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Article published In:
International Journal of Language and Culture
Vol. 9:1 (2022) ► pp.119–150

Cultural semantics of the ‘salt’ word in Persian

 | Griffith University
This article explicates the cultural conceptualizations of the word for salt (namak) in Persian. The concept of namak reveals an important aspect of Persian sociality, hospitality, mutual respect, and playfulness. For instance, a person’s face or words can be perceived to ‘have salt’, or one’s hand is declared to ‘not have salt’ in the Persian language. To examine the conceptualization of namak, this article makes use of corpus data as well as the metalanguage proposed by Natural Semantic Metalanguage to spell out the nuances of salt-related cultural concepts in Persian. Three senses are identified for namak from a historical perspective: namak 0 for the substance of salt; namak 1 the cornerstone of Iranian sociality and hospitality; and namak 2 the pleasantness, which has changed its semantic content from referring to being pleasant and eloquent to being amusing and playful.
Keywords: cultural semantics, Persian, namak , salt, Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cultural semantics
  • 3.Corpus data
  • 4.Hospitality: Namak0 and Namak1
    • 4.1Namak0
    • 4.2Namak1
  • 5.Pleasantness: Namak2
  • 6.With salt
  • 7.Without salt
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 June 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.21038.ara
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Arab, Reza
2024. Metapragmatics of Maze (Taste) in Persian. In The Handbook of Cultural Linguistics [Springer Handbooks in Languages and Linguistics, ], ► pp. 383 ff. DOI logo

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