Sustainability and semantic diversity : A view from the Malayan rainforest
(2023) In Topics in Cognitive Science 15(3). p.546-559- Abstract
- Sustainable development goals assume that basic notions such as health, life and water can be universally and easily expressed and understood across diverse communities and stakeholders. Yet there is growing evidence pointing to considerable semantic diversity in how humans represent the world in language. In this paper I discuss such semantic diversity in the context of key notions of sustainability. Focusing on an environmental term of broad relevance to sustainability goals, forest, I explore how this notion compares with assumed equivalent notions in a non-Western lesser-known speech community. Specifically, I analyze representations of treed environments in the language of the Jahai, a forager community inhabiting the rainforests of... (More)
- Sustainable development goals assume that basic notions such as health, life and water can be universally and easily expressed and understood across diverse communities and stakeholders. Yet there is growing evidence pointing to considerable semantic diversity in how humans represent the world in language. In this paper I discuss such semantic diversity in the context of key notions of sustainability. Focusing on an environmental term of broad relevance to sustainability goals, forest, I explore how this notion compares with assumed equivalent notions in a non-Western lesser-known speech community. Specifically, I analyze representations of treed environments in the language of the Jahai, a forager community inhabiting the rainforests of the Malay Peninsula. The results show that an understanding of local indigenous systems of representation can be crucial to the communication and implementation of sustainability goals. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/f157c23c-e319-48a2-ba6a-a48583494680
- author
- Burenhult, Niclas LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2023
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- sustainability, semantic diversity, environmental terminology, landscape, forest, Jahai
- in
- Topics in Cognitive Science
- volume
- 15
- issue
- 3
- pages
- 14 pages
- publisher
- Wiley
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85153526068
- pmid:37086059
- ISSN
- 1756-8765
- DOI
- 10.1111/tops.12654
- project
- Language as key to perceptual diversity: an interdisciplinary approach to the senses
- Language, cognition and landscape: understanding cross-cultural and individual variation in geographical ontology
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- f157c23c-e319-48a2-ba6a-a48583494680
- date added to LUP
- 2022-09-03 13:32:57
- date last changed
- 2023-12-21 10:20:10
@article{f157c23c-e319-48a2-ba6a-a48583494680, abstract = {{Sustainable development goals assume that basic notions such as health, life and water can be universally and easily expressed and understood across diverse communities and stakeholders. Yet there is growing evidence pointing to considerable semantic diversity in how humans represent the world in language. In this paper I discuss such semantic diversity in the context of key notions of sustainability. Focusing on an environmental term of broad relevance to sustainability goals, forest, I explore how this notion compares with assumed equivalent notions in a non-Western lesser-known speech community. Specifically, I analyze representations of treed environments in the language of the Jahai, a forager community inhabiting the rainforests of the Malay Peninsula. The results show that an understanding of local indigenous systems of representation can be crucial to the communication and implementation of sustainability goals.}}, author = {{Burenhult, Niclas}}, issn = {{1756-8765}}, keywords = {{sustainability; semantic diversity; environmental terminology; landscape; forest; Jahai}}, language = {{eng}}, number = {{3}}, pages = {{546--559}}, publisher = {{Wiley}}, series = {{Topics in Cognitive Science}}, title = {{Sustainability and semantic diversity : A view from the Malayan rainforest}}, url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/tops.12654}}, doi = {{10.1111/tops.12654}}, volume = {{15}}, year = {{2023}}, }