Why am I passionate about this?

I am professor of linguistics (Emerita) at the Australian National University. I was born in Poland, but having married an Australian I have now lived for 50 years in Australia. In 2007, my daughter Mary Besemeres and I published Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures, based on our own experience. I have three big ideas which have shaped my life’s work, and which are all related to my experience and to my thinking about that experience. As a Christian (a Catholic) I believe in the unity of the “human race”, and I am very happy to see that our discovery of “Basic Human” underlying all languages vindicates this unity.


I wrote

What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English

By Anna Wierzbicka,

Book cover of What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English

What is my book about?

My book explains Christian faith, as distilled in the Nicene Creed of 325 and 381 A.D., through Minimal English, which…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Anna Wierzbicka Why did I love this book?

I have just checked the index to my OUP 2006 book and I found that the number of references to John Locke (mostly, to his Essay) comes to 36. Apart from references to A.W., this beats everyone else; the next much quoted author being Shakespeare (27), and then, Cliff Goddard (18). As these figures illustrate, Locke’s Essay is in my view foundational for the study of meaning. One enormously important idea is developed in the following stunning passage:

“A moderate skill in different languages will easily satisfy one of the truth of this, it being so obvious to observe great store of words in one language which have not any that answer them in another. Which plainly show that those of one country, by their customs and manner of life, have found occasion to make several complex ideas, and given names to them which others never collected into specific ideas… Nay, if we look a little more closely into the matter, and exactly compare different languages, we shall find that, though they may have words which in translation and dictionaries are supposed to answer one another, yet there is scarce one in ten amongst the names of complex ideas.. that stands for the same precise idea which the word doesn’t that in dictionaries it is rendered by.”

As discussed in my 2014 OUP book, in the globalised world of the 21st century, dominated by English, this lack of correspondence between words of different languages leads, inter alia, to catastrophic Anglocentrism in the social sciences, with English concepts being routinely taken for granted as the voice of reason itself.

By John Locke, Kenneth P. Winkler (editor),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked An Essay Concerning Human Understanding as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Includes generous selections from the Essay, topically arranged passages from the replies to Stillingfleet, a chronology, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index based on the entries that Locke himself devised.


Book cover of Cultural Semantics and Social Cognition: A Case Study on the Danish Universe of Meaning

Anna Wierzbicka Why did I love this book?

This book is about “The Danish universe of meaning,” or, the view of the world as it is has been captured by Danish words and meanings. The work includes deep semantic analysis of cultural constructs such as hygge, roughly, ‘pleasant togetherness’ and tryghed, roughly, ‘sense of security, peace of mind,’ as well as cognitive verbs, emotion adjectives, personhood constructs, and rhetorical keywords. But Levisen’s aim is not only to study Danish—at heart, the book is about cultural semantics at large. The aim is to use Danish as a case study and to provide a new model for comparative research into the diversity and unity of meaning in European languages. To my mind, this book wonderfully succeeds in achieving this aim.

By Carsten Levisen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cultural Semantics and Social Cognition as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Presenting original, detailed studies of keywords of Danish, this book breaks new ground for the study of language and cultural values. Based on evidence from the semantic categories of everyday language, such as the Danish concept of hygge (roughly meaning, 'pleasant togetherness'), the book provides an integrative socio-cognitive framework for studying and understanding language-particular universes. It is argued that the worlds we live in are not linguistically and conceptually neutral, but rather that speakers who live by Danish concepts are likely to pay attention to their world in ways suggested by central Danish keywords and lexical grids. By means of…


Book cover of The Reign of Truth and Faith: Epistemic Expressions in 16th and 17th Century English

Anna Wierzbicka Why did I love this book?

This book takes the reader back to another speech world, that of 16th and 17th century English, albeit one on which we have some purchase through the plays of William Shakespeare. Where someone today may hedge their words with I suppose or probably, people in this time peppered their speech with expressions conveying certainty like verily and forsooth. This contrast represents the ethos of truth and faith that reigned at this time before it was replaced by a modern spirit of epistemic detachment ushered in by the British enlightenment. Yet a by my troth was not interchangeable with a by my faith, and each chapter of the book opens the door on the specifics of an epistemic expression in 16th and 17th century English through colourful examples, cultural evidence and a statement of its meaning. I love this book.

By Helen Bromhead,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Reign of Truth and Faith as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is a ground-breaking study in the historical semantics and pragmatics of English in the 16th and 17th centuries. It examines the meaning, use and cultural underpinnings of confident- and certain-sounding epistemic expressions, such as forsooth, by my troth and in faith, and first person epistemic phrases, such as I suppose, I ween and I think.

