Explicating the English lexicon of ‘doing and happening’

Goddard, Cliff; Wierzbicka, Anna

doi:10.1075/fol.23.2.03god

Cited by 21 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…(Goddard 2018: 491) Relying on the label "humour verb" to categorise the French verb blaguer and the noun blague smuggles in Anglo bias and obscures our view of something that is not from English. The word "laugh" on the other hand, has been shown to exist in almost all languages of the world (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2016;Wierzbicka 2014b). With this in mind, using this word as part of the category label will not contribute to Anglocentrism in humour studies.…”

Section: A Problem Of Categorisation: "Humour Concepts" or "Ways Of Lmentioning

confidence: 99%

The lexical semantics of blaguer: French ways of bringing people together through persuasion, deception and laughter

Waters¹

2020

EJHR

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This study presents a lexical semantic analysis of the French verb blaguer and related expressions. This verb belongs to a suite of “French humour practices”, and French-English dictionaries translate it as ‘to joke’. However, Anglo-specific terminology such as “joke” does not match the conceptual semantics of blaguer and its related noun blague. Relying on Anglo-specific terms to categorise culture-specific practices perpetuates conceptual and terminological Anglocentrism. This study furthers the call to avoid the dangers of sustaining Anglocentrism in the theoretical vocabulary of humour studies (Goddard & Mullan 2020; Goddard 2018; Wierzbicka 2014a). Working from the assumption that semantic categories reflect particular ways of speaking, thinking, and behaving, this study’s goal is to capture the insider perspective that French speakers have about the meaning of the verb blaguer and the noun blague. Making local understandings more obvious and accessible to cultural and linguistic outsiders will increase cross-cultural understanding and foster appreciation for the different ways that speakers construct and interpret their world with words (Levisen & Waters 2017). The analytical tool for this study is the technique of semantic explication couched in the simple cross-translatable and culture-neutral words of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2014). Carefully chosen example sentences are drawn from Google searches (google.fr) of authentic language use of the verb blaguer and the noun blague. Comparative reference is made to the verb ‘to joke’ from Australian English to highlight the differences in the conversational humour cultures of French and English speakers (Goddard & Mullan 2020; Béal & Mullan 2013, 2017).

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Section: A Problem Of Categorisation: "Humour Concepts" or "Ways Of Lmentioning

confidence: 99%

The lexical semantics of blaguer: French ways of bringing people together through persuasion, deception and laughter

Waters¹

2020

EJHR

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“…"Joking, kidding, teasing": Slippery categories Appendix 2: Semantics of laugh Cross-linguistic semantic research indicates that 'laugh' is likely to have close lexical equivalents in all or most languages (Wierzbicka 2014b;Goddard and Wierzbicka 2016). This is not to deny that linguacultures vary in their attitudes towards laughing, how it is regulated, deployed, etc.…”

Section: Bionote Cliff Goddardmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Joking, kidding, teasing”: Slippery categories for cross-cultural comparison but key words for understanding Anglo conversational humor

Goddard

2018

Intercultural Pragmatics

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Terms like to joke (and joking) and to tease (and teasing) have a curious double life in contrastive and interactional pragmatics and related fields. Occasionally they are studied as metapragmatic terms of ordinary English, along with related expressions such as kidding. More commonly they are used as scientific or technical categories, both for research into English and for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison. Related English adjectives, such as jocular and mock, are also much-used in a growing lexicon of compound terms, such as jocular abuse, mock abuse, jocular mockery, and the like. Against this background, the present paper has three main aims. In the first part, it is argued that the meanings of the verbs to joke and to tease (and related nouns) are much more English-specific than is commonly recognized. They are not precisely cross-translatable even into European languages such as French and German. Adopting such terms as baseline categories for cross-cultural comparison therefore risks introducing an Anglocentric bias into our theoretical vocabulary. Nor can the problem be easily solved, it is argued, by attributing technical meanings to the terms. Detailed analysis of the everyday meanings of words like joking and teasing, on the other hand, can yield insights into the ethnopragmatics of Anglo conversational humor. This task is undertaken in the second part of the paper. The important English verb to kid and the common conversational formulas just kidding and only joking are also examined. The semantic methodology used is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, which depends on paraphrase into simple, cross-translatable words. Building on the NSM analyses, the third part of the paper considers whether it is possible to construct a typological framework for conversational humor based on cross-translatable terminology.

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“…We do accept, however, that there is one "perfect match" between the French and English words displayed in Figure l, namely, between English laugh and French rire. This is important as it is widely assumed -in our view, rightly so -that the concept of 'laughing' is implicated in many "humor" concepts and practices (Provine 2000;Partington 2006;Chafe 2007;Goddard 2016). NSM.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…NSM. researchers have argued for some years that it is a reasonable hypothesis that a close lexical equivalent to 'laugh' exists in all or most lan guages (Wierzbicka 2014b;Goddard 2017;Goddard and Wierzbicka 2016), and can therefore be considered a semantic molecule [ml for NSM purposes. 2 Since this proposal has been dealt with in previous publications, we will take it for granted here.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explicating verbs for “laughing with other people” in French and English (and why it matters for humour studies)

Goddard

Mullan

2019

Humor

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This study undertakes a contrastive lexical-semantic analysis of a set of related verbs in English and French (English to joke and to kid, French rigoler and plaisanter), using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to semantic analysis. We show that the semantic and conceptual differences between French and English are greater than commonly assumed. These differences, we argue, have significant implications for humor studies: first, they shed light on different cultural orientations towards “laughter talk” in Anglo and French linguacultures; second; they highlight the danger of conceptual Anglocentrism in relying on English-specific words as a theoretical vocabulary for humor studies.

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Explicating the English lexicon of ‘doing and happening’

Cited by 21 publications

References 29 publications

The lexical semantics of blaguer: French ways of bringing people together through persuasion, deception and laughter

The lexical semantics of blaguer: French ways of bringing people together through persuasion, deception and laughter

“Joking, kidding, teasing”: Slippery categories for cross-cultural comparison but key words for understanding Anglo conversational humor

Explicating verbs for “laughing with other people” in French and English (and why it matters for humour studies)

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