Browsing results for Japanese

(1979) Japanese – Grammatical categories

Wierzbicka, Anna (1979). Are grammatical categories vague or polysemous? (The Japanese ‘adversative’ passive in a typological context). Papers in Linguistics, 12(1/2), 111-162.

DOI: 10.1080/08351817909370466

Abstract:

The number of meanings that the syntax of a language codifies is usually fairly large. The number of available morphological devices is usually much smaller. It is therefore not surprising that languages make the same morphological devices perform a variety of tasks. Seen against this background, the Japanese passive has to be recognized as multiply ambiguous – or, in other words, multifunctional. How do hearers determine which particular meaning a speaker had in mind in any given utterance?

While real ambiguity does occur, in the vast majority of cases utterances contain a sufficient number of clues to guide hearers towards the correct (i.e. intended) interpretation of any given instance of the Japanese passive. Clues that help disambiguate Japanese passive constructions are listed, and it is argued that grammatical categories in general (i.e. including the Japanese passive) are polysemous rather than vague.

More information:

A more recent publication building on this one is chapter 4 (pp. 257-292) of:

Wierzbicka, Anna (1988). The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

(1981) English, Japanese – Speech acts

Nevile, Ann (1981). A comparison of selected speech acts in Japanese and English. BA(Hons) thesis,
Australian National University.

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Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1987) English, Japanese – Emotions

Bramley, Nicolette Ruth (1987). The meaning of ‘love’ and ‘hate’ and other emotion words in Japanese and English. BA(Hons) thesis, Australian National University.

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(1989) Japanese – Verbs (love, dependence)

Hanrahan, Jo (1989). Verbs of love and dependence in the Japanese language. Master’s thesis, Australian National University. PDF (open access)

This thesis examines a group of Japanese words which express emotion, at the heart of which is the concept of ‘amae’ , the desire for love and attention from another person. The emotions expressed by the words discussed herein are common to all human beings and form the core of all cultures. It seems that human feelings of fondness vary, depending on the depth of the relationship existing between the people concerned. It is in the expression of these emotions that peoples differ. It is suggested that the differences are not in the way people feel, but in the way their culture conditions them to behave in communicating their feelings. Only the prototypical use of the verbs in which the concepts are expressed are defined in semantic primitives, although the peripheral uses are commented on separately.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1991) Japanese – Cultural key words

Wierzbicka, Anna (1991). Japanese key words and core cultural values. Language in Society, 20(3), 333-385.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500016535

Abstract:

Every language has its own key words, which reflect the core values of the culture. Consequently, cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key words. However, to be able to study, compare, and explain cultures in terms of their key words, we need a culture-independent analytical framework. A framework of this kind is provided by the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. This paper explores and analyses six Japanese concepts widely regarded as being almost more than any others culture-specific and culturally revealing – 甘え amae, 遠慮 enryo, 和 wa, 恩 on, 義理 giri, and 精神 seishin – and shows how the use of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage helps to make these concepts clear, affording better insight into Japanese culture and society.

More information:

A more recent publication building on this one is:

Chapter 6 (pp. 235-280) of Wierzbicka, Anna (1997), Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.

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(1994) English, Polish, Japanese – Cultural scripts

Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). ‘Cultural scripts’: A new approach to the study of cross-cultural communication. In Martin Pütz (Ed.), Language contact and language conflict (pp. 69-87). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/z.71.04wei [sic]

According to Edward Hall, writing in 1983, one element lacking in the cross-cultural field was the existence of adequate models that enable us to gain more insight into the processes going on inside people while they are thinking and communicating. It is the purpose of the present paper to develop and validate a model of the kind that Hall is calling for. The model developed here, which can be called the “cultural script  model”, offers a framework within which both the differences in the ways of communicating and the underlying differences in the ways of thinking can be fruitfully and rigorously explored. It is shown how cultural scripts can be stated and how they can be justified; this is done with particular reference to Anglo, Japanese, and Polish cultural norms.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1994) Japanese – NSM primes

Onishi, Masayuki (1994). Semantic primitives in Japanese. In Cliff Goddard, & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 361-386). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.18oni

