Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022—https://tidsskrift.

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).
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Scandinavian Studies in Language, 13(1), 2022 (67–77)

Like the postcolonial pragmatics of Anchimbe and Janney

(Anchimbe 2018; Anchimbe & Janney 2011), postcolonial semantics
does not confine itself to the themes and theorems of postcolonial and
decolonial theories in literary and cultural studies. The decolonization
of different academic fields and subfields requires different measures.
Therefore, postcolonial semantics has to identify its own key
problems and questions, while at the same time conversing with the
broader movement in postcolonial linguistics, and with
postcolonial/decolonial scholarship in general.
2. Background and key concepts
The meanings of words and constructions are invisible, and all
attempts to account for linguistic meaning requires a metalanguage.
While the question of metalanguage is central to semantics in general,
for the postcolonial semanticist, the question of metalanguage carries
additional weight. This is because of the power of English as a global
metalanguage in contemporary Anglo–international social and
cognitive sciences. Taking categories of English as a default for
comparison and theorizing creates an insidious problem for global
inquiry (Wierzbicka 2014). The Anglocentrism that follows from
taking English categories as the default “meta” in the study of
diversity of human languages and linguacultures inevitably creates a
distorting effect. Only through “cross-linguistic confrontation”
(Leezenberg et al. 2003) that takes seriously the multiple ways of
conceptualizing the world can we identify and circumvent the
“conceptual colonialism” (Levisen 2016) of modern Anglo English.
Other European languages that played a part in the era of
Eurocolonial expansion and world dominance, in particular, French,
Spanish, Portuguese, and to a lesser extent Dutch, German, and
Danish, are, despite their decreasing metalinguistic status, still locally
powerful defaults. The semantic critique of metalanguage is therefore
targeting not only “Anglo” defaults but “Eurocolonial” defaults
generally. The aim of semantic metalanguage studies is to provide
alternatives to these defaults, and to shed new light on the limitations
and possibilities for doing comparative, cross-semantic, and trans-
semantic analysis. As one of the few well-established theories of
semantics that is explicitly anti-Anglocentric, and which has offered a
critique of the conceptual colonialism of modern academic discourse,
the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach to semantic-
conceptual analysis (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2014; Goddard 2018) has
proven to be an important ally for postcolonial semantics.

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Postcolonial semantics is a reflexive type of research that

requires active listening. It is a semantics that implies listening to
other linguistic worldviews beyond those associated with standardized
European languages and, more specifically, to the universe of
meaning encapsulated in key concepts of place and people, of ways of
feeling, thinking, knowing, and speaking (Levisen, forthcoming). The
vast majority of semantic work has been done either on “Anglo
Englishes”—the prestigious, standard varieties known as British
English, American English, etc.—or on standardized European
languages. In fact, little semantic work has been done outside of the
Global North. The ultimate goal of postcolonial semantics is to rethink
semantics as a global rather than Anglo/European discipline and, in
doing so, be willing to unmake the defaults and the theorems that have
characterized semantic theorizing and styles of analysis.
3. Examples and explications
In this section, I will briefly discuss some recent studies that can serve
as models for postcolonial semantic work. These are recent, original
studies on specific words in specific contexts, and they all provide
both cultural and critical takes on the analysis. The examples revolve
around meaning-making in a domain that is of particular importance
for postcolonial semantics, namely the conceptualization of “place”
and the related theme of “people in places”. Needless to say, many
other domains are of importance too, such as social categories
(Levisen & Priestley 2017), emotions (Levisen 2016; Hein 2020a),
language ideologies (Levisen 2017; Hein 2020a), personhood
constructs (Levisen & Jogie 2015) and concepts of visuality (Levisen
et al. 2016), to mention just a few.
The semantic study of place, and of people in places, includes a
variety of domains and directions, such as the semantics of landscape
(Bromhead 2018), cityscapes and urban structures (Braga 2017),
popular geopolitics (Fernández 2021; Levisen and Fernández 2021),
and the Europeanization of place (Hein 2020b).
In a highly insightful semantic portrait of country, land, and
nation as keywords of Anglo English, Goddard aims “to semantically
deconstruct European words and concepts … and thus help to
denaturalise them” (2020:9). He also points to the close link between
Anglo semantics and Anglo–international discourse (2020:10):
The importance of the words country, land and nation,
and their derivatives, in Anglophone public and political

