Conceptualization of “happy-like” feelings in Japanese and its relevance to a semantic typology of emotion concepts

Abstract

ABSTRACT Emotions play a crucial role in human lives, often influencing behaviour. Among others, the feeling expressed by the word happy in English has received particular attention. If, on the one hand, the concept seems basic and likely to exist across languages and cultures, on the other hand, cross-linguistic semantics has shown that even close equivalents in genetically related languages, such as the German glücklich or French heureux, do not exactly correspond in meaning. Although the cross-linguistic differences in the conceptualization of “happy-like” feelings have been emphasized, focus on the cross-linguistic commonalities is insufficient. This study focuses on Japanese “happy-like” concepts, namely ureshii, tanoshii and shiawaseda to examine the question: to what extent are the conceptualizations of “happy-like” feelings similar or different across languages? It describes the meanings of candidates for Japanese near-equivalents of happy in a way that is comparable to other languages by combining the findings from Japanese linguistic studies with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework. Though none of them exactly correspond to the English happy in meaning, investigating “happy-like” concepts from a broader perspective reveals the conceptualizations underlying these concepts in different languages. It implies that although “happy-like” concepts in different languages provide different conceptualizations of emotions, cross-linguistic commonalities may lie beneath them.