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An analysis on actual usages of the emotive adjective 'ureshii (glad, delightful, happy)'
Cross-Cultural Studies
2009,
13(2), pp.287-312
DOI : 10.21049/ccs.2009.13.2.287
Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
Research Area : Literature
DOI : 10.21049/ccs.2009.13.2.287
Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
Research Area : Literature
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This thesis aimed to investigate the tendency of society and culture through a feeling of 'gladness (delight, happiness)' that people felt after contacting objects or experiencing events. Gladness was expressed by non-verbal aspects such as facial expressions and gestures or verbal expressions. Verbal expressions were the most advanced way of expressing various and delicate human emotions. Among them, adjectives expressed feelings directly. Therefore, they provided the most effective way to study expressions of feelings. 'Ureshii' was selected as an object of the analysis in order to study actual usages of expressions of gladness. It was because 'ureshii' was the most representative word that expressed gladness in Japanese. Example sentences were extracted from 'Yahoo! Knowledge' in 'a balanced corpus of the modern Japanese written language (2009)' which was provided by 'The National Institute for Japanese Language'. They were used to examine basic usages, how reasons and contents of gladness were expressed in sentences, which area of gladness they were included. Also, actual usages were analysed through giving and receiving expressions that appeared together with "ureshii" in order to understand one side of Japanese people's sense of gladness.
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