It is said that, in Japanese, a clear stylistic difference between male and female speakers is observed. Usually, lexeme choice and use of certain discourse devices are considered to be the symptoms of that difference. However, recent literature seems to suggest that at least some of the ‘gender-specific’ features can be analysed simply in terms of general conversational constraints, which reflect the power relationship of speakers in Japanese society. This issue is crucially important in the discourse of NSM mini-sentences and the choice of Japanese exponents for certain primitives sensitive to pragmatic contexts – notably I and YOU, but also many others. A somewhat neutralized version of the so-called male familiar style is used as the basic style of the mini-sentences, with plain forms of predicates and no sentence-final particles. In general, lexemes felicitously used in this style are chosen as the exponents of the primitives. Throughout this paper, the language of mini-sentences used for the identification of the Japanese exponents of the primitives is based on the Tokyo uptown dialect.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1994) Japanese – Psychomimes

Hasada, Rie (1994). The semantic aspects of onomatopoeia: Focusing on Japanese psychomimes. MA thesis, Australian National University. PDF (open access)

This thesis aims to examine the semantic aspects of Japanese onomatopoeia, which is among the least studied language phenomena in Japanese linguistics. The focus of the thesis is on explicating the meaning of psychomimes, the onomatopoeic words that refer to emotions. Among Japanese onomatopoeia, psychomimes are the hardest for non-native speakers to acquire. This is because their meanings are more abstract and more culturally embedded than other types of onomatopoeic words. The thesis also considers some cultural aspects that are
linked to Japanese onomatopoeic words, since their explication will facilitate a deeper understanding of the use and meaning of those words.

I demonstrate that the complex Japanese-specific meanings involved in selected psychomimes can be clearly shown and made comprehensible to outsiders when they are translated into the universal or near-universal Natural Semantic Metalanguage and represented in
the framework of a “prototype scenario”. I show that the complex and unique semantic concepts of Japanese psychomimes, which are usually described as ‘untranslatable’, are nonetheless translatable on the level of semantic explication with language-independent semantic
metalanguage. The similarities and dissimilarities in labelling and the conceptualization encoded in different psychomimes become apparent with the use of the universal Natural Semantic Metalanguage.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

 

(1994) Japanese, English (incl. Black) – Cultural scripts

Wierzbicka, Anna (1994). “Cultural scripts”: A semantic approach to cultural analysis and cross-cultural communication. Pragmatics and Language Learning [Monograph Series], 5, 1-24. PDF (open access)

This paper argues that the ways of speaking characteristic of a given speech community cannot be satisfactorily described (let alone explained) in purely behavioral terms. They constitute a behavioral manifestation of a tacit system of “cultural rules” or “cultural scripts”. To understand a society’s ways of speaking, we have to identify and articulate its implicit “cultural scripts”. Furthermore, it is argued that to be able to do this without ethnocentric bias we need a universal, language-independent perspective; this can be attained if the”rules” in question are stated in terms of lexical universals, that is, universal human concepts lexicalized in all languages of the world.

To illustrate these general propositions, the author shows how cultural scripts can be stated and how they can be justified. This is done with particular reference to Japanese, (White) Anglo-American, and Black American cultural norms.

The cultural scripts advanced in this paper are formulated in a highly constrained Natural Semantic Metalanguage, based on a small set of lexical universals (or near-universals) and a small set of universal (or near-universal) syntactic patterns. It is argued that the use of this metalanguage allows us to portray and compare culture-specific attitudes, assumptions, and norms from a neutral, culture-independent point of view and to do so in terms of simple formulae that are intuitively self-explanatory while at the same time being rigorous and empirically verifiable.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1995) Japanese, Malay, Polish – Emotion words

Goddard, Cliff (1995). Conceptual and cultural issues in emotion research. Culture & Psychology, 1(2), 289-298. DOI: 10.1177/1354067X9512009

