In this groundbreaking book, Wierzbicka demonstrates that every
language has its "key concepts" and that these key concepts reflect the
core values of the culture. Further, she argues that within a
culture-independent analytical framework one can study, compare, and
even explain cultures to outsiders through their key concepts. The
framework Wierzbicka proposes is the well-known "natural semantic
metalanguage" that she developed with her colleagues. For this study,
Wierzbicka focuses on four languages and cultures: Japanese, Australian
English, Polish, and Russian. She identifies "culture laden" words in
each of these languages; these words are, in a sense, "untranslatable."
She shows, however, that the words can be "explained" by means of the
semantic metalanguage's hypothetical semantic primitives such as
someone, something, do, happen, want, say, know, think, good, bad , etc.