Leading academics to explain ways to create a simpler English language

Some of the world’s leading academics from a range of disciplines will gather at ANU from today for a symposium on improving communication in global English.
 
Hosted by the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Global English, Minimal English: towards better intercultural communication aims to identify the challenges behind the language and how they can be overcome.
 
“English is a global language but it’s not a value-free language,” co-organiser and linguistics lecturer Dr Zhengdao Ye said.
 
“People tend to forget how it can conceal and cause problems in intercultural communication.
 
“The speakers we’re bringing together are specialists in different languages, cultures and continents, but we also have non-linguists who are big names in their own fields.”
 
Among them are academics from disciplines like diplomacy, history and international affairs.
 
Topics to be covered include global English versus Minimal English, perspectives from Indigenous Australia and an Italian international student’s view on English at the ANU.
 
“Minimal English is a relatively new term and is based on Natural Semantic Metalanguage,” Dr Ye explained.
 
“It’s English trimmed to the bone – a bridge that gets across the essential element of the meaning of things.”
 
Dr Ye completed her PhD at ANU some years ago, under the supervision of Professor Anna Wierzbicka, the pioneer of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach.
 
Professor Wierzbicka and Professor Cliff Goddard of Griffith University have written the NSM approach involves a small group of the “fundamental meaning elements of all languages” or semantic primes, which can be expressed by words or other linguistic expressions in all languages.
 
There is also a large body of studies into “how meanings are expressed differently through the words and grammars of different languages,” they wrote.
 
“Minimal English is a tool that can help people put their thoughts into words in a way that makes it easier to discuss them across a language barrier.”
 
Furthermore, the linguists argue, “Minimal English also helps one to think more clearly” as there are fewer words from which to choose.
 
For more details and position papers, click here.