As suggested by its title, Wierzbicka’s 1995 paper ‘Emotion and facial expression: A semantic perspective’ is an attempt to apply a uniform framework for semantic analysis to two domains of emotional expression – words and facial expressions – and to advance some hypotheses about how they are related. Wierzbicka argues that linguistic research shows that no emotion word of English (or any other language) has a simple and undecomposable meaning; rather, the emotion words of different languages encode complex and largely culture-specific perspectives on ‘ways of feeling’, linking feelings with specific kinds of thoughts and wants (prototypical cognitive scenarios). Essentially, the claim is that the meanings of words like angry, proud, lonesome, etc., embody little ‘cultural stories’ about human nature and human interaction. To uncover and state such stories in non-ethnocentric terms, however, requires a framework of semantic universals. We need to go beyond the ‘either-or’ question and seek both the universal core of communication, as well as the precise role of culture. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage is a new method that will assist us to reach that goal.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1996) Japanese – Cultural scripts

Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Japanese cultural scripts: Cultural psychology and “cultural grammar”. Ethos, 24(3), 527-555.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.1996.24.3.02a00060

Abstract:

To describe a language we need to describe, first of all, its vocabulary and its grammar. The task of describing a culture can be approached in many different ways; one useful and illuminating way of doing so is through linguistics, by describing a society’s ‘key words’ (embodying key cultural concepts) and its ‘cultural grammar’, that is, a set of subconscious rules that shape a people’s ways of thinking, feeling, speaking, and interacting. This paper focuses more specifically on Japanese cultural rules.

Translations:

Into Russian:

Chapter 14 (pp. 653-681) of Вежбицкая, Анна (1999), Семантические универсалии и описание языков [Semantic universals and the description of languages]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки русской культуры [Languages of Russian Culture].

Chapter 3 (pp. 123-158) of Вежбицкая, Анна (2001), Сопоставление культур через посредство лексики и прагматики [Comparison of cultures through vocabulary and pragmatics]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки Славянской Культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].

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(1997) English, Japanese – Non-verbal communicative behaviour

Hasada, Rie (1997). Some aspects of Japanese cultural ethos embedded in nonverbal communicative behaviour. In Fernando Poyatos (Ed.), Nonverbal communication and translation (pp. 83-103). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/btl.17.09has

This paper considers the non-verbal behaviour typical of Japanese people and culture. The focus of discussion are those patterns that often appear incomprehensible or inscrutable in the eyes of non-Japanese people. Special attention is paid to eye-movement, crying, and smiling. The study of these patterns clarifies some important characteristics of Japanese people’s psychology and socio-cultural norms/needs/values in society.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1997) Japanese – Conditionals, counterfactuals

Hasada, Rie (1997). Conditionals and counterfactuals in Japanese. Language Sciences, 19(3), 277-288. DOI: 10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00065-4

This paper examines whether Anna Wierzbicka’s (1996a, 1996b) hypothesis that the ‘conditional’ and ‘counterfactual’ constructions are semantic universals, can be justified in the case of the Japanese language. Many Japanese constructions are compatible with both condition (IF) and temporal (WHEN) interpretation; despite this, it is shown that there is an unambiguous exponent of the IF-construction in Japanese, which uses the particle moshi. It is also shown that the English ‘hypothetical conditional’ has an equivalent, or near-equivalent, in Japanese. As for the counterfactual, it is argued that while there is an unambiguous counterfactual in Japanese, in the form of a construction with (no)ni, this construction is not a perfect equivalent of the English counterfactual because the Japanese construction always
implies that the speaker feels something bad about the real outcome.

(1997) Japanese – NSM syntax (mental predicates)

Onishi, Masayuki (1997). The grammar of mental predicates in Japanese. Language Sciences, 19(3), 219-233. DOI: 10.1016/S0388-0001(96)00061-7

The current NSM theory regards six mental predicates – THINK, KNOW, WANT, SEE, HEAR and FEEL – as indefinable semantic universals. This paper examines the syntax of their Japanese exponents (omou, sit-te iru, -tai/hosii, miru, kiku and kimoti). Special attention is paid to the syntax and semantics of major complementation types (S no, S koto and S to) found with the majority of these predicates. It is shown that each primitive predicate has a specific set of syntactic frames in which the primitive meaning is expressed, and that the extended meanings that may be expressed in other syntactic environments are specifiable by reductive paraphrase explications.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1997) Malay – Cultural values

