The Cultural Semantics of the Japanese Emotion Terms 'Haji' and 'Hazukashii'

Abstract

This paper presents a cultural semantic analysis of the Japanese emotion terms ‘haji’ and ‘hazukashii’, made using the methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). The paper has three aims: (i) to pinpoint the conceptions of ‘haji’ and ‘hazukashii’ as emotion terms in Japanese language and culture; (ii) to highlight the differences in meaning with their typical English translations ‘shame’ and ‘embarrassing’, and show that ‘haji’ and ‘hazukashii’ reflect two different, culture-specific emotion conceptions; (iii) to emphasise the suitability of NSM for cross-cultural comparisons of emotion terms in different languages and, in turn, for cross-cultural training. The examples adduced are taken from various sources, including a Japanese dictionary, the Kotonoha corpus of Japanese language and Japanese novels.

Keywords

• Japan
• Natural Semantic Metalanguage
• NSM
• cross-cultural differences
• haji
• hazukashii
• literature
• shame
• embarrassment
• emotion terms
• linguistics
• social and cultural identity
• semantics
• translation