpose of saying woyɛ aboa ‘you are an animal/beast’, as
component (e) depicts, is to hurt the feelings of the target.
6.3.3 Gyimii ‘Retard/Stupid Person’
Gyimii is a nominalized form of the term gyimi, which is often glossed as ‘stupid’ or
‘foolish’ (see Warren and Brempong 1977; Sekyi-Baidoo 2009). Other nominalized
forms of gyimi are gyimini as in example (11) and gyimifo as in (12). Gyimi is
polysemous in Akan. In addition to being used as an insult, it is also a term
associated with comedians. A comedian is described in Akan as gyimii ‘fool’ or obi
a ogyimi ‘someone who fools’ (Donkor 2016). It is common to hear, coming from
an elated audience, during a comedy show, akoa wei deɛ, w’agyimi o ‘this person is
really a fool’, meant as a compliment for the comedian. Gyimii in this sense can
roughly be translated as jester. Since this use of gyimii clearly has a separate
meaning, it is not considered further in this study. Examples (10) to (12) illustrate
how gyimi was employed as an abusive term in CGCGE16.
SNR [IV]
During one of his campaign tours, President John Dramani Mahama men-
tioned that there will be 400,000 available jobs from 2017 under the National
Youth Employment Programme (NYEP).
Comment
Re: NYEP will provide 400,000 jobs in 2017 – Mahama
(10) this idiot thinks he can fool us again gyimii wait till we teach you lesson come
December 7th. gyimii. everyone knows that Npp will win this election except
ndc fools
Commenter: KSK
Date and Time: 09-11-16 20:03.
The commenter, KSK, refers to the president as gyimii because, to him, the pres-
ident has disappointed the electorate; KSK feels the president has made a fool of
them with similar promises during the previous campaign period. This can be
deduced from the statement that ‘this idiot thinks he can fool us again’. The use of
gyimii indicates that, in KSK’s opinion, the president has not lived up to the
expectations of Ghanaians. The repetition of gyimii in this example signals the
commenter’s immense discontentment towards the president.
SNR [V]
The presidential candidate of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Ivor
Greenstreet, in an interview, described the campaign promises of the National
Patriotic Party (NPP) as impractical. He said, ‘Trust me, the NPP’s promise of
giving you one-district-one-factory is not feasible. They are only telling lies
for your votes’.
Some people, especially members of the NPP questioned why Greenstreet
would attack the campaign message of another opposition party instead of
sharing his own campaign messages.
Comment
Re: NPP lying their way through – Greenstreet
116 R. Thompson
(11) One of the stupid NDC good for nothings … Gyimini the-se [te sɛ] wo. ‘One
of the stupid NDC good for nothings … stupid person like you’
Commenter: Citizen Ghana
Date and Time: 11-13-16 15:08.
Citizen Ghana is suggesting that Greenstreet, the presidential candidate of CPP, is

an NDC member. He first describes Greenstreet as a ‘stupid NDC good for nothing’
and then switches to Akan. Calling Greenstreet gyimini is a way of emphasizing
that the CPP presidential candidate is stupid. As it appears, Citizen Ghana expected
that as a candidate in opposition, Greenstreet would speak against the party in
power and not against another party in opposition.
SNR [VI]
Speaking in an interview with the BBC, the electoral commissioner who had
been accused of doing everything possible to ensure that the president retains
power made it clear that no one can influence the results of the elections due
to the processes involved. In her words, ‘it is impossible for the Electoral
Commission to be influenced by government because our processes are so
transparent and so inclusive that it is impossible for the Electoral Commission
itself to even manipulate […] one election day, if you want to influence the
process, you have to change your election sheet and change all the result
sheets being held by all the candidates’ agents […] So it is really impossible’
Comment
Re: It’s impossible for gov’t to influence election—EC Boss
(12) Those who voted for ndc in power. all them are fools nkurasefoɔ nkoa na eto
aba ma won agyimifoɔ party
‘All those who voted for NDC are fools. It is only villagers who vote for them.
Party of stupid people.’
Commenter: zulutuza
Date and Time: 11-03-16 13:40.
In example 12, the comment has no bearing on the news report. Zulutuza attacks all
the members of the NDC party and those who voted them into power. Without any
justification, he refers to them as ‘fools’, nkurasefoɔ ‘villagers and agyimifoɔ
‘retards/stupid people’. Agyimifoɔ as used in this comment is the plural form of
gyimifo.
As stated earlier, apart from using the ‘term only’ forms as exemplified in (10) to
(12), one can directly say to someone w’agyimi ‘you are stupid’ or woyɛ gyimifo/
gyimini ‘you are a stupid person’. The statement, w’agyimi ‘you are stupid’, from
Warren and Brempong’s (1977: 155) perspective, ‘indicates that the victim has no
brains, is crazy, senseless, and thoughtless’. However, my discussants had this to
say:
“se ye kase obi agyimi a, ekyere se, n’adwene a ewɔ ne tirimu no ahoɔden wɔ fɔm; ne
nyansa a ewɔ se ɔde ye adeɛ no sua”
‘to say someone is stupid means that their mind is weak; the wisdom they need to carry out
their duties is inadequate’.
In Akan communities, a person’s ‘stupidity’ could be blamed on supernatural forces

such as evil spirits, magic, and curses or emotions, especially love. It is possible to
hear example (13) from others when a person seems to be making illogical deci-
sions or their sense of judgment appears to be incongruous based on their expec-
tations. Example (14) is commonly used as a form of insinuation when the person is
in love. The thought that a person in love has an impaired sense of judgment,
though it may be based on observation or traditional knowledge, is in line with
some scientific studies. For instance, Zeki (2007) and van Steenbergen et al. (2014)
found that being in love could temporarily reduce one’s cognitive resources.
(13) Yɛ gyimi no.

‘S/he has been stupefied.’
(14) Odɔ ma nipa gyimi.
‘Love makes human beings stupid.’
Bearing the foregoing in mind, I am of the view that Warren and Brempong’s
(1977) explanation is to the extreme and could relate to w’abɔdam ‘you are crazy/
insane’ or bɔdamfo ‘an insane person’, more than to w’agyimi ‘you are stupid’.
While the brain or mental faculty of the bɔdamfo is considered to be defective, that
of the gyimi(fo/ni) is considered to be underdeveloped or impaired. The impairment
is what the second line of component (a) in Explication [C1] captures as ‘this
someone can’t think well’. A defect would have been captured as ‘this someone
can’t think’. The semantic explication this study proposes for gyimi(fo/ni) is as
follows:
[C1] Gyimi(-i/-fo/-ni) ‘retard/stupid person’
a. this someone is not like other people
other people can think well, this someone can’t think well
other people do things well, this someone can’t do things well.
b. people can feel something bad towards this someone because of this.
c. it is very very bad if someone is like this.
The idea behind component (a) is that a person regarded as gyimii is one who has a
‘feeble mind’. The target’s sense of judgment is impaired; alternatively, their action
or speech portrays that their wisdom is below par. The use of well in the second and
third lines conveys the idea that the target is not absolutely senseless, but rather has
limited mental capacity. Generally, this person can communicate with others and
can even perform some simple tasks, especially when under supervision.
118 R. Thompson
For example, if there are two bottles of beverage on a table—one containing

alcohol and the other a soft drink—and a gyimii is asked to give his younger sibling
—a baby—something to drink, one cannot be confident that the baby will not be
given the alcohol. In the instance where the baby is given the alcohol, it is possible
to hear the following statement about the person:
(15) Ne gyimi nti ɔnte m’asem ase.

‘Due to his stupidity, he does not understand my words’.
The gyimii may, however, be able to give the baby what is expected if the
instruction is given in more detail. Component (b) shows that, consequently, such a
person is not respected or appreciated and may be considered as ‘useless’ for not
being able to do things as expected. As presented in component (c), it is considered
‘very very bad’ if a person often disappoints others and frustrates them. [C2]
explicates the ‘PRO/N + be + term’ form of the insult.
[C2] Woyɛ gyimi(-i/-fo/-ni) ‘you are a stupid person’ or W’agyimi ‘you are stupid’
b. I think something very bad about you because of it
at the same time, I feel something bad towards you
c. I want to say something very bad to you now
d. I say this word: [gyimii]
Just as in explication [A2], it is the speaker’s knowledge of an inappropriate action

carried out by the target that motivates this verbal abuse. With the intention of
expressing disappointment in the target’s action, the speaker tells the target directly,
in their face: woyɛ gyimii ‘you are a stupid person’ (or w’agyimi ‘you are stupid’).
The idea behind this insult is to make the target feel ‘useless’ and therefore
undeserving of respect.
6.3.4 Overview
The explications in this study have articulated the culture-internal conceptualiza-

tions underlying the Akan insults kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa ‘animal/beast’ and gyimii
‘retard/stupid person’. It can be seen that as individual abusive words, each of them
has a specifiable meaning. However, like all other insults, they are employed with
the primary aim of making the referent feel very bad: ‘I say this word to you
because I want you to feel something very bad at this moment’. Employing insults,
in the words of Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014: 178), ‘involves an awareness of the
potential negative impact of speaking in this way and a wish to achieve such an
effect’. The negative impact is usually not dependent on the veracity of the insult.
Instead, it is generally dependent on the mood of the person (referent), the time, the
event, the place, the atmosphere, or the audience involved (Agyekum 2004;
Sekyi-Baidoo 2009; Culpeper 2011).
Among the Akans, the use of these insults performs certain sociocultural roles.
These roles include drawing one’s attention to a specific wrongdoing, signalling
disapproval of a particular behaviour or protesting against a person for engaging in
acts that challenge the values of the society (Yankah 1998; Agyekum 2010; Kampf
2015). Regardless of these roles, using kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa ‘animal/beast’ and
gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’, especially in public settings, is a morally unjustifiable
and unacceptable communicative behaviour among the Akans. It violates canonical
cultural values (Thompson and Agyekum 2015). Thus, a speaker who avoids using
insults in speech events may be referred to in Akan as obi a n’ani abue (literally,
one whose eyes are open), meaning one who is ‘civilized’ or ‘cultured’ (Asante and
Ma 2015).
On the basis of this study, it is evident from the examples selected from
CGCGE16 that although GhanaWeb is a public setting, participants freely use
kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa ‘animal/beast’ and gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’ against
national leaders. This is not unexpected and can be attributed to the inherent fea-
tures of the Internet, which allow a more expressive and affective communication
that easily leads to violation of communicative norms (Suler 2004). The present
author agrees with Chen and Ng (2016) that the use of such insults highlights the
fact that the online interactants have strong reservation, distrust or are dissatisfied
with the national leader or leaders who are the target.
6.4 Conclusion
The goal of this study was to capture the meanings of kwasea ‘oaf/fool’, aboa
‘animal/beast’ and gyimii ‘retard/stupid person’. It has been shown that these Akan
insults embody some particular conceptualizations and that their meanings do not
directly match the meaning of their English translations as they are different in
certain respects that are more congruent with Akan and, to some extent, Ghanaian
values. For instance, kwasea, which is often translated as ‘fool’, implies that one is
socially inept rather than mentally deficient. This means that if the insults are
merely glossed into their nearest English translations, readers who do not share the
background knowledge of Akans may understand their social value differently
compared to readers who do.
With the semantic explication technique, this study has described each of the
insults in a way that reflects what they actually mean to Akans in Ghana. It is
evident that the content of each term explicated is very informative. It is understood
that an individual’s social competence is of concern since social ineptitude is not
tolerated in the Akan society. Anyone who transgresses set social standards and
violates the norms and values of the Akans can be disapproved of and verbally
120 R. Thompson
attacked with any of the insults discussed in this chapter. The technique has thus
provided additional clarity about the meaning of the insults and has perfected their
analysis, thereby making them more meaningful to readers who are not familiar
with Akan culture.
Acknowledgements This study forms part of the author’s Ph.D. thesis titled Ethnopragmatic
perspectives on online political discourse in Ghana: Invective and Insults on GhanaWeb, prepared
under the supervision of Cliff Goddard and Andy Kirkpatrick, with the support of an Australian
Government Research Training Program Scholarship. I am indebted to my discussants, to Bert
Peeters and to the anonymous reviewers for their input.
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discourse. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 3(1), 107–127. https://doi.org/10.
1075/jlac.3.1.05kam.
Kpogo, F., & Abrefa, K. B. (2017). The structure of face-to-face casual conversation among the
Akans. Ghana Journal of Linguistics, 6(2), 56–84. https://doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v6i2.4.
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Rachel Thompson is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Humanities, Languages and
Social Science, Griffith University, Australia. Her major research interest is the use of language in
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contact situations.
Chapter 7
Bwénaado: An Ethnolexicological Study
of a Culturally Salient Word in Cèmuhî
(New Caledonia)
Bert Peeters and Margo Lecompte-Van Poucke
Abstract Ever since people have come together in communities, they have felt the
need to regulate and control their relationships with members of other groups. One
way of building and maintaining a stable society is by sharing wealth. New
Caledonia has developed its own unique system of exchange, referred to as la
coutume by its French-speaking inhabitants and by the Melanesian part of the
population, which also uses indigenous terms that have relatively high cultural
visibility and can thus be considered culturally salient. This paper focuses on one
such word, bwénaado, and aims to demonstrate that it reflects an important cultural
value in Cèmuhî, an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 3300 people
dispersed along the north-east coast and in the valleys of New Caledonia’s rugged
interior. To the best of our knowledge, no detailed treatment of bwénaado exists.
Our semantic analysis therefore breaks new ground. Three different meanings of the
word (roughly, ‘large-scale customary celebration’, ‘customary ceremony’ and
‘customary gift’) are distinguished. It will be argued that, even though the Kanak
social exchange system (in which all three meanings are highly relevant) seems to
be linked to a universal principle of reciprocity, it is highly culture-specific. To
ensure utmost respect for this cultural specificity and to break out of the prison
walls of the English language, Natural Semantic Metalanguage will be used to
frame the description, and applied ethnolinguistics will form the backdrop against
which the description is carried out.

Keywords Bwénaado Cèmuhî Reciprocity Applied ethnolinguistics

Ethnolexicology Natural Semantic Metalanguage
B. Peeters
e-mail: bert.peeters@anu.edu.au
e-mail: bert.peeters@uantwerpen.be
M. Lecompte-Van Poucke (&)
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
e-mail: margo.vanpoucke@mq.edu.au

124 B. Peeters and M. Lecompte-Van Poucke
7.1 Introduction
According to official census figures, Cèmuhî is spoken by an increasing number of

indigenous Kanak of all ages1: 2050 in 1996,2 2600 in 2009,3 3300 in 2015.4 Most
of them live in small communities on New Caledonia’s north-east coast and in the
adjacent valleys, within a radius of 50 km from the coastal town of Touho, in the
customary area of Paicî-Cèmuhî (shown in Fig. 7.1 as the area of Paicî-Camuki).
Linguistically informed efforts to document the language—in particular the more
prestigious inland variant known as Tié, on which this paper is based—started in
earnest in the 1960s, mainly thanks to the fieldwork undertaken by Jean-Claude
Rivierre, whose grammar (1980) and dictionary (1994) remain the main reference
works to date. Current spelling practice by and large follows the conventions set out
in Rivierre (1994), although tone diacritics are no longer used.
Rivierre’s efforts to document the language also include an invaluable corpus of
audio recordings, with transcriptions, of some of the Cèmuhî legends orally
transmitted from generation to generation. Many of these are now available online.5
Ahead of the print transcription, Bensa and Rivierre (1982) provided a detailed
account of how indigenous society operates in the Touho region. Like elsewhere in
indigenous New Caledonia, the mwa (‘clans’) that live in the region engage in a
continuous cycle of strengthening pre-existing alliances based on lineage and
kinship. Interruptions in the cycle throw the system out of balance, which may have
severe consequences for future relationships. Bensa and Rivierre (1982: 112)
pointed out that social relationships must be continually reaffirmed. One way for
this to happen is through acts of storytelling by the mwa’s male elders and in
exchange ceremonials known as bwénaado, during which the partners to the
exchange, in speeches made in front of piles of identical goods given and received
in mostly equivalent amounts, publicly recall the links that unite them as well as
their respective rankings. To ensure ongoing harmonious relations, wealth is con-
tinuously redistributed in a carefully balanced flow of goods embedded within an
incessant cycle of social events such as births, marriages, deaths or religious
gatherings.
1
Scholarly research written in English tends to adopt the grammatical convention treating the
French word kanak as invariable. The phrase the Cèmuhî will be used to refer to all Kanak whose
first language is Cèmuhî. See http://www.isee.nc/population/recensement/communautes for
information on demographic trends in New Caledonia.
2
http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/ALC/Languages/Cemuhi_popup.htm. Accessed 22 October 2018.
3
https://www.ethnologue.com/language/cam. Accessed 22 October 2018.
4
http://www.sorosoro.org/en/cemuhi/. Accessed 24 March 2018.
5
http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/pangloss/corpus/list_rsc_en.php?lg=Cemuhî&name=Cèmuhî. Accessed 4
May 2019.
7 Bwénaado: An Ethnolexicological Study … 125
Detailed accounts of bwénaado ceremonials, which used to also involve a lot of

dancing, appear in the works of missionary and ethnologist Maurice Leenhardt
(1878–1954; cf. Clifford 1992; Naepels and Salomon 2007), anthropologist Bensa
(e.g. 1990, 1998), and others. In contrast, the exact meaning and the status of the
word in today’s language remain uncharted territory. This paper argues that
bwénaado is a culturally salient word, particularly for the Cèmuhî but also, albeit to
a lesser extent, for New Caledonians at large. Adopting an applied ethnolinguistics
perspective (Peeters 2013, 2015, 2017), the paper uses the appropriate NSM-based
protocol for culturally salient words, namely ethnolexicology, to suggest that the
word bwénaado reflects an important cultural value, and as such seems to be able to
act as a catalyst for the purpose of delving into Cèmuhî cultural values at large.
Applied ethnolinguistics is a model primarily developed for use in the foreign
language classroom; its aim is to help advanced learners use their burgeoning
language skills to explore the cultural values upheld within the languaculture they
are studying.
7.2 Cultural Salience of the Word Bwénaado
Cultural salience is gauged based on relevant non-linguistic information. In the case

at hand, some of that information relates to the wider New Caledonian community,
some is specific to the Cèmuhî.
7.2.1 Bwénaado in the Wider New Caledonian Community
Many New Caledonians are likely to be aware of the word bwénaado, even though
they are unlikely to speak the language it is part of and do not often see it in writing.
They may get to see it when visiting the Centre culturel Tjibaou in Noumea, named
after legendary Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou. One of the main Kanak huts at
the Centre, the so-called grande case (‘big hut’), is the Case Bwénaado, which
serves as a home away from home for a number of Kanak artefacts on loan from the
overseas museums that originally collected them. Other (older) spellings that are
perhaps better known include boenando and bwenando. The latter crops up in an
anonymous report on a visit to the towns of Koné and Pouembout, situated on either
side of the border between the Paicî-Cèmuhî and the Hoot Ma Whaap (spelled Hoot
Ma Waap in Fig. 7.1) areas, outside of Cèmuhî territory, by Jean-Louis Veyret,
chairman of the Fondation des pionniers de Nouvelle-Calédonie6:
6
“Notre tournée à Koné et à Pouembout”, Pionniers de Nouvelle-Calédonie, novembre 2005,
pp. 3–4, p. 3.
Fig. 7.1 The Kanak languages and customary areas of New Caledonia. Source Sallabank (2015)
Notre président Jean-Louis, un peu perdu au milieu de tous ces Broussards […], a dû
égrener son “bwenando” et rappeler l’ancienneté des clans Veyret et Fayard en remontant
aux années 1880 et 1850. [‘Our chairman Jean-Louis, a little forlorn among all these
country people, had to recite his “bwenando” and recall the longstandingness of the Veyret
and Fayard clans, going back to the 1880s and 1850s.’]
Although the visit only involved people belonging to the European settler population
—the so-called Caldoches—, the use of the word bwenando in a context where
someone is meant to recall his or her ancestry is entirely accurate and in line with
indigenous practice. The use of the word clan to refer to a non-indigenous family and
its line of descendants (rather than to a Kanak collectivity) is noteworthy.
How did a word from a language with relatively few speakers come to be known
across New Caledonia, even making its way into the popular culture of Caldoche
pioneers? There can be little doubt that Jean-Marie Tjibaou himself has played a
significant role. He used the spelling boenando to name the first act of a
‘play-pageant’ or jeu scénique performed in Noumea in 1975, at the Mélanésia
2000 cultural event.7 The play-pageant’s title is Kanaké, after the name of its main
7
The complete text of the play, co-authored with Georges Dobbelaere, was not published until
twenty years after its staging. It appears in Mwà Véé 10 (September 1995). Mwà Véé was a Kanak
cultural periodical produced by the Agence de développement de la culture kanak at the Tjibaou
Cultural Centre. For an English translation, see Dobbelaere and Tjibaou (2006). For further
discussion and contextualization, see Brown (2008, 2016).
character Téâ Kanaké. The first of its three acts (Le boenando) uses the setting of a
multi-clan gathering and yam ceremony to evoke the spirit and values of the Kanak
before the arrival of European and other settlers.8 The second (La conquête) centres
on the disruption caused by French colonization. The third is largely symbolic and
revolves around reconciliation, projecting a postcolonial destin commun (‘common
destiny’) for the different communities, which are invited to another yam ceremony.
The word boenando is used again, but the act is called Le partage des ignames ‘The
sharing of yams’.
Interestingly, boenando is not even a word of Tjibaou’s native language, Pi(n)je,
spoken in the Southeast of the Hoot Ma Whaap area, which shares part of its south
border with the Paicî-Cèmuhî area. His choice of the word was a significant one,
though (Brown 2008: 545, 2016: 58). He could instead have relied on the word
pilou (or its reduplicated form pilou-pilou), a widely understood French regionalism
that was probably better known than his own choice boenando.9 However, as the
context was that of a play-pageant referring to pre-colonial times, with plenty of
visual cues and references to a traditional yam ceremony, it appeared more astute to
use a word that was resolutely indigenous.
Those with historical knowledge may furthermore remember Bwenando as the
name of a short-lived pro-independence newspaper sponsored by the FLNKS.10
Published from July 1985 until July 1989, it moved from a weekly to a fortnightly
schedule at the beginning of 1987 and continued to appear regularly until April
1988, after which only five issues came out at irregular intervals. Resolutely sep-
aratist,11 Bwenando presented itself as the voice of the Kanak people, and as le
premier journal de Kanaky, ‘Kanaky’s first newspaper’. Publication ceased shortly
after Tjibaou’s shooting death at the hands of a fellow Kanak, but the legacy
remained: bwenando and boenando are nowadays—together with pilou(-pilou)—
among the better known words in local discourse to refer to some of the events or
practices called bwénaado in Cèmuhî.
The concept of ‘bwénaado’ recently gained greater currency in the lead-up to the
New Caledonian independence referendum of 4 November 2018, as the exchange
8
Yams, also found in other temperate and tropical world regions, are a root vegetable similar to
sweet potatoes.
9
As explained for instance by Boulay (2013) and Geneix-Rabault (2015), pilou is the French
spelling of philu, a word from the Nyelâyu language referring to a dance or to the act of dancing;
its French counterpart is used for all Kanak dances, including those performed during boenando
(or bwénaado) type celebrations. Nyelâyu is spoken in and near the northern tip of New
Caledonia’s mainland (Balade, Belep Island; see Fig. 1), where the first migrants arrived. Pilou
may also be related to Tjibaou’s own word pila, a generic Pije word for a variety of dances (cf.
Ammann 1997: 55–56).
10
FLNKS stands for Front de libération nationale kanak et socialiste (‘Kanak and Socialist
National Liberation Front’), an alliance of pro-independence political parties founded in 1984.
Most of its supporters are from the Kanak indigenous population but the membership also includes
other ethnic communities.
11
See Aldrich (1995: 136) for a description of the newspaper’s ideological ambit.
of speeches and gifts constitutes the purposeful expression and continuous con-
struction of the identity of the individuals or groups arriving in a new space.
Tjibaou was the first to refer to the concept of ‘bwénaado’ as a way to reinforce the
idea of the ‘destin commun’ (‘common destiny’), agreed upon during the Noumea
Accord in 1998. During his opening speech at the Melanesia 2000 festival in 1975,
he said: ‘Nous avons voulu ce Festival parce que nous croyons en la possibilité
d’échanges plus profonds et plus suivis entre la culture européenne et la culture
canaque’ (‘We wanted this festival because we believe in the possibility of more
far-reaching and more intense exchanges between the European and Kanak cul-
tures’). As KamoHoot further explains in the online magazine Le Cri du Cagou: ‘Le
destin commun, c’est nous qui l’avons initié quand nous avons accepté le tabac du
premier Blanc qui est arrivé ici au 19ème siècle’ (‘We are the ones who initiated the
idea of a common destiny when we accepted the tobacco offered to us by the first
white man who arrived here in the 19th century’).12
7.2.2 Bwénaado Among the Cèmuhî
For the Cèmuhî, the cultural salience of the word bwénaado is not limited to the
large-scale events known in the wider community as bwenando, boenando or pilou
(-pilou). Bwénaado events occur in a variety of settings, ranging from greetings,
farewells and apologies to important milestones such as births, weddings and
funerals, and recurring yearly celebrations such as the previously mentioned yam
ceremonies. The latter (called bwénaado ko u in Cèmuhî) are especially important
in the Kanak calendar and return every year, around February and March. Large
numbers of freshly harvested yams are ceremoniously prepared, redistributed
among the present clans, and then eaten, to put an end to any conflicts of the past
year and to herald the start of a new year on the Kanak calendar. In accordance with
its phallic appearance, the yam (called u in Cèmuhî) symbolizes male virility.
However, it also has a deeper cultural connotation. In Kanak mythology, the u is
said to have penetrated the earth, an element that is associated with motherhood and
giving birth to new life after a gestation period of nine months, not unlike human
pregnancy. This is why the yam plays such an important role in several forms of
ceremonial exchange (Bensa 1998). For example, during a funeral, mourners offer
yams to the bereft family. It is a powerful symbolical gesture, meant to indicate that
the deceased will nourish the earth and thus ensure the continuation of the cycle of
regeneration.
12
http://lecriducagou.org/2009/02/kanaky-et-destin-commun. Accessed 12 November 2018. For
background information on the New Caledonian independence debate, the referendum, and the
discursive construction of a ‘common destiny’, see Lecompte-Van Poucke (2016, 2018).
Bwénaado events can range from large-scale multi-clan ceremonies13 to