Goddard, Cliff (1997). Cultural values and ‘cultural scripts’ of Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Journal of Pragmatics, 27(2), 183-201. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(96)00032-X

This paper documents some Malay ‘rules of speaking’ and articulates their connections with Malay cultural values, using the new theory of ‘cultural scripts’ developed by Anna Wierzbicka. Aspects of the preferred Malay discourse style, which is normally described as refined, restrained, and charming, are shown to be linked with the Malay social emotion of malu ‘shame, propriety’, with the personal qualities of maruah ‘dignity, self-respect, pride’ and harga diri ‘self-esteem’, and with the ideal of senang hati ‘a heart at ease; (lit.) easy heart’. It is argued that the cultural scripts approach enhances descriptive accuracy, helps reduce ethnocentricm, and facilitates the integration of pragmatics and cultural semantics.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(1997) Understanding cultures through their key words [BOOK]

Wierzbicka, Anna (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words: English, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract:

This book develops the dual themes that languages can differ widely in their vocabularies, and are sensitive indices to the cultures to which they belong. The author seeks to demonstrate that every language has key concepts, expressed in (cultural) key words, which reflect the core values of a given culture. She shows that cultures can be revealingly studied, compared, and explained to outsiders through their key concepts, and that NSM provides the analytical framework necessary for this purpose. The book demonstrates that cultural patterns can be studied in a verifiable, rigorous, and non-speculative way, on the basis of empirical evidence and in a coherent theoretical framework.

Table of contents:

  1. Introduction
  2. Lexicon as a key to ethno-sociology and cultural psychology: Patterns of “friendship” across cultures
  3. Lexicon as a key to ethno-philosophy, history, and politics: “Freedom” in Latin, English, Russian, and Polish
  4. Lexicon as a key to history, nation, and society: “Homeland” and “fatherland” in German, Polish, and Russian
  5. Australian key words and core cultural values
  6. Japanese key words and core cultural values

Translations:

Into Polish:

(Chapter 3 only) Wierzbicka, Anna (1999). Język – umysł – kultura [Language, mind, culture]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Wierzbicka, Anna (2007). Słowa klucze: Różne języki – różne kultury. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.

Into Russian (Chapters 1, 2 and 3 only):

Chapters 7 (pp. 263-305), 8 (pp. 306-433) and 9 (pp. 434-484) of Вежбицкая, Анна (1999), Семантические универсалии и описание языков [Semantic universals and the description of languages]. Москва [Moscow]: Языки русской культуры [Languages of Russian Culture].

Вежбицкая, Анна (2001). Понимание культур через посредство ключевых слов. Москва [Moscow]: Языки славянской культуры [Languages of Slavic Culture].

Into Japanese:

アンナ・ヴィエルジュビツカ著 [Anna Wierzbicka] (2009). キーワードによる異文化理解: 英語・ロシア語・ポーランド語・ 日本語の場合 . 東京 [Tokyo]: 而立書房 [Jiritsu Shobō].

More information:

Chapter 4 builds on: Lexicon as a key to history, culture, and society: “Homeland” and “fatherland” in German, Polish and Russian (1995)

Chapter 5, section 2 builds on: Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantics of human interaction (1991), chapter 5

Chapter 5, section 3 builds on: Australian b-words (bloody, bastard, bugger, bullshit): An expression of Australian culture and national character (1992)

Chapter 6 builds on: Japanese key words and core cultural values (1991)

Reviewed by:

Peeters, Bert (2000). Word, 51(3), 443-449. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.2000.11432505 / Open access

This review includes several suggestions for improvements to the explications in the book, as well as a revised explication of the Russian word друг drug.

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The tags mentioned below are limited to those not listed in work on which this book is based.

