VOCABULARY: AN EPITOME OF SOCIAL REALITIES
VOCABULARY: AN EPITOME OF SOCIAL REALITIES

Summary/Abstract: A society’s attitudes are exposed in its vocabulary and speaking practices. So far as linguists know, all languages are mutually translatable. What can be said in one language can be said in any other, somehow. Hence, if a speaker of any language wants to express something, s/he can resort to morphological processes and derive new words or can resort to syntax and make up new sentences in their languages which will express that new thought. All languages are thus constructed that new thoughts can be expressed in them. Undoubtedly, it is easier to convey some ideas in one language rather than another. This is because the vocabulary of each language develops partly according to the priorities of its culture. The objects, relationships, activities, and ideas important to the culture get coded onto single words, which are often highly specialized to express subtle nuances. The present article aims at tackling this issue by analyzing certain lexical choices, euphemisms, metaphors and idioms, gender-specific lexical structures in English (mostly American English) with reference to languages like Russian, German, Yiddish.

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