small-scale rituals involving only a few individuals. Regardless of size, the presence
of the individual referred to in Cèmuhî as daame (‘chief’ or ‘leader of the clan’) or
maame (‘elder brother’)—or his representative—is imperative. A large-scale
bwénaado involves an act of social exchange between a group of givers, one of
whom acts on behalf of the group, and a group of recipients or beneficiaries. The
aim is to strengthen existing relationships and/or create new ones. On the other
hand, the smaller the bwénaado, the less celebration; however, gift-giving and
speeches always remain. The speeches include three important elements: where
people come from, why they are there, and what their intentions are; they are based
on values such as humility, respect and willingness to bridge the gap between the
two entities.
Each type of event has its own defining features that, although often codified,
leave room for some improvisation. A good example of a small-scale bwénaado is
the very common greeting ritual in which a visitor engages when seeking hospi-
tality from a visitee, which would be la tribu (the French word for a Kanak
community), represented by pa daame (‘the chief’) or his approved delegate. In this
type of bwénaado, the visitor offers the representative a neatly folded cloth con-
taining an appropriate amount of money, often partly visible. This goes hand in
hand with a speech, preferably in the local language. If the visitor does not know
the language, French is an acceptable substitute. When the visitor has concluded his
greeting, the representative accepts the gift with a firmly resounding olé (‘thank
you’). Having accepted the gift, the representative presents the visitor with another
cloth, containing an equal sum of money. At the end of the visit, a different cloth is
presented from the one used on arrival; it once again contains money. The exchange
takes place in a manner that is highly similar to the greeting ritual.
An example of a small-scale greeting bwénaado, accompanied by an English
translation, is given in (1).
(1) E taa abé éni me pwö pèhin pa a pomwo
‘I have come here, near the foundation of the dwelling place’
hââhi ni nu me ni éja
‘beneath the coconut and the pine trees’
E pwö tiu a mwaanu ka
‘I gird myself with the cloth and’
E pwö abé bwöcu
‘I have come to greet [you]’
13
For video-recorded examples, see e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq1h0iqhD2c (fare-
well), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tSkyAHARLc (wedding), http://vimeo.com/50914091
(yam ceremony), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRDcgyI6v2s (apology). All accessed 14
September 2016.
me pwaalè ali pwaadèn

‘to establish the alliance (lit. ‘the road’)’
ka me pwaalè ali na pomwo.
‘and to right the dwelling place.’
The bwénaado tradition is upheld, not only by the Cèmuhî, but in fact (under
different names) by many other Kanak as well, with the possible exception of at
least some younger people living in urbanized environments. For non-Kanak vis-
itors and field workers striving to respect century-old traditions, this may at times
cause a degree of confusion. During fieldwork carried out in Pweevo, a small town
in the Hoot Ma Whaap area, Sallabank (2015: 39) preceded most of her interviews
with the ‘customary gesture’, a short formal speech asking for permission to enter
the home, which involves gifts, generally a token small sum of money and a length
of cloth’. She then adds: ‘However, when I visited the Catholic primary school to
interview teachers, who were all young women, and tried to initiate the customary
gesture, I was told gardez ça pour les vieux (‘keep that for the old people/elders’)’.
In a footnote, acknowledging feedback from a local linguist, she recognizes that
‘they could well have meant that I should give this to someone who could receive it,
like an elder’ (ibid.: 47; see above).
7.3 Linguistic Analysis
Investigation of written sources and consultation with native speakers suggest that
the word bwénaado has three prominent meanings: bwénaado1 refers to a large-scale
customary celebration, bwénaado2 to a customary ceremony, bwénaado3 to a cus-
tomary gift. Sections 7.3.1, 7.3.2 and 7.3.3. look at each of these meanings in turn.
7.3.1 Bwénaado1 ‘Large-Scale Customary Celebration’
As pointed out earlier (cf. Sect. 7.2.1), bwénaado is the Cèmuhî term for a practice
more widely known as pilou or pilou-pilou:
When Kanaks from different language areas come together, they use the term pilou or
pilou-pilou, but if they speak the same Kanak language they may, if they know their own
local vocabulary, use a local expression. In the languages of the north, […] the big
exchange ceremony with dancing is called genaman. In Cèmuhî, the ceremonies are called
bwénaado and in Paici, they are called gé. (Ammann 1997: 56)
Examples (2) and (3) illustrate this use of bwénaado. To alleviate the text and the
glosses, we shall refer to it as bwénaado1 in running commentary and as ‘cele-
bration’ in interlinear glosses and translations. Both the interlinear glosses and
translations are ours.
(2) […] piè me o ihi- ni ila ko- a bwénaado

namely to FUT side.dish ART.N.PL pot for- ART.N.SG celebration
‘[…] to add flavour to the meal at the celebration’
(Les écailles de poisson de Tiwécaalè [‘The scales of the fish from Tiwécaalè’], l.
39)
(3) ka è cèi a bwénaado tè-n ö a-tuo
and he announce ART.N.SG celebration his who A-Tuo
‘The chief of Touho announces that he is going to organize a celebration’
(A-Hîîni et Kaapo Hôuut [‘A-Hîîni and Kaapo Hôuut’], l. 44)
Taken from the Cèmuhî legends transcribed in the 1960s by Jean-Claude Rivierre,14
who used the word cérémonie at the level of the interlinear glosses and rendered it in
the translations as fête (‘feast, celebration’), these examples are in fact representative of
an older form of the Tié dialect that nonetheless keeps its currency. The so-called
langue des vieux (‘language of the elders’) is still being used for the transmission of
sacred ancestral discourse. Some of its words may no longer be in common use and its
syntax may be more complex than (or at least somewhat different from) what most
native speakers are used to on a daily basis. Nonetheless, it is important for the younger
generations to have a grasp of the older form of the language, so they can listen to the
elders and ensure ancestral discourse is passed on appropriately.
As a noun denoting an event, bwénaado1 ‘celebration’ often follows a verb that
expresses attendance or refers to an act of staging or preparation. Phrases such as mu
hê a bwénaado (illustrated in Sect. 3.3) and pwihi a bwénaado belong to the former
category; they can both be glossed as ‘attend a celebration’. The latter category
includes phrases such as wânehi a bwénaado ‘gather food for a celebration’ and pwö
a bwénaado, which, in terms of frequency, seems to outrank all others. Pwö can be an
existential predicator, as in (4), or denote an act of doing or making, as in (4):
(4) ka bwö pwö a bwénaado ééngin

and then be ART.N.SG celebration Hienghène
‘and then a celebration takes place in Hienghène’
(A-Hîîni et Kaapo Hôuut, l. 5)
(5) tè bè time lé ucè pwö mwo a-li bwénaado
ASSERT henceforth NEG they IMPR do still ART.DEF.SG ceremony
‘so they bring the celebration to a halt’
(Les écailles de poisson de Tiwécaalè, l. 42)
Table 7.1 provides a selection of mostly French glosses for bwénaado1 ‘celebra-
tion’ and related spellings used in the literature.
14
For Ex. (2) and (5), see https://cocoon.huma-num.fr/exist/crdo/meta/crdo-CAM_ECAIL_
SOUND. Accessed 18 September 2016. Ex. (3) and (4) are from https://cocoon.huma-num.fr/
exist/crdo/meta/crdo-CAM_T6FBT1_SOUND. Accessed 25 September 2016.
Table 7.1 A sample of glosses for the word bwénaado1 (including other spellings)
Spelling Gloss Source
bwénaado Échanges cérémoniels [‘Ceremonial Bensa and Rivierre (1982)
exchanges’]
bwénaado Rassemblement cérémoniel [‘Ceremonial Bensa and Antheaume
gathering’] (1982)
bwénaado Grands rassemblements [‘Big gatherings’] Bensa (1990)
boenando Échange fraternel [‘Brotherly exchange’] Kurtovitch (1995)
bwénaando Échange cérémoniel [‘Ceremonial exchange’] Mokaddem (1998)
bwenaado Rassemblement coutumier [‘Customary Jouve and Sodter (1999)
gathering’]
bwénaado Customary gathering Tissandier (2006)
boenando Fête [‘Celebration’] Brown (2008)
bwenando Yam exchange Chappell (2014)
bwenando Grandes fêtes [‘Big celebrations’] Djoupa (2014)
boenando Feast Brown (2016)
None of the glosses (including our own) captures its exact meaning. They are
approximations, at best. They rely on terminology imposed on the term bwénaado
from the outside. They try to capture the meaning of an indigenous word but
invariably get caught in a cultural prism. They rely on concepts that may not at all
be relevant—or even known—to speakers of Cèmuhî and variously emphasize one
or more aspects of a bwénaado1: exchange of gifts, gathering, brotherliness, cer-
emonial nature, festive nature, big size, custom.
Surprisingly, none refers to the fact that the gatherings or celebrations typically
involve a meeting of different clans or mwa, even though this is a highly salient
feature that ought to be properly acknowledged. To do so, we will posit mwa ‘clan’
as an areal semantic molecule (Levisen and Priestley 2017), one that transcends the
boundaries of a particular languaculture, but remains highly culturally specific and
is presumably needed as a semantically complex building block in the explication
of a considerable number of other words. The explication below defines mwa as a
community of people with shared ancestry (components a to e). It then goes on to
say that women marry into the clan of their husband (component f) and spells out
how members of a clan think about one another (component g).
[A] mwa ‘clan’
a. many people
b. these people can think like this: we [m] are many; at the same time, we [m] are like one
c. many of these people can think about one man [m] like this:
I live because this man lived a long time before
d. when these people think like this, they think about the same man [m]
e. if someone can think like this about this man [m], this someone is one of these people
f. if a woman’s [m] husband [m] can think like this about this man [m], this woman [m] is one of these people
g. if someone is one of these people, this someone can think like this about all the others:
I know that these people want to do good things for me as I want to do good things for them
I know that these people feel something good towards me as I feel something good towards them
As shown in [A], the explication of the areal semantic molecule mwa involves four
other semantic molecules. Three of these are likely to be universal, namely man [m],
woman [m] and husband [m]. Man [m] and woman [m] have been explicated (in their
plural forms men and women) in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014: Chap. 2); husband
[m] still awaits an explication. The fourth, we, is the object of what was, at the time of
writing, work in progress (Goddard and Wierzbicka forthcoming). The hypothesis is
that there is indeed a universal we, and that the so-called exclusive we (not including
the addressee) found in many languages is in fact semantically neutral (i.e. neither
inclusive nor exclusive) but pragmatically marked as it contrasts with a genuinely (i.e.
semantically) ‘inclusive we’ (which does include the addressee).
On the other hand, the exchange of gifts being a particularly salient feature of the
type of bwénaado that brings together two or more mwa, the act of giving, too, will
need to be referred to in an NSM explication for bwénaado1 ‘celebration’. This is
best done by means of a fifth semantic molecule, give [as a gift], for which an
explication is provided in Goddard and Wierzbicka (2016: 121).
A tentative explication for bwénaado1 ‘celebration’, relying on a combination of
semantic primes and molecules, might run as follows:
[B] bwénaado1 ‘celebration’
a. something that happens in a place when many people in this place do some things for some time
because they want to
b. when it happens, it is like this:
c. there can be two mwa [m] in this place; there can be more
d. the people in this place feel something very good towards the other people in this place;
these other people feel the same
e. they want to do good things for the other people in this place;
these other people want to do the same
f. they want good things to happen to the other people in this place;
these other people want the same
g. they say many things to the other people in this place;
these other people do the same
h. they give [m] many things to the other people in this place;
i. something like this happens at times not like other times because all these people want it to
happen at these times
j. when it happens, all these people feel something very good
k. it happened like this when people lived in this place before; it will happen many times after this
Component (a) describes the first meaning of bwénaado (i.e. bwénaado1 ‘cele-
bration’) as an organized event involving a large number of people. Components
(b) to (h) provide detail in the form of a prototypical scenario (‘it is like this’).
Component (c) depicts a bwénaado1 ‘celebration’ as involving two or more clans
(mwa). Components (d) to (h) describe the general mood among members of each
of the participating clans and highlight the striking features of a bwénaado1 ‘cel-
ebration’, including the speeches and the exchange of gifts. Component (i) de-
scribes a bwénaado1 ‘celebration’ as a special event held at special times.
Component (j) underscores the festive mood that reigns throughout. Component
(k) emphasizes the customary nature of the event. Unlike the glosses in Table 7.1,
[B] is verifiable by cultural insiders, and is thus accessible to insiders and outsiders
alike.
7.3.2 Bwénaado2 ‘Customary Ceremony’
Curiously, when there is an explicit mention of size in scholarly references to

bwénaado events, the emphasis is always on ‘big’, never on ‘small’. Yet, smallness
is by no means unheard of in the case of a Cèmuhî bwénaado: in contemporary
Tié, the term is also used for small-scale rituals (cf. Sect. 7.2.2), as shown in
example (6):
(6) é caa pwihi a-li bwénaado haabwén ka mehin ni

I PASTtake part ART.DEF.SG ceremony yesterday and few ART.N.PL
apuliè
people
‘The bwénaado I took part in yesterday involved just a few people.’
Table 7.2 lists the various settings for a bwénaado2 ‘customary ceremony’, together
with the conventional Cèmuhî and French name(s) for the ritual that takes place in
each.15 The Cèmuhî labels were elicited in 2013 from a native speaker from the
village where the second author lived from 2004 to 2008.
Unlike bwénaado1 ‘celebration’, hiuulè is a term used only for small-scale
events. This explains why, in some cases, two names are possible. When a greeting
event occurs on a large scale, between a herald designated by a clan, on the one
hand, and the daame (‘chief’ or ‘leader of the clan’) and caa me ni ao (‘fathers and
grandfathers’) of another clan, it is referred to as a bwénaado1 ko hegi apulip. It
may also occur on a smaller scale, e.g. between a representative of a household and
the daame (‘chief’) of another clan, in which case it may be called hiuulè ko hegi
apulip. In both cases, we are dealing with an act of a ceremonial nature, which,
regardless of its scale, can be referred to as a bwénaado2 ‘customary ceremony’.
The following NSM explication attempts to capture in universal terms the
meaning of bwénaado2 ‘customary ceremony’. References to many in explication
[B] have been replaced with references to some, thus changing the perspective from
a large-scale event to one that may vary in size according to the circumstances at
hand. For the same reason, references to mwa have been removed. Finally, as
bwénaado2 ‘customary ceremony’ is not limited to times not like other times, but
may occur in relatively unremarkable settings, component (i) in explication [B] has
been left out:
15
Interestingly, coutume and custom do not routinely surface in glosses of the word bwénaado and
its variants (cf. Table 1), although the adjectives coutumier and customary do appear occasionally.
Table 7.2 Different settings and names for the Cèmuhî bwénaado2
Setting Cèmuhî name Conventional French name
Greeting bwénaado/hiuulè ko hegi coutume d’accueil
apulip
Farewell bwénaado/hiuulè ko pine coutume de départ/d’au-revoir
apulip
Apology hiuulè ko jahinaado coutume de pardon
Birth hiuulè ko abèélè coutume de naissance
Funeral hiuulè ko mèlè coutume de deuil
Wedding bwénaado ko atèn coutume de mariage
Yam bwénaado ko u coutume (or fête) de l’igname/coutume (or fête)
ceremony des ignames
[C] bwénaado2 ‘customary ceremony’

a. something that happens in a place when some people in this place do some things for some time
because they want to
b. when it happens, it is like this:
c. the people in this place feel something very good towards the other people in this place;
these other people feel the same
d. they want to do good things for the other people in this place;
these other people want to do the same
e. they want good things to happen to the other people in this place;
these other people want the same
f. they say some things to the other people in this place;
g. they give [m] some things to the other people in this place;
h. when it happens, all these people feel something very good
i. it happened like this when people lived in this place before; it will happen many times after this
Like bwénaado1 ‘celebration’, bwénaado2 ‘customary ceremony’ is commonly used

in combination with the verb pwö. There is, however, an important difference. When
following pwö, bwénaado1 ‘celebration’ takes an article, and the resulting phrase is
semantically compositional, i.e. its meaning is a function of the meaning of its ele-
ments (see Ex. (4)–(5)). Bwénaado2 ‘customary ceremony’, on the other hand, is
‘fused’ to the verb pwö, creating what could be considered to be an idiomatic phrase.
Pwö bwénaado2 is the Cèmuhî phrase par excellence used to render the French
regionalism faire la coutume (lit. ‘make custom’, i.e. ‘[do] the act that all Kanak
people perform when they arrive at somebody’s place or at a particular ceremony—
linked to the life cycle, to the local society or to welcoming’; Leblic 2007: 276).16
Thus, during a wedding, when the family of the groom acknowledges, with their own
gifts intended for the bride’s family, the gifts from the family of the bride, including the
bride herself, the formula in (7) is used:
16
If our assessment is right, it disproves the claim, made by some (e.g. Deterts 2002: 4) that there is
no way of expressing the very generic idea captured by the phrase faire la coutume in local Kanak
languages, which—so the argument goes—can only refer to the act of making specific ‘forms of
custom’.
(7) pa kèpuunè è pwö bwénaado ne ko- pa

