This book is the first in a three-volume set that celebrates the career
and achievements of Cliff Goddard, a pioneer of the Natural Semantic
Metalanguage approach in linguistics. In addition, it explores
ethnopragmatics and conversational humour, with a further focus on
semantic analysis more broadly.
Often considered the most fully developed, comprehensive and practical
approach to cross-linguistic and cross-cultural semantics, Natural
Semantic Metalanguage is based on evidence that there is a small core of
basic, universal meanings (semantic primes) that can be expressed in all
languages. It has been used for linguistic and cultural analysis in such
diverse fields as semantics, cross-cultural communication, language
teaching, humour studies and applied linguistics, and has reached far
beyond the boundaries of linguistics into ethnopsychology, anthropology,
history, political science, the medical humanities and ethics.