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discourses is obvious. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration

to say that, without the support of words like these,
discourses of nationalism, patriotism, immigration,
international affairs, land rights, anti-colonialism and
postcolonialism would be literally impossible.
Goddard provides lexicographic portraits of country, land, and nation.
For country, he provides several different explications, including the
concept of countries in the modern global sense used in national
discourses and international relations. The semantic explication of
countries (in this sense) has been replicated below.

[A] An explication for countries (Goddard 2020:12)

a. many places of one kind
people can know what these places are called
all these places are parts of the earth
people can know where on earth these places are
b. people can think about the earth like this:
“all places on earth where people can live are parts of one place of this
kind”
people can think about a place of this kind like this: “many many people
live in this place”
c. in a place of this kind it is like this: people in this place cannot do some
things,
at the same time they can’t not do some other things
it can be like this because someone (or: some people) above other people
in this place says so
d. at the same time people can think about a place of this kind like this:
“people in this place are people of one kind”

Although this sense of country is now considered a default in political

and international discourse and cognition, Goddard’s analysis
highlights the culture-specific and era-specific nature of the concept.
Consider for instance, the “external viewpoint” that reflects a map-
based view of “the earth”, and the vision of the earth in which all
people by necessity have to live in countries, and where the aspect of
“law” (c), and an imagined community (d) are highlighted. Compared
to, say, the view of place as it is conceptualized in the linguacultures
of indigenous Australians, where place tends to be conceptualized as
something like “a living entity”, with an emphasis on water and
natural riches (Goddard 2020:23), the concept of countries stands out

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as a particular conceptualization of place, one which emerged in the

era of European identity nationalism, and which was central to
Eurocolonial discourses of place.
The importance of country for conceptual elaboration is not only
found in the semantic domain of place, or in Anglo English. The next
example is from Porteño Spanish, the kind of Spanish associated with
Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires. Porteño Spanish is itself a
postcolonial variety (cf. Pérez and Sippola 2021), a way of speaking
that is not only influenced by, but created through colonial encounters.
In European linguacultures, postcolonial semantic analysis focuses on
the parts of the lexicon that are either influenced by colonial
encounters, or which have influenced global keywords and discourses.
In postcolonial varieties, most parts of the lexicon are of potential
interest for postcolonial-semantic analysis. Consider, Hein’s analysis
of viveza criolla, a concept in Porteño Spanish that can be roughly
translated as “creole cunning” or “artful cheating” (2020a). It is a
category of sociality, of how people do things with other people. This
concept plays an important role in Argentine discourse, but similar
themes have been described in related South-American linguacultures.
Hein (2020a:101) says:
Argentines lay claim to viveza criolla, but rightly so do
Venezuelans, in whose country the same word with a
similar meaning has wide currency. In Brazil, viveza’s
counterpart takes the form of jeitinho (roughly, “little
way/knack”), in Peru, of criollada (roughly, “creole
action”), and, in Colombia, of malicia indígena (roughly,
“indigenous malice”)
Hein provides the following semantic analysis for “viveza criolla” (in
the frame of a concrete instance of viveza criolla).
a. something of one kind
in Argentina many people can do things of this kind, not like in other
countries
b. when someone does something of this kind, this someone thinks like this:
“if I do this in this way, something can happen because of it, it will be good
for me”
people can think about it like this:
“it can be bad for other people if someone does something like this”
c. at the same time, they often think about it like this:
“this someone did something very well, not everyone can do something
like this,

