Anna Wierzbicka

Biography

Anna Wierzbicka is an Emerita Professor of Linguistics in the College of Arts & Social Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU). Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies as well as linguistics. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the winner of the Dobrushin Prize for 2010 (established in Russia in honour of the Russian mathematician Roland Lvovich Dobrushin), the Polish Science Foundation’s 2010 prize for the humanities and social sciences, and has been awarded the Humboldt Research Prize for Foreign Scholars in Humanities.

In 2024, Emerita Professor Anna Wierzbicka has been named a ScholarGPS Highly Ranked Scholar for her exceptional performance and prolific publication record in the field of linguistics and, more broadly, in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

As the ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences Newsletter (30 May 2024) states, “Highly ranked researchers are the most productive authors, whose work are of profound impact and of utmost quality. This distinction recognises a lifetime of achievements, emphasised by a high volume of publications and citations – all underpinned by an exceptional h-index. Her excellent academic career has positioned her within the top 0.05% percentile of scholars worldwide.”

The Newsletter quotes Anna Wierzbicka: “For more than fifty years, my life’s work has been devoted to one big idea: the search for ‘the alphabet of human thoughts’, and for the basic conceptual language shared by all people, across languages and cultures. I believe this goal has now been largely achieved in a collaborative effort with colleagues – in what is known as the NSM research community. I think the ranking reflects the interdisciplinary relevance of these findings and the interest from scholars in many fields, not only in linguistics. Over the last two or three decades we have been increasingly focusing on putting the discovery of the simple and universal human concepts to practical use, in cross-cultural communication and in mutual understanding (e.g. in medicine, in public health messages, in environmental studies etc.)”

“I am happy and thankful that both the discovery of ‘the alphabet of human thoughts’ and its practical relevance are increasingly attracting attention of scholars in several disciplines, as the h-index indicates.”

Her recent books include: Imprisoned in English – The Hazards of English as a Default Language (OUP 2014) and What Christians Believe – The Story of God and People in Minimal English (OUP 2019)