The Introduction considers the need for global concepts shared throughout the world for commerce, human rights and geopolitics. At the same time, the authors posit that keywords are historically and linguistically situated. For this reason, they contend that it is essential to understand how keywords migrate from one culture to another, and what happens when cultures adopt foreign keywords. What happens to related words? And how does the reinterpretation of foreign keywords affect the worldview of the linguistic community that assimilates them? Methodology, sources and objectives are outlined in this introduction. The authors have adopted certain principles and paradigms from Raymond Williams in sociology, and from Wilhelm von Humboldt and Anna Wierzbicka in linguistics and language philosophy.
