Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A Cultural Semantic and Ethnopragmatic Analysis of the Russian Praise Words Molodec and Umnica (with Reference to English and Chinese)

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2013

Part of the book series: Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics ((YCLP,volume 1))

Abstract

Using data from the Russian National Corpus the chapter explores the semantics and ethnopragmatics of two Russian praise words molodec and umnica. The methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is employed to formulate semantic explications of the words in question as well as cultural scripts as a reflection of underlying cultural ideas. Cultural specificity of the terms is established by comparison with other Russian cultural key words and ideas as well as comparison with their closest pragmatic equivalents in English (good boy/girl) and in Chinese (guāi). The investigation allows us to formulate culturally valued modes of behaviour in Russian.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Apresjan, Valentina. 1997. ‘Fear’ and ‘pity’ in Russian and English from a lexicographic perspective. International Journal of Lexicography 10(2): 85–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boguslavskaja, O. 2004. Umnyj, neglupyj smyšlennyj, mudryj, glubokij, pronicatel’nyj, prozorlivyj. In Novyj ob”jasnitel’nyj slovar’ sinonimov russkogo jazyka [The new explanatory dictionary of Russian synonyms], ed. J. Apresjan, 1206–1213. Moskva-Wien: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury-Wiener Slawistischer Almanach.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins Wordbanks Online. http://www.collinslanguage.com/content-solutions/wordbanks. Accessed Jan 2013.

  • Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. English politeness: The 20th century. Paper presented at the 12th International Pragmatics Conference, Manchester, UK, 3–8 July 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Culpeper, Jonathan, and Jane Demmen. 2011. Nineteenth-century English politeness Negative politeness, conventional indirect requests and the rise of the individual self. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12(1–2): 49–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dal’, Vladimir. 1957[1862]. Poslovicy russkogo naroda [Proverbs of the Russian people]. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Xudožestvennoj Literatury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. Selected essays by Clifford Geertz. London: Hutchinson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gladkova, Anna. 2010a. ‘Sympathy’, ‘compassion’, and ‘empathy’ in English and Russian: A linguistic and cultural analysis. Culture & Psychology 16(2): 267–285.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gladkova, Anna. 2010b. A linguist’s view of ‘pride’. Emotion Review 2(2): 178–179.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gladkova, Anna. 2010c. Russkaja kul’turnaja semantika: ėmocii, cennosti, žiznennye ustanovki [Russian cultural semantics emotions, values, attitudes.]. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gladkova, Anna. 2011. Cultural variation in language use. In Pragmatics of society, Handbooks of pragmatics, vol. 5, ed. K. Aijmer and G. Andersen, 567–588. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goddard, Cliff. 2006. Ethnopragmatics: A new paradigm. In Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context, ed. C. Goddard, 1–30. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Goddard, Cliff. 2011. Semantic analysis: A practical introduction, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goddard, Cliff. 2012. ‘Early interactions’ in Australian English, American English, and English English: Cultural differences and cultural scripts. Journal of Pragmatics 44: 1038–1050.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.). 1994. Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.). 2002. Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings. Vols. I, II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2004. Cultural scripts: What are they and what are they good for? Intercultural Pragmatics 1–2: 153–166.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka. 2007. Semantic primes and cultural scripts in language learning and intercultural communication. In Applied cultural linguistics: Implications for second language learning and intercultural communication, ed. F. Sharifian and G. Palmer, 105–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haugh, Michael. 2007. Emic conceptualisations of (im)politeness and face in Japanese: Implications for the discursive negotiation of second language learner identities. Journal of Pragmatics 39(4): 657–680.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ide, Sachiko, and Kishiko Ueno. 2011. Honorofics and address terms. In Pragmatics of society, Handbook of pragmatics; 5, ed. G. Andersen and K. Aijmer, 439–470. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ispa, Jean. 1994. Child care in Russia: In transition. Westport/London: Bergin and Garvey.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ispa, Jean. 2002. Russian child care goals and values: From Perestroika to 2001. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 17(3): 393–413.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karimnia, Amin, and Akbar Afghari. 2010. On the applicability of cultural scripts in teaching L2 compliments. English Language Teaching 3(3): 71–80.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levontina, I. 2004. Molodec, umnica. In Novyj ob”jasnitel’nyj slovar’ sinonimov russkogo jazyka [The new explanatory dictionary of Russian synonyms], ed. J. Apresjan, 543–545. Moskva-Wien: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury-Wiener Slawistischer Almanach.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, R. 1999. When cultures collide: Managing successfully across cultures. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • ORED – M. Wheeler (ed.). 1980. The Oxford Russian-English dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pavlenko, Aneta. 2002. Emotions and the body in Russian and English. Pragmatics and Cognition 10(1–2): 207–241.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peeters, Bert (ed.). 2006. Semantic primes and universal grammar: Empirical evidence from the romance languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pesmen, D. 2000. Russia and soul: An exploration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quinn, N. 2003. Cultural selves. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1001: 145–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quinn, N. 2005. Universals of child rearing. Anthropological Theory 5(4): 477–516.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richmond, Yale. 2009. From Nyet to Da: Understanding the new Russians, 4th ed. Boston/London: Intercultural Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ries, Nancy. 1997. Russian talk: Culture and conversation during Perestroika. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Russian National Corpus. http://www.ruscorpora.ru. Accessed Jan 2013.

