中文「可愛」的語意、用法及其近十年的改變

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩士論文 Master Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 中文「可愛」的語意、用法及其近十年的改變. Kěài ‘Cute’ in Mandarin: Its Meanings, Uses, and Changes in the Recent Decade. 指導教授: 李臻儀博士 Advisor: Dr. Jen-i Li 研究生: 陳鈺潔 Student: Yu-Chieh Chen. 中華民國一百零六年十二月 December, 2017.

(2) 摘要中文的可愛一詞，字典定義為「討人喜愛的」，通常直譯為英文的cute，但其語意及用法卻遠超出字典的定義及英文的cute。雖然已有文獻研究過日文 kawaii的語意及中文可愛與日文kawaii的異同，但就我知識所及，目前仍無人探討過台灣中文裡可愛一詞的語意及用法，更無人研究過在此社交媒體平台普及的年代可愛的創新用法。鑑於此，此論文旨在探討 (一)中文可愛一詞的描述範圍， (二)可愛的語意及其語用功能，及 (三)可愛的語意及用法在社交媒體平台發明前及發明後的異同。本研究以語料為依據，探討不同語境和不同年代下的可愛。總共收集了八百筆可愛的語料，四百筆來自中央研究院漢語平衡語料庫(第四版)，另外四百筆來自廣泛被使用的社交媒體平台—臉書及狄卡。漢語平衡語料庫的語料是來自1981 至2007年間的文章，此組語料代表了社群網路尚未發達前的語料; 而取自臉書及狄卡的語料則代表2007至2017年間網路上的語言使用。本研究根據這兩組語料，調查分析可愛的描述範圍、語意、功用及其可能的改變。本論文研究結果包含三個部分: (一)可愛的描述範圍,(二)可愛的語意,及(三). 可愛的語用功能。就(一)可愛的描述範圍來說，在漢語平衡語料庫及社交媒體平台當中，可愛主要用來形容人類，如小孩和大人，再者是非人類，如有生命及無生命的對象，最後是事件。但是，在兩組語料中，這些對象被形容為可愛的特質卻不盡相同。在漢語平衡語料庫中，超過半數的人類之所以被形容為可愛，是因為他們的外在特色；然而，在社交媒體平台中，大多數的人類會被稱作可愛，是因為他們的行為表現，像是他們的禮儀、行為、態度和個性。至於非人類部分，在兩組語料中均發現，當可愛用來形容無生命的對象時，大多是因為這些對象所擁有的外在特色。可愛形容的第三個類別是事件，兩組語料在此類別有明顯的差異，在社交媒體平台中，高達12.1%的可愛是用來形容一整個事件，然而，在漢語平衡語料庫中，這一類可愛的用法只佔了0.8%。就(二)可愛的語意來說，兩組 i.

(3) 語料中大多數的可愛是用來表達正面意思。但儘管有此相似之處，兩組語料仍有差異存在。在社交媒體平台中，可愛出現了新的語意—「有娛樂效果的」。除此之外，在漢語平衡語料庫中，最常見的三種可愛的語意是「討人喜愛的」(62.3%)、「值得稱讚的」(11.9%) 及「單純的」(8.6%)，而在社交媒體平台中最常見的語意則為「討人喜愛的」(49.9%)、「有娛樂效果的」(12.1%) 及「好笑的」(10%)。就(三)可愛的語用功能而言，雖然可愛在兩組語料當中都可以被用來當作規避語，但在社交媒體平台中，可愛被發現有著另外一項功能：表達一個人驚訝的心理狀態。期望透過本研究，我們能夠更了解可愛的各種語意及用法，也能對其在近十年間的改變有進一步的認識。. 關鍵字: 可愛，語意及用法，語言變化，社交媒體平台，中文. ii.

