Words and Meanings

In a series of cross-cultural investigations of word meaning Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka examine key expressions from different domains of the lexicon - concrete abstract physical sensory emotional and social. They focus on complex and culturally important words in a range of languages that includes English Russian Polish French Warlpiri and Malay. Some are basic like men women and children or abstract nouns like trauma and violence; others describe qualities such as hot hard and rough emotions like happiness and sadness or feelings like pain. They ground their discussions in real examples from different cultures and draw on work ranging from Leibniz Locke and Bentham to popular works such as autobiographies and memoirs and the Dalai Lama on happiness.