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Grammar and the Influence of Society and Culture
This article treats grammar as inseparable from semantics and pragmatics. On the basis of existing studies, it demonstrates that it is possible to identify cultural information or meaning embedded in grammatical structures. Connections between grammar, culture, and society are studied in an emerging area of linguistics known as Ethnosyntax. The term “ethnosyntax” was coined by Anna Wierzbicka to introduce a new perspective into grammatical studies with a particular focus on cultural meaning. Two senses of ethnosyntax can be distinguished—a “narrow” and a “broad” one. Ethnosyntax in a narrow sense aims to locate and articulate cultural understandings that are embedded in the meanings of particular grammatical structures. Ethnosyntax in broad sense studies how pragmatic and cultural rules affect the use of grammatical structures and is comparable to other studies in the area of pragmatics, such as ethnopragmatics. The article provides examples of studies in ethnosyntax in its broad and narrow senses. In particular, it analyses examples of diminutives in Russian, Spanish, and Australian English, the English let-constructions, Russian impersonal constructions, and information seeking in Aboriginal English. The analysis is conducted using the approach of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage comprising 65 semantic universals which are governed by universal syntax.