Cli Goddard *

complicated words in the English language. Though there is no doubt an element of

* Fax: +61 67 73 3735.

E-mail address: cgoddard@metz.une.edu.au

Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173

www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci0388-0001/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, University of New England,

Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia

Accepted 17 May 2004

Abstract

Culture is one of the key words of the English language, in popular as well as scholarly dis-

course. It is ourishing in popular usage, with a proliferation of extended uses (police culture,

Barbie culture, argument culture, culture of complaint, etc.), while being endlessly debated in

intellectual circles. Though it is sometimes observed that the meaning of the English word cul-

ture is highly language-specic, its precise lexical semantics has received surprisingly little

attention. The main task undertaken in this paper is to develop and justify semantic explica-

tions for the common ordinary meanings of this polysemous word. My analytical framework

is the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach originated by Anna Wierzbicka. I will

propose a set of semantic explications framed in terms of empirically established universal

semantic primes such as PEOPLEPEOPLE, THINKTHINK, DODO, LIVELIVE, NOTNOT, LIKELIKE, THE SAMETHE SAME, and OTHEROTHER.

2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Abstract concepts; Lexical semantics; Natural semantic metalanguage; Wierzbicka; Culture

concept

1. Introduction

Williams (1976, p. 87) famously described culture as one of the two or three mostThe lexical semantics of culturedoi:10.1016/j.langsci.2004.05.001

rhetorical overstatement in this dictum, I show in this study that the English word

culture indeed exhibits a complicated network of interlocking polysemic meanings.

My approach will be a lexicographicsemantic one, employing the natural semantic

metalanguage method of semantic description of Wierzbicka (1996), Goddard (1998)

and Goddard and Wierzbicka (2002). Using the method of reductive paraphrasein semantic primes, I hope to bring new clarity to bear on the meaning of what is

undeniably a key word of the English language, in both popular and scholarly

52 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173discourse.

There is much to be gained from a systematic exploration of the abstract meta-

categories of English, such as culture, society, science, art, religion, politics, etc.

From a purely semantic point of view, such abstract words pose an intriguing,

and as far as I know, little tackled, analytical challenge. Since they constitute a

high-level language-specic taxonomy of human activity, articulating their meaningstructure in close detail would presumably shed much light on prevailing social and

cultural attitudes. Many such words are, furthermore, foundational terms of partic-

ular academic discourses: culture is the key word of anthropology, society the key

word for sociology, and so on. Of central interest is the fact that all these terms

are highly language/culture-specic. Even in other European languages the nearest

counterparts to culture, for example, such as German Kultur or Polish kultura, dier

signicantly to the English word, 1 and one could expect greater dierences in con-

cepts from more distant languages, such as Mandarin Chinese wen2hua4 culture, cul-tivation or Malay kebudayaan culture, traditional culture. Similarly with theEnglish concept of science, its extreme culture-specicity is shown by the fact that

even a language as close as German lacks an exact equivalent. German Wissens-

chaft, roughly (systematic) knowledge, has a much broader range of applicationwhich includes the humanities as well as science in the English sense. 2 The semantics

of such abstract metacategories is surely a compelling topic for sustained cross-lin-

guistic and cross-cultural study. I intend to make a start here with the English word

culture.As Bauman (1996, p. 9) observes in the opening passages of his book Contesting

Culture: No idea is as fundamental to an anthropological understanding of social

life as the concept of culture. At the same time, no anthropological term has spread

into public parlance and political discourse as this word has done over the past 20

years. Ironically, however, as this process has been under way the so-called culture

concept has been subject to sustained scrutiny and criticism in anthropology itself

(cf. Duranti, 1997; Kuper, 1999; Shweder, 2001). Among its alleged sins, as itemised

by Shweder, 2001, p. 3152), are: essentialism, primordialism, representationalism,

1 In the case of culture and related terms, a start has been made in classic studies such as Elias

(1978[1939]), but without the benet of modern methods of linguistic semantics.2 With the aid of modiers one can distinguish Naturwissenschaften systematic knowledge of nature,

natural sciences from Geisteswissenschaften systematic knowledge of human spirit, humanistic sciences,but the existence of these derived subcategories does not alter the fact that German has a broader over-

arching category lacking in English; plus, on close examination, neither of the German derived termsprecisely matches the English terminology of English either.

reication, idealism, positivism, functionalism, relativism, sexism, racism,colonialism, Orientalism, and just plain old-fashioned stereotyping. 3

My primary focus in this study is not on specialised academic understandings of

the culture concept, but rather on the lexical semantics of the word culture as used in

contemporary non-technical written and spoken discourse. Most of the examples Iwill cite come from Australian newspapers and magazines published in 20022003

(the abbreviations SMH and Aust refer to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Aus-

tralian newspapers, respectively). A smaller number of (unsourced) examples repre-

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 53sent personal observations by myself, usually from ephemeral sources, and the

remaining handful are drawn from recently published books intended for non-aca-

demic audiences. I will, however, have occasion to refer to intellectual critiques of

the culture concept to the extent that they can be connected with the semantic struc-

ture of the ordinary word culture.As far as I know, no previous study has sought to bring the methods of linguistic

semantics to bear on the word culture. 4 The present study employs the natural

semantic metalanguage method originated by Wierzbicka (1972, 1996, 1999) (cf.

