Japanese Expressions that Include English Expressions

PACLIC 21 / Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea / November 1-3, 200

総合研究11 日・英慣用表現の対照研究

This research has been undertaken to study contrastively the idiomatic expressions of Japanese and English in order to determine the extent to which the idioms of the respective cultures show distinctive ways of looking at the world. With the specific purpose of offering to the more advanced language learner a greater familiarity with the relationship between a language and the emotional life it expresses, we have focused on those idioms that relate the emotions to the parts of the body. Methodologically, the study has been organized as two interrelated and parallel projects, one for Japanese, the other for English, with each proceeding with a comparable list of body parts and a generally parallel list of emotions. The English group presented the findings as Part I of the study in "A Contrastive Study of Japanese and English Idiomatic Expressions , " Annals of The Institute for Comparative Studies of Culture, Tokyo Woman\u27s Christian University, Vol.58 (1997). The Japanese group, whose findings are presented here, began with the examination of Japanese idiomatic expressions that relate the emotions to the parts of the body. The schema used for the analysis of Japanese emotions parallels to the schema used forthe analysis of the English emotions. The research followed these steps: 1) all the parts of body used in the Japanese idioms of emotions were analyzed using the lexical schema of parts of body in Japanese (cf. Table 1); 2) the Japanese idiomatic expressions, the emotions, and their distribution were examined (cf. Table 2); 3) the emotions expressed in the idioms were classified along with the respective parts of body used (cf.Table 3) ; and 4) the parts of body related to the emotions in the Japanese idioms were classified into respective emotions (cf.Table 4). These results are here contrasted with the findings of the English group. Of the 304 Japanese idiomatic expressions, over one third are associated with four parts of the body, i.e., ki (kimochi) \u27spirit\u27 (42) , mune \u27chest\u27 (36), kokoro \u27heart\u27 (20), and kao \u27face\u27 (23), 121 in all, of which the top most ki (kimochi) has no corresponding body part in English. In English, the most frequently used parts of body are heart (35), eye (34), face (25), and head (25). Of the 42 emotions establishedby the schema, the six most frequently occurring in idiomatic expressions are kandoo \u27appreciation\u27 (26), yamashisa \u27shame\u27 (24), odoroki \u27alarm\u27 (22), fuman \u27discontent\u27 (22), shimpai \u27worry\u27 (21), and ikari \u27anger\u27 (19), of which the top most kando and yamashisa characterize the Japanese emotions, where as their English counterparts are anger (50), anxiety (28), fear (28), contempt (28), indifference (22) and sorror (19). Both in Japanese and English, more than two thirds of the total idiomatic expressions are applied to the negative emotions such as anger. Among three levels of emotions established by the schema , the frequency of idiomatic expressions decreases in Japanese in the order of those levels of interpersonal emotions such as anger, of natural emotions such as fear , and of social emotions such as indifference. In English, on the other hand, the frequency of idiomatic expressions increases in the order of those levels of natural emotions, of interpersonal emotions and social emotions. The fact that the frequency of the idiomatic expressions referring to the social emotions in Japanese is the lowest and that in English is the highest, while the frequencies of the idiomatic expressions referring to the natural and interpersonal emotions show similar tendencies, may suggest the expressions of the social emotions are supressed in Japanese while they are not in English. The parts of body most used in the Japanese idiomatic expressions are the parts visible when facing the front side of the body, while the parts of body used in English include such parts as back (14) and buttocks (11) as frequently mentiond ones. Lastly, it should be noted that in Japanese, idiomatic expressions of emotion referring to the first person are differentiated from those referring tothe rest, as the use of Japanese adjectives of emotion for the first person is differentiated from that for the rest. In English, the use of adjictives of emotion does not share this aspect

学習英英辞典を使うためのヒント36

This is an exploratory paper showing effective ways of using a monolingual English dictionary for Japanese English learners. The characteristics and effectiveness of this type of dictionary are discussed in comparison with more general English and English-Japanese dictionaries, and 36 practice tasks are presented to help learners see how to use these capabilities well. These include some tasks that make use of the functions of an electronic dictionary in sentence/phrase and multiple dictionary searches, sometimes also requiring the use of wild cards. The paper concludes with a word game called Definition Game in which headwords are induced from definitions given. Together, these various elements support a view that the monolingual learner’s dictionary is an indispensable tool for understanding clear definitions, mastering appropriate English expressions, and building up vocabulary

身体部位詞を含む慣用表現に関する認知言語学的研究: 首とneck の比較を中心に

The purpose of this study is to clarify the differences between the idiomatic use of the word neck in Japanese and English. There are a lot of idiomatic expressions referring to the human neck in each language and neck idioms are often generalized beyond that of referring to the meaning of the specific body part in each language. However, the way these body parts are referred to differs between the languages. For example, to shake one’s head (meaning “no” in English) is different to kubi wo furu which literally means shake one’s neck in Japanese.This thesis investigates the above expressions from a cognitive linguistic point of view, focusing upon the use of metaphor and metonymy. Chapter 2 reviews previous studies of how cognitive linguistics has viewed the topic of body parts in its metaphor theory, and explains why the theory is of relevance to this study.Chapter 4 investigates the origin of the words in each language. As shown in Fang (2010), it is noted how the Japanese word kubi (首) took over the semantic extension to include the concept of head by the influence of the Chinese character for head (首). Chapter 5.1 illustrates the semantic extension of the word neck in idioms, and classifies its figurative meanings on a lexical level. Chapter 5.2 further investigates the neck expressions on an idiomatic level.In conclusion, from the analyses of Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, it was found that the Japanese word kubi has more meaning than that of the English word neck, because the concept kubi covers not only the neck area of the body but also the head

Delaying dispreferred responses in English: From a Japanese perspective

This article employs conversation analysis to explore the interpenetration of grammar and preference organization in English conversation in comparison with a previous study for Japanese. Whereas varying the word order of major syntactic elements is a vital grammatical resource in Japanese for accomplishing the potentially universal task of delaying dispreferred responses to a range of first actions, it is found to have limited utility in English. A search for alternative operations and devices that conversationalists deploy for this objective in English points to several grammatical constructions that can be tailored to maximize the delay of dispreferred responses. These include the fronting of relatively mobile, syntactically ?non-obligatory? elements of clause structure and the employment of various copular constructions. A close interdependence is observed between the rudimentary grammatical resources available in the two languages and the types of operations that are respectively enlisted for the implementation of the organization of preference

Japanese politeness in the work of Fujio Minami

This article presents and evaluates the work on linguistic politeness of the Japanese linguist Minami Fujio. It also constitutes a critical introduction to the work "Keigo" [Honorifics] translated by B. Pizziconi in the second article appearing in the same volume

A Pilot Study of Emotions of Writing in L2: Unpacking the Felt Sense of an EFL Writer

This study explores one EFL writer’s emotional aspects towards writing in second language (L2) through verbalizing her felt sense using the Thinking at the Edge (TAE) approach. Data collected include the participant’s autobiography of learning English, TAE-based reflective worksheets, and an individual interview. To analyze the data, thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998) in a qualitative method was employed. The findings reveal that the participant showed difficulty in expressing herself clearly in English and remained apprehensive about using English words and expressions properly. However, she realized the importance of English writing, which has promoted her creating a sense of confidence and writing proficiency. This study indicates that the findings obtained by the TAE approach will enhance the importance of seeking learners’ psychological engagement with writing in L2 in a qualitative manner