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

In Imprisoned in English, Anna Wierzbicka argues that in the present English-dominated world, millions of people - including academics, lawyers, diplomats, and writers - can become "prisoners of English", unable to think outside English. In particular, social sciences and the humanities are now increasingly locked in a conceptual framework grounded in English. To most scholars in these fields, treating English as a default language seems a natural thing to do.

The book's approach is interdisciplinary, and its themes range over areas of central interest to anthropology, psychology, and sociology, among others. The linguistic material is drawn from languages of America, Australia, the Pacific, South-East Asia and Europe. Wierzbicka argues that it is time for human sciences to take advantage of English as a global lingua franca while at the same time transcending the limitations of the historically-shaped conceptual vocabulary of English. And she shows how this can be done.

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)