Goddard and Wierzbicka, 1994, 2002; Goddard, 1998). I will therefore be seeking

to articulate the various meanings of culture in the form of explanatory paraphrases

framed in a highly constrained metalanguage of some 60 simple semantic primes,

such as PEOPLEPEOPLE, THINKTHINK, DODO, SAYSAY, GOODGOOD, BADBAD, BECAUSEBECAUSE, IFIF, and others. By using

such a small and controlled vocabulary (see Appendix A), the method aims to elim-inate the circularity and obscurity which plague most dictionary denitions (and

most scholarly discussions), and to enable the maximum possible resolution of mean-

ing. A growing body of evidence, accumulated over 20 years, indicates that the pos-

tulated primes are lexically encoded, as words or word-like elements, in all

languages. A large body of empirical semantic description has been conducted in this

framework, spanning domains such as emotions, speech acts, colours, concrete ob-

jects, value terms and a variety of grammatical phenomena, in many languages. 5

Before we get started, a brief historical overview will provide some useful orien-tation (cf. Williams, 1976; Kuper, 1999; Inglis, 2004). In its earliest English uses, cul-

ture was a noun of process, referring to the tending of crops, animals, or the like,

typically accompanied by a modier indicating the nature of the thing being culti-

vated. Presumably this meaning (roughly cultivating) remains with us in words suchas agriculture, horticulture, and viviculture, and expressions such as tissue culture,

yoghurt culture, cultured pearls, and so on. In the 16th century culture began to be used

about cultivating the human body through training, and then about cultivating the

3 For discussions consistent with the semantic orientation of the present study, see DAndrade (2001),Eneld (2000), Goddard (2002) and Wierzbicka (1997, pp. 131). For a defence of the culture concept, see

Wierzbicka (in press).4 Kroeber and Kluckhorn (1963[1952]) book Culture: A critical review of concepts and denitions was

focused on social science concepts of culture, rather than on ordinary, everyday uses of the word, and,

more importantly, they did not apply any principled or systematic analytical procedures.5 A comprehensive bibliography is available at The NSM Homepage: www.une.edu.au/arts/LCL/disciplines/linguistics/nsmpage.htm.

non-physical aspects of a person. Among the OEDs citations are to the culture andprot of theyr myndes (Thomas More, c. 1516) and necessary for the culture of

good manners (Lennard, 1633). This self-cultivation meaning remained the pre-

dominant one till as late as the 19th century: a classic denition is that of Arnold

(1873): Culture, acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and saidin the world.

In the late 19th century, things got more complicated. On the one hand, there

were extensions which broadened the usage of culture to take in a general state of

2.1. The classical anthropological concept of culture and its immediate ospring

54 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173According to Kroeber and Kluckhorn (1963[1952]) (cf. Vermeersch, 1977), the

older or classical anthropological concept of culture combines as key components

of its meaning both mental states and processes and patterns of behaviour (hab-

its, customs, ways of life). Clearly implicated are the semantic primes THINKTHINK and DODO,and, if one can take expressions such as way of life at face value, the semantic primeLIVELIVE. Another key ingredient is the role of the precedents of the past, as highlighted

in classic denitions such as the whole complex of traditional behaviour (MargaretMead, 1937) and behaviour which in man is not given at birth (Ruth Benedict,1947).

As discussed above, this idea of culture, or something very close to it, has since

migrated, so to speak, into ordinary English. To cite just two examples:

6 Williams (1976, pp. 9192) claims that this usage originated in specialised uses of German Kultur

under the inuence of Herder, but like other aspects of Williamss account, this is controversial (cf. Kuper,1999). In any case, although Herder made some use of the term Kultur (in an earlier spelling Cultur,

reecting its origin as a French loan word), his primary concept was rather that of Volkgeist, cf. Johoda

(1993, pp. 7578). The modern meaning of German Kultur, which developed in German in opposition to

the French concept of civilisation (cf. Elias (1978[1939], pp. 134)), is signicantly dierent to anyhuman intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development (roughly comparable to civ-ilisation). More recently still, this line of development gave rise to the artistic worksand practices meaning, referring to such things as music, literature, painting, the-

atre and lm. On the other hand, a new anthropological usage of culture was

introduced into English by Tylor in his 1870 book Primitive Culture. 6 Tylor denedculture as that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,

custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

This sense subsequently ourished with the advent of modern social science, espe-

cially anthropology, before spilling out into popular discourse and spawning several

polysemic extensions. I will deal with these immediately in Section 2 below, and then

turn to the artistic works and practices meaning in Section 3.

2. Culture as ways of living, thinking, and behavingcontemporary meaning of English culture.

1. I loved being immersed in a dierent culture and having the chance to learn so

much about the Japanese people. It was great! (re. students holiday trip toJapan).

2. After childbirth in the Chinese culture, the women are made to stay in bed and

cultu

image

enmetiona

intere

and b

dier

serve

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 55Chinese culture, Samoan culture, Russian culture, Aboriginal culture, and so on.

Notice that canonical uses of this sense are associated with place-related descrip-

tors (such as Chinese, Samoan, or Russian, derived from the names of countries), orfrom other words, such as Aboriginal, with strongly place-related meanings. For this

meaning of culture, I propose explication [A1], composed exclusively in semantic

primes. The initial components in (a) are intended to model the fact that culture is

7 Palsson (1993, p. 6) pushes the institutionalism of the travel account back to the Middle Ages, saying

that it satised the desire to experience both dierence and the crossing of boundaries. He also mentions

that later, especially in the 19th century, there arose allied genres such as the semi-ethnographic novel, e.g.Hermares, either oriental or concerned with the savages of America or Africa. Theof the savage, albeit an unrealistic oneplayed an important role in Enlight-

nt ideas of human nature. 7 Herder, Humboldt, Voltaire, and other founda-l Enlightenment thinkers all read and studied travel reports with the greatest

st. My point is that the recognition that there were communities of morality

elief very dierent than ours was linked at the beginning with geographical

ence, i.e. with localisation. I would like to suggest that this feature is still pre-

d in the meaning of the English word culture, as found in expressions such asbasically do nothing but feed baby.

Equally, this older or classical concept of culture has attracted harsh criticism

within anthropology itself. Two quotations follow, and it is interesting to consider

them, not from the point of view of their validity as critiques, but in order to ask

what in the meaning of the term culture invites these complaints.