(1998) Japanese – Cultural values (OMOIYARI)

Travis, Catherine (1998). Omoiyari as a core Japanese value: Japanese-style empathy? In Angeliki Athanasiadou, & Elzbieta Tabakowska (Eds.), Speaking of emotions: Conceptualisation and expression (pp. 83-103). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110806007.55

This paper presents a semantic analysis of the Japanese concept of omoiyari, a key word representing core Japanese values. Omoiyari is essential to successful communication and the maintaining of harmonious relations in Japan. A full understanding of this word is extremely insightful into Japanese culture, revealing a great deal about the Japanese “indirect” communicative style; the importance of being “in tune” with others’ unexpressed desires and feelings; the “interdependence” on which group relations are based in Japan; and, in the light of all these factors, the Japanese perception of individuality, or “selfhood”. Furthermore, an understanding of omoiyari provides analysts with a tool with which to examine and describe Japanese culture, allowing them to adopt a kind of Japanese perspective, and thus to gain greater comprehension of some of the values and attitudes on which the society operates.

Omoiyari essentially represents a kind of “intuitive” understanding of the unexpressed feelings, desires and thoughts of others, and doing something for them on the basis of this understanding. Previous analyses of this word have been carried out without establishing an explicit definition of omoiyari, and it has been defined in terms of apparently “close” English equivalents. Such an approach is inherently flawed, as there is no one word for omoiyari in English. It is possible to fully define omoiyari in a way that makes its meaning accessible to non-Japanese speakers, and that is by using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage as developed by Wierzbicka and colleagues. This paper will present such a definition, established through an analysis of usage examples. This will then be compared with the meaning of one of its “close” English equivalents, and probably the word most commonly used to translate omoiyari, which is empathy. It shall be shown that, although these two words are similar in some respects, their meanings have much less in common than may be perceived through a superficial analysis, and that these differences reflect real differences in the respective cultures to which these words belong.

(1998) Japanese – Evidentials, indirectness

Asano, Yuko (1998). Evidentiality and indirectness in Japanese. Master’s thesis, Australian National University.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2000) Japanese – Emotions

Hasada, Rie (2000). An exploratory study of expression of emotions in Japanese: Towards a semantic interpretation. PhD thesis, Australian National University. PDF (open access)

The present study explores the emotional world of Japanese people. Using the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, this thesis attempts to explicate the conceptual organization of aspects of Modern Standard Japanese, with a special focus on the lexicon. This thesis also aims to explicate the cultural norms that are related to the emotion words/expressions with the use of culture-independent, universal Natural Semantic Metalanguage. A great amount of data is taken from various sources: TV or radio broadcasting, actual conversation, published literature both in Japanese and English, film scripts, dialogues in magazines, newspaper/magazine articles, comic books, advertisements, letters, dictionaries, and popular songs.

The work is organized in the following way. Chapter 1 is the introduction. Chapter 2 consists of a review of the literature on emotions and includes philosophical, anthropological, and psychological approaches. Chapter 3 demonstrates the importance of linguistic study for the research on emotions, and suggests the Natural Semantic Metalanguage as the most appropriate method for achieving the main goals of this thesis. Chapter 4 discusses the grammatical features of emotion expression sentences. Chapter 5 deals with those body parts terms which are related to emotions in Japanese. Chapters 6 to 11 explicate the meanings of various Japanese emotion words and expressions. Chapter 12 focuses on communication of nonverbal emotion in Japanese culture. Chapter 13 examines characteristic Japanese speakers’ attitudes towards emotions. Chapter 14 is the conclusion.

Wherever possible, the thesis seeks to probe into culturally-based aspects of the conceptual structure of emotion words/expressions, by drawing on a variety of anthropological, psychological, and sociological studies of Japanese society.


Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2000) Malay – Communicative style

Goddard, Cliff (2000). “Cultural scripts” and communicative style in Malay (Bahasa Melayu). Anthropological Linguistics, 42(1), 81-106. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30028746

The “cultural scripts” approach is a descriptive technique that has grown out of the cross-cultural semantic theory of Anna Wierzbicka. The author uses this technique to describe and make sense of aspects of Malay communicative style. The proposed Malay cultural scripts are linked with the importance placed on appropriate (patut, sesuai) behavior and on nasihat ‘advice’, and on the need to balas budi (roughly) ‘return good treatment’, to jaga hati orang ‘look after people’s feelings’, and to menghormati ‘show respect, deference’.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners