Tag: (E) ita-kawaii いた かわいい

(2017) Japanese – Cultural key words

Asano-Cavanagh, Yuko (2017). Kawaii discourse: The semantics of a Japanese cultural keyword and its social elaboration. In Carsten Levisen & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 211-234). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277.09asa

Abstract:

Taking its starting point in the Japanese cultural key word kawaii (roughly, ‘cute’), this chapter explores contemporary Japanese social discourse. Using NSM to explicate kawaii, the two kawaii compounds ita-kawaii and otona-kawaii and the related cultural key words itai and otona, it breaks new ground and increases our understanding of the conceptual basis of kawaii and its elaborations in discourse. A view on Japanese socialization and gendered discourse is simultaneously developed, and the value of ‘being kawaii’ is being scrutinized through the stability and innovations of kawaii in discourse.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2013) Japanese – Cultural key words

Asano-Cavanagh, Yuko (2013). Understanding Japanese culture through a semantic analysis of kawaii ‘cute’, itai ‘pitiful’ and ita-kawaii ‘pitifully trying to be cute’. In John Henderson, Marie-Ève Ritz, & Celeste Rodríguez Louro (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. https://sites.google.com/site/als2012uwa/proceedings.

Open access

Abstract:

This paper examines the three Japanese words kawaii ‘cute’, itai ‘pitiful’ and ita‐kawaii ‘pitifully trying to be cute’. Japanese women frequently say kawaii to show positive feelings towards objects or people. However, too much kawaii is  considered undesirable. A compound word, ita‐kawaii, is used to describe women who dress or wear make‐up in an overly kawaii way. Especially when older women try to look kawaii, they are criticized as itai, or ita‐kawaii.

From a linguistic perspective, kawaii, itai, and ita‐kawaii are not lexicalized in other languages. Although the kawaii phenomenon has been thoroughly discussed by many scholars, there has been no rigorous semantic analysis of these three words. In this study, NSM is used to explicate the exact meaning of kawaii, itai, and ita‐kawaii. The analysis indicates that the meaning of itai and ita‐kawaii is related to the social norm that criticizes someone for being conceited. The kawaii and ita‐kawaii syndrome reveals a Japanese cultural characteristic enforcing people not to be out of place in society.

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