[T]he term seems to connote a certain coherence, uniformity and timelessness inthe meaning systems of a given group, and to operate rather like the earlierconcept of race in identifying fundamentally dierent, essentialized, andhomogenous social units (as when we speak about a culture). (Abu-Lughodand Lutz, 1990, p. 9)[cultural fundamentalism] reies culture conceived as a compact, bounded,localised and historically rooted set of traditional values. (Stolcke, 1995, 4)

To begin with the issues of boundedness and localisation, various commenta-tors have traced the origins of the classical concept of culture back to the 18th cen-

tury, a time in which travel stories were popularising, among educated readers, theexistence of widely diering customs and values in places around the world. It was

the age of exploration and the age of colonialism, and the world was shrinking. Jo-

hoda (1993, p. 29) records that according to one detailed study, the total numbers of

travel books in the French language in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were 21, 78,

and 250, respectively: a large proportion of such books dealt with non-Europeann Melvilles1846 novel Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life.

a noun (which implies that it designates something) and that, as with many otherabstract nouns, there is a certain vagueness in its meaning. The referent (the some-thing in question) is not described directly, but is only linked with a mental model

hen people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this). The com-

56 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173b1. people live in many places

some of these places are far from here

many kinds of people live in these places, one kind of people in one place,another kind of people in another place

b2. these many kinds of people dont live in the same way as people here livethey dont think about things in the same way as people here think about thingsthey dont do things in the same way as people here do things

c. people in one place live in one way, not in another way,

because other people of the same kind lived this way before for a long time

d. people in one place think about things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind thought this way before for a long time

they think some things are good, they think some other things are not good

because other people of the same kind thought this way before for a long timee. people in one place do things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind did things this way before for a long time

In several ways, the structure of explication [A1] is consistent with modern cri-

tiques of the culture concept. First, it refers repeatedly to kinds of people, therebyessentialising social units. 8 Second, although nothing in the explication rules out

them out, adaptation and change are not provided for explicitly and the overall

8 There may be a non-compositional link between the notion of a kind of people and a distinctive wayof living which is reproduced across time. In the natural world at least, the notion of kinds is centredponents in (b1) and (b2) set up the presupposed existence of various far-ung geo-graphical locations, each inhabited by a dierent kind of people, and each with a

distinctive way of living, thinking, and behaving. Subsequent sections attribute the

distinctive ways of living, thinking and behaving (characteristic of the people of a

particular region) to the inuence of precedent: the people of a particular place live,

think and behave as they do because people of the same kind have lived, thought and

behaved in these ways traditionally, i.e. for a long time before. This is not a fullyexplicit reference to intergenerational transmission, but it comes close to it. Note that

section (d), which concerns ways of thinking, has two parts, corresponding to atti-tudes and to values, respectively.

[A1] (Samoan, Chinese, Russian, etc.) cultureA1=

a. something

when people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this:(waround species, which certainly do reproduce themselves across the generations.

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 57phrasing certainly suggests coherence, uniformity and timelessness. Likewise,

although nothing in the explication rules out internal variability, the overall phras-

ing, with its emphasis on sameness, is suggestive of homogeneous social units.

Third, it may fairly be said that this concept does in a sense exoticise the Other, for

it assumes the viewpoint of people here, and envisages people and places far fromhere in terms of their dierences from people here. The home-based aspect of thenotion of culture explains why in everyday usage culture tends to be seen as some-

thing that other people have. It is for this reason that getting students to accept

that they have a culture too is a necessary standard move in introductory anthropol-

ogy courses and textbooks.

Nevertheless, it may well be questioned whether the relevant contemporary con-

cept of culture is always bound to such a home-based point of view. While the old-

fashioned or unsophisticated concept of culture explicated in [A1] is still alive andwell in popular usage, in more sophisticated discourse it is perfectly all right to speak

of, for example, American culture, Anglo culture, Western culture, and so on, i.e. to

apply the culture concept to ones home society as well as to others, on an equal foot-ing, as it were. To cite just a single example:

3. He has argued that many exhibits [in the Australian National Museum] treat

white culture with mockery and irony while the treatment of indigenous culture

ranges from respect to reverence. European culture in Australia was largely por-trayed as a series of disasters. (SMH 4-5/01/03, p. 13)

In recognition of this, it is necessary to posit a modied concept, as in [A2],

stripped of the home-based perspective and with a reduced emphasis on localisation.

For the most part, the relationship between [A1] and [A2] can be seen as one of

semantic generalisation, in the sense of the loss of some previous semantic material.

[A2] (white, European, Muslim, etc.) culturesA2=

a. something

when people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this:

b. people live in many places

many kinds of people live in these places, one kind of people in one place,

another kind of people in another place

c. people of one kind live in one way, not in another way,

because other people of the same kind lived this way before for a long time

d. people of one kind think about things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind thought this way before for a long time

they think some things are good, they think some other things are not good

because other people of the same kind thought this way before for a long time

e. people of one kind do things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind did things this way before for a long

time

A smaller but still signicant change in [A2] is that in components (c)(e) the cul-

ture-bearing people are identied as people of one kind, rather than as people inone place. Importantly, a link with places is retained in component (b): the notionof dierent kinds of people is initially introduced by way of localisationas if, ide-ally, dierent kinds of people live in dierent placesbut once having been intro-

duced in this fashion, subsequent references to people of one kind are notnecessarily tied to any one place. On this model, one could perhaps say that there

is an implication that white culture or Chinese culture, for example, belong some-

where or originated somewhere, but without any suggestion that they are presently

conned to any single location. In other respects the concept explicated in [A2] is

identical to that of [A1]: an historically rooted way of living, thinking, and behav-ing attributed to essentialised and homogenous social units. 9

These explications help explain why this particular concept of culture does not sit

58 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173well with modern urban multiculturalism, in which many dierent groups are all liv-

ing together, and not only that, mixing all the time in schools, in shops, and on the

street. This is not really consonant with the notion of geographical separation

(implying social separation) which forms part of the classical culture concept. The

explications also make it clear why those who believe that the world, or at least their

patch of it, has passed into a fragmented, globalised postmodern condition, wherecultural inuences are interpenetrating, cross-cutting, and in constant ux, no longer

believe that the concept of culture has any applicability. Not only is there no longer

the stability implied by the explication, but equally there is no longer any localisa-tion, any grounding in place. 10

2.2. Promoting subcultures to cultures

In contemporary usage a modied concept of culture has detached itself evenmore denitively from localisation, e.g. in expressions like youth culture, gay culture,

Kid culture [a book title], redneck culture, ocker culture, drug culture. Here the prin-

ciple of dierentiation has shifted entirely to the notion of dierent kinds of people,

