Pope Leo’s first words to the world: A semantic and intercultural perspective
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Anna Wierzbicka
Anna Wierzbicka is Professor of Linguistics (Emerita) at the Australian National University. She has published twenty-five books. Her latest book is
The Nicene Creed in Minimal English: Why Christianity Needs Universal Human Concepts (in press/2025, Palgrave). Her work engages linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology and religion. In 2024 she was named an Inaugural Highly Ranked Google Scholar, ranked 5 in linguistics, within the top 0.05 % across all disciplines.
Abstract
As this article shows, Pope Leo’s “first words” – the words with which he opened his encounter with the world as a Pope – are multi-layered and multi-dimensional. In these words the newly elected Pope greets and blesses all people on earth (whom he addresses as “fratelli e sorelle carissimi”, “dearest brothers and sisters”) with the words spoken by Jesus Christ to his Apostles when they saw him for the first time after his Resurrection. Jesus’ words, first spoken in Aramaic and transmitted to us through the Greek of the New Testament, have been translated into thousands of languages. But how have they been translated? And how can they be translated, given that many languages in the world don’t have a word comparable to “peace” and that many speech cultures do not have speech genres such as “greetings” and “blessings”? The article seeks to demonstrate that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) based on shared human concepts allows us to articulate, clearly and precisely, messages intended for the whole humanity. In addition, the article illustrates the difficulties involved in cross-cultural and cross-temporal communication with one particularly interesting example, the rendering of Jesus’ words “peace to you” in John’s Gospel (John 20:19) in the Hawaii Pidgin Bible (2024). Thinking through the problems and challenges that faced the translators and the solutions that they creatively reached for, the article discusses the intricacies of the connections between semantics and pragmatics, translation and interpretation, biblical hermeneutics and intercultural communication across languages, centuries and cultures.
About the author
Anna Wierzbicka is Professor of Linguistics (Emerita) at the Australian National University. She has published twenty-five books. Her latest book is The Nicene Creed in Minimal English: Why Christianity Needs Universal Human Concepts (in press/2025, Palgrave). Her work engages linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology and religion. In 2024 she was named an Inaugural Highly Ranked Google Scholar, ranked 5 in linguistics, within the top 0.05 % across all disciplines.
Acknowledgments
This article has benefitted from comments from a number of colleagues, and especially from Dr Sandy Habib, Dr Charbel El-Khaissi, Dr Charles Grimes, Dr Mary Besemeres, and Professor James Franklin. I am very grateful for their feedback.
References
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Short editorial note
- Research Articles
- Charting the decline of pragmatics in adults with neurodegenerative disorders
- Pope Leo’s first words to the world: A semantic and intercultural perspective
- How Ta’ārof works: Ritual politeness and social hierarchy in Persian communication
- On (in)definite ART in Italian and Italo-Romance varieties
- On bullshit and lies: For a responsibility-based approach
- Book Reviews
- Miriam A. Locher, Daria Dayter & Thomas C. Messerli: Pragmatics and Translation
- Victoria Guillén-Nieto: Hate Speech: Linguistic Perspectives
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Short editorial note
- Research Articles
- Charting the decline of pragmatics in adults with neurodegenerative disorders
- Pope Leo’s first words to the world: A semantic and intercultural perspective
- How Ta’ārof works: Ritual politeness and social hierarchy in Persian communication
- On (in)definite ART in Italian and Italo-Romance varieties
- On bullshit and lies: For a responsibility-based approach
- Book Reviews
- Miriam A. Locher, Daria Dayter & Thomas C. Messerli: Pragmatics and Translation
- Victoria Guillén-Nieto: Hate Speech: Linguistic Perspectives
