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Professor Anna Wierzbicka

Research Interests:

Professor Anna Wierzbicka is a Professor in the Linguistics Program, School of Language Studies, Arts. In her 1972 book “Semantic Primitives” she launched a theory now known under the acronym “NSM” (Natural Semantic Metalanguage), which is now internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading theories of language and meaning. This approach has been used in hundreads of semantic studies across many languages and cultures (NSM homepage, http://www.une.edu.au/lcl/nsm/index.php). She has published over twenty books and edited or co-edited several others. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies as well as linguistics, and has been published in many journals across all these disciplines (e.g., Language, American Anthropologist, Man, Anthropological Linguistics, Cognition and Emotion, Culture and Psychology, Ethos, Philosophica, Brain and Behaviourial Sciences, The Journal of Cognition and Culture etc). Professor Wierzbicka is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences; she has been awarded the Humboldt Research Prize for Foreign Scholars in Humanities.

 

Selected Publications:

2006. English: Meaning and Culture. (New York: Oxford University Press)

2003. Second edition of Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. Revised and expanded.

2001. What Did Jesus Mean? Explaining the sermon on the mount and the parables in simple and universal human concepts. (New York: Oxford University Press).

1999. Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and universals. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

1996a. Semantics, Primes and Universals. (Oxford: OUP).

1996b. Understanding Cultures through their Key Words. (Oxford: OUP).

1992. Semantics, Culture and Cognition. (Oxford: OUP).

1991. Cross-cultural Pragmatics. (Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter).

1988. The Semantics of Grammar. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins).

1987. English Speech Act Verbs: A semantic dictionary. (Sydney: Academic Press).

1985. Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis. (Ann Arbor: Karoma).

1980a. The Case for Surface Case. (Ann Arbor: Karoma).

1980b. Lingua Mentalis. (Sydney: Academic Press).

1972. Semantic Primitives. (Frankfurt: Athenäum).