9 In some academic writing an even more generalised concept of culture may exist, seen as a generic

attribute of the human species. For example: Unlike that of other species, the human mind has a collective

counterpart: culture. . . we have evolved an adaptation for living in culture (Donald, 2001, p. xiii); There is nocontradiction between a naturalistic, biologically informed approach to human cognition and the rcognition of

a constitutive role in it of culture (Sinha, 2002, p. 273), cf. McGrew (1998)). This further meaning, which we

could designate [A3], appears to contain a dierent (b) componentpeople are not like other kinds ofliving things, while at the same time disregarding localisation and the existence of dierent kinds ofpeople. Stripped down versions of subsequent components could be: people live in some ways, not inother ways, because other people live in these ways; people think about things in some ways, not in other

ways, because other people think in these ways; people do things in some ways, not in other ways, because

other people do things in these ways.10 Richards (1994) says of the classic anthropology of Cliord Geertz that it depended fundamentally

on the evocation of a locale: his classic studies of Morocco, for example, are as much about Morocco

(the place) as about Moroccans (the people). Against this, Richards (1994, p. 241) counterposes the

postcolonial vision of Homi Bhabha, remarking: A sense of place is the rst denial in the writings ofdislocated postcolonial writers.

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 59each with a distinctive way of living, thinking and behaving. A new component rep-

resenting the idea of co-association (people of one kind do many things with otherpeople of the same kind) takes over the explanatory role of historical precedent. Inthis usage of culture, the assumption is that people of a particular kind (youth, gays,

kids, drug-addicts, or whatever) live, think and behave in certain shared ways, be-cause other people of the same kind live, think and behave similarly. Needless to

say, the essentialising and homogenising implications remain.

[B] (youth, gay, redneck) cultureB=

a. something

when people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this:

b. there are many kinds of people

people of one kind do many things with other people of the same kindc. people of one kind live in one way, not in another way,

because other people of the same kind live this way

d. people of one kind think about things in some ways, not in other ways,

because other people of the same kind think this way

they think some things are good, they think some other things are not good

because other people of the same kind think this way

e. people of one kind do things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind do things this way

Presumably this culture meaning is a kind of descendent of the term subculture

(which seems to be becoming obsolete). I am not exactly suggesting that the meaning

of subculture has shifted to become a sub-sense of culture itself, because the meaning

of the term subculture must contain an additional component, linked with the prex

sub-, which explicitly refers to the status of the people concerned as a part or section(some of) of the larger society. The suggestion is rather, as Hartman (1997, p. 49)puts it, that there has been a tendency to promote[s] all subcultures to culturesby dropping the prex sub-.

Paradoxical as it may seem, I believe that explication [B] is compatible with the

expression mainstream culture, because the term mainstream culture in a sense

acknowledges the existence of subcultures or minority cultures, even as it excludes

them.

2.3. Small cultures

The cover-term small cultures is taken from Holliday (1999). In this meaning,

the word culture refers to the shared mindset and behaviours of people who spend

a lot of time doing the same kinds of things, i.e. who share the same occupation or

pastime, or live in the same kind of institution. A notable early usage (possibly inno-

vative) was Snow (1964) famous dictum that It is dangerous to have two cultures

which cant or dont communicate, referring to the gulf between those working in

science and in the humanities. Since then this kind of usage has proliferated to the

(c)

of

sio

cul

Th

vario

ture,

60 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 51736. These two phenomena come together in tittie bar culture; Houston has more

tittie bars than any other city in the world. (Aust Magazine, 10-11/03/02, p. 26)siders, and a sort of residual category consisting of the assorted miscellany ofsome rather plain police horse sense. (Manning and Van Maanen, 1978,p. 267)

The small culture concept is extremely versatile, since it can be applied to just

about any set of people who undertake common activities. Some less standardised

examples are given below.

5. Theres not only a culture of bullying, theres a culture of being men, being macho,not talking about your feelings (at Trinity School). (Telegraph, 9/02/00)uted to the people concerned, e.g. argument culture, culture of bullying, culture of

deference, and the other examples in (4b) and (4c). That these various usages involve

the same meaning is clear from double barrelled expressions like the ABCs cultureof entrenched resistance to change, the police culture of secrecy and Ansetts culture ofcost-cutting.

The extension of culture to so-called occupational cultures or institutional cul-

tures is a very natural one. In a study titled Police culture, Chen (1999) explainsthat social scientists who studied routine police work have for decades postulated

the existence of a distinctive police occupational culture. She cites a seminal early

statement about the elements of this postulated culture, which are strikingly similar

in nature (rules, ideology, standards, models, customs, etc.) to those we haveseen previously:

long-standing rules of thumb, a somewhat special language and ideologywhich help to edit a members everyday experiences, shared standards of rel-evance as to the critical aspects of the work, matter-of-fact prejudices, mod-els for street-level etiquette and demeanour, certain customs and ritualssuggestive of how members are to relate not only to each other but to out-culture of deference, culture of complaint [a Robert Hughes book title], culture

privacy, culture of violence, culture of corruption, culture of secrecy and suppres-

n, culture of indecision, one-bullet, one-kill culture (i.e. attitude behind the sniperture)

e meaning occurs with modiers (an adjective, noun, or postposed genitive) in

us functions: identifying a social domain e.g. institutional culture, prison cul-

and the other examples in (4a), or a characteristic behaviour or attitude attrib-extent that one commentator (Hartman, 1997, p. 30) has likened it to a linguistic

weed. Examples include phrases such as the following:

4. (a) institutional culture, occupational culture, police culture, student culture, corpo-rate culture, ABC culture, beach culture, prison culture, health club culture, gym cul-

ture, culture of the classroom, the culture of the Catholic Church in Sydney

(b) culture of bullying, a culture of alcoholism and drug-taking, argument culture [a

