The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is an approach to studying linguistic meaning in isolation, as well as in context. Relying on Leibniz’s hypothesis about the existence of undefinable and irreducible further meanings in language, the approach proposes a set of 65 semantic primitives and their universal syntactic properties. The primitives and their universal syntactic properties have been identified by trial and error in the process of designing definitions of words from multiple lexical domains and have been tested in about three dozen related and unrelated languages. The primitives are used to construct semantic explications as representations of meaning and cultural scripts. The chapter discusses the main NSM theoretical concepts, such as semantic primitive, universal syntax, semantic molecule, semantic explication, cultural keyword, cultural script, Minimal Language. It illustrates the possibilities of applying NSM in the analysis of linguistic meaning at a conceptual level and in cultural context. It demonstrates how NSM can be applied to studying “formal” linguistic context, through studying lexical meaning and conceptual inter-connections and constructing semantic explications. Cases of multiple types of context influencing meaning are also illustrated. The chapter concludes with the description of recent developments of the NSM approach and the concept of Minimal Language.

This chapter looks at scholarly assessment of traditional issues in relation to Proverbs such as provenance, historical and cultural context and literary-critical history across the debates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries leading into the twenty-first. Beginning in the nineteenth century when the term “wisdom literature” was coined, changing ideas regarding compositional issues, original social context, and authorship and the effect of key Egyptian parallels on those debates are all discussed.

Specific diagnoses have specific implications, and this chapter examines these. Prevalence of specific conditions is difficult to establish, but some broad findings are reviewed. Specific diagnoses are then considered in turn, looking at their conceptual basis and potential misunderstandings, diagnostic criteria and the difficulty of categorising symptoms, and the implications of making, or not making, each.For each diagnosis the authors consider how culturally normal reactions may wrongly be labelled as ‘symptoms’ but equally how problems may be wrongly ascribed to ‘culturally normal’ experience. Some diagnoses may be overlooked, especially if difficulties are ascribed to cultural factors – substance abuse, traumatic brain injury, intellectual disability and neuroatypicality.

Situations where there is no diagnosis, or changing and overlapping diagnoses are reviewed.Fabrication is considered, and the value and hazards of raising the possibility in an assessment.

This chapter briefly surveys the field of intercultural sensitivity training programs and focuses on intercultural simulations as a method to replicate real intercultural interactions and allow participants to experience important aspects of intercultural interactions and to consider their experience in the light of the cultural and cross-cultural context of the interactions. These replications reveal the underlying dynamics and sources of perceptual and interpretative bias that may confound intercultural interaction, such as the fundamental attribution error, ethnocentric, and homogeneity biases that may produce confusion, misattribution, and even conflict. The chapter identifies numerous typologies and situates simulations in an experiential category. The chapter describes two experiential methods in some detail and provides suggestions for extracting insights made available to participants by elevating the saliency of culture to the interpretation of the interactions. Strengths and potential limitations are identified.

When children ask questions, learning may occur, a connection that has led some researchers to posit that children’s questions are a mechanism of cognitive development. There is an implicit assumption of universality in this view. Yet much of the research on this topic has been conducted in cultural settings where children’s questions are encouraged and supported. In this chapter, we discuss children’s questions as a form of social and cultural behavior. We draw on theories of language socialization to emphasize how, over development, children learn to use language in ways that are appropriate in the sociocultural setting in which they live. We describe evidence from a sample of 96 three- and five-year–old children living in four traditional communities, Garifuna (Belize), Logoli (Kenya), Newars (Nepal), and Samoans (American Samoa), that suggests there may be substantial differences across developmental contexts in children’s question-asking behavior, especially questions that seek explanation. We do not take issue with the idea that children have great curiosity about the world, a characteristic that leads them to seek out opportunities for learning. Rather, we are concerned with the form this curiosity takes and its relation to the social and cultural context of development.