This book addresses the problems and challenges of studying the discourse of "danger" cross-linguistically and cross-culturally, and proposes the cultural pragmatics of danger as a new field of inquiry. Detailed case studies of several linguacultures include Arabic, Chinese, Danish, English, German, Japanese and Spanish. Focusing on global and local contexts surrounding “living in dangerous times”, this book showcases how the new model of cultural pragmatics can be used to illuminate cultural meanings in discourse. Unlike the universalist approaches to pragmatics, cultural pragmatics focuses on understanding the linguacultural logics of discourse, and in the case of “danger”, the multiple cultural logics around which the themes and domains of “danger” revolve. The approach makes use of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) as its principal analytical tool, and concepts such as “cultural keywords” and “cultural scripts” figure prominently as bearers of culture-specific meanings. The book will be of interest to students of pragmatics and discourse studies, researchers in cultural and cognitive semantics, anthropological linguistics, global humanities, political rhetoric and environmental studies, as well as linguists working in applied areas, such as risk and disaster studies, crisis and emergency communication.

This book addresses the problems and challenges of studying the discourse of danger cross-linguistically and cross-culturally, and proposes the cultural pragmatics of danger as a new field of inquiry. Detailed case studies of several linguacultures include Arabic, Chinese, Danish, German, English, Japanese and Spanish. Focusing on global and local contexts surrounding "living in dangerous times", this book showcases how the new model of cultural pragmatics can be used to illuminate cultural meanings in discourse. Unlike the universalist approaches to pragmatics, cultural pragmatics focuses on understanding the linguacultural logics of discourse, and in the case of "danger", the multiple cultural logics around which the themes and domains of "danger" revolve. The approach makes use of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) as its principal analytical tool, and concepts such as "cultural keywords" and "cultural scripts" figure prominently as bearers of culture-specific meanings. The book will be of interest to students of pragmatics and discourse studies, researchers in cultural and cognitive semantics, anthropological linguistics, global humanities, political rhetoric and environmental studies, as well as linguists working in applied areas, such as risk and disaster studies, crisis and emergency communication.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.

This fascinating book explores the bodily expression of emotion in worldwide and culture-specific contexts.

This study offers a pragmatic dimension to World Englishes research. It is particularly timely because pragmatics has generally been understudied in past research on World Englishes, especially postcolonial Englishes. Apart from drawing attention to the paucity of research, the book also contributes to theory formation on the emerging theoretical framework, postcolonial pragmatics, which is then applied to data from two World (postcolonial) Englishes, Ghanaian and Cameroon Englishes. The copious examples used clearly illustrate how postcolonial societies realise various pragmatic phenomena, in this case offers and offer refusals, and how these could be fruitfully explained using an analytical framework designed on the complex internal set ups of these societies. For research on social interaction in these societies to be representative, it has to take into account the complex history of their evolution, contact with other systems during colonialism, and the heritages thereof. This book does just that.

Dangerous Characters is about people of all kinds, stuck with their unique personalities and trying to negotiate their ways through lifes bramble strewn path. As intellectual historians, psychologists of love, and psychotherapists, Elaine Hatfield and Richard L. Rapson bring to bear their sharp and wry observations upon a constellation of vivid characters.

Presenting original, detailed studies of keywords of Danish, this book breaks new ground for the study of language and cultural values. Based on evidence from the semantic categories of everyday language, such as the Danish concept of hygge (roughly meaning, ‘pleasant togetherness’), the book provides an integrative socio-cognitive framework for studying and understanding language-particular universes. It is argued that the worlds we live in are not linguistically and conceptually neutral, but rather that speakers who live by Danish concepts are likely to pay attention to their world in ways suggested by central Danish keywords and lexical grids. By means of a sophisticated semantic methodology, the author accounts for the meanings of even highly culture-specific and untranslatable linguistic concepts. The book offers new tools for comparative research into the diversity of semantic and cultural systems in contemporary Europe. Additionally, it contributes to the emerging discipline of cultural semantics, and to the ongoing debates of linguistic diversity, metalanguage, and the use of linguistic evidence in studies of culture and social cognition.