Deborah Tannen book title], pill-popping culture, surf culture, gun culture

tc. t

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 61they think some things are good, they think some other things are not good

because other people in the same place think this way

d. these people do many things in some ways, not in other ways,

because other people in the same place do these things this way

The reference to a place in component (b1), i.e. people in this place. . ., and sub-sequently, could be queried. It is true that sometimes (not very often in my collection

of examples) there is no explicit place name in the immediate context, but I believe

that one could always be supplied from context, if necessary. If we are to think of aabout things

hey dont do things in the same ways as other people do thingshese people think about things in some ways, not in other ways,

because other people in the same place think this way7. Today, for example, the new culture of the Internet and the rave/rap/DJ ethos is

rising with the New Economy... (SMH Spectrum, 10/03/01, p. 10)

The meaning can be stated as in explication [C]. Notice that the notion of there

being dierent kinds of people is no longer present. The principle of classicationand social segregation is rather a matter of shared activity. As Holliday (1999) puts

it:

The idea of small cultures. . . is non-essentialist in that it is not related to theessence of ethnic, national or international entities. Instead it relates to anycohesive social grouping. . . Small culture is thus more to do with activities tak-ing place within a group than with the nature of the group itself. (Holliday,1999, p. 240, 250)

The explication begins with the assumption, in component (b1), that although

people in general undertake all sorts of activities, some people in a given place spend

a lot of time doing things with other people in the same place. According to compo-

nent (b2), this association sets these particular people apart from others in terms of

their attitudes and ways of going about things. Notice the resemblance to a similar

contrastive component in explication [A1] for the traditional culture concept.

Components (c) and (d) spell out the idea that the people concerned share certainattitudes, values, and ways of behaving, in similar fashion to previous explications.

Notice also that intra-group aliation in components (c) and (d) is no longer spec-

ied in terms of other people of the same kind, with its essentialist implications, butrather in terms of other people in the same place.

[C] (place-Xs) cultureC (of Y) e.g. Trinity Schools culture of bullying=

a. something

when people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this:

b1. people in this place do many things with other people in the same place

b2. these people dont think about things in the same way as other people think

62 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173certain set of people as constituting a social grouping, as Holliday terms it, it

seems to be a conceptual necessary that they must all be in one place, on the under-

standing that this place can be very broad and vague. If someone starts talking about

police culture, for instance, it is always legitimate to ask what police culture? or

police culture where?, and the answer will come back police culture in Australiaor police culture in general (i.e. everywhere), or whatever. Even an expression like

the new culture of the Internet implies from a semantic point of view that the people

concerned are in a certain particular somewhere, i.e. on the internet. (Indeed, thespatialisation of the new media of shared electronic communication is quite strik-

ing; cf. terms such as cyberspace, chatroom, and so on).

As mentioned, in the cultureC meaning the term can be supplied with modiers

which indicate a particular entrenched attitude, value orientation, or behaviour,

i.e. a particular way of thinking or acting. Some examples:

8. [They] appeared seriously traumatised and severely aected by a culture of self-

harm (e.g. slicing of wrists and suicide threats). (SMH, 3-4/08/02, p. 33)

9. We would be very concerned if the growth of a customer culture in universitieswere to lead to examples of plagiarism being tolerated and/or swept under the

carpet. (SMH 24/02/01, p. 6)

10. Otherwise, all we will get is a culture of managed and correct behaviour with no

progress in developing moral consciousness in adult/child relationships (Aust.19/07/02, p. 10)

In the examples so far, the overall tone can be characterised as negative but the

construction also occurs (albeit less commonly) in contexts where the speakers atti-tude is positive, as, for example, when universities are urged to embrace a culture of

excellence or (sigh!) a culture of entrepreneurialism. There are also cases where there

seems to be no obvious value judgement involved. In (12), for example, the writersintention seems to be purely descriptive and explanatory, and not at all judgmental.This is true despite the fact that if taken in isolation the expression culture of criticism

would probably sound negative (presumably, because the word criticism implies the

idea of conict). A context-dependent tone, either positive or negative, can easily

colour an expression of this kind. For example, in (13) the expression culture of

academic freedom is presented as a source of problems and hence seems to pick up

a negative cast, while in (14) the expression audiovisual culture acquires a negative

cast for similar reasons. These context-dependent eects are not part of the semantic

invariant.

11. It emerged during the 17th century, when Louis XIV built a culture of beauty,

etiquette and elegance which still dictates almost every detail of French life,. . .(Turnbull, 2002, p. 135)

12. There is a culture of criticism in France which means that people do not hold

back from telling you that something is bad. (Turnbull, 2002, p. 248)

13. The culture of academic freedom has perhaps led to inappropriate devolution ofpowers and lack of internal control. (SMH 24-25/08/02, 2002)

14. The book is dead, crow the champions of audiovisual culture. (Devine, 1998,

p. 19)

Another indication that the construction is not inherently valanced in either the

negative or positive direction comes in the form of paired expressions. For example,in an article about business management, Charan (2001) explains how a culture of

indecision (also culture of indecisiveness) can be turned around into a culture of deci-

sive behaviour (also culture of decisiveness). I conclude with some more novel and idi-

osyncratic modifying expressions. 11

15. a culture of putting on a happy smiling face and pretending the problems arentthere (12/07/02, ABC morning radio)

16. Were talking about the backs-against-the-wall culture that sees every change asan assault on the ABCs independence and therefore its credibility.

17. Munck describes how Marriot transformed its see and be seen culture by

implementing an initiative dubbed Management Flexibility at several of its

hotels. (Munck, 2001, p. 21)

lowing examples:

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 6311 In high register academic and intellectual contexts a related usage is found in expressions like gender

culture, speech culture, work culture, culture of sex, culture of death. Here the modier identies a certain

domain of activity: gender relations, speech, work, death, sex, death, etc. For example, the book The

Culture of Sex in Ancient China (Goldin, 2002) is about how people in Ancient China thought about sex,

what their sexual practices were, and so on. This meaning, which we can designate as [C2], seems to call for

a (b) component like people in this place all do things of this kind with other people at some times; that is,it refers to certain kinds of things which concern everyone in some implied social domain, and which call

for some shared activities at some time. Subsequent components refer to attitudes, values and practices

about this domain of activity. Holliday (1999)) groups this meaning with cultureC, under the single term

small cultures. The two concepts cannot be subsumed under a single explication, however, because in

the cultureC2 of X, the term X refers to a domain of activity, whereas in the cultureC of X, it indicates an

entrenched attitude, value orientation or behaviour. This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that certain

phrases are susceptible to both interpretations. For example, the expression cultureC of death was used by

Pope John Paul II (1995) in his condemnation of the widespread acceptance of abortion in secular Western

society. The expression the cultureC2 of death appears in following example, which is the opening remark in

a review of a book about death in Australia: This is not a book about the culture of death or mortuary

custom (ANU Reporter 33(13), Oct. 2002, no pagination). The expression here refers a set of attitudes and3. Culture as artistic works and practices, etc.

