ABSTRACT

All languages and cultures appear to have one or more "mind-like" constructs that supplement the human body. Linguistic evidence suggests they all have a word for someone, and another word for body, but that doesn’t mean that whatever else makes up a human being (i.e. someone) apart from the body is the same everywhere. Nonetheless, the (Anglo) mind is often reified and thought of in universal terms. This volume adds to the literature that denounces such reification. It looks at Japanese, Longgu (an Oceanic language), Thai, and Old Norse-Icelandic, spelling out, in a culturally neutral Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), how the "mind-like" constructs in these languages differ from the Anglo mind.

chapter 1|29 pages

Delving into Heart- and Soul-Like Constructs

Describing EPCs in NSM

chapter 2|28 pages

Inochi and Tamashii

Incursions into Japanese Ethnopsychology

chapter 3|24 pages

Longgu

Conceptualizing the Human Person from the Inside Out

chapter 4|34 pages

Tracing the Thai ‘Heart’

The Semantics of a Thai Ethnopsychological Construct