Axiologies of Speaking: Scandinavian Perspectives on Verbs of Verbality

This paper explores ‘speaking’-related verbs in Scandinavian linguacultures from an axiological perspective. In Anglo-international pragmatics, English words like speak, speaker, and speech are often treated as universal, basic concepts and value-neutral categories, but cross-linguistic evidence suggests that such words are loaded with axiological and cultural assumptions, and that the domain of verbality reflects different axioms in different linguacultures. In this paper, two central Danish verbs of verbality tale and snakke, are explicated, and situated into the broader discussion on linguacultural difference, metapragmatics, and axiology. With reference also to the Swedish verbs tala, prata, and snacka, the goal of the paper is to provide a new analysis of Scandinavian ‘speaking’-related verbs. While these Scandinavian verbs are all rough translational counterparts of the English verb speak, they have different semantic-axiological profiles, and they model different ‘ways of saying things’. The empirical frames of exploration are based on discursive evidence from verbal art as well as linguistic evidence from electronic corpora of texts. The NSM method of paraphrase will be used in order to bring these aims and perspectives together. Inspired by, and in a discussion with, Bert Peeters’ analytical concepts of ‘transcultural axiology’ and ‘ethnoaxiology’, the paper provides an integrated analysis of verbs of verbality that reopens the discussion of the basic categories of pragmatics and metapragmatics.