Postcolonial Semantics
Postcolonial Semantics
Postcolonial Semantics
dk/sss
POSTCOLONIAL SEMANTICS
Carsten Levisen
Roskilde University
[email protected]
1. Introduction
“Postcolonial semantics” is the study of meaning and meaning-
making in postcolonial contexts, and at the same time, it is a way of
articulating and mediating metasemantic critique. In this paper, my
aim is to provide a brief overview of postcolonial semantics as an
emerging field and approach, focusing on central concepts and
analytical scopes.
The theoretical backdrop for the establishment of postcolonial
semantics is partly found in the developments of new fields, such as
colonial and postcolonial linguistics, postcolonial pragmatics, and
decolonial linguistics (see e.g. Errington 2008; Stolz et al. 2016;
Levisen & Sippola 2019; Deumert et al. 2020; Faraclas & Delgado
2021, Perez & Sippola 2021), and partly in the cognitive and cultural
renewals of linguistic semantics. The cognitive cultural semantics to
which this special issue is devoted is a conceptual kind of semantics,
as opposed to a “realist” (or “referential”) semantics. It is also a
semantics of “understanding” (U-semantics), rather than a semantics
of “truth” (T-semantics)—see Levisen, Fernández and Hein, this
volume. Synthesizing the overall aims of these movements, we can
say that postcolonial semantics is a conceptual and U-semantic
approach to the linguacultural complexities that colonial language
encounters have brought about, and an approach that combines
cultural and critical perspectives. Postcolonial semantics engages
critically with the semantic conceptualizations born out of colonial-era
linguistic worldviews, especially in the form of a critique of the
terminological and conceptual biases that have entered into the
frameworks of modern cognitive and social sciences, including
Eurocentric and Anglocentric concepts and terminologies that
characterize the vocabulary and priorities of modern linguistics
(Levisen 2019).
Carsten Levisen
Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
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Carsten Levisen
Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
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Carsten Levisen
Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
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Carsten Levisen
Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
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Carsten Levisen
Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
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Carsten Levisen
Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
Someone X is flyfrisk
a. I say: this person is someone of one kind
people of this kind are from Denmark
b. everyone here knows: they are here for a short time
after this short time, they will not be here anymore,
after this, other people of the same kind will be here for a short time
c. people of this kind know many things, not like people here know things
because of this a person like this can think like this:
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Carsten Levisen
Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
References
Anchimbe, Eric A. 2018. Offers and offer refusals: A postcolonial
pragmatics perspective on World Englishes. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.298
Anchimbe, Eric A., and Richard W. Janney. 2011. Postcolonial
pragmatics: An introduction. Journal of Pragmatics 43(6),
1451–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.10.027
Braga, Ana Paulla Mattos. 2017. Subúrbio and suburbanos: Two
cultural keywords in Brazilian discourse. In Carsten Levisen and
Sophia Waters (eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse
(Pragmatics and Beyond New Series), 157–82. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.277.07mat
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Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
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Carsten Levisen
Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
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Carsten Levisen
Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)
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