Semantics in the time of coronavirus: “Virus”, “bacteria”, “germs”, “disease” and related concepts

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This study proposes Natural Semantic Metalanguage semantic explications for the English words ‘virus’ (in two senses), ‘bacteria’, ‘germs’, and for the related words ‘sick’, ‘ill’, and ‘disease’. We concentrate on their “naïve” or “folk” meanings (Apresjan 1992) in everyday English, as opposed to scientific or semi-scientific meanings. In this way, the paper makes a start on uncovering the folk epidemiology embedded in the English lexicon. The semantics of words like ‘virus’, ‘bacteria’ and ‘germs’ is not, however, a purely academic matter. It is also a matter of effective health education and health communication. To reach people at a time of an epidemic, explanations need to connect with “ordinary people’s” ways of thinking and speaking. This paper argues that the simple and cross-translatable words of NSM, and minimal languages based on it, can be effective tools not only for linguistic semantics but also for education and communication everywhere - at the local school and in the world at large.

作者简介

Cliff Goddard

Griffith University

编辑信件的主要联系方式.
Email: c.goddard@griffith.edu.au

Professor of Linguistics at Griffith University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. He has published widely on semantics, ethnopragmatics and language description. His latest books are Ten Lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage (2018, Brill) and Minimal Languages in Action (2021, Palgrave).

Brisbane, Queensland 4111 Australia

Anna Wierzbicka

Australian National University

Email: anna.wierzbicka@anu.edu.au

Professor of Linguistics (Emerita) in the School of Literature, Languages, and Linguistics at Australian National University. 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. She has published over twenty books, including Emotions across Languages and Cultures. Professor Wierzbicka is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the winner of the International Dobrushin Prize for 2010 and of the Polish Science Foundation’s 2010 prize for the humanities and social sciences.

Canberra, ACT, 2602, Australia

参考

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  3. Diget, Ida Stevia. In press/2021. Minimal English for health: Reader accessibility in public health communication about COVID-19 in Australia (with contrastive reference to Denmark). In Goddard, Cliff (ed.), Minimal Languages in Action. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan
  4. Gladkova, Anna and Tatiana Larina. 2018. Anna Wierzbicka, language, culture and communication. Russian Journal of Linguistics 22 (4) (Special Issue: Studies in Cultural Semantics and Pragmatics: For Anna Wierzbicka’s Anniversary). 717-748
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