Abstract:

This thesis focuses on five apologetic expressions of Japanese and aims at the situations in which they are used, or in other words, their function as well as applies Natural Semantic Metalanguage to make descriptions on their functions. The research is based on a corpus including 465 examples gathered from the authentic materials of four recent Japanese TV dramas which were broadcasted during 2009-2013.

There are numerous apologetic expressions in Japanese which are used under various circumstances. The apologetic expressions also include a number of variations due to the delicate honorific system in Japanese. Acquiring a full picture of the functions of the apologetic expressions has always been a fascinating field. Nevertheless, past studies either used limited number of examples or were inadequate in the means of describing the functions of the apologetic expressions. Therefore, this study intends to apply Natural Semantic Metalanguage to make an attempt on a new way of description while using a corpus of authentic material as the source of data to carry out a scaled statistical analysis.

In the first stage, this research intends to use the method of feature analysis to categorize the patterns of the examples of the apologetic expressions. This is due to the fact that 465 examples are involved in this study and therefore, it is difficult to find out the similarities between any two random examples of a same apologetic expression directly via perception. Therefore, it is necessary to categorize the examples before any further study can be carried out. In this stage, I drew the experience from componential analysis – a traditional method of meaning analysis widely used in the field of semantic studies. Enlightened by the idea of componential analysis, I used different features to tag the examples and categorize the examples into different patterns according to their feature bundles. This is proved applicable by the result.

After grouping the examples into patterns, it is possible to summarize the similarities of the examples in a same pattern. Based on the similarities, it is also possible to summarize the functions. I also made other attempts of using means of statistical analysis to make comparisons between the examples of same pattern but of different apologetic expressions. This kind of comparison also offered some inspirational findings.

The final part is applying Natural Semantic Metalanguage as a means of the descriptions of the functions, attempting to obtain a neutral and non-culturally biased description of the functions of the apologetic expressions. Some previous studies on apologetic expressions in Japanese lack the neutrality in descriptions of the apologetic expressions since they are not able to avoid the appearance of certain culturally exclusive conceptions. For those who have very limited knowledge in Japanese language and culture, they have no idea about the conceptions closely related to the culture and therefore are by no means able to understand the functions of the apologetic expressions. Natural Semantic Metalanguage is based on semantic primes which are universal in different languages and cultures and therefore, the cultural scripts used to make description on certain cultural norms or expressions can be easily perceived by people with different linguistic or cultural background. Besides, the practicality of Natural Semantic Metalanguage has also been examined by different scholars and their studies. It is suggested by this study that Natural Semantic Metalanguage is applicable in describing the functions of apologetic expressions. Moreover, by applying an expandable semantic template, it can even be applied to the descriptions of pragmatic meaning of expressions of other conversational routines.