Wierzbicka argues that such features of English were the product of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers of the British Enlightenment, especially John Locke in works such as the Essay Concerning Human Nature (1690). To the British Enlightenment, reason was not the ‘pure reason’ of Descartes. Rather, it was ‘a reason focused on empirical reality, on “facts”, on “common sense”, and on probabilistic thinking, not expecting absolute certainty in anything’. The values that flow from this philosophy are central Anglo values, and they permeate its vocabulary, and even its grammar and syntax.

A book from an internationally acclaimed semanticist, who at times uses a theory of semantic primitives in her analysis, might seem geared to an audience of linguists. But this important book deserves a much wider audience, such as readers interested in cross-cultural matters or in the intersections of philosophy and linguistics, and especially those involved in the teaching of English to migrants.