Part of
The Language of Memory in a Crosslinguistic PerspectiveEdited by Mengistu Amberber
[Human Cognitive Processing 21] 2007
► pp. 13–39
Edited by Mengistu Amberber
[Human Cognitive Processing 21] 2007
► pp. 13–39
2. Is "remember" a universal human concept? "Memory" and culture
Speaking of “elementary notions, common to everyone in the human race, that can be expressed in all languages”, Umberto Eco (2000: 87–88) states: “Most certainly, every man has a notion of what it means to (. . .) to remember”. This paper argues that Eco is mistaken and that ‘remembering’ is not a universal human concept but a cultural construct, shared by some languages but not others. It also shows that culture-specifi c concepts like ‘remember’ and ‘memory’ can be explained and compared through genuinely elementary and universal notions such as know, think and before (that is, through ‘ nsm’). To illustrate these general themes, the paper offers a detailed analysis of the Polish fi eld of ‘memory’, linking Polish semantics with Polish history and culture.
Cited by
Cited by 7 other publications
Goddard, Cliff & Anna Wierzbicka
Lai, Changsheng
2021. Against epistemic absolutism. Synthese 199:1-2 ► pp. 3945 ff. 
Linde, Charlotte
2015. Memory in Narrative. In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ► pp. 1 ff.
Monchamp, Anne Marie
2011. The other side of the story. Memory Studies 4:1 ► pp. 53 ff.
Przyklenk, Joanna
2023. “Into Memory It Is Engraved – In Memory It Is Treasured – From Memory It Fades”. On the Perception of Memory in Conversations With Witnesses of History on the Example of the Archives of the Warsaw Rising Museum. Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Językoznawcza 30:1 ► pp. 121 ff.
Sutton, John
2020. Movements, Memory, and Mixture: Aristotle, Confusion, and the Historicity of Memory. In The Internal Senses in the Aristotelian Tradition [Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, 22], ► pp. 137 ff.
Tivyaeva, Irina & Olga Syomina
2020. English Mnemonic Lexicon: Constituent Structure and Verbalization Potential. English Studies at NBU 6:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 december 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.