ABSTRACT
Scholars working in ethno-epistemology need to tread carefully in how they formulate their discussions in order to circumvent or minimise several dangers, such as conceptual imposition from English or other home languages and relying too heavily on some semantic subtlety peculiar to their own language.
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to meaning, originated by Anna Wierzbicka, offers a well developed framework for overcoming these dangers. Based on a decades-long program of conceptual analysis and cross-linguistic empirical research, NSM is the only comprehensive approach to meaning that confronts the challenges of Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism head on, by seeking to base its representations on simple cross-translatable words. It offers the prospect of authentically modelling the thoughts and meanings of ordinary native speakers, insofar as it uses non-technical words that are accessible to speakers in their own language. It also provides procedures for dealing with ambiguity and vagueness of words, including how to distinguish lexical polysemy (distinct-yet-related meanings) from semantic generality.
This chapter overviews the NSM program, summarising the research base behind it and exemplifying its key concepts and methods with examples relevant to ethno-epistemology. The chapter seeks to demonstrate that the NSM program can provide a suitable metalanguage for ethno-epistemology.
