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Original Research

CSLL. 2019; 1(1): 61-77


The English ethnopsychological personhood construct mind “deconstructed” in universally intelligible words

Bert Peeters.




Abstract

This paper addresses the perennial problem of Anglocentrism and reification of ethnopsychological personhood constructs (EPCs) in scholarly discourse, where English continues to set the tone and its constructs continue to be used as yardsticks in the description of cultural diversity, thereby elevating the English language to a status it does not deserve, no matter how important it may be on a world scale. Use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage is put forward as a way out of the problem. NSM is introduced, with specific reference to semantic primes, semantic explications, and semantic templates. To demonstrate the famous NSM motto that “every explication is an experiment”, the author then reconstructs the various stages that explications of the English EPC mind have gone through since the first attempt was made in the late 1980s. He concludes by saying that, by all the available evidence, the NSM approach is alive and well and has a bright future ahead of itself.

Key words: English, mind, ethnopsychological personhood constructs, Natural Semantic Metalanguage






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