Ethnosyntax, Ethnopragmatics, Sign-Functions, and Culture

Abstract

The main goal of this chapter is conceptual and theoretical: to articulate and discuss the concept of ethnosyntax from the standpoint of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) theory of Anna Wierzbicka and colleagues (1980, 1996a; Goddard and Wierzbicka 1994, in press). I recognise two senses of the term 'ethnosyntax': a narrow sense referring to culture-related semantic content encoded in morphosyntax, and a broad sense encompassing a much wider range of phenomena in which grammar and culture may be related. The chapter begins with material which is relatively specific and concrete, and progresses in stages toward concerns which are broader and more abstract. Section 3.1 discusses ethnosyntax in the narrow sense, illustrating with a slightly reinterpreted version of some of Wierzbicka's classic work on 'fatalism' in Russian grammar. Section 3.2 discusses the relationship between ethnosyntax and ethnopragmatics, drawing on the NSM theory of cultural scripts. Section 3.3 argues for the importance of recognizing that language involves different kinds of sign-function - semantic (symbolic), iconic, indexical - and asks how we can deal with ethnosyntactic connections in the realm of iconic-indexical meaning. Section 3.4 broadens the focus further in an effort to situate ethnosyntax in a larger semiotic theory of culture, but argues that a semiotic concept of culture is not viable unless it adequately recognizes iconic and indexical, as well as semantic (symbolic), phenomena.