This meaning (or set of meanings) appears in expressions such as high culture,

popular culture, the pursuit of culture, and so on. As mentioned in Section 1, it has

followed quite a dierent track of historical development to the anthropological

concepts of culture, and, as we shall see, it is semantically very dierent in its struc-

ture and content. Culture in this sense can used as an independent noun in the fol-practices for dealing with death (analogous to the culture of sex).

64 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 517318. [It was] a crime against culture (UN spokesman condemning the Talibansdestruction of giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan) (Aust. 14/03/01, p. 1)

19. As we talk about the various strands of cultureboth popular and classical

that run through the books, Fforde confesses he is always surprised when read-

ers much younger than himself enjoy them. (SMH Spectrum 28-29/12/02, p. 20)

It is found in the names of ocial bodies such as the Department of Culture and

the Arts (Western Australia) and the Department for Culture,Media and Sport (UK),

in newspaper section headings such as Arts and Culture, Lifestyle and Culture, in

specialised expressions like pop culture and lm culture; in references to cultural

events, cultural activities, cultural facilities, cultural institutions, and so on. The adjec-

tive cultured, as in a cultured person, and the expression a person of culture, also dis-

play this usage.Culture in this sense can be used at dierent levels of generality and in relation to

dierent subjects. On the one hand, it can be used to designate general processes re-

garded as conducive to the improvement of the human mind and spirit (Eliot,

1962, 21), and to refer collectively to various works and activities (of art, music, lit-

erature, and so on) regarded as contributing to this process. On the other hand, cul-

ture can be attributed to a place. For example, one of the mottos of Armidale, NSW,

is City of culture and learning; see also example (20). More commonly, culture is de-

nied to a place, as in (21) and (22).

20. In both culture and education, the city [Liverpool, Sydney] is about to boom,

with a refurbuishment of the Casula Powerhouse, which will include a specialist

book shop, gallery, and a 250-seat theatre. (SMH 6/01/03, p. 4)

21. Cairns is not a great place for culture.

22. Low rents but not much culture [comment re. a poor neighbourhood]

Similarly, culture can be attributed to a person, as in a person of culture, or de-

nied, as in example (23).

23. . . . when you really scratch the surface and see whats in there, a lot of the timeyou discover that there really isnt much there. Not much culture, not a greatdeal of intellectual complexity.

It is important to note that although the arts may be the most salient compo-nents of culture (in the usage under discussion), the concepts of culture and the arts

are by no means co-extensive. For example, culture could include knowledge of phi-

losophy and history, and other intellectual activities, and it seems to imply a certainrenement of sensibility and manners. As Eliot (1962, p. 23) insisted, an artist, writer

or other contributor to culture is not a person of culture if they are narrow in their

interests, or crude, or dull.

According to explication [D] below, the mental model associated with cultureD be-

gins with the idea, set out in section (b), that there are certain things whose existence

is thought to be good for people, but not for reasons of survival or for practical util-

itarian purposes. These components position culture, so to speak, above mundane

concerns and establish its benecial or enriching potential for humanity at large.

Skipping down to the components in (d), we can see why. A person can benet

(something good can happen in a person) if they see, hear or think about thingsof this kind. The nature of the potential benet is not specied: it could be some kind

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 65of personal growth or development, or perhaps simply an enjoyable experience. 12

The wording is intended to allow for the existence of various kinds of cultural prod-

ucts (paintings, music, books, and so on) which can be experienced in various ways,

and even to allow for intangible things, such as philosophical ideas, to count as cul-

tural stimuli.

The component in (c) species that human agency is necessary for the stu of

culture to come into existence, with the proviso that not everyone can do thesethings. The wording is deliberately vague for several reasons. First, it has to be com-patible with the existence of various intangible cultural matter, such as ideas and per-formances (a reference to making things would therefore be over-specic). Second,though one might think at rst blush that cultural matter has to be produced for the

purpose, so to speak, this is actually not the case, as shown by the example in (18)

above. The giant Buddha statues were originally made for religious rather than artis-

tic reasons, but the UN spokesperson evidently felt that their existence was a good

thing for the world (i.e. for people in general), such that their deliberate destruction

by the Taliban was a crime against culture. Similarly, museums and art galleries often

feature exhibitions of ne furniture, clothing, and decorative art from dierent his-torical periods, which were not necessarily produced with primarily artistic motiva-

tions. The phrasing of component (c) is sucient to require human agency, without

insisting on any particular kind of motive.

Finally, section (e) concerns people who pursue culture, i.e. who do many

things because they want the benets of cultural experience. These people are de-

scribed as having signicant knowledge about a range of things, and as having cer-

tain ways of thinking and behaving, on account of their cultural experiences. Notice

that the initial expression some people implies that cultured people are a subset ofsociety at large. This set of components is compatible with the implication of social

superiority attaching to this meaning of culture, parodied by terms like Kulcha and

culture vulture (Williams, 1976, p. 92).

