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In:The Cultural Pragmatics of Danger: Cross-linguistic perspectives
Edited by Carsten Levisen and Zhengdao Ye
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 346] 2024
► pp. 217–235

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Chapter 11
Security, Sicherheit, ānquán

Similar-but-different key concepts in English, German and Chinese

ORCiD logo with link | Griffith University
 | Griffith University
ORCiD logo with link | The Australian National University
Published online: 15 August 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.346.11god
Abstract
In this chapter we first develop a semantic-conceptual analysis of the English word security, a key word in international geopolitical discourse, contrasting it with English safety. We then investigate the meanings of comparable words in German and in Chinese, i.e. Sicherheit and ānquán, respectively. Our method of lexical semantic description is the NSM (natural semantic metalanguage) approach, which is based on paraphrase into simple, cross-translatable words. The analysis is corpus-assisted. The results show that the meaning differences between “safety/security concepts” across languages are greater than many people would expect, and, furthermore, that these differences are culture-related. The implications for international “security discourse” are briefly explored.
Article outline
  • 1.‘Security’: A global key word in international discourse
  • 2.English ‘safety’ vs. ‘security’
    • 2.1Safety
    • 2.2Security: Its uses and contexts
    • 2.3Security concepts involving ‘countries [m]’
  • 3.German Sicherheit
  • 4.Chinese ānquán
    • 4.1ānquán1 [Chinese]
    • 4.2ānquán2 [Chinese]
    • 4.3Uses of ānquán in international relations and public security contexts
  • 5.Implications for international “security discourse”
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Corpora
  • References
References (25)
Corpora
BCC Corpus (Beijing Language and Culture University) [[URL]]
CCL Corpus (Centre for Chinese Linguistics Corpus PKU) [[URL]]
WordBanks Online. [[URL]]
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