ART.SG groom.and.his.family he make.custom towards to ART.SG
ajèlu
giver.of.the.bride
‘The groom and his family make custom to the family of the bride.’
(Margo Lecompte-Van Poucke, field notes)
Rivierre’s (1994: 118) gloss for the non-compositional use (the only one he lists in
his dictionary) is not faire la coutume, which may come as a surprise as it was a
well-established phrase, even at the time when his dictionary was published, but
faire les cérémonies coutumières (‘do the customary ceremonies’). We would like
to argue that it is to Rivierre’s credit that he did not use the former.
Indeed, while the set phrase pwö bwénaado is a culturally very appropriate
rendering of the regional French faire la coutume, it is debatable whether the latter
should be encouraged as a translation of the former. In spite of its common use, the
French phrase inevitably carries with it a reference to an unintended meaning of the
word coutume, one that is not specifically tied to a Kanak context, but is used more
widely. It has been said (see, e.g., Salomon 2000: 287) that the intended meaning is
a metonymical, and locally bound, extension of the other one—and therein lies
precisely the problem: one and the same word covers what are, from a Kanak
perspective, two different realities. On the one hand, the word coutume refers to ‘un
ensemble de normes et de pratiques censées avoir réglé la vie sociale locale avant
l’arrivée des Européens’ [‘a body of norms and practices presumed to have ruled
local social life before the arrival of the Europeans’] (ibid.). On the other hand, it
refers to ‘les cérémonies d’échange entre groupes sociaux […] et les biens engagés
lors de ces échanges cérémoniels’ [‘the exchange rituals between social groups and
the goods tended during these ritual exchanges’] (ibid.). To talk about ‘the body of
norms and practices’, one would say C’est la coutume, always with a definite
article, la. To generalize about the exchange rituals, one would say the same;
however, referring to each of the individual rituals, one would say C’est une
coutume (indefinite article une) (Faugère 2000: 41).
The Cèmuhî do not use the word bwénaado to refer to the entire ‘body of norms
and practices’ that rule their lives; they use the word bwö-mu17 instead. Nor do
other Kanak use their word for bwénaado in such a broad meaning. Bwénaado is
not about customary law or droit coutumier at large but about native custom or
customs of one particular kind, invariably entailing giving and receiving in a
17
Lit. ‘manner + to stay’, i.e. ‘manner of staying’. Like kastom, formally derived from the English
word custom, meaning ‘traditional culture’ in Bislama, bwö-mu “allows speakers to talk about the
past as a vital part of the present” (Levisen and Priestley 2017). An NSM explication of bwö-mu
would presumably follow roughly the same lines as that proposed by Levisen and Priestley for
“kastom as a cultural value”.
variety of settings. Conflating the two, even while duly acknowledging the poly-
semy of the term used, brings with it a reinterpretation that is foreign to New
Caledonia’s indigenous population, one that the Kanak themselves appear to have
cleverly avoided in their own rendering of the phrase faire la coutume by using
words such as bwénaado.
The French phrase is nowadays so widespread in New Caledonia that, in all
likelihood, it is there to stay. However, we would still want to argue that a better
back-translation for the conventional (non-compositional) use of pwö bwénaado
would be (to) exchange (gifts and/or speeches) and, in French, échanger (des
cadeaux et/ou des discours). The latter are the phrases used by Jean-Marie Tjibaou
himself, in one of his most memorable speeches (Entretiens de Genève, University
of Geneva, March 1981), to clarify the meaning of faire la coutume for a Western
audience:
Et le groupe, quand on fait la coutume, quand on échange des cadeaux, quand on échange
des discours, on le fait par rapport aux alliances. [‘And in the group, when you make
custom, exchange gifts, exchange speeches, you do so by reference to connections by
marriage.’] (Tjibaou 1996: 111, 2005: 83)
7.3.3 Bwénaado3 ‘Customary Gift’
The various phrases that make up the entry for the word bwénaado in Rivierre’s
(1994) Dictionnaire cèmuhî-français demonstrate that the meanings we have
glossed as ‘celebration’ (i.e. bwénaado1) and as ‘customary ceremony’ (i.e.
bwénaado2) are by far the most salient ones. Of the two other meanings listed by
Rivierre, one refers to ‘customary gifts’, the other to ‘returned leftovers’. The
phrase pi-tii a-li bwénaado ‘scatter/distribute the gifts’ serves as an illustration of
the second meaning. As gifts are such an important part of our bwénaado1,2, the
existence of this meaning does not come as a surprise. The third meaning is not
exemplified; it becomes more prominent around the start of the new Kanak year
(which coincides more or less with French Easter celebrations), when elders dis-
tribute ni mwöp ‘leftovers’ (of the new crop of yams) among the various households
of the clan.
Examples (8) and (9) illustrate the use of bwénaado3 ‘customary gift’.18 The former
displays two meanings of bwénaado in short succession. The latter shows that the
polysemy observed in the case of bwénaado extends to the word hiuulè as well. Hiuulè
refers in this example to an exchange for a birth gift, which is first referred to as a béé- a
pamuliè and then as a bwénaado.
18
Ex. (8) is from Bensa and Rivierre (1982: 385); Ex. (9) is from https://cocoon.huma-num.fr/
exist/crdo/meta/crdo-CAM_T4FBT3etT5FAT1_SOUND. Accessed 22 September 2016.
(8) ka lu tè-ko mu hê- a-li bwénaado — lé tè-ko

and they2 REAL remain in ART.DEF.SG celebration they REAL
pi-tii a-li bwénaado
scatter ART.DEF.SG gifts
‘And the two of them attend the celebration; the gifts are shared around’
(La fille du soleil [‘The sun’s daughter’], l. 98)
(9) ka pwö a cème- pwén ka pwö a hiuulè naa
and be ART.N.SG reward turtle and be ART.N.SG gift REL
me a béé- a pamuliè tè- pa-jè a bwénaado naa

for ART.N.SG birth.gift de lui ART.N.SG gift REL
è ko pé daa-bé ö pwén
he ACT bring climb.this.way he.who turtle
‘[Of the two presents,] one is a reward for Turtle, and one is in return for his [= A-
Tipwa’s] birth gift, the present that Turtle has brought all the way up here’
(A-Tipwa Wiimiâ, l. 356)
In the literature, references to bwénaado3 ‘customary gift’ are rare. Sabourin and
Tuyienon (2007: 310) point out that the ‘dons réciproques’ [‘reciprocal gifts’] that
take place during important rituals are called gé in Paicî, and bwenaando (i.e.
bwénaado) in Cèmuhî.
An NSM explication of bwénaado3 ‘customary gift’ appears in [D].
[D] bwénaado3 ‘customary gift’
a. something
b. someone does something to this something because this someone wants to do something good
for someone else
c. when someone does this to this something, it is like this:
d. a short time before, this someone thought like this about someone else:
e. “I want this something to be this someone's”
f. because of this, this someone says something to this someone else
g. at the same time, this someone does something to this something
h. because this someone does this, after this, this something is this other someone’s, as this
someone wanted
i. it happened like this when people lived in this place before; it will happen many times after this
Components (a) and (b) describe bwénaado3 as an object to which something is

done by someone with good intentions towards someone else. Components (c) to
(h) describe the good intentions and detail what the person who harbours these
intentions does to turn the intentions into reality. Component (i) underscores the
customary nature of the process. The semantic molecule give [m] is forgone, as it is
possible to frame the explication in [D], but not those in [B] and [C], in semantic
primes without compromising readability.
7.4 Towards a Hypothetical Cultural Value
The more or less ceremonial exchange of gifts is a well-established practice in many

different parts of the world. The anthropological literature is rife with books and
papers that provide detailed accounts of culturally salient gift-giving systems in
various languacultures. Some of the earlier accounts (e.g. Mauss 2012 [first edition
1923–1924] on the Amerindian potlatch practice, and Malinowski 2014 [first edition
1922] on the Trobriand Islands’ kula ring) have become rightly famous for breaking
new ground and opening up perspectives for further research. Much of that research,
especially since Gouldner’s (1960) ‘preliminary statement’ on the matter, has been
carried out under the banner of reciprocity.19 By contrast, the term appears only
three times in Malinowski (2014), a book of almost 500 pages, and its French
equivalent réciprocité occurs just once in the 150 or so pages of Mauss (2012).
Everything seems to point to the fact that reciprocity is also a defining feature of a
bwénaado1 or bwénaado2. To put it differently, a bwénaado1 or bwénaado2 would
not be what they are if it were not for the gifts (bwénaado3) and the speeches that are
exchanged (or ‘reciprocated’) as part of the celebration or the ceremony. It would
therefore appear to make sense, based on our observations, to look at reciprocity as a
hypothetical cultural value in Cèmuhî languaculture. For anyone with first-hand
knowledge of indigenous New Caledonian languacultures, there is in all likelihood
nothing hypothetical about reciprocity among the Kanak: it is a given. Not so for
someone who looks in from the outside. When we talk about a hypothetical cultural
value, we do so from an applied ethnolinguistics perspective (Peeters 2013, 2015),
i.e. a perspective that, in the case at hand, enables learners of Kanak languages and
culture to supplement their often limited knowledge of the cultural values of their
chosen language through a positive engagement with the language.
Simply talking about reciprocity is not enough, though, for at least two reasons.
First of all, the various accounts in the scholarly literature show that no exchange
practice is exactly like any other. Even within the same broad region, there can be
noticeable differences (as Mauss found in the case of the potlatch systems of North
America). One thing that sets the Kanak exchange systems apart from many others
is that its present forms may also involve banknotes (as opposed to the so-called
shell money or shell currency crafted by local artisans). In addition, there is a
degree of competitiveness, though not at the level of the goods exchanged (as is the
case in many other parts of the world), but only at that of the accompanying
speeches: speakers try to outdo one another by piling up references to toponyms
and patronyms relevant to their respective clans.
Second, nobody to date seems to have thought of defining the term reciprocity in
simple, immediately intelligible words that make it intuitively clear what exactly we
are talking about. Gouldner (1960), who started the contemporary trend of talking
about reciprocity, convinced as he was that most people behave according to the
19
See for instance Sahlins (1972), van Baal (1975), Douglas (1994), Deterts (2002), Adloff and
Mau (2006), Hann (2006), Sabourin and Tuyienon (2007), Stegbauer (2011), Servet (2013).
dictates of an overruling principle of reciprocity,20 defined that principle as ‘a

mutually gratifying pattern of exchanging goods and services’ and explained how
reciprocity may ensure stability within social systems (ibid.: 170). But what are we
to make of such a definition, replete with the all too common technical jargon that is
rampant in today’s scholarly publications? How much clearer does a concept
become when its definition relies on terms that, from a semantic point of view, are
as complex—or even more so—as the concept that it seeks to define?
Using simple, immediately intelligible words (i.e. NSM), Wierzbicka (2009:
105–106) provides the following non-exhaustive list of ‘variations on reciprocity’
(our terminology) in a study of the so-called reciprocal constructions (such as, in
English, those involving the phrase each other) encoded in the grammars of
English, Russian, Polish, French and Japanese.21
[E]
at that time, someone did something to someone else
at the same time, this someone else did the same thing to this someone
[F]
after this, this someone else did the same thing to this someone
[G]
at that time, someone was doing something to someone else for some time
at the same time, this someone else was doing the same thing to this someone
[H]
at that time, someone was doing something to someone else for some time
after this, this someone else was doing the same thing to this someone for some time
[I]
because of this, after this, this someone else did the same thing to this someone
The differences are small, but not insignificant: as argued by Wierzbicka (2009: 105),
we need to be clear about the choice between after this and at the same time, between
inclusion and exclusion of for some time, and between inclusion and exclusion of
because of this. More importantly, perhaps, [E]–[I] cast doubt on the appropriateness of
the label reciprocity for our purposes. Indeed, reciprocity as a hypothetical cultural
value is not about someone doing something (anything) to someone else, and this
someone else doing the same thing to this someone; rather, it is about someone doing
something good for someone else, and this someone else doing something good
(not necessarily the same thing) in return. In addition, for the Cèmuhî, the cycle is
supposed to go on and on, and any interruptions to it are bound to have a negative
impact. Furthermore, doing good things together with other people is at least as
important as doing them on one’s own. There is no simple way of capturing this in
20
He talked about a ‘universal norm’, which he thought of as being inherent in most cultures.
21
Some inconsistencies have been removed.
English, which may well be the reason why anthropologists have turned to the label
reciprocity, changing its meaning in the process. We propose the following cultural
script:
[J] A cultural script for the never-ending cycle of doing good things for
others among the Cèmuhî
when someone does something good for someone else,
this someone else cannot not do something good for this someone because of this
it is bad if, after this, this someone doesn’t do other good things for this someone else
when people do something good for other people,
these other people cannot not do something good for these people because of this
it is bad if, after this, these people don’t do other good things for these other people
The cultural script in [J] may not provide us with any detail about what actually
happens when the Cèmuhî engage in acts of doing good things and doing other
good things in return (e.g. during a bwénaado), but it does tell us how, from a
Cèmuhî point of view, the cycle operates. It is an attempt at reflecting a Cèmuhî way
of thinking in terms that the Cèmuhî can actually understand and in which they can
recognize themselves, even though they do not normally think in English, but in
their own language or in French. Because it is written in cross-culturally intelligible
English, each of its components can be translated into Cèmuhî statements that
express exactly the same idea. A Cèmuhî version of [J] is given in [K]:22
[K] A cultural script for the never-ending cycle of doing good things for
others among the Cèmuhî (Cèmuhî version)
mepiè è tè ö pa-cèli ka pwö a-naa waé ne ko pa-cèli naa ité,
ö pa-cèli-ce ité time time tèmehi me è pwö a-naa waé ne ko pa-cèli-naa bè naa bè
tè ta he-me, alècèhen, è time ité pwö ö pa-cèli-ce ni-naa waé ne ko pa-cèli naa ité
mepiè pwö ni apuliè ka lé pwö a-naa waé ne ko ni apuliè-naa ité,
lépwö apuliè-ce ité time time tèmehi me lé pwö a-naa waé ne ko ni apuliè-naa bè naa bè
tè ta he-me, alècèhen, lé time ité pwö lépwö apuliè-ce ni-naa waé ne ko ni apuliè naa ité
For instructional purposes, it may be useful to make a few minor adjustments to [J].
It is recommended these include a newly added introductory phrase (to draw
attention to the fact that the script is by its very nature a generalization), generic you
instead of indefinite someone, as well as sentence-initial capitals and final full stops.
Doing this turns [J] into the so-called pedagogical script [L] (Goddard 2010):
[L] A pedagogical script for learners of Cèmuhî
Among the Cèmuhî, it is like this (because many people think like this):
When you do something good for someone else,
this other person has to do something good to you.
It is bad if, after this, you don’t do other good things for this other person.
When people do something good for other people,
these other people has to do something good for them.
It is bad if, after this, they don’t do other good things for these other people.
22
A table of Cèmuhî lexicalizations of semantic primes, with their English equivalents, is provided
in an appendix to this chapter.
Pedagogical scripts, which are not entirely written in NSM but rather in an
NSM-inspired form of minimal English, may also rely on any other version of the
metalanguage. The most relevant version is of course the one based on the language
the end-user is most comfortable with.
One question remains. Could we somehow generalize even further (without
going too far), and pitch the cultural and the pedagogical scripts above at the Kanak
rather than the Cèmuhî level? This is ultimately a matter for further research. It
seems, though, in spite of minor differences between the various indigenous lan-
guacultures of New Caledonia, as described by Leenhardt, Bensa, and others (cf. 1),
that the kind of thinking referred to in [J] and [L] is indeed not just typical of the
Cèmuhî but of all Kanak. In that sense, [J] and [L] are areal cultural scripts ‘shared
by members of several distinct linguistic communities which belong to what might
be called a […] cultural area’ (Ameka and Breedveld 2004: 168–169).
Critics might argue we have not dug deep enough. Could it be that, rather than a
cultural value, the Kanak cycle of doing good things for others and others doing
good things in return is no more than a behavioural norm and that, underpinning
that norm, there is a more basic and more authentic cultural value, i.e. social
stability? The cultural value that we posited would then be ‘downgraded’ to an
essential principle that efficiently regulates Kanak society by preserving stable
social relationships between its members.
The idea that Kanak culture attaches much greater ‘value’ to social stability than
Western cultures is commonplace. However, how useful would it be, from an
instructional point of view (i.e. adopting an applied ethnolinguistics perspective), to
posit a cultural value of social stability—or a rendering of the same idea in Cèmuhî,
were this to be possible? Is social stability not something that members of any
languaculture aspire to? It does not set languacultures apart from one another in the
same way that the Kanak ideal of doing good things for others and others doing
good things in return does. It would of course be entirely possible to propose social
stability as an ultimate cultural value, not only with reference to Cèmuhî and/or to
other Kanak languacultures but with reference to languacultures world-wide, and to
define it with due reference to particular forms of culturally inspired behaviour.
What we stand to gain by taking that approach is nonetheless unclear.
7.5 Conclusion and Outlook
Ever since people have come together in communities, they have felt the need to
regulate and control their relationships with members of other groups. One way of
building and maintaining a harmonious society is by sharing wealth. New
Caledonia has developed its own unique system of exchange, referred to as la
coutume by its French-speaking inhabitants and by the Melanesian part of the
population, which also uses indigenous terms that have high cultural visibility and
can thus be considered to be culturally salient words and carriers of cultural

meaning (Goddard 2015). This paper has focused on one such culturally salient
word and has set out to demonstrate that it reflects an important cultural value.
The word is bwénaado, and NSM has been used to explicate, as precisely and
culture-neutrally as possible, the meanings of the word and to spell out the cultural
value that underpins it.
From an instructional point of view, a lot is to be gained from approaching the
culture behind a foreign language through the language itself. This, however, is a
lesson that many language teachers have not yet learned: they continue to teach
culture ‘on the side’. Applied ethnolinguistics (Peeters 2013, 2015, 2017) offers
several pathways (protocols) leading from words, phrases and other linguistic
material to hypothetical cultural values, which are then to be corroborated through a
separate pathway going from the assumed cultural value back to the language.
Ethnolexicology is the approach that takes a culturally salient word as a starting point
and investigates whether, underpinning it, there might be a cultural value that is
important in the corresponding languaculture. Further evidence for this hypothetical
cultural value, which at this stage is hypothetical as it is based on the study of just one
culturally salient word, will need to be gathered using another protocol, known as
ethnoaxiology. The latter takes the hypothetical cultural value as a starting point and
seeks to corroborate it by means of independent non-linguistic and linguistic data.
This either leads to confirmation of the presumed cultural value or, in the absence of
supporting data, may result in dismissal of the initial hypothesis.
Adopting an applied ethnolinguistics perspective, we can say that the cultural
script in [J] and the pedagogical script in [L] refer to a hypothetical cultural value
derived from an ethnolexicological analysis of the culturally salient word
bwénaado. The hypothesis, which is more tentative for those who approach the
language without prior knowledge of the associated culture than for those who
already have a fair idea of the culture behind it, calls for further corroboration by
means of independent non-linguistic and linguistic data. This is the point where
ethnoaxiology will need to take over from ethnolexicology, in an attempt to bolster
the reality (and culture-specificity) of a cultural value upheld in Cèmuhî culture.
This additional step is not illustrated here. The evidence to be looked at should
definitely include the word hiuulè, as well as words for specific gifts such as (béé-
a) pamuliè ‘birth gift’ in Ex. (9).
In the case of an indigenous language such as Cèmuhî, the relevance of applied
ethnolinguistics may not be immediately obvious. It is after all a model primarily
developed for use in the foreign language classroom (see Sect. 1). However, as of
14 March 2018, out of the 28 Kanak languages that, according to most counts (cf.
Roche 2015: §2) remain, only seven—not including Cèmuhî (which is nonetheless
one of the more common ones)—were taught as non-compulsory single subjects
(second and/or third language) at the secondary level across New Caledonia.23 On
the other hand, the University of New Caledonia currently offers a licence
23
http://www.ac-noumea.nc/spip.php?article3161. Accessed 24 March 2018.
(bachelor’s degree) in Oceanic languages and cultures involving some exposure to

Paicî, Drehu, Nengone and Ajië. Again, Cèmuhî is not included. But times may
change; it is to be hoped that some form of applied ethnolinguistics will one day be
able to be implemented as part of a Cèmuhî teaching programme (or indeed as part
of any Kanak language teaching programme), as a way of promoting the discovery
of cultural values through language, thereby showing that language and culture are
inextricably linked and should be taught together, rather than in isolation.
Appendix: Cèmuhî Exponents of Semantic Primes
WAEO, WOGO, PACE, NAADO, APULIE, EEN Substantives

I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING*THING, PEOPLE, BODY
TOTO, BE- Relational substantives

KIND, PART
-CE, WIEN, ITE Determiners

THIS, THE SAME, OTHER*ELSE
CEIU/A, ALO, (I)-CEI, TAI, TOME*HIWON, MEHIN Quantifiers

ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MUCH*MANY, LITTLE*FEW
WAE, TA Evaluators
GOOD, BAD
UBWO, WAHIN Descriptors

BIG, SMALL
TEMEHI, NIIMIHI, NIME-(N), TIME NIME-(N), TENE, ALIHI, TENE Mental predicates
KNOW, THINK, WANT, DON’T WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
PII, PWOOTI, JU Speech

SAY, WORDS, TRUE
PWO, TUIE, PENEM Actions, events,

DO, HAPPEN, MOVE movement
MU, PWO, TE Location, existence,
BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) specification
TONG Possession
(IS) MINE
MULIE, MELE Life and death

LIVE, DIE
HE-ME*TAN, JENAA, ANABUN, ITE, MWO, EMWONU, BENAAMWON, Time

BENAAMWON
WHEN*TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR

SOME TIME, MOMENT
(continued)
(continued)
WE*BENAAMWON, ENI, PWO-(N), HAAHI-(N), KOJA, JE-, DUAA-(N), HE- Place
(N), TI
WHERE*PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE, TOUCH
TIME, HIE, TEMEHI, BE, MEPIE Logical concepts

NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF
NIHE, KOJA Intensifier, augmentor

VERY, MORE
WIELI Similarity
LIKE*AS
Notes • Exponents of primes can be polysemous, i.e. they can have other, additional meanings
• Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes • They can be formally, i.e.
morphologically, complex • They can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with *)
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conflict discourse.
Chapter 8
Heaven and Hell Are Here!
The Non-religious Meanings of English
Heaven and Hell and Their Arabic
and Hebrew Counterparts
Sandy Habib
Abstract The religious meanings of English heaven and hell, Arabic aljanna and
jahannam, and Hebrew gan eden and geyhinom have been explored in previous
work. The aim of the present chapter is to throw light on their non-religious
meanings, which turn out to be identical across the three languages. The six words
are explicated using the simple, universal terms of the Natural Semantic
Metalanguage. This results in explications that are easily understood and readily
translatable into all languages, giving cultural outsiders an insider’s view of these
concepts.

Keywords Heaven Hell Aljanna Jahannam Gan eden Geyhinom Natural
8.1 Introduction
The English words heaven and hell and their Arabic and Hebrew counterparts seem
to be polysemous. They each have two different but related meanings: one meaning
is religious while the other is non-religious. Examples (1) and (2) illustrate this for
English1:
(1) English heaven

a. God is in heaven.
b. Arkansas’s got nothing… California is heaven.
1
The corpora from which they are taken are further described in Sect. 8.3.
S. Habib (&)
Ohalo Academic College, Qatsrin, Israel
e-mail: mhsandy3@gmail.com

150 S. Habib
(2) English hell

a. And that you will burn in hell for the rest of your life when you leave this life.
b. War is hell, real life and the movies tell us.
In Arabic, there are several words for ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’, all of which appear in the
Quran and the Hadith (the latter being the record of the words, deeds and silent
approvals of the prophet Muhammad). The most commonly used word for ‘heaven’
is aljanna; for ‘hell’, it is jahannam. Their religious and non-religious meanings are
exemplified in (3) and (4). All Arabic examples in this chapter are quoted in a
transliterated version as well as an English translation.
(3) Arabic aljanna
a. aljannatu daru qararen lilmuʾminīna.
‘aljanna is a final repose to the faithful.’
b. inna ddāra llatī laysa fīhā kadarun walā huznun hiya ljannatu.
‘The house that is void of sorrow and sadness is aljanna.’
(4) Arabic jahannam
a. waman yaqtulu muʾminan mutaʿammidan fajazāʿhu jahannam.
‘He who deliberately kills a faithful will have jahannam as his reward.’
b. ʿammān madīnatun mukhtalaṭatun fīhā shayʾun mina ljannati washayʾun min
jahannam.
‘Amman is a mixed city; it has something of heaven and something of jahannam.’
Hebrew uses the words gan eden and geyhinom, respectively. Of these two words,
the first can be literally glossed as ‘garden of Eden’, the second as ‘valley of
Hinom’. Examples involving their religious and non-religious meanings are given
in (5) and (6). Hebrew data, too, are quoted in a transliterated form as well as a
translation into English.
(5) Hebrew gan eden

a. yesh hama`minim ki neshamatu shel adam tsaddik magià legan eden beòd
neshamato shel adam khote magià legeyhinom.
‘There are those who believe that the soul of a righteous person goes to gan eden
while
the soul of a sinner goes to hell.’
b. kitsorey haderekh halalu hafkhu legan eden la`tslanim.
‘These shortcuts became gan eden for lazy people.’
(6) Hebrew geyhinom
a. hageyhinom vehasatan hem hamakhshirim leha`nashat neshmat haàdam.
‘Geyhinom and Satan are the tools for punishing man’s soul.’
b. aval kaèt hem bogdim bi, veàkhshav ani khotse et hageyhinom.
‘But now they are betraying me, and I am currently crossing geyhinom.’
8 Heaven and Hell Are Here! The Non-religious Meanings … 151
In the first sentence of each of the above sets (marked with the letter a), heaven,
hell, and their Arabic and Hebrew counterparts refer to the afterlife. This is not so in
the second sentences (marked with the letter b). In addition, in the ‘a-sentences’, the
words for ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ seem to behave as concrete nouns whereas, in the
‘b-sentences’, their behaviour is apparently similar to that of abstract nouns. One
test (proposed by Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014) allowing for a distinction to be
made between concrete and abstract nouns is ‘by reference to “localizability”, i.e.
applicability or inapplicability of the question “where is it?”’ When heaven, for
instance, is used to refer to the ‘afterlife’, it is used as a concrete noun because one
can ask the question ‘Where is heaven?’ By contrast, when the same word is used
with its non-religious meaning, the question is inapplicable.
Section 8.2 of this chapter revisits the religious meanings of heaven, hell and
their counterparts in Arabic and Hebrew. Section 8.3 is methodological. The
non-religious meanings of the six words are the subject of Sect. 8.4. Some brief
conclusions are offered in Sect. 8.5.
8.2 Explication of the Religious Meanings (Habib 2018)
The religious meanings of the six words were investigated in Habib (2018), who
came up with an explication for each term and who, moreover, devised a semantic
template for supernatural places. The six explications are reproduced below with
some minor modifications that do not affect their content.
[A] English heaven
a place of one kind CATEGORY
this place isn’t like any place of any kind
some people think like this: “there isn’t a place of this kind” EXISTENTIAL STATUS
when people think about this place, they can say things like this: TYPICAL ATTRIBUTES
God [m] is in this place –INHABITANTS

after good people die, they live in this place all the time, because God [m] wants this
when good people live in this place after they die, –NATURE OF THE PLACE
they can’t not feel something very good because of this
good things can happen to people because someone in this place wants this
bad things can not happen to people because someone in this place wants this
when people think about this place, they can think like this: –LOCATION
this place is above the place where all people live
this place is very far from the place where all people live
before people die, they can’t see this place, they can’t be in this place
152 S. Habib
[B] Arabic aljanna

after good people die, they live in this place all the time, –INHABITANTS
because God [m] wants this
this place is above the place where all people live –LOCATION
this place is a very big place, there are many places in this place, –GENERAL DESCRIPTION
every place is above another place
if people in one of these places feel something good,
people in a place above this place feel something very good
many things in this place are like many things in the place where all people live:
there are trees [m] in this place, there is much water [m] in this place
people can eat [m] many good things in this place
people can drink [m] many good things in this place
there are boys [m] in this place, they live there all the time
when someone sees these boys [m], this someone can’t not feel something very good because of
this
when people live in this place [m], these boys [m] can do good things for them
there are women [m] in this place, they live there all the time
when someone sees these women [m], this someone can’t not feel something very good because
of this
when good men [m] live in this place after they die, they can do something with the bodies of these
women [m], like men [m] can do with the bodies of women [m] when they want to feel
something very good in their bodies
[C] Arabic ‫ ﺍﻟﺠﻨﺔ‬aljanna (Arabic version)
[D] Hebrew gan eden

after good people die, they live in this place all the time, –INHABITANTS
when people think about this place, they can think like this: –LOCATION
this place is above the place where all people live
154 S. Habib
[E] Hebrew ‫ גן עדן‬gan eden (Hebrew version)
‫הקטגוריה‬ ‫מקום מסוג אחד‬