  • Searle, John R. 1975. A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In Language, mind, and knowledge, Minneapolis studies in the philosophy of science, vol. 7, ed. K. Günderson, 344–369. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Šmelev, Alexey. 2005. Širota russkoj duši [The breadth of the Russian soul]. In Ključevye idei russkoj jazykovoj kartiny mira [Key ideas of the Russian linguistic picture of the world], ed. Anna A Zalizniak, I. Levontina, and A. Šmelev, 51–63. Moskva: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury.

    Google Scholar 

  • SRJ – A. Evgen’eva (ed.). 1981–1984. Slovar’ russkogo jazyka [Russian dictionary], 4 Vols. 2nd ed. Moscow: Russkij Jazyk.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uryson, E. 2004. Um, razum, rassudok, intellekt. In Novyj ob”jasnitel’nyj slovar’ sinonimov russkogo jazyka [The new explanatory dictionary of Russian synonyms], ed. J. Apresjan, 37–44. Moskva-Wien: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury-Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 1203–1206.

    Google Scholar 

  • Visson, Lynn. 2001. Wedded strangers: The challenges of Russian-American marriages. New York: Hippocrene Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wierzbicka, Anna. 1992. Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wierzbicka, Anna. 1998. Russian emotion expression. Ethos 26(4): 456–483.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wierzbicka, Anna. 2002. Russian cultural scripts: The theory of cultural scripts and its applications. Ethos 30(4): 401–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wierzbicka, Anna. 2003[1991]. Cross-cultural pragmatics, 2nd ed. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wierzbicka, Anna. 2004. The English expressions “good boy” and “good girl” and cultural models of child rearing. Culture and Psychology 10(3): 251–278.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. English: Meaning and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, D., and J. Ispa. 1999. A comparison of the child-rearing goals of Russian and U.S. university students. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 30(4): 540–546.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wong, Jock. 2006. Social hierarchy in the “speech culture” of Singapore. In Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context, ed. C. Goddard, 99–125. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wong, Jock. 2010. The “triple articulation” of language. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2932–2944.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Linguistics, School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, The University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 2351, Australia

    Anna Gladkova

Authors
  1. Anna Gladkova
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anna Gladkova .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Autonomous University of Madrid, C/Francisco Tomás y Valiente 1, Madrid, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Jesús Romero-Trillo

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Gladkova, A. (2013). A Cultural Semantic and Ethnopragmatic Analysis of the Russian Praise Words Molodec and Umnica (with Reference to English and Chinese). In: Romero-Trillo, J. (eds) Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2013. Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6250-3_12

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation