Books by Anna (Professor of Linguistics Wierzbicka

Many people today, both Christians and non-Christians, are confused about or unaware of the essentials of Christian faith. In this book, Anna Wierzbicka takes a radically novel approach to the task of communicating "what Christians believe" to the widest possible audience. The Story of God and People, which is the heart of this book, sets out the core tenets of Christian faith in narrative form using Minimal English. It is accessible to anyone, even thosewith no familiarity with Christianity or Christian vocabulary.

Points out that language and culture are not just interconnected, but inseparable. This work uses research to investigate the "universe of meaning" within the English language and places it in historical and geographical perspective. It is intended for linguists and others concerned with language and culture.

Imprisoned in English argues that in the present English-dominated world, social sciences and the humanities are locked in a conceptual framework grounded in English and that scholars need to break away from this framework to reach a more universal, culture-independent perspective on things human

This interdisciplinary work aims to cast light on the words of Jesus by taking the author's semantic theory of "universal human concepts" - concepts which are intuitively understandable and self-explanatory across languages - and bringing it to bear on Jesus' parables and the Sermon on the Mount.

This book provides a synthesis of Wierzbicka's theory of meaning, which is based on conceptual primitives and semantic universals, using empirical findings from a wide range of languages. While addressed primarily to linguists, the book deals with highly topical and controversial issues of central importance to several disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy.

This work demonstrates that every language has its "key concepts" (expressed in key words) and that these concepts reflect the core values of the culture in question. It shows that cultures can be revealingly studied, compared and explained to outsiders through their key concepts.