With a point of departure in the Japanese keyword kawaii, roughly, “cute”, this chapter explores contemporary Japanese social discourse. Using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage to explicate kawaii, the two kawaii compounds ita-kawaii and otona-kawaii and the related keywords itai and otona, this study breaks new ground into the understanding of the conceptual basis of kawaii and its elaborations in discourse. As the conceptual configurations of kawaii and related concept are analysed, 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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Cited by (4)
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Sakaba, Hiromichi
2023. Conceptualization of “happy-like” feelings in Japanese and its relevance to a semantic typology of emotion concepts. Australian Journal of Linguistics 43:4 ► pp. 283 ff.
2021. From beautiful to cute. International Journal of Language and Culture 8:1 ► pp. 62 ff.
Peeters, Bert
2020. Culture Is Everywhere!. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, ► pp. 1 ff.
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