‫המקום הזה לא כמו אף מקום מאף סוג‬
‫המעמד הקיומי‬ "‫ "אין מקום מסוג זה‬:‫מספר אנשים חושבים כך‬
‫תכונות טיפוסיות‬ :‫ הם יכולים לומר דברים כאלה‬,‫כשאנשים חושבים על המקום הזה‬
‫תושבים‬- ‫ כי אלוהים ]מ[ רוצה את זה‬,‫ אנשים אלה חיים במקום זה כל הזמן‬,‫אחרי שאנשים טובים מתים‬
‫טבעו של המקום‬- ,‫כשאנשים טובים חיים במקום הזה אחרי שהם מתים‬
‫הם לא יכולים לא להרגיש משהו מאוד טוב בגלל זה‬
‫מיקום‬- :‫ הם יכולים לחשוב כך‬,‫כשאנשים חושבים על המקום הזה‬
‫מקום זה הוא מקום מעל למקום החיים בו כל האנשים‬
‫מקום זה הוא מאוד רחוק מהמקום החיים בו כל האנשים‬
‫ הם לא יכולים להיות במקום הזה‬,‫ הם לא יכולים לראות את המקום הזה‬,‫לפני שאנשים מתים‬
[F] English hell

after bad people die, they live in this place all the time, –INHABITANTS
when bad people live in this place after they die, –NATURE OF THE PLACE
they can’t not feel something very bad because of this
when people think about this place, they can think like this:
this place is below the place where all people live –LOCATION
there is fire [m] everywhere in this place –GENERAL DESCRIPTION
because of this, bad people feel something very bad after they die
[G] Arabic jahannam

after bad people die, they live in this place all the time, –INHABITANTS
when bad people live in this place after they die, –NATURE OF THE PLACE
they can’t not feel something very bad because of this
there is fire [m] everywhere in this place –GENERAL DESCRIPTION
because of this, bad people feel something very bad after they die
[H] Arabic ‫ ﺟﻬﻨﻢ‬jahannam (Arabic version)
[I] Hebrew geyhinom

some people think like this: “there is not a place of this kind” EXISTENTIAL STATUS
when people think about this place, people can say things like this: TYPICAL ATTRIBUTES
after bad people die, these people live in this place all the time, –INHABITANTS
when bad people live in this place after these people die, –NATURE OF THE PLACE
these people can’t not feel something very bad because of this
when people think about this place, people can think like this: –GENERAL DESCRIPTION
there is fire [m] everywhere in this place
because of this, bad people feel something very bad after these people die
156 S. Habib
[J] Hebrew ‫ גיהינום‬geyhinom (Hebrew version)
‫הקטגוריה‬ ‫מקום מסוג אחד‬

‫המקום הזה לא כמו אף מקום מאף סוג‬
‫המעמד הקיומי‬ "‫ "אין מקום מסוג זה‬:‫מספר אנשים חושבים כך‬
‫תכונות טיפוסיות‬ :‫ הם יכולים לומר דברים כאלה‬,‫כשאנשים חושבים על המקום הזה‬
‫תושבים‬- ‫ כי אלוהים ]מ[ רוצה את זה‬,‫ אנשים אלה חיים במקום זה כל הזמן‬,‫אחרי שאנשים רעים מתים‬
‫טבעו של המקום‬- ,‫כשאנשים רעים חיים במקום הזה אחרי שהם מתים‬
‫הם לא יכולים לא להרגיש משהו מאוד רע בגלל זה‬
‫מיקום‬- :‫ הם יכולים לחשוב כך‬,‫כשאנשים חושבים על המקום הזה‬
‫יש אש ]מ[ בכל מקום במקום הזה‬
‫ אנשים רעים ירגישו משהו מאוד רע אחרי שהם מתים‬,‫בגלל זה‬
For detailed discussion of each of these explications, the reader is referred to Habib
(2018).
8.3 Methodology
In Sect. 4, I attempt to shed light on the non-religious meanings of heaven, hell, and
their Arabic and Hebrew counterparts. To do so, I will once again (as in Habib
2018) rely on corpus analysis, as well as on simple and universal concepts.
Using corpora for lexico-semantic analysis helps researchers find out how lan-
guage users employ the lexical items they are interested in across various contexts,
and this in turn provides them with information about what people know about the
concepts labelled by those items. For the purposes of this chapter, three corpora
were consulted: (1) the Corpus of Contemporary American English (over 520
million words; henceforth COCA), (2) ArabiCorpus (over 173 million words), and
(3) HebrewCorpus (over 150 million words).
Relying on corpus analysis is one thing; avoiding ambiguity (i.e. lack of clarity)
and ethnocentricity (i.e. bias) when presenting the results is quite another. To
sidestep these two pitfalls, the explications of the target terms will be based on
simple and universal concepts. The simplicity of the concepts will guarantee that
the explications are unambiguous; their universality will ensure that they are not
ethnocentric.
Which concepts, however, are simple and universal? Evidence from
cross-linguistic research on typologically and genetically different languages has
demonstrated that there are 65 concepts that enjoy these two characteristics
(Goddard and Wierzbicka 1994, 2002, 2014; Levisen 2013; Peeters 2006;
Wierzbicka 1972, 1996). These 65 concepts are called ‘semantic primes’ in the
Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory developed by Anna Wierzbicka,
Cliff Goddard and colleagues. This chapter seeks to capture the non-religious
meanings of English heaven and hell, as well as of their Arabic and Hebrew
counterparts, using English, Arabic and Hebrew exponents of the semantic primes.
The Arabic exponents of the primes are listed in Appendix 1; the Hebrew exponents
of the primes are listed in Appendix 2.
8.4 Non-religious heaven and hell and Their Arabic

and Hebrew Counterparts
8.4.1 ‘Heaven’
English heaven and its Hebrew and Arabic equivalents can be employed to talk
about very pleasant situations. Examples (7)–(9) relate to the English words and are
taken from COCA:
(7) ‘So tell me, what is it like in Georgia? I’ve never traveled farther south Denver’,
Rusty said. ‘Well, it’s heaven on earth to me’.
(8) ‘The oil fields, the war and the contraband trade made this place a lucrative heaven
for the local mafias’, says Arnold.
(9) Still, the Internet is heaven for researchers.
Examples (10)–(12) relate to the Hebrew words and are taken from HebrewCorpus:
(10) island hi gan eden aley adamot lema`ritsey teva.
‘Iceland is gan eden on earth for people who like nature.’
(11) medinat yisraèl hafkha lihyot gan eden laposhìm.
‘The state of Israel has turned into gan eden for criminals.’
(12) mezeg haàvir hakarir vehaàdama hatova hofkhim et marom hagalil legan eden
lagfanim.
‘The cool weather and the good soil turn Marom Hagali to gan eden for grapes.’
Examples (13)–(15) relate to the Arabic words and are taken from ArabiCorpus:
(13) arḍu miṣra hiya ljannatu fī ddunyā.
‘The land of Egypt is aljanna in this life.’
(14) ʿāshat zaynabu farḥatan biḥayātihā maʿa usratin jadidatin […] 45 yawman qaḍathā
zaynabu fī ljannati ʿalā ḥaddi taʿbīrihā.
‘Zaynab lived joyfully with her new family […] she spent 45 days in aljanna, as she
said.’
(15) innahum bikhtiṣāren yahrubūna mina ttaʿāsati […] fī bilādihim ilā ljannati
lmawʿūdati fī bilādi shshimāli ṣṣināʿiyyati.
‘In short, they escape from the misery […] in their countries to the promised janna in
the industrial countries of the north.’
158 S. Habib
As these examples demonstrate, the concept of heaven and its Hebrew and Arabic
equivalents are used in a similar way. The examples refer to a situation in which
people feel very good because things happen as they want. Note that people feel
very good when experiencing such a condition, not because they are obtaining good
things, but rather because they are gaining what they desire. This is evident from
examples (8) and (11). In (8), the place in question is described as being heaven for
local mafias, and, in (11), Israel is portrayed as being gan eden for criminals.
Needless to say, this does not mean that good things are happening in these places,
but that things are going in the direction that these local mafias or criminals want. It
is worth noting that ArabiCorpus does not present any examples in which aljanna is
used in this way. All the examples in which aljanna is used with a non-religious
meaning refer to a situation in which very good things are happening to someone.
Google, on the other hand, shows a number of examples of the closely related
Arabic word janna collocating with negatively loaded words, e.g. jannat
almutaṭarrifīn ‘janna of the extremists’ (35 hits), jannat alfāsidīn ‘janna of the
corrupt’ (32 hits), jannat assāriqīn ‘janna of the robbers’ (12 hits). I should also
note that Arabic employs the sequence jannat ʿadan ‘janna of Eden’ religiously and
non-religiously. It refers either to the ‘place’ where Adam and Eve were before their
fall (Muslims believe that this place is inside the place to which good people go
after they die) or to a situation in which they experience happiness as they obtain
what they desire. The sequence jannat ʿadan is found 74 times in ArabiCorpus. On
55 occasions, it is used with a religious sense, as in examples (16)–(18):
(16) bal innahu ʿazza wajalla khalaqa jannat ʿadan biyadihi.

‘But he, the Almighty one, created jannat ʿadan with his hand.’
(17) allahumma… askinnā jannat ʿadan.
‘Oh, God… make us dwell in jannat ʿadan.’
(18) hādhihi rriwāyāt tadūru ḥawla khaṭīʾati lʾisāni fī jannat ʿadan.
‘These narratives talk about man’s sin in jannat ʿadan.’
On 19 occasions, the sequence is used with a non-religious sense, as in examples

(19)–(21):
(19) shāhadtu fī ljanūbi jannat ʿadan.
‘I saw the South [of Egypt] as jannat ʿadan.’
(20) āb fī irlandā jannat ʿadan. Fahwa bāridun wadūd.
‘August in Ireland is jannat ʿadan; it is cool and friendly.’
(21) qabla an takhrujū litajlibū lanā jannat ʿadan, taʾakkadū min annakum lā taqūdūnā
naḥwa jahannam.
‘before you go out to bring us jannat ʿadan, make sure you are not leading us into hell.’
I suggest the following explication for English heaven, Arabic aljanna and Hebrew
gan eden:
[K] English heaven (Arabic aljanna, Hebrew gan eden)

a. it can be like this in a place for some time:
b. many things are happening in this place as someone wants
c. because of this, this someone can’t not feel something very good
d. at the same time, this someone knows that it is not like this at many other times
[L] Arabic aljanna (English heaven, Hebrew gan eden) (Arabic version)
[M] Hebrew gan eden (English heaven, Arabic aljanna) (Hebrew version)
:‫יכול להיות כך במקום מסוים לזמן מסוים‬ .a

‫הרבה דברים קורים במקום הזה כמו שמישהו רוצה‬ .b
‫ המיזהו הזה לא יכול לא להרגיש משהו מאוד טוב‬,‫בגלל זה‬ .c
‫ המישהו הזה יודע כי זה לא כך בזמנים רבים‬,‫באותו זמן‬ .d
8.4.2 ‘Hell’
In a similar fashion, English hell and its Arabic and Hebrew near-equivalents can be
employed to talk about very unpleasant situations. The following examples from
the corpora are illustrative:
(22) There is no doubt that the large Haitian community here in the USA is facing hell on
earth, waiting to hear if family members are alive or dead.
(23) Part of her was scared, ready to hobble back to the elder care, wait for the darkness
and see if Steve was there for her on the other side. Still, living this way was hell for
someone who’d always leaped before she looked.
(24) June is hot, July is hotter, and August is hell.
(25) laqad fataḥa lʾirhābu bāba jahannam.
‘Terrorism has opened the door of jahannam.’
(26) turīdīnanī an aʿīsha fī jahannama qalaqī wakhawfī watasāʾulī?
‘Do you want me to live in the jahannam of my anxiety, fear, and questioning?’
(27) mudunu lʿālami ththālithi hiya fī lghālibi jahannam.
‘Third World countries are mostly jahannam.’
160 S. Habib
(28) beynetayim hu takuwa bemalon shehu geyhinom aley adamot im kol hasiyutim
sheèfshar ledamyen.
‘Meanwhile, he is stranded in a hotel which is geyhinom on earth, with all the night-
mares that one can imagine.’
(29) ma ze hageyhinom haze, shekhavurat neàrim matila al haìr vehamishtara lo osa
klum.
‘What is this geyhinom which a group of adolescents is imposing on the city while the
police are not doing anything.’
(30) ulay yadah harakha tekhabe et esh hageyhinom shebalev.
‘Perhaps her soft hand would extinguish the fire of geyhinom that is in the heart.’
These examples show that English hell and its Arabic and Hebrew counterparts can
be used to refer to a situation in which a person or a group of people feel very bad
because of very bad things happening. The three corpora do not show any differ-
ence in the non-religious use of these words; this being so, I propose the following
explication for the three concepts:
[N] English hell (Arabic jahannam or Hebrew geyhinom)
a. it can be like this in a place for some time:

b. very bad things are happening to someone in this place
c. because of this, this someone can’t not feel something very bad
[O] Arabic jahannam (English hell, Hebrew geyhinom) (Arabic version)
[P] Hebrew geyhinom (English hell, Arabic Jahannam) (Hebrew version)
:‫יכול להיות כך במקום מסוים לזמן מסוים‬ a

‫הרבה דברים רעים קורים למישהו במקום הזה‬ b
‫ המישהו הזה לא יכול לא להרגיש משהו מאוד רע‬,‫בגלל זה‬ c
8.4.3 Comments on Individual Components
As argued at the end of Sect. 8.1 above, when used in their non-religious meanings,
the words studied in this paper are abstract nouns. Abstract nouns pose ‘certain
problems of explication’ (Goddard 2009: 18). Goddard (2009) and Goddard and
Wierzbicka (2014: Chap. 9) suggested one particular solution to these problems,

which is to start off the explication of an abstract noun X as shown in [Q]2:
[Q] X
a. something
b. people can say what (this something is) with the word X
c. someone can say something about something with this word when this someone thinks like this:
d. “it can be like this: […]”
The reasoning behind the use of these components was that abstract nouns ‘contain
in their meaning a semantic component which can be represented as “something”,
and also an explicit reference to a particular “word”’ (Goddard and Wierzbicka
2014: 209). The fact that this particular ‘word’ appears to be identical to the noun
being defined prompted the remark that such an approach ‘may seem circular’
(ibid.). The suggestion of (potential) circularity was countered by the claim that the
noun, as used in the body of the explication, is ‘functioning simply as a word-form’
(Goddard 2009: 18). Components (c) and (d) conveyed the idea that people can
describe something with the word being explicated when they are ‘thinking in
accordance with a certain mental model of how things can be’ (ibid.).
In the explications in Sects. 4.1 and 4.2, an expanded version of component
(d) is all that is used by way of introduction. Since the publication of Goddard and
Wierzbicka (2014), the authors appear to have abandoned the frame used until 2014
for abstract nouns, and so have some other NSM researchers.3 For example,
Mooney’s (2018) explication of the abstract noun torture simply starts with the
component ‘it can be like this’. Proceeding along these lines also avoids referring to
(abstract) heaven and hell (and their counterparts in Hebrew and Arabic) as
‘something’, which is arguably counter-intuitive. Rather, words such as heaven and
hell, used as abstract nouns, refer to a situation that exists in a certain place. Unlike
concrete heaven and hell, they do not directly refer to a place; however, they ‘need’
a place for the situation described as ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’ to eventuate. This provides
justification for adding a reference to a place to the component ‘it can be like this’.
The prime FOR SOME TIME is added because it seems that the situation in question has
to have some duration.
In components (b) to (d) of explications [K] to [M], corresponding to the words
heaven, aljanna and gan eden, and in components (b) and (c) of explications [N] to
[P], corresponding to the words hell, jahannam and geyhinom, I have used the
prime SOMEONE rather than PEOPLE. This is because feeling in heaven (aljanna, gan
eden) is not restricted to a group of people but can also be experienced by
2
The bracketed words in component (b), absent from Goddard (2009), were added in Goddard and
Wierzbicka (2014).
3
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer of this paper for pointing this out to me. One of the
reasons for not maintaining the longer version is newly discovered empirical evidence that
combinations of the prime SAY with wh-words like what are not universal.
162 S. Habib
individuals—and likewise for hell (jahannam, geyhinom). In component (c) of all

explications, the individual is described as feeling ‘very’ good or ‘very’ bad
because heaven (aljanna, gan eden) refers to an extremely pleasant situation, and
hell (jahannam, geyhinom) to an extremely unpleasant one. Thus, describing a
place as being ‘heaven on earth’, as in example (7) above, indicates that the speaker
is talking about a very pleasant experience that one can have while being or living
there. Component (d) was added in explications [K], [L] and [M], but not in
explications [N], [O] and [P], in order to emphasize the uniqueness of experiencing
heaven (aljanna, gan eden) in its non-religious meaning.
8.5 Conclusion
Semanticists have not paid a great deal of attention to nouns that are related to
religion. This includes nouns that, apart from a religious meaning, have a
non-religious meaning as well. The aim of this chapter was to investigate the
non-religious meanings of English heaven and hell, as well as their Arabic and
Hebrew near-equivalents. The terms were analysed and explicated using NSM. It
turns out that English heaven and its Arabic and Hebrew counterparts have identical
non-religious meanings: they refer to a very pleasant situation in which an indi-
vidual obtains what he or she desires. In the same way, the non-religious meanings
of English hell and its Arabic and Hebrew near-equivalents appear to overlap
perfectly: they refer to an extremely unpleasant experience that someone can go
through.
The present study can be seen as a contribution to the study of the semantics of
nouns (Ye 2017). It demonstrates that true translation equivalents do exist, even in
the case of concepts that, at first, appear to be highly culture-specific.
Appendix 1: Arabic Exponents of Semantic Primes (Based

on Habib 2011; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014)
ANĀ, ANTA, AHAD, SHAY’, NĀS, JISM Substantives

NAW‘, JUZ’ Relational substantives

KIND, PART
HĀDHĀ, NAFS, ĀKHAR Determiners

(continued)
(continued)
WĀḤID, ITHNĀN, BA‘Ḍ, KULL, KATHĪR, QALĪL, Quantifiers
JAYYID, SAYYI’ Evaluators

GOOD, BAD
KABĪR, ṢAGHĪR Descriptors

BIG, SMALL
YUFAKKER, YA‘REF, YURĪD, LĀ YURĪD, YASH‘UR*YAḤUSS, YARĀ, YASMA‘ Mental predicates

YAQŪL, KALIMĀT, ṢAḤĪḤ Speech

SAY, WORDS, TRUE
YA‘MAL*YAF‘AL, YAḤDUTH, YATAḤARRAK Actions, events,

YAKŪN (SOMEWHERE), HUNĀLIKA*YUWJAD, YAKŪN (SOMEONE/ Location, existence,
SOMETHING) specification
BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING)
LĪ Possession
(IS) MINE
YA‘ĪSH*YAḤYĀ, YAMŪT Life and death
LIVE, DIE
‘INDAMĀ*MATĀ*WAQT*MARRA, AL’ĀN, QABL, BA‘D, WAQT ṬAWĪL, Time

WAQT QAṢĪR, LIBA‘ḌI LWAQT, LAḤẒA
WHEN*TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR

SOME TIME, MOMENT
AYNA*ḤAYTHU*MAKĀN, HUNĀ, FAWQ, TAḤT, BA‘ĪD, QARĪB, JĀNIB, Place

DĀKHIL, YAMUSS
LAYSA*LAM*LĀ*LAN, RUBBAMĀ, YUMKIN AN, LI‘ANNA*BISABAB, Logical concepts

IDHĀ
JIDDAN, ALMAZĪD Intensifier, augmentor

VERY, MORE
MITHL Similarity
LIKE*AS
morphologically, complex • They can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with*)
164 S. Habib
Appendix 2: Hebrew Exponents of Semantic Primes (Based

on Habib 2011; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014)
ANI, ATA, MISHEHU, MASHEHU*DAVAR, ANASHIM, GUF Substantives

SUG, KHELEK Relational substantives

KIND, PART
ZE, OTO, AKHER Determiners

EKHAD, SHNAYIM, KAMA, KOL, HARBE, MIÀT*KTSAT Quantifiers

TOV, RA Evaluators
GOOD, BAD
GADOL, KATAN Descriptors

BIG, SMALL
LAKHASHOV, LADAÀT*LEHAKIR, LIRTSOT, LO LIRTSOT, LEHARGISH*LAKHUSH, Mental predicates

LIRÒT, LISHMOWA
LOMAR*LEHAGID, MILIM, NAKHON Speech

SAY, WORDS, TRUE
LAÀSOT, LIKROT, LANUWA Actions, events,

LIHYOT (SOMEWHERE), YESH*LIHYOT, LIHYOT (SOMEONE/SOMETHING) Location, existence,
SHELI Possession
(IS) MINE
LIKHYOT, LAMUT Life and death

LIVE, DIE
KAÀSHER*KSHE-*ZMAN*MATAY*PAÀM, AKHSHAV, LIFNEY, AKHAREY, Time

HARBE ZMAN, ZMAN KATSAR, LEKKAMA ZMAN, REGA
WHEN*TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME,
MOMENT
EYFO*MAKOM, KAN*PO, MEÀL, MITAKHAT, RAKHOK, KAROV, TSAD, BETOKH, Place

LAGAÀT
LO, ULAY, YAKHOL, BIGLAL SHE-, IM Logical concepts

MEÒD, OD Intensifier, augmentor

VERY, MORE
KMO Similarity
LIKE*AS
morphologically, complex • They can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with *) • Each
prime has well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties
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Sandy Habib is a Catholic priest serving in the Maronite Archdiocese of Haifa and the Holy Land.
He is also the English Department Head at the Ohalo Academic College in Katzrin, Israel. His
main research interests are in theo-semantics, the interface between theology and semantics. He
has published a number of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the semantics of religious
terms.
Part II
Understanding Discourse in Cultural
Context
Chapter 9
Postcolonial Prepositions: Semantics
and Popular Geopolitics
in the Danosphere
Carsten Levisen
Abstract This study breaks new ground in the semantics of ‘popular geopolitics’.
With a case study on two Danish prepositions, i and på, both of which are important
for the Danish construal of Greenland, the study develops a new analysis of the
popular geopolitics that guide Danish ways of thinking about Greenland.
Empirically, the study relies on evidence from social media discourse, which is
subjected to the Natural Semantic Metalanguage method of analysis. The aim is to
provide semantic explications for the two prepositional phrases i Grønland ‘in
Greenland’ and på Grønland ‘on Greenland’, and to articulate the cultural scripts
that allow speakers to ascribe geopolitical meaning to these prepositions. Drawing
on Goddard’s seminal work on spatial semantics, place constructs and ethnoprag-
matics, the paper develops a postcolonial semantic account of Danish ‘preposition
talk’. It is shown that the two prepositions have come to stand for two different
Danish attitudes towards Greenland, in short, the på-attitude, which emphasizes
Greenland’s ‘Islandness’, and the i-attitude, which emphasizes Greenland as a
country among other countries.

