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Imprisoned in English: the hazards of English as a default language
Abstract
PART I: Every language draws a circle ... Chapter 1. Introduction: Recognising the contingency of one's own language Chapter 2. Naming the world or construing the world? Chapter 3. The givens of human life Chapter 4. Universal words, semantic atoms and semantic molecules Chapter 5. Human bodies and human minds: what is visible and what is invisible PART II: Emotions and values Chapter 6. Anglo values vs. Human values: Talking about values in a global world Chapter 7. Human emotions and English words: Are anger and disgust universal? PART III: 'Politeness' and 'cooperation' Chapter 8. Talking to other people: 'Politeness' and cultural scripts Chapter 9. Doing things with other people: 'cooperation', 'interaction' and 'obs?enie' PART IV: Entering other minds Chapter 10. Grammar and social cognition: the Hawaiians, the Dalabons, and the Anglos Chapter 11. Endangered languages, endangered meanings Chapter 12. Thinking about 'things' in Yucatec and in English Chapter 13. Chimpanzees and the evolution of human cognition PART V: Breaking down the walls of the prison Chapter 14. From ordinary (Anglo) English to Minimal English PART VI: kindred thinking across disciplines Preliminary remarks Chapter 15. Anthropology, Psychology, Psychiatry Chapter 16. Philosophy, Theology, Politics Chapter 17. Linguistics: Cognitive and cultural approaches Chapter 18. Bilingualism, Life writing, Translation Final remarks References Index
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“Furthermore, it makes no sense to elevate categories for anger, sadness, fear, disgust and happiness to a common ethological framework for comparing humans with other animals, when there is ample evidence from linguistics, anthropology and psychology that these categories do not offer a robust, universal framework for comparing humans of different cultures (Russell, 1991; Gendron et al., 2014a,b,”
From The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization (2016) · cites this paper as Wierzbicka, 2014
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Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements
Barrett, L. F., Adolphs, R., Marsella, S., Martinez, A. M., & Pollak, S. D. (2019) · Psychological Science in the Public Interest · doi:10.1177/1529100619832930 · Cited by 1,748
The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization
Barrett, L. F. (2016) · Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience · doi:10.1093/scan/nsw154 · Cited by 1,426
The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization
Barrett, L. F. (2017) · Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience · doi:10.1093/scan/nsx060 · Cited by 1,009
“Scientists begin with emotion concepts that are most recognizably English (Pavlenko, 2014; Wierzbicka, 2014), such as anger, sadness, fear, and disgust, and search for their elusive biological essences (i.e. their neural signatures or fingerprints), usually in subcortical regions.”
Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science
Blasi, D. E., Henrich, J., Adamou, E., Kemmerer, D., & Majid, A. (2022) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.015 · Cited by 396
Alexander, R., Aragón, O. R., Bookwala, J., Cherbuin, N., Gatt, J. M., Kahrilas, I. J., Kästner, N., Lawrence, A. B., Lowe, L. J., Morrison, R., et al. (2020) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.002 · Cited by 364
Metadata
- Venue
- Choice Reviews Online
- Publisher
- American Library Association
- Published
- 2014-09-22
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 02
- Pages
- 52-0677-52-0677
- ISSN
- 0009-4978 (ISSN-L)
- 1523-8253
- OpenAlex
- W631046676
- Cited by
- 331
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 33 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 32 · 2020: 56 · 2019: 44 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 43 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 11
- Type
- book review
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Choice Reviews Online (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Language and Culture
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
- Keywords
- language and thought, linguistic relativity, language universals, emotions, values, politeness, cooperation, endangered languages, Yucatec Maya, chimpanzees, human cognitive evolution, bilingualism, translation, cross-cultural cognition
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