Phraseology and Culture in English

4. The 
Australian 
weekend: A description using NSM 
At the outset, it was noted that the Australian weekend is perhaps no longer 
what it once was. Nonetheless, I have been able to show, on the basis of 
linguistic data, that Australians continue to attach considerable importance 
to their weekends. In the process, a number of aspects related to Australian 
culture were touched upon, and this is undoubtedly additional evidence for 
the claim that the word weekend is a key word. The cultural aspects will be 
further elaborated below, using an additional sample of words, phrases and 
conversational routines. First, though, I would like to propose a hopefully 
exhaustive description, in Natural Semantic Metalanguage, of the word week-
end in Australian English: 
the [Australian] weekend
(a) part of a week
(b) there is no other part of the week like this
(c) this part has two parts of the same kind
(d) many people think of this part like this:
I want this part to have more parts of the same kind
this part is the part when, for a short time, I can do things
because I want to do these things
not because I have to do these things
(e) after this part, many people feel something bad
(f) before this part, there is another part

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Australian perceptions of the weekend
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(g) this other part has many parts of the same kind
(h) this other part is the part when people do many things
because they have to do these things
not because they want to do them
(i) they do not want to do these things for a long time
(j) this other part is the part when many people think:
after this part there will be another part
this is good
(k) when people think like this they feel something good
For those who are not used to thinking in terms of semantic primes, it 
may be useful to link this description to something they feel they can 
relate to a little better (even though there is a heavy price to be paid in 
terms of unwarranted cultural specificity). Components (a) and (b) locate 
the Australian weekend with reference to the week as a whole. Compo-
nent (c) specifies that there are two days in the weekend. Component
(d) includes two very common reflections on the weekend, viz. that it 
would be better if it were longer (“the land of the long weekend”), and 
that people can spend their time doing what they feel like doing, not what 
they have to do (to earn a living, for instance; cf. Dusevic). Component 
(e) refers to what people feel when they realise that another working 
week is upon them (they feel like taking or having a sickie). Components 
(f) to (i) describe the working week routine: it precedes the freedom that 
comes with the weekend, and it is spread over several days during which 
one has to do certain things one hopes not to have to do for too long. 
Components (j) and (k) express how the weekend is conceptualised as 
something people look forward to (what one feels like doing is always 
nicer than what one has to do) and talk about the emotions triggered by 
such anticipation. 
Care must be taken not to export as such into other varieties of English 
the description that has just been provided. It is important to recall that the 
meaning and the connotations of the word weekend are not necessarily the 
same everywhere in the English-speaking world. The available evidence 
shows that it is a key word in Australian English, but who is to say whether, 
in addition, it is a key word anywhere else? More research is needed to 
decide either way. 
Before we return to the data, it must be recalled that the word week,
used at the start of the explication, needs to be explicated as well. It is not