Keywords Postcolonial semantics Ethnopragmatics Popular geopolitics

Danish prepositions Danish construals of Greenland Natural Semantic
Metalanguage
9.1 Introduction
A well-known trick question often heard in Danish schoolyards goes like this: Hvad
var verdens største ø, før Grønland blev opdaget? ‘Which was the biggest island in
the world before the discovery of Greenland?’. Those who venture Borneo,
Madagascar or Great Britain are all wrong. The answer is Grønland ‘Greenland’,
and the point is clear: Greenland was always there, even before the Danes knew of
C. Levisen (&)
Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
e-mail: calev@ruc.dk

170 C. Levisen
it. The trick question prompts children (and adults) to become aware of their
Danocentric (and Eurocentric) biases, and as such promotes their critical post-
colonial awareness. But even instances of explicitly articulated progressive post-
colonial discourse are based on linguistically embedded geopolitically charged
assumptions, and all linguistically embedded assumptions need to be critically
examined.
Indeed, the framing of Grønland ‘Greenland’ as an ø ‘island’ is not as innocent
as it might seem at first. Most importantly, the concept of Grønland ‘Greenland’ as
a land mass that, according to the riddle, ‘was always there’, and the ethnogeo-
graphical concept of ø ‘island’ are both Danish. They should be viewed as Danish
constructs resulting from a particular take on the Arctic, rather than as geopolitically
neutral words. Second, the framing of ‘Grønland as an ø’ is a tradition firmly rooted
and dominant in Danish colonial discourse; it is anything but a ‘natural’ way of
thinking and talking about this part of the world.
In addition, in contemporary Danish discourse, the two prepositions på and
i have come to play a central role in construals of Grønland. The main research
question pursued in this chapter revolves around the choice between both in con-
temporary Danish:
(1) (traditional)
på Grønland
‘on Greenland’
(2) (reformist)
i Grønland
‘in Greenland’
Our immediate goal is to provide explications for the grammatical semantics of

both the traditional (på) and the reformist (i) preposition and to establish their
associated cultural scripts. A more distant, but nonetheless crucial, aim is to gain a
better understanding of Danish popular geopolitics based on the evidence derived
from these two grammatical devices. Studies in language ideology, toponymy and
socio-onomastics have taught us that the world and its different parts do not impose
on us any particular ways of conceptualization (see, e.g., Ainiala and Östman 2017:
2; on colonial toponomastics, see also Dunker et al. 2017). When speakers name
places they simultaneously create concepts, and these concepts are charged with the
viewpoints, assumptions and ideologies of those who name them.
The conceptual framework for my exploration will be NSM semantics (Goddard and
Wierzbicka 2014; Goddard 2018a, b). The NSM method of analysis has been
applied for decades in the study of lexical and grammatical semantics, as well as
pragmatics, and has served as a high-definition tool for analysing the meaning of
words and grammatical constructions in cultural contexts (for an overview, see, e.g.,
Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014), including words that construe ‘places’ (Wierzbicka
1997: Chap. 4; Bromhead 2011, 2018; Braga Mattos 2017; Goddard, in press).
One of the many strengths of the NSM approach is its ability to do ‘intersection
work’ across disciplines and to provide a stable tool of analysis that can help
9 Postcolonial Prepositions: Semantics and Popular … 171
explore meaning-making across domains. In this paper, I will demonstrate how the
study of popular geopolitics can be enriched by NSM analysis. The analytical
advantage of NSM semantics partly lies in its building block principle and
bottom-up discovery procedure, which allows researchers not only to carry out
exploratory analysis and to break new ground into less well-defined territory, but
also to break free from static and top-down terminologies.
The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows. Section 9.2 introduces the
emerging field of popular geopolitics and provides a sketch of how an NSM-based
‘Postcolonial Semantics’ can enrich this new field. Drawing on Goddard’s analysis
of the spatial semantics of on-constructions, Sect. 9.3 provides semantic explica-
tions for the two constructions i Grønland and på Grønland. On the basis of the
metapragmatic case studies in Sect. 9.4, Sect. 9.5 then discusses the wider social,
cultural, and geopolitical implications of the attitudes and understandings that the
two prepositions allow. A brief note on the molecules ø ‘island’ and land ‘country’
follows in Sect. 9.6. Section 9.7 offers some concluding remarks and suggestions
for future research.
9.2 Popular Geopolitics: A View from Semantics
Popular geopolitics is an emerging interdisciplinary area that embraces the study of

popular culture, media studies, film studies, geography and geopolitics (Saunders
and Strukov 2018). Studying the worldviews that are enacted, created and circu-
lated on social media, in games, lyrics and films by different groups, Saunders and
Strukov (2018: 3) explain their analytical aims as follows: ‘Ultimately, we are
concerned with how popular culture articulates meanings, and essentially geopo-
litical spaces’. Their basic finding is that there are multiple worlds of meaning at
play, and that these worlds all encode and enable particular views of the world, of
people in the world, and of places in people’s worlds. This begs the question ‘whose
global worlds should be singled out for attention’ (Neumann 2018: xii). To my
knowledge, linguistic semantics has not yet engaged with this interdisciplinary
research programme on popular geopolitics. However, it is my view that both
grammatical and lexical semantics have much to offer this emerging interdiscipline.
Within NSM semantics, a subfield called Postcolonial Semantics has been
developed in recent years (Levisen and Jogie 2015; Levisen 2016, in press; Levisen
and Priestley 2017). Postcolonial Semantics studies meaning and meaning-making
in colonial and postcolonial contexts and takes a special interest in how ‘place’ is
conceptualized and elaborated. It scrutinizes the way in which dominant discourses,
colonial as well as postcolonial, have organized the worlds we live in. Analytically,
Postcolonial Semantics has two scopes: a linguistic scope and a metalinguistic
scope. Linguistically, the aim is to provide semantically grounded studies in words,
grammars, languages and discourses characterized by colonial and/or postcolonial
logics. Metalinguistically, the aim is to scrutinize the multiple forms of logic on
which metalinguistic representations are founded, and to help develop decolonial
172 C. Levisen
tools for representing meanings cross-linguistically (Levisen, in press). NSM

semantics in general, and Postcolonial Semantics in particular, offer perspectives,
methods, and tools that can help advance the linguistic and discursive aspects of
Popular Geopolitics.
9.2.1 Danish as a Colonial and Postcolonial Language
Perhaps Danish is not the first language that springs to mind when the issue of
language and colonialism is brought up. In global linguistic history, English,
French, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and German might all have a more prominent
position in discourses of colonialism (Levisen et al. 2017). Nonetheless, Danish
plays an important role in the discourse of colonialism in the Arctic area and in the
Atlantic High North. Still today, Greenland is not fully decolonized. It remains an
autonomous constituent part of the Kingdom of Denmark, whereas Iceland gained
full independence from Denmark in 1918.
The bias of exempting the Arctic from global discourses of colonialism seems to
be rooted in popular geopolitical thought. For instance, in colloquial Danish, the
word koloni ‘colony’ prototypically refers to ‘tropical’ colonies. This means that
Greenland, from a popular geopolitical perspective, is a non-prototypical koloni, if a
koloni at all. Other areas and places with former Danish colonial rule, such as
possessions in the Caribbean (US Virgin Islands), Africa (Ghana, Gold Coast) and
India (Tarangambadi, formerly Tranquebar), are much more likely than Greenland
to be thought and talked about through the lens of colonialism.
In fact, it seems to me that the study of Danish as a (post)colonial language has
been overlooked so far, and that scrutiny of the lexical, grammatical and discursive
evidence that portrays Danish as a language imbued with colonial and postcolonial
meanings, discursive themes and socio-cognitive conventions requires a more
systematic and analytical effort. In postcolonial linguistics, contact varieties such as
creoles, pidgins, mixed languages and World Englishes have sometimes been
dubbed ‘postcolonial language varieties’ because they are direct outcomes of lin-
guistic and cultural encounters in era-colonial times. In fact, I have used this term
myself in previous publications, but I have come to think that there is something
misleading in this terminology. European languages, too, are built on different
forms of colonial and postcolonial logic. As such, it does not seem viable to exclude
them from postcolonial-linguistic analysis. This is what Postcolonial Semantics is
essentially about: shedding light on the crypto-categories of (post)coloniality in
language and discourse, including the discourse systems of former colonizers, and
the words and grammars that constitute the multiple forms of discourse about the
geopolitical past and present.
9.2.2 Grønland as a Modern Danish Concept
As we have seen, the contemporary Danish word Grønland ‘Greenland’ is itself a

popular geopolitical term. When discussing the name Grønland, it is common in
popular discourse to conflate the (failed) Norse colonization of the Arctic and
Danish colonization in era-colonial time. Two contemporary narratives of naming
both focus on the mismatch between grøn ‘green’ and Greenland’s Arctic climate.
According to one modern narrative, the Vikings were simply among the first to
make use of political spin, by calling the place grøn to make it more attractive. The
alternative story is about climate change, and about how grøn Greenland really was
before changes in climate made it more white than green. Such contemporary
explanatory narratives are of course both chronocentric and anachronistic at the
same time, but the use of the past to legitimize naming processes is itself an
important field of discursive and narrative enquiry (on chronocentrism as an
interpretative bias, see Bromhead 2009). In terms of conceptual onomastics, the
morpheme -land is perhaps even more interesting than the morpheme grøn-,
because of its polysemy. In modern Danish, land means ‘country’ as well as ‘area
not covered by sea’. This polysemy is worth paying attention to, because it allows
certain forms of discourse to eventuate. The meaning of land ‘country’ is of course
rather new. Before the rise of European identity nationalism, people were not
organized in ‘countries’ in the way we think of the world today (on identity
nationalism and Danish language, see Levisen 2012:17). The original sense of land
was ‘area not covered by sea’, as evidenced in several place names. Consider for
instance Danish island names such as Lolland and Langeland, and names of
peninsula such as Djursland or Himmerland, which are also land-based. This
suggests that ‘islandness’ was not a part of the original Norse motivation for
naming—the key idea was simply to conceptualize the ‘non-sea status’ of the area.
The main Greenlandic conceptualization is Kalaallit Nunaat ‘the land of people’ (in
Kalaallisut, Greenland’s official language) and the Greenlandic conceptualization
offers a geosocial and geopolitical take on the Arctic area that differs from the ones
suggested by both colonial and contemporary Danish geopolitical words.
With this initial discussion, I have advanced three important points:
i. Grønland, Greenland and Kalaallit Nunaat are all conceptualizations, not just
‘names’ for a ready-made concept. Hence, from a conceptual viewpoint there
is no basis for the claim that ‘Greenland was always there’ (cf. the discussion
in the introduction). Reality does not demand on us any particular way of
conceptualizing it, and this makes it all the more important to scrutinize the
language with which we conceptualize places, and the way we elaborate on
these conceptualizations with our grammatical and lexical framings.
ii. Contemporary geopolitics is rooted in popular geopolitics, and in particular
the popular- geopolitical discourse of former colonizers. Much like the con-
cepts of ‘Africa’ and ‘Australia’, both of which are the conceptual creations of
colonizer discourse, ‘Greenland’ has been naturalized as an area that delin-
eated itself ‘naturally’, an area that simply needed a name.
174 C. Levisen
iii. The discursive-conceptual prominence of ‘Islandness’ is rooted in colonial

discourse. All the ethnogeographical categories imposed on places by the
semantic systems of colonizers seem to come with a certain cultural logic. This
cultural logic, in turn, is likely to become naturalized as the factual way of
conceptualizing places, and is likely to become an immovable fixture on which
knowledge systems are based and built.
9.3 The Semantics of Geopolitical Prepositions
The prepositions på and i form part of an extensive network of grammatical poly-

semy, akin to the one that has been described for English on and in (Goddard 2002).
In this chapter, I am mainly interested in the ‘PREP + Place’ construction and, even
more precisely, in the highly specialized ‘PREP + Named_Place’ construction and
its meaning and use in colonial and postcolonial geopolitical discourse. Goddard’s
innovative work on both global and English-specific spatial prepositions and spatial
relations has inspired my attempt to analyse these two Danish constructions. In NSM
semantics, ‘being (somewhere)’ is considered to be a semantic prime, and ‘being on
something’ is considered to be a universal semantic molecule. At the same time, there
are highly language-specific meanings and polysemous networks at play in most
prepositions, including spatial and geopolitical ones. Goddard observes that some
prepositions are semantically meaningless. This is an important insight. One English
allolex of ‘being somewhere’ is ‘being in a place’, and the in in this construction is
not carrying any semantic meaning: it serves solely as a structure-indexing device
(Goddard 2013b). To compare, the Danish exponent of the same prime is er et sted
literally ‘is a place’ (or at være et sted, literally ‘to be a place’), and in this con-
struction there is no preposition. The molecule ‘being on something’ is realized in
Danish as er på noget, literally ‘be on something’ (or at være på noget, ‘to be on
something’). The interesting thing about what I call geopolitical prepositions is that
they are neither just about ‘being somewhere’ or ‘being on something’, but they
crucially rely on the former, and differ from the semantics of the latter.
Moving back to English semantics, it is well-known that the English preposition
on is hyper-polysemous, and that place-based on-constructions in English are also
polysemous. In his work on the semantics of English on-constructions that involve
‘laterality’, Goddard (2013b) defines six discrete semantic meanings based on the
construction ‘[on + NP place]’. One of these is of the type on an island. Goddard
provides the explication in [A] for the general meaning of this on-construction:
[A] X is on place-Y (according to Goddard 2013b)
a. X is in a place, this place is of kind-Y
b. people can think about places of this kind like this:
“when someone sees a place like this, this someone can see something on all sides of it”
Goddard (2013b: 8) notes that for this construction, ‘the essential condition is that
the landmark expression must be “visibly delineated”’. He emphasizes that the
semantic analysis is not about accounting for ‘the nature of the intended referent in
an objective sense, but rather the way in which the referent is being conceptualized
or construed’ (ibid.). He further notes that ‘this particular on-construction cannot be
used unless the island is small enough; compare on Tikopea (a small island in the
Pacific) versus *on Tasmania (the large southern island state of Australia)’.
Interestingly, Danish speakers of English are likely to say on Tasmania—as well
as på Tasmanien in Danish. The popular geopolitical representation of Tasmania
has exploded in Danish discourse since Tasmanian-born Mary Donaldson married
Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, and ‘Tasmania talk’ has become quite common
in Danish. Consider for instance a typical example from a woman’s magazine, in
which Tasmania attracts both the preposition på and the descriptor en lille ø ‘a
small island’.
(3) Mary Donaldson kommer til Danmark fra den anden side af jorden. Hun er født på
Tasmanien, en lille ø sydøst for Australien.
‘Mary Donaldson is going to Denmark from the other side of the earth. She was born på
Tasmania, a small island south-east of Australia’
Geographers will inform us that Tasmania covers an area of 68,401 km2, with
Denmark occupying only 42,932 km2, so this seems to be a good example of the
power of popular geopolitics. The phrase på Tasmanian seems to be reflective of a
map-based cognition, in which the default experiential basis for talking and
thinking about Tasmania is not based on having been there, but on having seen it on
a map. Perhaps then, the latter component ‘when someone sees a place like this, this
someone can see something on all sides of it’ could still hold true, not only for
English on, but in some form also for the Danish ‘på + Named_Place’ construction.
Another reason why Tasmania attracts på and not i seems to be that Tasmania is not
a region with aspiration for nationhood and independence. By contrast, Irland
‘Ireland’ would always attract the preposition i (i Irland), and not på (*på Irland).
Saying på Irland sounds humorous, precisely because it suggests that Irland is just
an island, not a real nation. If we compare with Danish islands with a land-based
onomastic morphology such as Langeland and Lolland, we find that they clearly
attract the på-construction. Langeland is 285 km2 and Lolland is 1243 km2. På
Langeland and på Lolland are the standard formulations to be used with these two
islands; *i Langeland and *i Lolland would be highly ungrammatical. If interpreted
humourously, such i-constructions would suggest that these two minor Danish
islands had aspirations for nationhood—a ridiculous thought.
Turning now to Grønland, it seems clear that the two prepositions are ‘doing
Grønland’ in different ways; but how, more precisely? As my first hypothesis, I will
propose two explications for the grammatical semantics of the two prepositional
phrases ‘X er på Grønland’, (traditional) and ‘X er i Grønland’ (reformist). Both
explications are presented in English and Danish NSM (on Danish NSM, see
Levisen 2012):
176 C. Levisen
[B1] X er på Grønland (traditional)

X is in this place
this place is called Grønland
when someone is in this place this someone can think like this:
“this is an island, there is water on all sides of this place”
[C1] X er i Grønland (reformist)

X is in this place
this place is called Grønland
when someone is in this place this someone can think like this:
“this is a country, I want to say something good about this country”
[B2] X er på Grønland
X er det her sted
det her sted hedder Grønland
når en person er det her sted kan den her person tænke sådan:
“det her er en ø, der er vand på alle sider af det her sted”
[C2] X er i Grønland
X er det her sted
det her sted hedder Grønland
når en person er det her sted kan den her person tænke sådan:
“det her er et land, jeg vil sige noget godt om det her land”
Semantically, what is proposed in explication [B] and [C] is a slightly more specific
version (a geopolitical version) of the general spatial semantics proposed by
Goddard for the construction ‘X is in NPplace’. The main difference between the
explications of the på-construction and the i-construction is the way in which they
encode place. Both constructions are about ‘being in a place’, and both construc-
tions make use of the semantic molecule is called [m], which is used extensively in
explications of toponyms. They differ in their final components, which are centred
around ‘island’ and ‘country’, respectively. Schematically, the two constructions
make use of the following semantic molecules.
Molecules for the på-construction

hedder [m], ø [m], vand [m]
‘be called [m], island [m], water [m]’
Molecules for the i-construction
hedder [m] land [m]
‘be called [m], country [m]’
In short, the initial analysis suggests that both på Grønland and i Grønland are
toponomastic devices, but that på turns Greenland into a ‘geographical entity’ with
an emphasis on Greenland’s islandness; it singles out ‘being surrounded by water’

as a defining element of meaning. By contrast, i invokes a ‘national semantics’ that
frames Greenland as a country.
9.4 Preposition Talk: Three Case Studies

in Metapragmatic Discourse
Metapragmatic discourse is particularly insightful for the analysis of popular

