Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language

Anna Wierzbicka

ISBN 10: 0199321493 / ISBN 13: 9780199321490

Published by Oxford University Press, 2013

About this Item

Hardcover, xii + 287 pages, NOT ex-library. Minor handling wear, book is clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Issued without a dust jacket. -- This book critically examines the dominance of English as a global language and the potential pitfalls of its widespread use. Anna Wierzbicka, a renowned linguist, explores how English shapes the way we think, communicate, and understand the world. By using English as the default language, nuances and meanings from other languages are often lost or misrepresented. Wierzbicka discusses how language structures thought and the limitations of English in conveying concepts found in other languages. The book argues that the dominance of English in global discourse can lead to a narrowing of perspective and a loss of linguistic diversity. It challenges readers to consider how different languages offer unique worldviews and how monolingualism in English may restrict understanding across cultures.

Seller Inventory # 009697

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199321493
• ISBN 13: 9780199321490
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Imprisoned in English argues that in the present English-dominated world, social sciences and the humanities are locked in a conceptual framework grounded in English and that most scholars in these fields are not aware of the need to break away from this framework to reach a more universal, culture-independent perspective on things human. Indeed they are typically not aware that any problem exists, and resistant to its being pointed out.
The book engages with current debates across a range of disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, evolutionary science, psychology, and cognitive science, as well as linguistics. The topics include values, emotions, social cognition, intercultural communication, endangered languages, human universals vs. human diversity, the evolution of consciousness, etc.
It is a book dedicated to one central idea: the blind spot in contemporary social sciences and the prevailing global discourse on values, the human condition, human relations, and so on, which results from the "invisibility " of English as an increasingly globalized way of thinking and talking.

About the Author

Professor of Linguistics, Australian National University, and author of Semantics, Culture, and Cognition (1992); Semantics: Primes and Universals (1996): Understanding Cultures Through their Keywords (1997); What did Jesus Mean? (2001), and English: Meaning and Culture (2006)