Klaipėdos universitetas

The article analyses the conscious use of the principle of ethnocentrism in the perception and understanding of Lithuanian vocabulary at the level of short-term education in courses in the Lithuanian language and culture. The use of the methods of analogy and association allowed users of East Slavic languages to identify shared and different characteristics with their native language. Common features include vocabulary with phonetic consonances, among which internationalisms make up a separate group. Various signs are associated with ‘false friends’ and diphthongs.

Some of the words used in these discourses about multiculturalism, and everyday multicultural practice, such as “culture”, “ethnicity”, and “identity”, are ubiquitous and figure in almost every argument about multiculturalism, or discussion about multicultural practice. What I am going to argue is that, in popular and some scholarly discourses, these words and concepts may be used in ways that may be completely incompatible with our anthropological understandings of them. I am going to focus on three interrelated problems: ethnocentrism, essentialism, and primordialism.