The meaning of English words across cultures, with a focus on cameroon and Hong Kong

The meaning of English words across cultures, with a focus on cameroon and Hong Kong

• Bobda, Augustin Simo Ecole Normale Superieure, University of Yaounde I, Cameroon, Africa

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 30(5), 375-389, 2009

Routledge

2009

• G Curriculum, Teaching & Learning: Specific Disciplines
  • GB English Language

Lexicography Foreign Countries English (Second Language) Second Language Learning Definitions Language Variation Cultural Differences Schemata (Cognition) Cameroon Hong Kong

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Unknown or Unspecified

A word, even when considered monosemic, generally has a cluster of meanings, depending on the mental representation of the referent by the speaker/writer or listener/reader. The variation is even more noticeable across cultures. This paper investigates the different ways in which cultural knowledge helps in the interpretation of English lexical items. After a brief review of the traditional World Englishes structural perspective, the paper analyses the various ways in which the schema helps in the construction of lexical meaning: it helps to decode the denotative meaning of some words with possible multiple interpretations; to perceive the referential boundaries; to understand the connotative meaning; to modulate meaning, demoting some features and promoting others; to understand the physical elements which contribute to the mental representation of some words; to perceive the bodily movements and other paralinguistic elements which contribute to the construction of the meaning of some words; to perceive the salience of a word within a cultural community; to perceive and predict collocates; to perceive cultural assumptions; to perceive political politeness and taboos; to distinguish transactional language from interactional language, and so on. The study is shown to have implications for lexicography and for English Language teaching.
[Copyright of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434630802147882]

• English

Journal Articles

• 01434632

• 10.1080/01434630802147882

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/72dafebc

2010-11-28