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in Argentina we often do things like this”

when they think like this, they can feel something good because of this

From the viewpoint of the concept, this type of sociality is portrayed

as specific to Argentina. It typifies recurrent scenarios of a “self-
centered plan … [that] does not necessarily contemplate its bad
consequences for other people, even if this may be evident to other
people” (pp. 108–09). At the same time, these skills are celebrated and
admired. The ambivalence encoded into viveza and other Porteño
keywords, according to Hein’s analysis, were formed by “inequities
and social tensions” engendered by a nineteenth-century political
project in Argentina that sought to conceptually Europeanize the
people and the place.
4. On the Nordic relevance of postcolonial semantics
Colonialism has not featured prominently as a research topic in
Nordic language studies. Until recently, it has hardly featured at all.
The “colonial amnesia” that has characterized Nordic academia and
public life is in many ways also an amnesia of language and
linguistics. Nordic language studies, like European language studies in
general, is a story of the silencing of certain kinds of semantics, and a
naturalization of the semantic configurations of standard written
national varieties.
On this background, at least five questions can be identified as
central to the study of postcolonial semantics in Nordic contexts:
(i) The semantics of keywords in the discourse of colonialism.
What do the words koloni and kolonialisering mean? Intuitively,
these words are prototypically “Southern”-focused, and
configured around “tropical” ideas, which in turn erase, or
marginalize the Atlantic High North, the Arctic areas, and
Sápmi from the context of European/Nordic colonization.
(ii) The politics of metalinguistic practice in semantic description
and theorizing. Through what metalanguage is knowledge about
the world presented? What metalanguages have dominated
Nordic language studies, and Nordic studies in general?
(iii) The semantics of particular words and constructions in
contemporary and historical Nordic linguacultures that encode
and afford colonial themes. What words have colonial baggage,

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and how is this baggage shaped and configured? (See e.g.

Levisen 2020.)
(iv) The semantics of postcolonial language varieties that have
emerged through language encounters and contact in the Nordic
region. What kinds of hybrids and semantic innovations have
been coined in these varieties, and what kinds of linguistic
worldviews are associated with these varieties or linguacultures?
(v) The semantics of words and constructions in the linguacultures
of colonized peoples. How are coloniality, neocoloniality, and
anticolonial struggles configured semantically and represented
in the discourse of these people—or in world areas with Nordic
colonial presence?
The list above is by no means exhaustive, and it is currently not
possible to outline an entire research program for postcolonial
semantics in the North. The way forward at this very early stage is to
take one word at a time. And I will end this short presentation by
proposing a semantic explication that has yet not been published. It
exemplifies, in the drop of a single word, how words can capture
experienced reality, and the analytical power and scope of
postcolonial semantics. The case in point is flyfrisk ‘plane fresh’, a
word from Arctic Danish, or Danish as it is spoken in Nuuk, the
capital of Kalaallit Nunaat. It is a mock-concept, when used in the
construction “person X is flyfrisk”. The word was originally coined to
describe the type of food in supermarkets that is imported from
Denmark, including vegetables and other kinds of food that have
“freshly” arrived from Denmark by plane. The construction in
question, flyfrisk, has been extended to conceptualize Danish
professionals, who are flown in to Kalaallit Nunaat to cover expertise
in areas, such as teaching and administration, and whose engagement
is highly transient. My first attempt at capturing the semantics of
flyfrisk in this construction goes as follows:

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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“it is very good for people here that I am here now”

d. when people here say something about people of this kind in this way,
they can laugh

In this first attempt at explicating flyfrisk, I propose four sections. In

(a) and (b), a typified and prototypical social situation is represented
in which yet another person from Denmark arrives in Kalaallit
Nunaat. The deictic ‘here’ is a marker of local belonging. In (c) the
alleged expert status of these people from Denmark is modelled, but a
semantic hook in the phrase ‘it is very good for people here that I am
here now’ allows for a discourse on the neocolonial saviour syndrome
in this type of Dane. In (d) the jocular nature of the word is modelled.
I have not accounted for the figurative nature of the term, as I am not
sure whether this is an obligatory part of the synchronic semantic
profile. However, an additional component along the lines of “like
when planes fly from Denmark to here with goods” could be added to
account for this link.
Apart from the trends and ideas sketched in this overview paper,
postcolonial semantics offers different inroads for collaborative and
comparative research, and for an unmaking of the linguistics of
“language families” and the study of “whole languages”. It envisions a
linguistic study of worldviews and conceptualizations – and of the
sociality of meaning-making in postcolonial contexts.

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