Description: Anna Wierzbicka demonstrates that three uniquely English words--evidence, experience, and sense--are linchpins for whole networks of meanings, and that penetrating the meanings of such key words can open our eyes to an entire cultural universe.
Review Quotes: "Focusing on a handful of English words whose meaning seems obvious to native speakers, and using a brand of semantic analysis accessible to any intelligent lay person, Anna Wierzbicka reveals the empiricist worldview embedded in the English lexicon and shows how mystifyingly foreign English can thus be to foreigners. As an exploration in historical semantics, Wierzbicka's new book deserves a place beside Raymond Williams's Keywords."--J.M. Coetzee, University of Adelaide, Nobel Laureate in Literature