Lige, a Danish ‘magic word’?

Abstract

The Danish wordlige[ˈliːə] is a highly culture-specific discourse particle. English translations sometimes render it as “please,” but this kind of functional translation is motivated solely by the expectation that, in English, one has to ‘say please’. In the Danish universe of meaning, there is in fact no direct equivalent of anything like Englishplease, Germanbitte, or similar constructs in other European languages. Consequently, Danish speakers cannot ‘say please’, and Danish children cannot ‘say the magic word’. However,ligeis in its own way a magic word, performing a different kind of pragmatic magic that has almost been left unstudied because it does not correlate well with any of the major Anglo-international research questions such as “how to express politeness” or “how to make a request.” This paper analyzes the semantics ofligein order to shed light on the peculiarities of Danish ethnopragmatics. It is demonstrated not only that Danishligedoes a different semantic job than Englishplease, but also thatplease-based andlige-based interactions are bound to different interpretations of social life and interpersonal relations, and reflect differing cultural values.

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