The work supports the hypothesis that the British Enlightenment and its attendant empiricism brought about a profound epistemic shift in the 'ways of thinking' and 'ways of speaking' in the English speaking world. In contrast to the modern ethos of empiricism and doubt, the…


Book cover of The Semantics of Nouns

Anna Wierzbicka Why did I love this book?

This is a pioneering book which raises some fundamental questions about nouns and the concepts that they embody—not abstract nouns, but concrete nouns like ‘brother’, ‘angel’, ‘bee’, ‘foot,’ and ‘pond’? How can we study and compare such concepts across languages in a truly meaningful way that does not privilege the categories of one language over those in other languages? This collective volume seeks to provide answers to these questions and show how in-depth meaning analysis, anchored in a cross-linguistic and cross-domain perspective, can lead to unexpected insights into the common and particular ways in which speakers of different languages conceptualise, categorise and order the world around them. Many languages are included in the volume, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Hebrew, and the Papuan language Koromu.

By Zhengdao Ye (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Semantics of Nouns as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This volume brings together the latest research on the semantics of nouns in both familiar and less well-documented languages, including English, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, the Papuan language Koromu, the Dravidian language Solega, and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara from Australia. Chapters offer systematic and detailed analyses of scores of individual nouns across a range of conceptual domains, including 'people', 'places', and 'living things', with each analysis
fully grounded in a unified methodological framework. They not only cover central theoretical issues specific to the analysis of the domain in question, but also empirically investigate the different types of meaning relations that hold between nouns, such…


Book cover of Minimal Languages in Action

Anna Wierzbicka Why did I love this book?

Minimal languages are based on words which are clear, accessible and easy-to-translate. This book presents a diverse and fascinating range of studies, illustrating this new approach to meaning and communication. The authors show, how they are putting minimal languages into service; for example, to help language learners understand the invisible culture behind French or Korean ways of speaking; to improve “easy language” materials for people with linguistic and cognitive troubles; to inform better health communication about cancer or COVID-19. One of my favourite chapters shows how a pediatric tool for assessing mother-infant emotional connection was adapted into simply-worded versions in English, Finnish, Chinese, and four other languages.

By Cliff Goddard (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Minimal Languages in Action as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This edited book explores the rising interest in minimal languages - radically simplified languages using cross-translatable words and grammar, fulfilling the widely-recognised need to use language which is clear, accessible and easy to translate. The authors draw on case studies from around the world to demonstrate how early adopters have been putting Minimal English, Minimal Finnish, and other minimal languages into action: in language teaching and learning, 'easy language' projects, agricultural development training, language revitalisation, intercultural education, paediatric assessment, and health messaging. As well as reporting how minimal languages are being put into service, the contributors explore how minimal languages…


Explore my book 😀

What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English

By Anna Wierzbicka,

Book cover of What Christians Believe: The Story of God and People in Minimal English

What is my book about?

My book explains Christian faith, as distilled in the Nicene Creed of 325 and 381 A.D., through Minimal English, which is the English version of a slightly expanded form of “Basic Human”. The “Story of God and People” told in Minimal English shows the power and versatility of simple words, which, evidence suggests, all languages share.

As the book shows, with the help of such “universal human words”, supplemented by a small inventory of words important to a particular culture, a very rich and sophisticated set of ideas can be explained in a way intelligible to anyone, regardless of their background and beliefs. There are well over two billion Christians in the world, about one third of the world’s total population.

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Secret St. Augustine: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

By Elizabeth Randall, William Randall,

Book cover of Secret St. Augustine: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

Elizabeth Randall Author Of Secret St. Augustine: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

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Why am I passionate about this?

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What is my book about?

Tourists and local residents of St. Augustine will enjoy reading about the secret wonders of their ancient city that are right under their noses. Of course, that includes a few stray corpses and ghosts!

Secret St. Augustine: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

By Elizabeth Randall, William Randall,

What is this book about?

It is no wonder the ancient city of St. Augustine is steeped in secrets.

St. Johns, the oldest continuously occupied county in America, celebrated its 450th birthday on September 4, 2015. More like a European enclave than an urban landscape, it is a place of cannon fire, street parties, historical reenactments, concerts, and more. From admiring replicas of fine art at Ripley’s Believe or Not, to hunting haunts in restaurants and museums, to eating ice cream from a recipe originated by World War II bombardiers, St. Augustine has it all from beaches, gourmet dining, festivals, and attractions.


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Interested in the English language, Denmark, and rhetoric?

Denmark 40 books
Rhetoric 55 books