geopolitics. When speakers collaboratively reflect on linguistic practices and word
meanings, and negotiate the linguistic activities they take part in, the cultural scripts
on which their communicative logic is based is sometimes made explicit in a way
that makes it possible to provide a new analysis of the ‘communal meaning’.
Studies in language ideology, folk linguistics and other kinds of linguistic
anthropology often rest on the ‘metalingual’ or ‘reflective’ function of language, by
which speakers can ‘talk about ways of talking’. Prepositions are perhaps not the
most common object of such ‘talk about ways of talking’. It seems that highly
people-centred topics, such as human social constructs, personal pronouns, and
taboo-centred topics including swear words and humour-driven discourses, are
much more common topics for metapragmatic discourse. Nevertheless, metaprag-
matic discourse on prepositions does exist, and the på/i question is well-attested as
a metapragmatic topic of discussion in the Danish language universe.
In the following, I will study three different instances in which the på/i question
has been discussed on Danish-language social media: (i) a Q&A section from the
Danish Language Council’s webpage; (ii) a discussion from Heste-Nettet ‘Horse
Net’; and (iii) a discussion from Pokernet ‘Pokernet’.
9.4.1 Dansk Sprognævn ‘Danish Language Council’
The first illustration is taken from the online database of answers provided by the
Danish Language Council (Dansk Sprognævn).1 Danish is a heavily standardized
language; there is a prevalent belief among speakers that there is a ‘correct’ way of
speaking and writing Danish. It is not unusual to find discussions among Danish
speakers about hvad hedder det? ‘what is it called?’ or hvad er korrekt? ‘what is
correct?’. If speakers disagree about what something ‘is called’, they might ask
Dansk Sprognævn for its advice in the matter. Interestingly, this language council
holds unusually ‘liberal’ and ‘descriptive’ views compared to similar institutions in
Europe: it is much less ‘prescriptive’ than speakers might expect. Consider the
example below, where a speaker asks the language council for guidance about the
1
http://www.dsn.dk.
178 C. Levisen
preposition to be used when talking about Grønland. The excerpt is of the ‘Q and
A’ type and is followed by my own translation.
Spørgsmål:
Hedder det på Grønland eller i Grønland? Og hvad med Island?
Svar:
Både på Grønland/Island og i Grønland/Island er korrekte. Det traditionelle er at bruge på
Island/Grønland da der er tale om øer, og denne formulering er nok den naturligste for de
fleste danskere. Der er imidlertid nogle sprogbrugere der mener at man viser mest respekt
over for Grønland og Island ved at bruge i fordi man på denne måde sprogligt anerkender at
de to øer er selvstændige områder.
(Dansk Sprognævns svarbase, 08 May 2006)
‘Question:
Is it called på Grønland or i Grønland? And what about Iceland?
Answer:
Both på Grønland/Island and i Grønland/Island are correct. The traditional way is to use
på Grønland/Island because we are talking about islands, and this phrasing is probably
what comes most natural for most Danes. However, there are some language users who
think that one shows more respect towards Greenland and Iceland by using i because in this
way one marks linguistically that these two islands are independent areas.’
This Q and A is interesting for several reasons. As we have seen, the speaker’s
expectation that there should be one correct answer to the question is met with the
council’s emotionally detached and ‘scientific’ approach to the description of
meaning and use. In addition, the dialogue suggests there might be an underlying
postcolonial theme in the question, since not only Grønland ‘Greenland’ but also
Island ‘Iceland’ is brought up (see Sect. 2.1). The themes of ‘Islandness’, ‘the
Danes’, ‘naturalness’ and ‘respect’ are all addressed, and these themes seem to be
recurring in other discussions of the topic. From this first instance of lay-expert
communication, let us now move to an online instance of communication between
lay people.
9.4.2 Heste-Nettet ‘The Horse Net’
Heste-nettet ‘The Horse Net’ is an internet forum that presents itself as Danmarks
største samlingssted for alt til hest og rytter ‘Denmark’s biggest site for everything
for horse and rider’.2 The site includes an extensive discussion forum in four major
sections called (i) Hestefagligt ‘Specialist (talk about) horses’, (ii) Heste og
Samfund ‘Horse and Society’, Socialt ‘Socially’ and Diverse ‘Miscellaneous’. One
should perhaps not expect the question of Greenland, let alone what preposition to
use when talking about Greenland, to be discussed in such a forum, but nevertheless
2
www.heste-nettet.dk.
the question has been discussed several times by these horse enthusiasts. In what
follows I reproduce one instance of such a discussion on The Horse Net (more
particularly its social section). I have used pseudonyms rather than real names.
There are many more responses to Anne’s question than the ones provided by
Bertha, Cille and Ditte. I have included here some of the answers that are more
explicitly metapragmatic and that spell out the logic on which their linguistic
worldview is based. All translations are my own.
Anne:
Har haft en debat med en af mine venner om hvordan man bruger ordet i eller på? og i
hvilken sammenhæng??
jeg siger at man siger: PÅ grønland (det er jo en ø, men er stadig en del af dk)
Og jeg siger det hedder I Island (da det er et land)
Men vil du så nok sige?? det hedder da også grønLAND??
Men fordi det er en del af dk siger man på!!!
desuden mener jeg at have hørt at islænder bliver fornærmet hvis man siger på Island??
hvad er jeres mening til denne her omgang sludder??
Hvad siger i????
‘I had a debate with one of my friends about how you use the words i and på. And in what
context? What I say is that it is called PÅ grønland (it is an island, right, but still a part of
Denmark)
And I would say that it’s called i Island (because it is a country)
But then you might say, right, but it is also called grønLAND??
But because it is a part of Denmark, you say på!!!
Apart from that, I have heard that Icelanders are offended if you say på Island
What is your opinion about all this nonsense??
What do you guys say?’
Bertha:
I Grønland..
Og hvorfor kan jeg ikke huske men har engang fået en meget lang og fin forklaring på det.
‘I Grønland
And why, I don’t remember why, but I once heard a very long and great explanation why.’
Cille:
I Grønland. Det hedder jo heller ikke på Danmark vel?
Ø eller ej. Grønland er jo et land.
‘I Grønland. It is not called på Danmark, right?
Island or not. Grønland is a country, you know.’
Ditte:
min onkel…
når det drejer som en ø, som samtidig er et land, som fx. Island skal man sige I, altså I
Island, derimod når det drejer sig om en ø, som ikke er et selvstændigt land siger man PÅ.
Altså PÅ Grønland
venlig hilsen Mogens
‘My uncle…
When it is about an island that at the same time is a country, as for instance Iceland, then
one is supposed to say I, that is, I Island, however, when it is about an island that is not an
independent country, one says PÅ, that is, PÅ Grønland.
Best regards, Mogens.’
180 C. Levisen
The discussion provides ample evidence that the på–i question is linked to the ø–
land ‘island-country’ discussion. Anne asserts that på is correct, partly because she
views Greenland as ‘a part of Denmark’, but at the same time she ascribes meaning
to the fact that the name Grønland has the constituent land in its structure, and in
her reasoning, this provides a counter-argument. Bertha expresses the opposite
view, but she has forgotten the arguments. Her answer suggests that there are ‘deep’
differences, but that only experts have the capacity to explain what these are. Cille
uses a nation-based analogy, arguing that på Grønland is as wrong as på Danmark.
Finally, Ditte asks her uncle Mogens to set things straight. With an authoritative
tone of voice, he maintains that på Grønland is correct, based on the fact that
Greenland is not selvstændigt ‘independent’.
9.4.3 Pokernet ‘Poker Net’
Pokernet ‘Poker Net’ presents itself as Danmarks største poker-forum ‘Denmark’s

biggest poker forum’.3 One of the services provided is a discussion forum with
sections called Online Poker ‘Online Poker’, Forum ‘Forum’, Poker-rejser ‘Poker
Travels’, Pokerregler ‘Poker Rules’, Nybegynder-Poker ‘Poker for Beginners’ and
several other sections. Unlike the Horse Net community, which is dominated by
young females, the Poker Net community seems dominated by young males. The
tone is quite different and it seems clear that the topics of horses and poker might
attract different groups of people. Yet the question of Greenland and the preposi-
tions also pops up here. In fact, an extensive discussion takes place on the site.
I have provided seven turns of this exchange from the Forum section. Again, my
selection criteria are based on the degree to which metapragmatic logic was
developed explicitly, and pseudonyms have been used.
Anton:
Hjælp mig og min ven, med at afgøre om det hedder på—eller i Grøndland? tak
‘Help me and my friend by determining whether it is called på—or i Grøndland? Thanks.’
Bastian:
Jeg kan ihvertfald lige hjælpe jer med at stave til Grønland
‘At least I can help you to spell Grønland correctly.’
Casper:
Siger du også i Bornholm?
‘Do you also say i Bornholm?’
3
http://www.pokernet.dk.
Dennis:
Det hedder da på Grønland—i hvert fald i mit hoved, pga det er en ø
‘It is called på Grønland—at least in my head, since it is an island.’
Esben:
Så vidt jeg ved kommer det an på om man anerkender Grønland som selvstændig eller ej
Gør man ikke => Grønland er en ø => ‘På Grønland’
Gør man => Grønland er en nation/whatever => “I Grønland”
‘As far as I know, it is about whether one recognizes Grønland as independent or not.
If you don’t => Grønland is an island => “På Grønland”
If you do => Grønland is a nation/whatever => “I Grønland”’
Frederik:
Jeg har også altid brug “I” om lande og “På” om ikke selvstændige øer. Jeg har det også
meget hårdt med “I Malta”
‘I have also always used “i” about countries and “på” about non-independent islands. I also
have a hard time with “I Malta”.’
Anton:
Hej alle. Tak for alle tilbagemeldingerne.. - Beklager den pinlige stavefejl!! Tror vi fastslår
at man kan sige begge, men PÅ er mest korrekt, da man ikke har respekt for Grønland!;)
‘Hello everyone. Thanks for all the feedback. I apologize for the embarrassing spelling
error. I think we can determine that both things can be said, but PÅ is most correct, since
one doesn’t have respect for Grønland!;)’
The first turns turn around spelling, a topic introduced as a result of Anton’s
misspelling of Grønland. This discourse is perhaps not directly relevant to our
exploration, but it teaches us two metalinguistic points: (i) it indicates that the grøn-
in Grønland may be fully demorphologized, that is, that the colour word grøn may
no longer be active in all speakers; and (ii) it situates the correctness issue in an
interesting hierarchy, in which the importance of the prepositions might even trump
the importance of the name itself. Casper’s answer contains a rhetorical question in
which the analogy of Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic sea (588.3 km2), is
used. The implicature of his turn is clearly to support the preposition på for
Greenland, since it is used for other prototypical islands, such as Bornholm. Dennis
makes an explicit link between på and island, and Esben spells out the same logic in
even more detail. Frederik links på with ikke selvstændige øer ‘non-independent
islands’. Anton’s final response is rather shocking, even if it was meant to have a
humorous intent. It underlines once again the link between ‘having respect for
Greenland’ and the use of the i-preposition.
182 C. Levisen
9.5 Cultural Scripts for Geopolitical Attitudes
In Goddard’s seminal (2006) volume Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse

in cultural context and in subsequent NSM-based work on cultural discourse
(Goddard 2013a; Peeters 2015; Goddard and Ye 2016; Levisen and Waters 2017),
cultural scripts have often been used to account for the attitudes that undergird
discourse. In popular geopolitics, political cognition is seen as culturally consti-
tuted. By definition, then, cultural scripts for political attitudes are not essentially
different from other types of attitudes. They can be articulated, and articulated
clearly, with NSM as a tool. What the ‘political’ adds to the ‘cultural’ is mainly a
dimension of explicit non-consensus within a group of speakers, and therefore the
articulation of several competing scripts seems important for this kind of analysis.
Based on the observations so far, it seems clear that the Danish prepositional
phrases på Grønland and i Grønland are not only semantically different, but that the
two phrases allow for different forms of discourse. In this section, I will try to
articulate some of the logics that seem to be linked with discourse that involves
these two prepositions. This will be done in the form of two cultural scripts, through
which I seek to spell out in more detail the attitudes that are being enacted in
discourses about Greenland in Denmark. The scripts reflect what we could call the
Danish ‘på-attitude’ and ‘i-attitude’ towards Greenland. The following molecules
are used: land ‘country’ [m], ø ‘island’ [m], vi ‘we’ [m], Danmark ‘Denmark’ [m],
danskere ‘Danes’ [m], Grønland ‘Greenland’ [m], grønlændere ‘Greenlanders’ [m].
[D1] Cultural script for the i-attitude
some Danes think like this:
it is good if people here can think like this about Greenland:
“Greenland is a country
it is not like a part of Denmark, it is not a Danish island”
because it is like, it is bad if Danes say something like this:
“we want Greenlanders to do as we want”
it is good if Danes can think about Greenland like they think about other countries
[D2] Cultural script for the i-attitude (Danish version)

nogle danskere tænker sådan:
der er godt hvis folk her kan tænke sådan om Grønland:
”Grønland er et land
det er ikke en del af Danmark, det er ikke en dansk ø”
fordi det er sådan er det dårligt hvis danskere siger sådan noget som det her:
”vi vil have grønlændere til at gøre som vi vil”
det er godt hvis de kan tænke om Grønland som de tænker om andre lande
Script [D] is phrased as the view of ‘some Danes’. It includes a positive statement
that gives Greenland a sort of ‘cognitive independence’—an attitude that portrays
Greenland’s move towards independence as natural, given that it implies becoming
something that it already is: a country like other countries (which just happens to
not yet have been fully decolonized in political terms). This view leads to a verbal
prescription against Danes wanting to tell Greenlanders what to do, and a pro-
scription for speaking of Greenland as a country. In short, script [D] can be viewed
as a progressive and postcolonial sentiment among Danes.
The competing script is the Danish ‘på-attitude’ towards Greenland. This script
can be spelled out as follows:
[E1] Cultural script for the på-attitude
some Danes think like this:
“Greenland is a big island far from Denmark”
at the same time they think like this:
“it is a part of Denmark, it has been a part of Denmark for a long time”
because of this it is bad if the Greenlanders say something like this now:
“we don’t want Greenland to be a part of Denmark anymore”
[E2] Cultural script for the på-attitude (Danish version)

nogle danskere tænker sådan:
“Grønland er en stor ø langt fra Danmark”
samtidigt tænker de sådan:
“det er en del af Danmark, det har længe været en del af Danmark”
fordi det er sådan er det dårligt hvis grønlænderne siger sådan noget som det her nu:
“vi vil ikke at Grønland er en del af Danmark mere”
This script elaborates on the ‘geographicalization’ of Greenland. It portrays a status

quo attitude to the current political situation. It can also be read as a neo-colonial, or
at least an anti-decolonial, attitude. The script includes two rather contradictory
thoughts, namely Greenland’s remoteness (from Denmark) and Greenland’s
partonomy (of Denmark). The primes FAR (FROM) and PART (OF) articulate this
contradiction. Furthermore, the script as a whole articulates a rationalization of the
status quo via an explanation based on ‘tradition’ (‘it has been like a part of
Denmark for a long time’) and discourages Greenlanders from wanting indepen-
dence from Denmark.
9.6 A Note on the Molecules Ø ‘Island’ and Land

‘Country’
In this chapter, I have not provided explications for the two ethnogeographically
and geopolitically salient words ø ‘island’ and land ‘country’, which function as
semantic molecules in both scripts and explications (on English country, see
Goddard in press). However, since these words are important, I will offer some
initial reflections on the meaning of the two Danish words. Ø is, in its unique
shortness, a word with a prominent position in Danish ethnogeography and con-
ceptual history. It is an ethnogeograhical term based on a ‘lateral semantics’, and on
the idea of a place that has ‘water on all sides’. It is also a place where people can
live, at least prototypically so. In fact, the concept of ubeboet ø ‘uninhabited island’
184 C. Levisen
is the default; beboet ø ‘inhabited island’ is a highly marked choice (on islands,
languages, and linguistics, see also Nash et al., in press).
There might also be an element of size (small or big) for the prototypical ø, but
the question of size is complex and conceptual, rather than referential. Even if we
consider the shift from experience-based cognition to a modern map-based cog-
nition, there is an upper limit to what can be an ø. In modern map-based cognition,
it is probably more likely to classify a place with water on all sides as an ø ‘island’,
unless it is ‘very very big’. In the latter case, the concept of kontinent ‘continent’ is
more likely to be invoked. In the case of Grønland, the discourse of ‘the world’s
biggest island’ occasionally leads to the question er Grønland et kontinent? ‘is
Greenland a continent’?
The Danish word land is perhaps confusing from an Anglo viewpoint. Like the
English word land, the Danish land is polysemous. Some meanings are shared,
others are not. The sea-farers’ concept of land as the opposite of the sea is a sense
that seems to be shared by English and Danish. English, then, has the
poetic-political land (land of the free, land rights) (see, e.g., Goddard, in press), a
lexical unit that exists in Danish, but seems rather marginal. The main difference,
then, is that Danish also has a conceptualization of land ‘country’ in the sense of
‘country’, and this is the sense that I have been mainly interested in in this chapter.
In the metapragmatic discussions, it was interesting to see how the name Grønland
occasionally was reanalysed as being a real land ‘country’, based on the formal
structure of the name grøn + land. This is an interesting polysemy-driven folk
etymology. Obviously, the original coinage, and the historical concepts, could not
have involved land ‘country’, given that this particular lexical unit is a product of
European nationalism.
Following Goddard’s pioneering work on prepositions, spatial semantics, place

constructs and cultural scripts, this chapter provides an analysis of the two Danish
phrases på Grønland and i Grønland from the viewpoint of Postcolonial Semantics,
and with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage as the chosen tool of description. The
analysis demonstrates that the two phrases are fraught with popular geopolitics, that
is, habitual thoughts on Danish-Arctic relations. The chapter shows that the
prepositions differ in their grammatical semantics, and more specifically that the i-
based construal of Greenland focuses on Greenland as a national entity, whereas the
på-based construal focuses on Greenland as a geographical entity—as an island,
rather than a country. It was demonstrated that these two different construals are
linked with cultural scripts surrounding attitudes and conventional ways of thinking
and talking about Greenland in Denmark.
On a theoretical level, this chapter advances Postcolonial Semantics in several
new ways. Firstly, it illustrates how grammatical semantics, just like lexical
semantics, can be important for the postcolonial study of language, and also that
grammatical semantics, in a similar way to lexical semantics, can be linked with

cultural scripts. Secondly, it shows that postcolonial linguistics is not always about
‘the language of the colonized’. In fact, it makes good sense also to consider the
‘language of the (former) colonizers’. As such, the present study breaks new ground
for the postcolonial-semantic study of European colonizer languages such as
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German… and Danish.
Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Cliff Goddard, my friend and
supervisor-for-life. I met him for the first time at the Australian Linguistics Institute in 2006 at UQ
Brisbane, where he taught a Semantics Masterclass with Anna Wierzbicka. Ever since, I have
found inspiration in his original, incisive thinking and analysis. Most of my own work has been
greatly enriched by conversations with Cliff, most recently in Tivoli Gardens Copenhagen, 2018,
during one of his many ‘Nordic Tours’.
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Carsten Levisen is an associate professor at Roskilde University, Denmark, and a member of the
Young Academy of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. His research interests are
in lexical semantics, linguistic anthropology, and postcolonial linguistics. His publications include
Cultural Semantics and Social Cognition (2012), Creole Studies (ed. with B. Bakker, F.
Borchsenius, E. Sippola 2017), Cultural Keywords in Discourse (ed. with S. Waters 2017),
Language Ideologies in Music (ed. with E. Sippola, B. Schneider), The Social Life of Interjections
(ed., 2019 with E. Jensen, T. Hougaard), and Biases in Linguistics (ed. with S. Borchmann, B.
Schneider, 2019).
Chapter 10
Combining NSM Explications
for Clusters of Cantonese Utterance
Particles: laa3-wo3 and zaa3-wo3
Helen Hue Lam Leung
Abstract Utterance particles expressing speakers’ attitudes, assumptions or feel-

ings are indispensable in informal Hong Kong Cantonese. Everyday conversation
would sound very unusual if they were omitted. There are approximately 30 ‘basic’
(monosyllabic) particles, which can be either used on their own or combined with
each other in ‘clusters’, i.e. polysyllabic combinations where two or more particles
occur one after the other in immediate succession. Clusters of particles have con-
sistently been claimed to have the combined meaning of the separate particles of
which they are made up (see e.g. Gibbons in Linguistics 18:763–775, 1980; Kwok
in Sentence particles in Cantonese. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press,
1984; Matthews and Yip in Cantonese: A comprehensive grammar. London:
Routledge, 2011) but in the absence of rigorous semantic analyses of the individual
particles involved, evidence for this has been scant at best. Indeed, the range of use
of each of the particles is broad and varied, and it is extremely difficult, even for
native speakers, to satisfactorily explain their meanings and functions. Most prior
studies provide semantic descriptions that are vague, contradictory, and sometimes
untrue. The current chapter builds on some of the evidence-based, translatable and
testable NSM explications of individual particles put forward in the author’s PhD
thesis (2016), which demonstrated that the particles have stable and identifiable
meanings. It shows how, using NSM, the semantic content of clusters of Cantonese
utterance particles can effectively be derived from the meaning of individual par-
ticles. Two clusters are examined, laa3-wo3 and zaa3-wo3, which are formed from
three ‘basic’ particles: laa3, zaa3 and wo3. The short explications of the individual
particles are combined to create ‘joint’ explications, with the resulting cluster
definitions tested by substitution into real examples taken from the Hong Kong
Cantonese Corpus. It is found that the combined NSM explications adequately
portray the meanings of the particle clusters.

Keywords Cantonese Particles Combinations Clusters Semantics Natural
H. H. L. Leung (&)
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
e-mail: Helen.Leung@nottingham.ac.uk

188 H. H. L. Leung
10.1 Introduction
10.1.1 Utterance Particles in Cantonese
Utterance particles are essential for the self-expression of Cantonese speakers. They
convey speaker attitudes, assumptions, intentions, feelings, or emotions. Always
attached at the end of an utterance, they are unable to occur independently. They
have no direct counterpart in English. The particles are not grammatically obliga-
tory, but they are indispensable, and Cantonese speakers widely agree that a con-
versation without any utterance particles sounds strikingly unnatural. Luke (1990:
14) explains that a conversation without particles ‘would sound overly terse to
some, hostile or perhaps funny to others, but in any case unreal, almost unintelli-
gible’. He found that in ordinary, continuous talk, the particles occur every 1.5 s on
average (occurring less in formal situations), while Gibbons reported that in a radio
discussion programme, 85% of the utterances used utterance particles (Luke 1990:
11; Gibbons 1980: 765). In the Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus (see Luke and Wong
2015), the most frequently used particle, aa3, is also, remarkably, the second most
frequently used word overall. It comes second only to the word hai6, which means
‘is’ or ‘yes’.1
Not only do utterance particles occur extremely frequently, there are also a
distinctly large number of them in Cantonese. There are approximately 30–70
‘basic’ particles,2 which are typically monosyllabic (Kwok 1984: 8; Yau 1980: 37;
Gibbons 1980: 764). Of particular relevance to this chapter is that the particles can
also be used together in ‘clusters’ of more than one particle. For example, two
independent particles laa3 and wo3 can come together, resulting in the combina-
tion3 laa3-wo3. Clusters of three particles are also very common in speech. Longer
combinations of four or more particles have been reported but sound increasingly
clumsy and less natural. The actual number of particles in use, basic and compound,
is said to be approximately 100 or more (Gibbons 1980: 764; Luke 1990: 1;
Wakefield 2011: 13). In terms of sheer numbers, and even with conservative fig-
ures, Cantonese utterance particles far outnumber their Mandarin counterparts, and
are matched by very few, if any, other languages.
Utterance particles are also known as ‘sentence particles’, ‘sentence-final par-
ticles’, or ‘final particles’. However, they can occur at the end of syntactic units that
1
This chapter uses the ‘Jyutping’ romanization system developed by the Linguistic Society of
Hong Kong.
2
There seems to be disagreement over which particles are ‘basic’—some items are considered
particles in their own right by some, but variations or ‘contractions’ of other particles by others.
Some scholars, such as Yau (1980), also posit additional ‘bound’ particles, which must occur with
another particle. There is even some disagreement on whether certain particles/variations exist in
present-day speech.
3
In this chapter I use the term ‘combination’ to refer to any combination of particles, whether
polysyllabic ‘clusters’ or supposed monosyllabic ‘contractions’; the focus of the chapter is on
particle clusters.
10 Combining NSM Explications for Clusters of Cantonese … 189
are not sentences, such as clauses, phrases, free-standing words, after the sentence
topic, and at other natural breaks in the sentence. Some authors make further
distinctions depending on the particle’s position in the sentence, but terminological
discrepancies also exist there, not to mention that natural speech includes many
ill-formed sentences. These distinctions are not important to the semantic analysis
presented here.
Cantonese is the primary spoken language of Hong Kong. A 2016 census found
that over 6.2 million people, or 88.9% of the population of Hong Kong (not
including people under the age of five or mute), speak Cantonese as their usual
language (Census and Statistics Department 2017). Cantonese is a Sinitic language,
belonging to the Yue group of ‘dialects’. It is mutually unintelligible with
Mandarin, the standard official language of China (also known as ‘Modern Standard
Chinese’, ‘Standard Mandarin’, or ‘Putonghua’). Cantonese is the most widely
known and influential variety of Chinese besides Mandarin (Matthews and Yip
2011: 2). This chapter uses the term Cantonese to refer to the variety as spoken in
Hong Kong, although Cantonese is also spoken outside of Hong Kong, for example
in Guangzhou, Macau, Singapore and Malaysia. This study also considers only
informal, ‘everyday’ spoken Cantonese. Use of Cantonese utterance particles is
significantly reduced in formal contexts, possibly because formal language is
heavily influenced by Mandarin and the written language (there is a significant
discontinuity in Hong Kong between spoken and written language).
As mentioned, utterance particles have no lexical counterpart in English, but
their functions may be conveyed by intonation patterns. Cantonese is a tonal lan-
guage with six distinctive tones, which means speakers cannot use intonation to the
same extent as in English or other non-tonal languages. There is speculation that
this may help explain the high number and frequency of utterance particles in
Cantonese (Yau 1980: 51; Wakefield 2011). Wakefield (2011, 2012a, b) has pro-
vided the most in-depth analysis in this area.
Despite the pervasiveness and importance of utterance particles in Cantonese,
there has long been much confusion and uncertainty over their possible meanings.
Native Cantonese speakers themselves find it extraordinarily difficult to pinpoint
what the particles mean, and it is generally agreed that their meanings—if they have
any—are extremely elusive. The range of use of each particle is broad and varied,
so that even if a particle’s use seems straightforward in one context, the particle
may appear to do something completely different in another context. As Matthews
and Yip (2011: 389) put it, ‘it is extremely difficult to identify a common
denominator underlying all its uses’. Accurate and comprehensive semantic anal-
yses of Cantonese utterance particles have long been lacking, with some scholars
providing vague, contradictory, and often untrue descriptions, and/or jumping to the
conclusion that the particles have no semantic content [an extensive literature
review can be found in Leung (2016)].
Combinations of particles have repeatedly been claimed to have the combined
meaning of the separate particles of which they are made up (Yau 1965; Gibbons
1980; Kwok 1984; Matthews and Yip 2011). According to Wakefield (2011: 13–
14), all studies on Cantonese utterance particles appear to agree that this is the case,
190 H. H. L. Leung
presumably based on native speaker intuition and assumption. However, supportive

