Postcolonial Semantics: Meaning and Metalanguage in a Multipolar World

Carsten Levisen

Open Access Published by De Gruyter 2024

Postcolonial Semantics

Meaning and Metalanguage in a Multipolar World

Carsten Levisen

Volume 22 in the series Koloniale und Postkoloniale Linguistik / Colonial and Postcolonial Linguistics (KPL/CPL)

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111337432

Overview
Contents

About this book

Global knowledge production increasingly happens through one particular language: modern Anglo English. What does the Anglocentric reliance of English words and phrases mean for the way we make claims, formulate research questions, and develop theories? In this monograph, these questions are scrutinized and explored through "Postcolonial Semantics", a new framework that draws on advances in postcolonial linguistics and cognitive/cultural semantics. Through original semantic work on Bislama words and Urban Pacific concepts, each chapter provides alternatives to Anglocentric linguistic framings of knowledge in the domains of language, communication, sociology, psychology, and geopolitics. Highlighting the pluriversality of meaning-making and the multipolarity of knowledge, the book speaks into central themes in semantics, including the question of metalanguage and the representation of meaning, as well as contact-zone semantics and the colonial matrix of power. All analyses are provided in both English and Bislama through a translatable semantic metalanguage of shared human concepts. Apart from semanticists and postcolonial language scholars, the monograph is of interest to researchers and research students in fields such as World Englishes, creole studies, linguistic anthropology, intercultural pragmatics, and global discourse studies.

Author / Editor information

Carsten Levisen, Roskilde University, Denmark

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	XIII
Writing conventions Publicly Available Download PDF	XV
1 What is Postcolonial Semantics? Open Access Download PDF	1
2 Meanings and metalanguage Open Access Download PDF	25
3 Postcolonial semantics and popular geopolitics Open Access Download PDF	48
4 Metalinguistics and the Multipolar Turn Open Access Download PDF	77
5 Postcolonial lexicography: A dictionary of social words and worlds Open Access Download PDF	106
6 Anglo emotions and affective sciences: A cross-semantic confrontation Open Access Download PDF	155
7 Orders of ortholexy: A cultural and critical theory of good words and bad words Open Access Download PDF	188
8 Parting remarks Open Access Download PDF	216
Appendix 1: An annotated guide to Bislama exponents of semantic primes Open Access Download PDF	225
References Open Access Download PDF	231
Index Open Access Download PDF	251

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: scholars working in cognitive semantics, postcolonial and decolonial linguistics, creole studies, World Englishes
Pages
- Front matter: 16
- Main content: 264
Illustrations
- Tables: 1
Keywords: cultural semantics; cognitive semantics; postcolonial linguistics; discourse studies

eBook

Published: April 1, 2024
ISBN: 9783111337432

Hardcover

Published: April 1, 2024
ISBN: 9783111336909