[E] cultureD=

a. something

when people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this:

b. it is good for people if some things existnot because people cant live if they dont have these thingsnot because people cant do other things if they dont have these things

12 In the component something good can happen in a person, the word in can be regarded as anallolex or contextual variant of the semantic prime INSIDEINSIDE. That is, the overall meaning is the same assomething good can happen inside a person. I have preferred the simpler phrasing for easier readability.

this kind

e. some people do many things because they want things like this to happen to them

66 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173these people know much about many things because of this

these people think about things in some ways, not other ways, because of this

these people do things in some ways, not other ways, because of this

At rst, the existence of the expression popular culture (referring to popular, or

even commercial, art forms such as movies, television, paperback novels, comics,and so on) might seem to run counter to explication [D], which has a distinctly high

culture tone about it, especially in the noble-sounding rst line of component (b),

the implication of specialised skills in component (c), and in the social selective-

ness and social superiority implied by the components in (e). On closer inspec-

tion, however, the expression popular culture is actually conrmatory of [D]. This

is because popular culture is a xed expression, which works precisely by cancelling

part of the normal presuppositions of the word culture itself. (Without the adjective,

culture cannot refer to popular cultural products.)Explication [D] is designed to t general uses of culture as an independent noun, in

examples such as a crime against culture and the pursuit of culture. How does it fare

with uses where culture is attributed (or not attributed) to a place or to a person, asin (20)(23) above? Essentially, these uses are conned to these particular grammat-

ical frames, and the meaning of the word in these contexts can be easily derived from

the general meaning given in [D]. If a place is said to have (or not have) culture, thismeans that the kinds of thing referred to in components (b)(d) can (or cannot) befound in that place. If a person is said to have (or not have) culture, this means thatthe person matches (or does not match) the description given in (e).

An additional usage is shown in (24), where culture refers to activities such as

going to art galleries and concerts, viewing historic buildings, and so on. Here the

word refers to the activities of experiencing culture, as set out in component (d).

24. There is a lot to see in Rome [Sistine Chapel, Vatican museum, Forum, Colos-

seum, etc.], but as we said there is only so much culture we can take.

4. Concluding remarks

In this study I have identied ve dierent senses of the word culture in contem-

porary English, and presented formal semantic explications for each of them. Clearly

four of these meanings are in a relationship of close polysemy, in the sense that cer-c. things of this kind cant exist if some people dont do some thingsnot everyone can do these things

d. something good can happen in a person when this person sees things of this kind

something good can happen in a person when this person hears things of this kind

something good can happen in a person when this person thinks about things oftain individual components of meaning recur, in the style of a theme with variations,

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 67across the various meanings. They can be seen as extensions of the classical concept

of cultureA1 as, roughly speaking, the distinctive ways of living, thinking and behav-

ing of dierent kinds of people in far-away locations, e.g. Samoan culture. By elim-

inating the implicitly home-based perspective, this meaning was generalised to

take in the distinctive ways of living, thinking and behaving of any localised kindof people (not excluding ourselves), the meaning identied here as cultureA2 as in

European culture. Subsequently, subgroups within the home society (youth, gays,

kids, etc.) were identied as dierent kinds of people, each with its own subculture,and this mediated the rise of cultureB as in youth culture or gay culture. Though in

this meaning the principle of localisation lost its prominence, it made a comeback

of sorts in cultureC. This focuses on a collectivity of people who need not live

together in a single place, but who nevertheless do many things together and are

seen as sharing distinctive attitudes and behaviours, as in police culture or the cultureof secrecy. As for the fth meaning, the artistic works and practices meaning cul-

tureD it bears little relation to the others, having undergone a more or less indepen-

dent historical development. The explications are tabulated for reference in

Appendix B.

For some readers, the formal semantic explications will have been heavy-going. De-

spite their simplicity at the level of individual phrases and clauses, lengthy explications

framed entirely in semantic primes require a certain measure of con-centration

and reection to take in and understand as a whole. Questions such as the followingnaturally arise: Are such long and involved explications really necessary? What do

they add to the informal explanation given in the surrounding text?

To begin with the issue of the length and complexity of the explications, in my

view this simply has to be accepted as an empirical nding about the semantics of

the word culture. The reaction one sometimes hears, along the lines of there must

be something wrong, it cant be as complicated as that, seems to me to be an atti-tude which is anti-scientic, in the sense that it places a higher value on preconcep-

tions than on careful and methodical analysis. I do not mean to claim that myanalyses cannot be improved. No doubt they can be rened, and any serious propos-

als to this eect are to be welcomed. It is suciently clear, however, that the seman-

tics of the word culture, in its various interrelated meanings, has a certain inherent

informational complexity which can be revealed, but not reduced, by faithful seman-

tic analysis in ne-grained detail in terms of semantic primes.

As for why we need this level of ne-grained detail, while many readers may nd

explanations framed in academic English easier to process than those framed in

semantic primes, this apparent ease of interpretation is deceptive. It depends onour specialised abilities to understand a complex, language-specic (and register-spe-

cic) code, involving terms such as patterns of behaviour, mental states and pro-cesses, localisation, historically transmitted precedents, cohesive socialgrouping, artistic works and practices, and so on. For ease of exposition it wouldbe foolish not to take advantage of such terms with a readership which can be as-

sumed to comprehend academic English uently, but in reality each of these terms

is itself a tightly knotted bundle of language-specic semantic complexity. Theyare entirely unsuitable as a medium for the systematic documentation of meaning

aAcknowledgments

I am grateful to Anna Wierzb

f

Existence and possession: THERE ISTHERE IS (EXISTEXIST), HAVEHAVE

Life and death: LIVELIVE, DIEDIE

Logical concepts: NOTNOT, MAYBEMAYBE, CANCAN, BECAUSEBECAUSE, IFIF

68 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173Augmentor: MOREMORE

Taxonomy, partonomy KINDKIND, PARTPARTSimilarity: LIKELIKE (ASAS, WAYWAY)

Exponents of primes may be words, bound morphemes, or phrasemes.Time: WHENWHEN (TIMETIME), NOWNOW, BEFOREBEFORE, AFTERAFTER,

A LONG TIMEA LONG TIME, A SHORT TIMEA SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIMEFOR SOME TIME,

MOMENTMOMENT

Space: WHEREWHERE (PLACEPLACE), HEREHERE, ABOVEABOVE, BELOWBELOW, FARFAR,

NEARNEAR, SIDESIDE, INSIDEINSIDE, TOUCHINGTOUCHINGMental/experiential predicates: THINKTHINK, KNOWKNOW, WANTWANT, FEELFEEL, SEESEE, HEARHEAR

Speech: SAYSAY, WORDSWORDS, TRUETRUE

Actions, events, movement: DODO, HAPPENHAPPEN, MOVEMOVEIntensier: They can be morphologicallyBIGBIG, SMALLSMALL

