Wierzbicka A. Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words (English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese)

New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. — 328 p. ISBN: 0-19-508835-2.In this groundbreaking book, Wierzbicka demonstrates that every language has its "key concepts" and that these key concepts reflect the core values of the culture. Further, she argues that within a culture-independent analytical framework one can study, compare, and even explain cultures to outsiders through their key concepts. The framework Wierzbicka proposes is the well-known "natural semantic metalanguage" that she developed with her colleagues. For this study, Wierzbicka focuses on four languages and cultures:Japanese , Australian English, Polish, and Russian. She identifies "culture laden" words in each of these languages; these words are, in a sense, "untranslatable. " She shows, however, that the words can be "explained" by meansof the semantic metalanguage's hypothetical semantic primitives such as someone, something, do, happen, want, say, know, think, good, bad , etc.