Lige, a Danish ‘magic word’?

Abstract

The Danish wordlige[ˈliːə] is a highly culture-specific discourse particle. English translations sometimes render it as “please,” but this kind of functional translation is motivated solely by the expectation that, in English, one has to ‘say please’. In the Danish universe of meaning, there is in fact no direct equivalent of anything like Englishplease, Germanbitte, or similar constructs in other European languages. Consequently, Danish speakers cannot ‘say please’, and Danish children cannot ‘say the magic word’. However,ligeis in its own way a magic word, performing a different kind of pragmatic magic that has almost been left unstudied because it does not correlate well with any of the major Anglo-international research questions such as “how to express politeness” or “how to make a request.” This paper analyzes the semantics ofligein order to shed light on the peculiarities of Danish ethnopragmatics. It is demonstrated not only that Danishligedoes a different semantic job than Englishplease, but also thatplease-based andlige-based interactions are bound to different interpretations of social life and interpersonal relations, and reflect differing cultural values.

The Meaning of Manners in Australian English

“…( The use of please, thank you, and excuse me, which come under the banner of manners, reflects deep Anglo cultural understandings of the value of "personal autonomy" and the cultural norm of "not telling people what to do" (Wierzbicka 2006;Goddard 2012;Levisen & Waters 2015). Anglos see themselves as autonomous individuals with the right to make their own decisions.…”

“…In folk knowledge, particularly around child rearing, please is known as the "magic word" and should be attached to a directive message (Levisen & Waters 2015). In the politeness literature, please is often labelled as a "politeness marker" or "politeness formula" (House 1989;Wichmann 2004;Aijmer 2009).…”

<em>Prøv at se her!</em> – grammatikalisering af verbet <em>prøve</em> i dansk

“…lige i ( 44), ( 45) og (50), eller sådan i (48). Et andetsemantisk -argument for at prøve er grammatikaliseret, er kompatibiliteten med lige, som i disse saetninger antyder at aktiviteten ikke er saerlig svaer (Levisen & Waters 2015). Dette viser at betydningskomponenterne 'efter bedste evne' og 'gøre et forsøg' er blegnet i prøve.…”

Culture Is Everywhere!

“…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.…”