VERYVERYEvaluators:

Descriptors:GOODGOOD, BADBAD

Quantiers: ONEONE, TWOTWO, SOMESOME, ALLALL, MUCH/MANYMUCH/MANYDeterminers: THISTHIS, THE SAMETHE SAME, OTHEROTHER(THINGTHING), BODYBODYSubstantives: II, YOUYOU, SOMEONESOMEONE (PERSONPERSON), PEOPLEPEOPLE, SOMETHINGSOMETHINGAppendix A. Table of semantic primes (after Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2002)Sciences who made a number o helpful suggestions.

sions of this paper. I would alsoicka for many helpful discussions about earlier ver-

like to thank an anonymous reviewer for Languagethe formal representation of me ning from the grip of the English language.in terms which are readily transposable across all human languages, thus freeingstructure, both because they are complex (and hence do not allow for maximum res-

olution of meaning) and because they are language-specic (and hence cannot be

transposed cleanly into other languages). Using empirically established semantic

primes as the medium of explication, on the other hand, obliges one to analyse all

the way down to the maximum resolution or granularity of meaning, and to do socomplex.

[A2] is a more general concept than [A1], stripped of the implicit home-based

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 69perspective in the second line of (b1) and the entire bundle of components in (b2).

Relatedly, in components (c)(e) the people concerned are identied, not in terms They can have combinatorial variants, i.e. allolexes. Each prime has a well-specied set of grammatical (combinatorial) properties.

Appendix B. Explications with explanatory annotations

[A1]: As in the other explications, component (a) identies the meaning as some-thing linked with the mental model spelt out in the subsequent components. (b1)sets out the assumption that there are many kinds of people each living a placeof its own, while (b2) adds the assumption that these dierent kinds of people live,

think and behave dierently from people here. Components (c)(e) attribute to thepeople of each place a distinctive way of life, a distinctive set of attitudes and values,

and distinctive ways of doing things, on account of historical precedent, i.e. because

other people of the same kind lived (thought, behaved) in this way before for a longtime.

[A1] (Samoan, Chinese, Russian, etc.) cultureA1=

a. something

when people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this:

b1. people live in many places

some of these places are far from here

many kinds of people live in these places, one kind of people in one place,

another

kind of people in another place

b2. these many kinds of people dont live in the same way as people here livethey dont think about things in the same way as people here think about thingsthey dont do things in the same way as people here do things

c. people in one place live in one way, not in another way,

because other people of the same kind lived this way before for a long time

d. people in one place think about things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind thought this way before for a long

time

they think some things are good, they think some other things are not good

because other people of the same kind thought this way before for a long

time

e. people in one place do things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind did things this way before for a longtimeof location (people in one place), but as people of one kind.

70 C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173[A2] (white, European, Muslim, etc.) cultureA2=

a. something

when people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this:

b. people live in many placesmany kinds of people live in these places, one kind of people in one place, another

kind of people in another place

c. people of one kind live in one way, not in another way,

because other people of the same kind lived this way before for a long time

d. people of one kind think about things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind thought this way before for a long time

they think some things are good, they think some other things are not good

because other people of the same kind thought this way before for a long timee. people of one kind do things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind did things this way before for a long

time

[B] diers from [A1] and [A2] in several interrelated ways. Component (b) recog-

nises the existence of dierent kinds of people without reference to localisation. In-stead there is reference to co-association: people of one kind doing many things

together. Components (c)(d) have lost the implication of historical transmission.The people in question live, think and behave as they do because other people ofthe same kind live, think and behave similarly.

[B] (youth, gay, redneck) cultureB=

a. something

when people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this:

b. there are many kinds of people

people of one kind do many things with other people of the same kindc. people of one kind live in one way, not in another way,

because other people of the same kind live this way

d. people of one kind think about things in some ways, not in other ways,

because other people of the same kind think this way

they think some things are good, they think some other things are not good

because other people of the same kind think this way

e. people of one kind do things in some ways, not in other ways

because other people of the same kind do things this way

In structure, explication [C] partly resembles [B], but there are two important dif-

ferences in content. First, the reference to dierent kinds of people has been re-placed by reference to people in a place doing things together; second, althoughthe reference to shared ways of thinking and behaving persists, the attribution of

shared ways of living is absent. Like [A2], the explication has a distinctivenesscomponent in (b2).

b1. people in this place do many things with other people in the same place

C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 71b2. these people dont think about things in the same way as other people thinkabout things

they dont do things in the same ways as other people do thingsc. these people think about things in some ways, not in other ways,

because other people in the same place think this way

they think some things are good, they think some other things are not good

because other people in the same place think this way

d. these people do many things in some ways, not in other ways,

because other people in the same place do these things this way

As explained in the main body of the paper, the concept explicated in [D] bears

little direct relationship, either semantically or historically, to the others. There is

one semantic link, however, in the nal two lines of component (e), which essentially

state that cultured people have certain characteristic attitudes and behaviours on

account of their cultural experiences.

[D] cultureD e.g. the pursuit of culture=

a. somethingwhen people say things about it, they are thinking about things like this:

b. it is good for people if some things exist

not because people cant live if they dont have these thingsnot because people cant do other things if they dont have these things

c. things of this kind cant exist if some people dont do some thingsnot everyone can do these things

d. something good can happen in a person when this person sees things of this kind

something good can happen in a person when this person hears things of this kindsomething good can happen in a person when this person thinks about things of

this kind

e. some people do many things because they want things like this to happen to them

these people know much about many things because of this

these people think about things in some ways, not other ways, because of this

these people do things in some ways, not other ways, because of this

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C. Goddard / Language Sciences 27 (2005) 5173 73

The lexical semantics of cultureIntroductionCulture as ways of living, thinking, and behavingThe classical ldquo anthropological rdquo concept of culture and its immediate offspringPromoting subcultures to cultures ldquo Small cultures rdquo

Culture as artistic works and practices, etc.Concluding remarksAcknowledgmentsTable of semantic primes (after Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2002)Explications with explanatory annotationsReferences