evidence is scant at best, and the claim could hardly be backed up without rigorous
semantic analyses of the individual particles involved.
Semantic analysis by Leung (2016) of a selection of particles using the Natural
Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) has recently provided explications of five ‘basic’,
commonly used Cantonese utterance particles. The explications are based on
Cantonese corpus data, testable by substitution into real, natural Cantonese utter-
ances, and show that those utterance particles have identifiable invariant meanings.
The explications are given in Cantonese as well as English and are translatable into
other languages. Building on the explications for the five particles, the study
introduces a new method of representing the meaning of particle clusters, and it is
this method that is the focus of the current chapter.
This chapter uses an unusual fusing of NSM explications to show how the
meaning of particle clusters is indeed equal to the combined meanings of the
particles of which they are made up. It demonstrates that the particle clusters can be
explained semantically. Specifically, it examines the two clusters laa3-wo3 and
zaa3-wo3, which are formed from three ‘basic’ particles: laa3, zaa3, and wo3. The
explications of the individual particles are combined to create ‘joint’ explications,
with the resulting cluster definitions again tested by substitution into real examples
of their use found in the Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus.
10.1.2 NSM and the Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus
The goal of NSM semantic analysis is to decompose complex meanings into

explications made up of semantic primes via reductive paraphrase. Semantic primes
are meanings that cannot be further broken down or paraphrased more simply.
The NSM approach has been applied to particles in various languages, including
Malay (Goddard 1994, 2001, 2011: 180–183), Mparntwe Arrernte (Goddard 2011:
176–180), English (Goddard 2011: 167–175; Wierzbicka 2003: 345–370),
Singapore English (Besemeres and Wierzbicka 2003; Wong 2004b, 2005, 2014),
Mandarin Chinese (Chappell 1991), Polish (Wierzbicka 2003: 371–389), Ewe
(Ameka 1991), Colombian Spanish (Travis 2005) and Arabic (Rieschild 2011).
Since studies of Cantonese utterance particles have often expressed their meanings
in obscure or esoteric terms that are themselves not well-defined, NSM is a very apt
and useful framework in this area. Cantonese utterance particles were investigated
using NSM in Leung (2012, 2013, 2016), with combinations of particles and
explications explored in the latter two works, where the current method was first
trialled.
A modified NSM has also been used for Cantonese utterance particles in
Wakefield (2011, 2012a, b). Wakefield was mainly concerned with matching four
Cantonese utterance particles to English intonation patterns, drawing on the mod-
ified NSM to aid in the process. His explications used, for instance, non-universal
features like the comparative construction, ‘embedded’ certain particles within the
explications for other particles, and assumed polysemy, opening the door for
non-translatability, circularity and obscurity. (It may be that molecules are required
in certain particle explications, but so far this is not very convincing.) Wakefield
also added ‘P’ (and ‘P2’) for ‘proposition’ and ‘D’ (and ‘D2’) for ‘discourse’ items
into his explications, giving them a technical quality inconsistent with NSM prin-
ciples. Even overlooking some other problematic factors,4 Wakefield’s ‘translation’
of particles to intonation would not work for particle combinations because pre-
sumably intonation contours cannot be combined. The very large number of par-
ticles and particle combinations in Cantonese also makes it implausible for each one
to be equivalent to a distinct intonation contour. Wakefield (2011: 250–251)
himself admits that not all particles, let alone combinations, will have equivalent
intonation contours.
Explications in this chapter are presented in parallel English and Cantonese
versions. A limited number of Cantonese exponents of NSM primes were first
proposed by Tong, Yell and Goddard (1997: 249–251); they were related to time
and space. Wakefield (2011) then proposed nine Cantonese primes that he needed
in his explications, and in a limited number of other cases he translated Chappell’s
(2002) Mandarin exponents into Cantonese. Cantonese exponents for the remainder
of the 65 semantic primes currently recognized were proposed in full for the first
time in Leung (2016), which was accompanied by discussion of the Cantonese
exponents, how they were chosen, and complications. Some of the exponents
matched those in the earlier papers, while others differed. The list is reproduced in
an appendix to this chapter.
The Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus, the source of the Cantonese examples,
contains about 30 h of recording and 180,000 word tokens. It is made up of
informal, spontaneous speech either in ordinary settings among family, friends and
colleagues, or taken from radio talk shows. All the examples used here are from
ordinary settings among family, friends and colleagues. There were some 100 Hong
Kong Cantonese speakers recorded in Hong Kong between the late 1990s and early
2000s. They were mostly aged in their 20s and 30s, with roughly equal female and
male gender distribution. The version of the corpus used shows the original tran-
scription in Chinese characters and a romanization; all of the word-for-word glosses
in English and the English free translations shown in this chapter are my own work.
For reasons of space, the interlinear gloss is not given for certain turns where the
Cantonese wording is unimportant and the English translation is considered ade-
quate. Nonetheless, the English translations retain all Cantonese utterance particles.
Testing of the proposed combined explications is carried out by substituting the
explications into real examples of the particles in use from the corpus and deter-
mining whether this makes sense in context and seems a plausible representation of
what the speaker wanted to express.
4
A brief discussion of the general issues with Wakefield’s analysis is given in Leung (2016: 36–
39). His semantic analysis is discussed in e.g. Leung (2016: 234–242) and elsewhere in the same
work..
192 H. H. L. Leung
10.2 Explications and Examples5
10.2.1 Explications for Three Monosyllabic Particles
Leung (2016) has shown that it is possible to propose a specific, clear and
cross-translatable NSM paraphrase that captures the invariant meaning expressed
by certain Cantonese utterance particles. Three of the particles studied are laa3,
zaa3 and wo3. Their explications are given below, with explanatory notes. It will
become clear that, in context, the proposed explications apply consistently, even in
the case of utterances that may be expressing quite different attitudes, assumptions
or intentions. [For in-depth semantic analysis of each particle, see Leung (2016); it
is not possible in the current chapter to justify these explications more thoroughly.]
[A1] laa3 [English version]
I want you to think now: ‘I know it’s like this’
[A2] laa3 [Cantonese version]
ngo5 soeng2 lei5 ji4gaa1 lam2: ‘ngo5 zi1 hai6 gam2joeng2
I want you now think I know is this-way
Laa3 is found to be used in a range of situations including informing, teaching/
instructing, and answering questions. It even occurs in jokes and teasing. The
explication for laa3 shows that the speaker can sound like they are telling the hearer
something they should pay attention to (regardless of whether the hearer already
knows). Laa3 conveys a kind of ‘emphasis’ that often indicates that the hearer
should ‘note’ or ‘register’ something, that something is worth keeping in mind or
should not be overlooked.
[B1] zaa3 [English version]
it is like this, (it is) not more
someone can feel something because of this
[B2] zaa3 [Cantonese version]
hai6 gam2joeng2, m4 hai6 do1di1
is like-this/this-way not is more
jau5jan4 ho2ji5 jan1wai6 gam2 gok3dak1 jau5 je5
someone can because like-this/this-way feel there-is something
Zaa3’s most intuitively obvious effect is to ‘minimize’. It is often compared to
English only, although non-substitutable utterance particles are also described this
way and the description in terms of ‘only’ is problematic (Leung 2016: 234–241).
The first line of the above explication encompasses ideas related to the primes
LITTLE*FEW, A SHORT TIME and ONE, while excluding the possibility of a meaning to
do with SMALL, which seemed intuitively to belong in the explication, but was not
5
The following abbreviations are used in interlinear glosses: CL: Classifier; DEL: Delimitative
aspect; PL: Plural; PROG: Progressive aspect; PRT: Utterance particle.
substantiated in the corpus. It can also explain examples of zaa3 to do with hearsay,
e.g. ‘I heard/guessed it zaa3’. The phrasing avoids the non-universal comparative
construction. The second line of the explication shows that use of zaa3 seems to
provoke some kind of reaction or emotion, even if small (although the speaker may
want or expect this, there is no guarantee that the hearer provides it). Use of zaa3
seems to help the speaker point out that the fact something is ‘not more’ is often
unexpected or worth acknowledgement. The explication is compatible with the
tendency for zaa3 to be used to describe things negatively, while not making it part
of the particle’s invariant meaning, since zaa3 can occasionally be used in a pos-
itive way.
[C1] wo3 [English version]
you aren’t thinking about this at this moment
it is good if you think about it
[C2] wo3 [Cantonese version]
lei5 li1 jat1haak1 m4 hai6 lam2 gan2 li1 jat1 joeng6 je5
you this moment not is think PROG this one CL thing
jyu4gwo2 lei5 lam2 haa5 zau6 hou2
if you think DEL then good
Wo3 can be used in a variety of ways, including to give information or point out
something noteworthy, answer questions in a ‘negative’ or ‘unexpected’ way, give
reminders, or when remembering or realizing something. The first line of the
explication for wo3, ‘you aren’t thinking about this at this moment’, encompasses
wo3’s ability to code new information as well as ‘old’ information, such as in
reminders. The second line of the explication ‘it is good if you think about it’ shows
the noteworthiness of the information or the purpose/relevance of saying it. When
wo3 is used in instances where one remembers or realizes something, the speaker is
talking to themselves or thinking out loud, with ‘you’ in the explication referring to
oneself.
It should be noted that these explications look very different to the average NSM
explication, even those of particles in similar languages. Specifically, they are much
shorter. This was unexpected in the early stages of analysis. In proposing the
original explications, the researcher first attempted to include many more compo-
nents than were ultimately retained, due both to the particles’ hazy meanings and to
an expectation based on the average length of other NSM explications. It is
important to recognize that the meanings of the particles are context-bound, and one
of the keys to explicating them is to use NSM primes which allow reference to
deictic and changing elements. This way, the explications show how the particles
can accomplish a multitude of different tasks in conversation. Understanding this
helps to pinpoint the invariant meaning and show that this meaning remains stable
across different contexts and situations. It makes sense that the explications are
short and not very specific; this is consistent with the particles’ high frequency of
use. Generally speaking, parts of explications that are deictic and require context,
194 H. H. L. Leung
such as the word this, refer to whatever might be in the utterance (or its context) that
the particle is attached to.
These three explications were all created independently of the others, without
considering potential combinations. It so happens that these particles can form the
two clusters laa3-wo3 and zaa3-wo3. Laa3 and zaa3 never occur together in a
combination. Changing the order of particles in a cluster also appears not to be
allowed: *wo3-laa3 and *wo3-zaa3 never occur. Non-combinations are discussed
in Sect. 10.3.
10.2.2 Explications for Two Particle Clusters
Using the three particle explications given in Sect. 2.1, NSM explications for the
two possible particle clusters are arrived at by simply placing one explication after
the other, in the same order as the particles would be spoken. In other words, the
explication for the cluster laa3-wo3 consists of the explication for laa3 followed by
the explication for wo3. Similarly, the explication for the cluster zaa3-wo3 consists
of the explication for zaa3 followed by the explication for wo3. The same is done
with the Cantonese versions. The explications of these combinations refer to the
utterances the combinations are attached to, as in the case of the original, inde-
pendent particle explications. The combined explications are tested by substitution
into examples found in the Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus, to see whether they can
take the place of those clusters and plausibly explain what the speaker was
expressing at that moment. Some examples contain other particles and combina-
tions, but we consider only laa3-wo3 and zaa3-wo3 here.
10.2.2.1 Laa3-wo3: Proposed Explication and Examples
The proposed explication for laa3-wo3 is given in [D1] and [D2]:

[D1] Proposed explication for laa3-wo3 [English version]
I want you to think now: ‘I know it’s like this’
[D2] Proposed explication for laa3-wo3 [Cantonese version]
ngo5 soeng2 lei5 ji4gaa1 lam2: ‘ngo5 zi1 hai6 gam2joeng2
I want you now think I know is this-way
This combined explication for laa3-wo3 makes good sense and can explain the
varied functions of the cluster. Matthews and Yip (2011: 396) state that laa3-wo3
indicates ‘current relevance + noteworthiness’. This corresponds well with the
proposed combined explication, where the first line (i.e. the explication for laa3)
emphasizes the utterance’s relevance, especially as the line includes the prime NOW.
The last two lines (i.e. the explication for wo3) can convey ‘noteworthiness’ as the
speaker feels that it is good for the hearer to think about something.
To test this explication using substitution into real utterances, consider first
example (1) below from the Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus, which features speaker
A’s shaky defence of her relationship with her and speaker B’s mutual friend. As B
shows in the first turn of this excerpt, A’s relationship with their friend is not good.
B is incredulous that A is talking about her past relationship with their mutual
friend. B stresses that the good times of their relationship were a long time ago
(three years) and clearly thinks this is too long ago to be relevant to the present
time.
(1) B: ‘You two have such a bad relationship.’
A: Ngo5dei6 ji5cin4 di1 gwaan1hai6 hou2 hou2 gaa3.
we before CL relationship very good PRT
‘We used to have a very good relationship gaa3.’
B: Ji5cin4 gwaan1hai6? Waa3! Hou2 noi6 laa3 wo3.
before relationship wow very long-time PRT PRT
Gei2do1 nin4 cin4?
how-many year before
‘Before? Wow! [That was] a very long time ago laa3-wo3. How many
years ago?’
A: ‘Three years.’
B: ‘Three years ago laa1!’
A: ‘Three years ago our relationship was very good gaa3.’
The laa3-wo3 suffixed utterance in example (1) shows speaker B trying to ‘remind’,
‘point out’, or ‘emphasize’ to speaker A that the good relationship with the other
person goes back a fair while. It could be interpreted as mild teasing or joking, but it
appears there is an element of truth here. B’s amazement or surprise at A bringing
up the past is demonstrated by his use of waa3 ‘wow’. Laa3-wo3 helps B express
firstly that B wants A to think now ‘I know it’s like this’—speaker A needs to know
and understand the fact that the good times in their relationship were a very long
time ago. B also expresses ‘you aren’t thinking about this at this moment’, because
it seems that A does not realize the significant length of time that has passed, or
perhaps is not thinking about how different their relationship is at the present time.
Finally, B expresses to A the idea that ‘it is good if you think about it’. This is a
way for B to convey to A that she needs to realize and accept the facts. It seems to
be a way for B to tell A to move on and not dwell on their past relationship, which
196 H. H. L. Leung
is no longer relevant in B’s eyes. The use of laa3-wo3 helps B simultaneously

express his incredulity and his appeal to A to accept the facts.
Now let us look at example 2.
(2) B: ‘And but the salary is very low zaa3-wo3. For one months’ work ne1 you
still only get three-thousand-and-something dollars zaa3-wo3.’
A: ‘Huh.’
B: Ngo5 go2zan6si4 Form Five heoi3 zou6 syu2kei4gung1
I at-that-time form five go do summer-job
saam1cin1leng4 man1. Ji4gaa1 jau6 hai6
three-thousand-something dollar now also/still is
saam1cin1leng4 man1. Daan6 ji5ging1 hai6 gei2do1
three-thousand-something dollar but already is how-many
nin4 cin4 aa3? Ng5 nin4 cin4 laa3 wo3.
year before PRT five year before PRT PRT
‘When I had a summer job in Form Five [I got] three-thousand-and-
something dollars. Now it’s also/still three-thousand-and-something dollars.
But that was already how many years ago aa3? Five years ago laa3-wo3.’
A: ‘That’s very little aa3.’
Example (2) has some similarities with (1), although the speaker is pointing out the
ridiculousness of the situation rather than the ridiculousness of the hearer. In this
example, a student of speaker B’s has got a summer job and speaker B is telling
speaker A about it. In the first turn she indicates twice that the pay is very low, each
time using zaa3-wo3 to help point this out and prompt some kind of feeling or
reflection (this is discussed in example 6). The speaker says that the pay for a
summer job has not changed in five years, and the use of laa3-wo3 has the effect of
‘emphasizing’ this. In giving this information, B wants A to think now: ‘I know it’s
like this’. B points out that A is not thinking about this at this moment and indicates
that it is good if speaker A thinks about it—this is new information and B really
wants A to grasp it and to think about how low the pay is. This is in keeping with
the ‘persuasive’ nature of the first turn (discussed in example 6). A does get B’s
point, and he responds saying ‘That’s very little’.
Two examples of laa3-wo3 are shown in example (3) below, which show a
conversation about whale-watching in Australia. Speaker B would like to go on a
whale-watching tour and is explaining what that is, while A, who clearly does not
know anything about whale-watching, asks B questions about it. While examples
(1) and (2) above showed laa3-wo3 used in utterances where the speaker had lots of
certainty and wanted to ‘emphasize’ what was being said, speaker A in (3) is
uncertain about whale-watching and uses laa3-wo3 to check with B what she
thinks. The two instances of laa3-wo3 in (3), labelled (a) and (b), function some-
what like tag questions, which is fairly common for this cluster.
(3) B: ‘I mean they’ll have—have a boat to take you out to sea. Like that.
A: Zik1hai6 dou3si4 zi6gei2 join go2di1 local tour
meaning at-that-time self join those local tour
laa3 wo3 (a), ji3si1 hai6.
PRT PRT meaning is
‘You mean when you get there you’ll join those local tours by yourself
laa3-wo3 (a), you mean.’
B: E6, jyu4gwo2 hai6 zi6gei2 heoi3 zau6 hai6 lo1...
eh if is self go then is PRT
‘Eh, if you go by yourself then yes lo1...’
[Three turns omitted]
B: Hai6 tai2 hoi2 aa3, tai2 saan1wu4 go2di1 je5 lo1.
is look sea PRT look coral those thing PRT
‘Look at the sea aa3, look at the coral and things lo1.’
A: O3 zik1hai6 wai3 keoi5 sik6 je5 go2di1 laa3 wo3 (b).
oh meaning feed them eat thing those PRT PRT
‘Oh you mean like feeding them [the whales] laa3-wo3 (b).’
B: ‘No aa3. This one is… that one is not gaa3 that one is to watch the natural
ones [whales] gaa3-wo3, they’re not raised by people gaa3-wo3.’
In (3a), speaker A is making a guess that people join a local whale-watching tour
after they get to Australia. She is unsure about this, and so seeks confirmation from
speaker B. Her utterance with laa3-wo3 functions like a tag question, as if she is
saying something like ‘you mean you join the local tours when you get there,
right?’ although the same effect may be noticeable without the particles present.6
Using the proposed explication for laa3-wo3, we can understand her utterance to
mean firstly ‘I want you to think now: “I know it’s like this”’. This is plausible as A
wants B to think about and know the answer with certainty. ‘It’s like this’ refers to
A’s assumption about joining a local tour post-arrival. She also expresses ‘you
aren’t thinking about this at this moment’, because she has changed the topic to
how to join such tours and rephrased her assumption. Finally, she indicates ‘it is
good if you think about it’ because if B thinks about it she can ‘check’ A’s
assumption and respond with the relevant information. The use of laa3-wo3
6
It may be worth noting that Cantonese speakers generally speak with more apparent ‘certainty’
than English speakers, who tend to use, for example, many epistemic adverbs and phrases; see e.g.
Wierzbicka (2006b).
198 H. H. L. Leung
successfully expresses to B that A wants her statement to be checked and corrected

if necessary, and B responds appropriately in the next turn.
The second occurrence of laa3-wo3, (3b), is similar to (3a). Speaker B is listing
things that one does while on the tour, and A ‘asks’ B whether people feed the
whales. She says this like a statement and uses laa3-wo3 to get confirmation, again
somewhat like a tag question. A is expressing ‘I want you to think now: “I know it’s
like this”’ because she wants B to think about and know the answer. She also
expresses ‘you aren’t thinking about this at this moment’ since feeding the whales
has not been mentioned up to this point. She indicates ‘it is good if you think about
it’. If she is correct that you feed the whales, this serves as a way to ‘remind’ B of
this missed point (B may want to add this to her list from the previous turn), or
perhaps to elicit more information about it from B. If she is incorrect, as is the case
here, she can successfully ‘check’—she has completely misunderstood, and B
corrects her in the next turn.
Example (4) shows a different use of laa3-wo3.
(4) B: Nei5dei6 haa6nin2 saam1jyut6 zau6 haau2 laa3 wo3 jing1man2.

you(PL) next-year March then test PRT PRT English
‘You are sitting your exam next March laa3-wo3, for English.’
A: ‘Yes aa3.’
In (4), speaker B brings up the topic of an English examination that speaker A is to

sit. Presumably, A already knows that he is to sit the exam, and this is supported by
his nonchalant response in the next turn. In this context, it is unlikely that B is
‘asking’ or ‘checking’ about the examination as with the whale-watching examples
in (3). Here, B is saying this as a kind of ‘reminder’ or ‘prompt’, to bring it up so
that the conversation can move on to this new topic. Speaker B expresses ‘I want
you to think now: “I know it’s like this”’ because she wants A to think about it now.
The speaker expresses ‘you aren’t thinking about this at this moment’ since it is a
change in topic. She also expresses ‘it is good if you think about it’ as a way to
indicate that B would like A to tell her more about it. It could also be interpreted as
a reminder or even warning to him that his exams are coming up.
Example (5) shows a speaker describing her trip to Indonesia.
(5) Gan1zyu6 dai6ng5 jat6 ne1 jau6 zou2 gei1 zau2 wo3.
and-then fifth day PRT again/also early flight leave PRT
Jat1 hei2san1 ne1 sik6 jyun4 zou2caan1 zau6 zau2 laa3 wo3.
as-soon-as wake-up PRT eat finish breakfast then leave PRT PRT
‘And then on the fifth day ne1 [we] left on an early flight wo3. As soon as [we]
woke up ne1 [and] finished breakfast [we] then had to leave laa3-wo3.’
The speaker in example (5) is explaining that her trip was very disappointing
because they were always travelling and so did not get much time to really enjoy
Indonesia. In this example, the speaker uses laa3-wo3 to add the comment that she
had to leave early on the last day of her trip. Laa3-wo3 indicates firstly that the
speaker wants the hearer to now think ‘I know it’s like this’, i.e. to know what
happened and understand the situation. The speaker also expresses ‘you aren’t
thinking about this at this moment’ as it is an added point to a longer conversation
about how little time she had free in Indonesia. Laa3-wo3 also indicates ‘it is good
if you think about it’ because the speaker is trying to be very ‘emphatic’ or ‘per-
suasive’ about how poorly her trip went.
10.2.2.2 Zaa3-Wo3: Proposed Explication and Examples
Let us now look at zaa3-wo3. Following the same method as for laa3-wo3, the
combined explication for zaa3-wo3 is provided first. Examples from the corpus
then show its use in natural, spoken Cantonese.
[E1] Proposed explication for zaa3-wo3 [English version]
it is like this, (it is) not more
someone can feel something because of this
[E2] Proposed explication for zaa3-wo3 [Cantonese version]
hai6 gam2joeng2, m4 hai6 do1di1
is like-this/this-way not is more
jau5jan4 ho2ji5 jan1wai6 gam2 gok3dak1 jau5 je5
someone can because like-this/this-way feel there-is something
The first example of the cluster zaa3-wo3 is given in (6), which is the first part of
example (2). A student of speaker B’s has got a summer job and speaker B is telling
speaker A about it.
(6) B: Tung4maai4 bat1gwo3 jan4gung1 dou1 hou2 ngan1

and but salary also very ‘skinny’/little
zaa3 wo3 (a). Zou6 jat1 go3 jyut6 ne1 dou1 hai6
PRT PRT do one CL month PRT still/even is
dak1 saam1cin1leng4 man1 zaa3 wo3 (b).
only three-thousand-something dollar PRT PRT
‘And but the salary is very low zaa3-wo3 (a). For one months’ work ne1
you still only get three-thousand-and-something dollars zaa3-wo3 (b).’
A: ‘Huh.’
B is commenting on the low pay, ‘convincing’ A that this is unusual or unexpected,

and prompting some thought and consideration. In (6a), B is saying that the pay is
‘skinny’ (i.e. little), not more. She seems to want the hearer to feel something about
this, trying to convince him that this is troubling or at the very least interesting.
200 H. H. L. Leung
Another interpretation could be that the someone who can feel something is herself,
as she clearly finds this noteworthy. She expresses to the hearer that he is not
thinking about this at this moment, because she has only just brought it up. She also
indicates that it is good if he thinks about it. We know from the rest of the
conversation in (2) that she is very eager to keep talking about it.
In (6b), the particle combination helps give the statement of fact an element of
‘unexpectedness’ and ‘noteworthiness’. The speaker comments that the pay is only
three-thousand-and-something dollars and not more. Someone can feel something
because of this—it is clear that speaker B feels slightly alarmed and disturbed by it,
and she seems to want some kind of reaction or support from the hearer, perhaps
wanting him to feel the same way. (This may seem odd to English speakers but is
quite normal in Cantonese.) She indicates that the hearer is not thinking about this
at this moment, probably because he has not reacted at this point or because this is
still new information to him. She then indicates that it is good if the hearer thinks
about it, again wanting some reaction and/or reflection from him. He is quick to
provide this, immediately acknowledging her with a ‘ha’ in a surprised tone
(‘neutral’ in pitch, not corresponding to one of the six tones noted in romanization).
She then observes in a perplexed way that when she herself was that age, her
summer job paid the same amount—even though that was five years ago (as seen in
example 2). Throughout (6) and (2), B tries to convince and emphasize to the hearer
that this salary is low, and uses wo3 to try to get a reaction from him.
Example (7) shows two friends talking about where to go to celebrate the
birthday of a third (who is present but does not speak in this excerpt). The birthday
girl has said she does not want to go to karaoke, explaining that she does not want
her friends to spend too much. Two of her friends, speakers E and M, say that not
going to karaoke will be even more expensive.
(7) E: ‘I’m scared that it [not going to karaoke] will be even more expensive wo3.
Karaoke would include eating dinner gaa3-laa3-wo3.’
M: ‘Yes lo1.’
E: Big Echo maai6 gwong2gou3 sap6 man1 jat1 caan1 zaa3 wo3.
Big Echo sell advertisement ten dollar one meal PRT PRT
‘Big Echo advertizes a meal for ten dollars zaa3-wo3.’
M: Zik1hai6 zik1hai6 peng4 peng4 dei2 mui5 jan4
meaning meaning cheap cheap ‘ish’ each person
gaap3 baak3 - baak3 leng4 man1 zau6
contribute/share hundred hundred or-so/around dollar then
syun3 gaa3 laa1 maa3.
let-it-go/finish PRT PRT PRT
‘I mean I mean cheaply everybody contribute a hundred—a hundred or so

dollars then that’s acceptable/satisfactory gaa3-laa1-maa3.’
Speaker E points out that karaoke would include dinner, adding that Big Echo, a
karaoke venue, advertises a $10 meal. His zaa3-wo3 indicates to his friends that the
meal is not more than $10, i.e. it is very cheap. Probably, they can all feel glad or
assured by this, and the birthday girl can be comforted to know that going to
karaoke will not be too costly for her friends. Speaker E also points out that the
birthday girl is not thinking about the fact that they can eat dinner for $10—this is
apparent from her concern that it will be expensive. Finally, E indicates that it is
good if the birthday girl and/or their friends think about this. Clearly, E would like
to go to karaoke, and uses zaa3-wo3 to point out that it will not be expensive and
that his friend should reconsider. Similarly to the speaker in (6), the birthday girl’s
friends here may seem ‘pushy’ from the perspective of an English speaker, who
would likely expect more ‘personal autonomy’ (well-documented in NSM works,
e.g. Wierzbicka 2006a, b; Wong 2004a), but this does not seem to be an issue for
the Cantonese speakers here.
In example (8), two people are talking about points needed to get into certain
study programmes.
(8) A: Sap6baat3 ze1 maa3 man4fo1 sau1.
eighteen PRT PRT Arts accept
‘[Only] eighteen ze1-maa3 to be accepted into Arts.’
B: Sap6baat3 dak1 hou2 siu2 zaa3 wo3.
eighteen have very few PRT PRT
‘Eighteen is very few zaa3-wo3.’
A: Hai6 lei5fo1 go2di1 beng6taai3 ze1.
is Science those sick-state PRT
‘It’s [just] Science that’s unreasonable/crazy [has high requirements] ze1.’
Speaker A explains nonchalantly that only eighteen points are needed for Arts
subjects, and speaker B points out that eighteen is very few. As explained by the
proposed explication, B’s zaa3-wo3 indicates that eighteen is very few and not
more. Because of this, someone may feel something about this—perhaps surprise or
relief. It certainly seems from the corpus data that B is surprised by this. B points
out that A is not thinking about this at this moment, as B feels that A is not
appropriately surprised or reactive to this fact, or not giving it enough weight and
importance. B thinks it is good if A thinks about it. Speaker A responds by pointing
out that this attitude or behaviour only seems strange compared to the high
requirements needed for Science subjects (thus explaining his lack of emotion).
202 H. H. L. Leung
10.3 Non-combination of Laa3 and Zaa3
As mentioned, some particle combinations never occur; laa3 and zaa3 never
combine with each other. Some other pairs of incompatible particles, such as wo3
and laa1, were found by Leung (2013: 24, 2016: 355–356) to have strong semantic
clashes, made clear by opposing components in their NSM explications.7 This kind
of strong semantic conflict is not obvious in the explications of laa3 and zaa3.
A hypothesis that was briefly considered was that the meanings of laa3 and zaa3
may be too similar to each other to warrant usage together. Though the two particles
can usually not be substituted for each other in speech, both ultimately refer to a
current state of affairs the speaker wants to point out as somehow factual or
noteworthy: ‘it is like this’. It may be that this overlap means Cantonese speakers
will never need to use both particles simultaneously. However, speakers often
produce redundant repetitions; this is, therefore, not a very satisfying answer.
Matthews and Yip (2011: 395–396) state that possible combinations are limited
by pronounceability as well as semantic coherence. According to them, pro-
nounceability affects clusters such as *laa3-le1 due to the clash of similar sounds
(they imply that *laa3-le1 is semantically possible and otherwise acceptable).
However, I believe pronounceability is not a cause for non-occurring clusters, since
this does not appear to affect other parts of speech. Tongue twisters in Cantonese
and other languages, while acknowledged by speakers as difficult to pronounce, do
not cause those utterances to be impossible to say. Reduplication in other Cantonese
word classes is also common, suggesting that similar sounding words can co-occur
acceptably. Moreover, if some words were forbidden due to phonological reasons,
this might mean that utterances ending in certain words cannot be followed by
certain particles. This does not seem to happen, and native speakers do not seem to
be prevented from using certain words or particles together for phonological
reasons.
Besides possible phonological and semantic reasons for non-combination,
Cantonese utterance particles seem to follow certain rules about which particles go
first, second, and so on. Out of all the possible combinations made from the five
individual particles in Leung (2016), laa3, zaa3, wo3, laa1, and gaa3, the two
particles in focus here, laa3 and zaa3, fill the same, middle position of three (both
can be preceded by gaa3 and/or followed by wo3). The other particle of the five to
share this feature, laa1, can also not be combined with laa3 or zaa3. This posi-
tioning seems to have some bearing on the (non-)compatibility. Rigid ordering
extends to particles which do combine—*wo3-laa3 and *wo3-zaa3 are unaccept-
able. Matthews and Yip (2011: 394–396) also noted the restricted ordering of the
particles, despite the large number of logically possible permutations. Some syn-
tactic reasons for the rigid ordering appear to have first been proposed in Law
7
Wo3 includes a component ‘you aren’t thinking about this at this moment’, and laa1 includes a
component ‘you now know how I think about this’. These components are semantically
incompatible.
(1990) and are not reviewed here. Given the small number of particles that have
undergone rigorous semantic analysis so far, a strong semantic reason for this
ordering is left for future research.
This exploration of two common Cantonese utterance particle clusters, laa3-wo3

and zaa3-wo3, backs the frequently referenced claim that the meaning of a particle
cluster is equal to the meaning of the individual particles combined. This had
previously not been satisfactorily tested. The short but meaningful NSM explica-
tions proposed for the three monosyllabic particles laa3, zaa3 and wo3 in Leung
(2016) can combine to yield the meaning of the two clusters. The explications can
combine in ways predicted (or necessitated) by the actual particle clusters in speech,
and the occurring clusters appear to reflect the semantic compatibility of the
component particles. The composite meanings can be stated in English and
Cantonese, using NSM, and can be substituted into examples of the clusters found
in the Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus to explain their meaning.
This innovative use of NSM for combining explications appears promising, even
if limited to Cantonese utterance particles. To my knowledge, this method of
‘mixing and matching’ explications has never been applied to other words. Of
course, the explications in this chapter offer all the usual benefits of NSM, with
simple, cross-translatable paraphrases able to overcome common definition prob-
lems such as circularity, obscurity, untranslatability and inaccuracy. Using NSM, it
has been possible to construct explications from the speaker’s point of view and to
test these meanings by substituting them into real contexts. As well, this can be
considered an additional test of the individual explications first proposed. In ret-
rospect, the fact that Cantonese utterance particles’ explications are short and
simple, with deictic elements, makes a lot of sense. It helps explain their remarkably
high frequency in ordinary conversation and their versatility across many contexts.
Moreover, their compact meanings make sense when considering particle clusters.
Short explications would be expected to combine more easily, probably influencing
the particles’ frequent combination with one another in particle clusters.
Longer combinations such as gaa3-laa3-wo3 and gaa3-zaa3-wo3 seem able to
be described and analysed in this same way. That is, the explication for the particle
gaa3 can be placed in front of the combined explications discussed here to plau-
sibly give the meaning of the corresponding three-particle clusters. These are also
substantiated by examples from the corpus. Nonetheless, our understanding of
particle clusters would still benefit from analyses of more individual particles using
NSM. More research can confirm whether the observed semantic compatibility of
the relevant explications is true of other particle clusters. Furthermore, semantic
reasons for non-occurring particle clusters and non-occurring orderings of particles
within clusters is still unclear. Better evidence of reasons for their ordering may
arise with further research.
204 H. H. L. Leung
Acknowledgements Of course, I must thank Cliff Goddard who made great contributions to the
research that this chapter draws from, giving me many ideas whilst I was under his wing.
Appendix—Cantonese Exponents of NSM Primes
The list of NSM semantic primes from Leung (2016) is reproduced in the table
below, showing Cantonese and English exponents. These are the exponents used in
the explications in this chapter. In Cantonese explications and cultural scripts,
classifiers will sometimes be needed; they are not shown in this table. The most
likely classifiers are go3 and joeng6, as they are neutral and non-specific.
NGO5, LEI5, JAN4, JE5, JAN4, SAN1 TAI2 Substantives

ZUNG2, BOU6 FAN6 Relational substantives

KIND, PART
LI1, TUNG4 JAT1, LING6 JAT1*LING6 NGOI6 Determiners

JAT1, LOENG5, DI1, DOU1*CYUN4 BOU6, DO1, SIU2 Quantifiers

HOU2, M4 HOU2 Evaluators

GOOD, BAD
DAAI6, SAI3 Descriptors

BIG, SMALL
ZI1 (DOU3), LAM2, SOENG2, M4 SOENG2, GOK3 DAK1, GIN3 (DOU2), TENG1 Mental predicates
DOU2
GONG2*WAA6, ZI6, ZAN1 Speech

SAY, WORDS, TRUE
ZOU6, FAAT3 SANG1, JUK1 Actions, events,

HAI2, JAU5, HAI6 Location, existence,
(HAI6) NGO5 GE3 Possession
(IS) MINE
SANG1 CYUN4, SEI2 Life and death
LIVE, DIE
SI4 HAU6, JI4 GAA1, ZI1 CIN4, ZI1 HAU6, NOI6, JAT1 ZAN6, JAT1 DYUN6 SI4 Time
GAAN3, JAT1 HAAK1
WHEN*TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME
TIME, MOMENT
(continued)
(continued)
DOU6, LI1 DOU6, SEONG6 GOU1, HAA6 MIN6, JYUN5, KAN6, BIN6, LEOI5 Place
MIN6*JAP6 MIN6, DIM3 (ZYU6)
M4, HO2 LANG4*WAAK6 ZE2, HO2 JI5, JAN1 WAI6, JYU4 GWO2 (… Logical concepts
ZAU6…)
HOU2, DO1 (DI1)*ZOI3 Intensifier, augmentor

VERY, MORE
CI5*GAM2 JOENG2 Similarity

LIKE*AS
Notes • Exponents of primes can be polysemous, i.e. they can have other, additional meanings •
Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes • They can be formally, i.e.
morphologically, complex • They can have combinatorial variants or allolexes (indicated with *)
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Part III
Cliff Goddard: List of Publications
Cliff Goddard: List of Publications
Compiled by Bert Peeters
1976
(Book review) The Speculative Grammar by C. S. Peirce. International Review of
Slavic Linguistics, 1(2/3), 427–440.
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Case systems and case marking in Australian languages: A new interpretation.
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B. Peeters (&)
e-mail: Bert.Peeters@anu.edu.au
e-mail: Bert.Peeters@uantwerpen.be

210 B. Peeters
1984
Cohesion and switch-reference in Yankunytjatjara. Language in Central Australia,
1, 35–42.
When to use that apostrophe? Language in Central Australia, 3, 11–13.
1985
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(Co-edited; second editor: A. Kalotas) Punu: Yankunytjatjara plant use. Traditional
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1986
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1987
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1988
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1989
Issues in Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Quaderni di semantica, 10(1), 51–64.
The goals and limits of semantic representation. Quaderni di semantica, 10(2),
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Emergent genres of reportage and advocacy in the Pitjantjatjara print media.
Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1990(2), 27–47.
The lexical semantics of “good feelings” in Yankunytjatjara. Australian Journal of
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1993
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empirical findings (pp. 31–54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.
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(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Key words, culture and cognition.
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269 pp.
(Edited) Studies in the syntax of universal semantic primitives. Language Sciences,

19(3) (special issue).
The universal syntax of semantic primitives. Language Sciences, 19(3), 197–207.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00059-9.
(Co-authored; first author: M. Tong, second author: M. Yell) Semantic primitives of
time and space in Hong Kong Cantonese. Language Sciences, 19(3), 245–261.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00063-0.
(Co-authored; first author: D. Hill). Spatial terms, polysemy and possession in
Longgu (Solomon Islands). Language Sciences, 19(3), 263–275. https://doi.org/10.
1016/S0388-0001(96)00064-2.
Semantic primes and grammatical categories. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 17
(1), 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268609708599543.
Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: ‘Surprise’ in Malay and English.
Culture & Psychology, 3(2), 153–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X9700
300204.
Cultural values and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Journal of
Pragmatics, 27(2), 183–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(96)00032-X.
The semantics of coming and going. Pragmatics, 7(2), 147–162. https://doi.org/10.
1075/prag.7.2.02god.
(Co-authored; second author: N. Thieberger) Lexicographic research on Australian
Aboriginal languages 1968–1993. In D. Tryon, & M. Walsh (Eds.), Boundary
rider: Essays in honour of Geoffrey O’Grady (pp. 175–208). Canberra: Pacific
Linguistics.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Discourse and culture. In T.A. van
Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 231–257). London: Sage.
(Book review) U. Eco, The search for the perfect language. Australian Journal of
1998
Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xv +
411 pp. See also 2011.
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theoretical papers, 434. Reprinted in 2007 with divergent page numbering.
Bad arguments against semantic primitives. Theoretical Linguistics, 24(2/3), 129–
156. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.1998.24.2-3.129.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Language, culture and meaning:
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ration of language and linguistics (pp. 137–159). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See
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(Edited) Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context. Berlin:
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physical qualities: sweet, hot, hard, heavy, rough, sharp in cross-linguistic per-
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A “lexicographic portrait” of forgetting. In M. Amberber (Ed.), The language of
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A culture-neutral metalanguage for mental state concepts. In A.C. Schalley, & D.
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in language learning and intercultural communication. In F. Sharifian, & G.B.
Palmer (Eds.), Applied Cultural Linguistics: Implications for second language
learning and intercultural communication (pp. 105–124). Amsterdam: John
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«Игpaй лyчшe, Mapтинa!» (иpoния «c кaмeнным лицoм» и этнoпpaгмaтикa
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(Edited) Cross-linguistic semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xvi + 356
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Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 1–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/
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(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) New semantic primes and new syn-
tactic frames: “Specificational BE” and “abstract THIS/IT”. In C. Goddard (Ed.),
Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 35–57). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.
org/10.1075/slcs.102.06god.
Towards a systematic table of semantic elements. In C. Goddard (Ed.),

Cross-linguistic semantics (pp. 59–81). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.
org/10.1075/slcs.102.07god.
(Co-authored; second author: S. Karlsson) Re-thinking THINK in contrastive per-
spective: Swedish vs. English. In C. Goddard (Ed.), Cross-linguistic semantics
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Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages (pp. 75–
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(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Universal human concepts as a basis
for contrastive linguistic semantics. In M.Á. Gómez González, J.L. Mackenzie, &
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Not taking yourself too seriously in Australian English: Semantic explications,
cultural scripts, corpus evidence. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(1), 29–53. https://doi.
org/10.1515/IPRG.2009.002.
(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Contrastive semantics of physical
activity verbs: ‘Cutting’ and ‘chopping’ in English, Polish, and Japanese. Language
Sciences, 31, 60–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2007.10.002.
“Like a crab teaching its young to walk straight”: Proverbiality, semantics, and
indexicality in English and Malay. In G. Senft, & E.B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual com-
munication (pp. 103–125). New York: Berg.
Componential analysis. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Culture
and language use (pp. 58–67). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. See also 1995, 2005.
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Cultural scripts. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and
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“Cлeдyй пyтeм pиcoвoгo пoля”: ceмaнтикa пocлoвиц в aнглийcкoм и
мaлaйcкoм языкax [“Follow the way of the rice plant”: The semantics of proverbs
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(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) ‘Want’ is a lexical and conceptual
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A piece of cheese, a grain of sand: The semantics of mass nouns and unitizers. In F.
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‘Early interactions’ in Australian English, American English, and English English:
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On the river, on an island, on the street: The semantics of English on-constructions
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(Co-authored; first author: M.A. Barrios Rodríguez) ‘Degrad verbs’ in Spanish and
English: Collocations, lexical functions and contrastive NSM semantic analysis.
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Evolutionary semantics: Using NSM to model stages in human cognitive evolution.
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(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) Semantic fieldwork and lexical uni-
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On “disgust”. In F. Baider, & G. Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions
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(Co-authored; second author: A. Wierzbicka) What does Jukurrpa (‘Dreamtime’,
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Aboriginal Studies, 2015(1): 43–65.
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. In B. Heine, & H. Narrog (Eds.),
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Verb classes and valency alternations (NSM approach), with special reference to
English physical activity verbs. In A. Malchukov, & B. Comrie (Eds.), Valency
classes in the world’s languages: Vol. 2 (pp. 1671–1701). Berlin: de Gruyter
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Bert Peeters · Kerry Mullan ·

Lauren Sadow Editors

ISBN 978-981-32-9974-0 ISBN 978-981-32-9975-7 (eBook)

Part I Words as Carriers of Cultural Meaning

Part II Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context

Part III Cliff Goddard: List of Publications

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 1

1.2 NSM in a Nutshell

languages (other NSMs), thereby making culturally speciﬁc terms universally

Table 1.1 Exponents of semantic primes in English

1.3 Words as Carriers of Cultural Meaning

Although, from a historiographical point of view, it is not entirely accurate to say

contexts, which is something that needs to be acknowledged through properly

in Porteño Spanish, is an insult—even though in today’s usage the word has

Arguing against the simplistic—but at the same time terminologically complex—

1.4 Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context

Asano-Cavanagh, Y. (2013). Understanding Japanese culture through a semantic analysis of

Peeters, B. (2015a). La France de la débrouille: Étude ethnoaxiologique d’une valeur culturelle

Wierzbicka, A. (2010b). Cross-cultural communication and miscommunication: The role of cultural

Yuko Asano-Cavanagh and Gian Marco Farese

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 17

2.2 Socio-Cultural Background of Shūkatsu and Konkatsu

2.3 Methodology and Data

Table 2.1 Frequency of occurrence of shūkatsu and konkatsu on the Internet

2.4 Semantic Analysis

(2) 再挑戦のため、企業の評価が高い有名国立大の大学院に進んだ。学問や 研究の

As illustrated in the above example, shūkatsu requires students to have foresight.

‘Important aspects are:

In short, candidates need to emphasize their potential to be of use to the employer,

As shown in these examples, participants in shūkatsu are required to send job

In other words, shūkatsu involves paying full attention to appearance according to

For many participants, not receiving an offer of employment before graduation in

In summary, engaging in shūkatsu means carrying out job-seeking activities with

A recent survey (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research

(13) 私も婚活中です。(略)私も結構お金使いました。金の無駄だし何度か辞めよう かと思い

(16) 出会いがない 上場会社の30歳の男です。今春に海外勤務から戻った後に辞令が

There are known instances of konkatsu agencies holding screenings of important

(23) 絶対に負けられない婚活がそこにはある W杯PVで企画

a. it can be like this:

Yuko Asano-Cavanagh is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Curtin University,

Keywords Porteño Spanish Viveza criolla Vivo Boludo Natural Semantic

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 35

3.2 Viveza Criolla

3.2.1 Porteña and Criolla: A Long-Standing Tradition

To understand viveza criolla, one must work backwards to late nineteenth-century

Argentines lay claim to viveza criolla, but rightly so do Venezuelans, in whose

3.2.2 Viveza in Dictionaries

quien no la haya experimentado—o sufrido—. Refleja o encumbre habilidades y miserias. Juega

not special, treatment among words of a lunfardo dictionary. It comes as a surprise

3.2.3 The Ubiquity of Viveza Criolla

3.2.3.1 La Mano de Dios

Argentines wish to pinpoint when they refer to La Mano de Dios as a viveza2. In

3.2.3.2 Behind the Wheel

3.2.3.3 Underground Viveza

In 2012, an underground fare increase from $1.10 to $2.50 was announced in

3.2.4 Semantic Explications of Viveza Criolla

[A] viveza criolla1 (e.g. We Argentines have viveza criolla1)

[B] viveza criolla2 (e.g. This is a viveza criolla2)

3.3 Boludo and Vivo

In his prologue to Che Boludo! A Gringo’s guide to understanding the Argentines,

Before exploring deﬁnitions of boludo and vivo in dictionaries, a couple of

3.3.2 Boludo and Vivo in Dictionaries

Boludo is a word pervasively used by Porteños, and by a majority of Argentines

(2) 再挑戦のため、企業の評価が高い有名国立大の大学院に進んだ。学問や研究の

(13) 私も婚活中です。(略)私も結構お金使いました。金の無駄だし何度か辞めようかと思い

(16) 出会いがない上場会社の30歳の男です。今春に海外勤務から戻った後に辞令が