(4) ABSTRACT. In Mandarin, the word kěài, literally meaning “lovable” or “adorable”, is usually translated into cute in English. In fact, the meaning and use of kěài is far beyond what is given in the dictionary or that of its English counterpart. Although there is literature explicating the semantics of the cuteness term kawaii in Japanese and there is a contrastive study comparing Chinese kěài and Japanese kawaii, no research has been devoted to thoroughly examining the meanings and uses of kěài in Taiwan Mandarin, let alone possible innovative usage of kěài after the popularity of social media platforms. In view of this, this study aims to detailedly examine (a) what Mandarin kěài can describe (i.e. its descriptive range), (b) the semantics of kěài, along with its pragmatic functions, and (c) whether the meanings and uses of kěài are different in different times – the time before and after the invention of social media platforms. This study adopts the data-based approach to examine kěài in different contexts and different times. A total 800 tokens of kěài were collected – 400 tokens from the Sinica Corpus (fourth edition) and the other 400 tokens from two widely used social media platforms, Facebook and Dcard. The set of data from the Sinica Corpus, in which the texts were written from 1981 to 2007, represents the data before the invention and popularity of the social media platforms while the set of data from Facebook and Dcard gives us texts from 2007 to 2017. Based on the two sets of data, the descriptive ranges, meanings, and functions of kěài and its possible changes are investigated. The results of kěài in this study consist of three parts: (a) the descriptive range, (b) the semantics, and (c) the pragmatic functions. In terms of (a) the descriptive range of kěài, what kěài most frequently describes in both the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms is Human beings, such as children and adults, followed by iii.

(5) Non-human beings, such as animate and inanimate objects, and finally Events. But the properties for those objects to be described as kěài in the two sets of data are different in some way. In the Sinica Corpus, over half of the Human beings to be described as kěài are due to their “external features”; however, in the social media platforms, most Human beings to be called kěài lie in their deportment, including their manner, behavior, attitude and personality. As to Non-human beings, the property of those inanimate objects to be called kěài is mostly their external features in both sets of data. The last main type that kěài describes is Events and there is an obvious difference between the two sets of data: in the social media platforms, up to 12.1% of kěài is used to describe the whole situation and the event; however, in the Sinica Corpus, such usage of kěài only takes up 0.8%. In terms of (b) the semantics of kěài, kěài is found to convey positive meanings most of the time in both the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms. Despite the similarity, there are differences. Kěài is found to have a new meaning—“entertaining” in the social media platforms. Besides, the top three meanings of kěài in the Sinica Corpus is “adorable” (62.3%) “praiseworthy” (11.9%) , and “innocent” (8.6%) while in the social media platforms such ranking becomes “adorable” (49.9%), “entertaining” (12.1%), and “amusing” (10%). In terms of (c) the functions of kěài, although kěài is found to be used as hedges in both the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms, among the data of social media platforms, kěài has another function: show a person’s surprised mental state. Through this study, it is hoped that we can have a better understanding of the various senses of kěài and its functions that foreground aspects of communication in different social interactions.. Keywords: cuteness, kěài, semantics, function, language change, social media platform, Mandarin iv.

(6) 謝辭「陳某不看便罷，看了一遍，又念一遍，自己把兩手拍了一下，笑了一聲道：『噫！好了！我完成了！』說著，往後一跤跌倒，牙關咬緊，不醒人事。」寫論文真的是一條漫漫長路，無止盡的修改，彷彿看不到盡頭。實在很難回想起這一年半以來，歷經五百多個—「論文虐我千遍，我待論文如初戀」的日子，我是如何一步一步地完成論文的。曾經以為完成的瞬間，我會雀躍地又是痛哭流涕，又是亂跑亂跳地像是隻興奮的小猴子，大力為自己鼓掌喝采，因為那些個過程實在苦澀難耐; 但等到真正完成的片刻，我卻是異常冷靜，沒有躁動，僅是內心滿足而喜悅地看著最後的完成品。原來，這一路上曾經深刻的酸甜苦辣早已昇華，昇華為一種平淡卻也彌新的感動。當然，之所以能夠走到這裡，絕非我一人的努力可以達成，這一路上有太多太多人的貴人挺身相助，現在，就讓我來一一介紹並且感謝他們吧! 首先，我要感謝我的指導教授—李臻儀老師。臻儀老師是個很溫柔的女性，她就像是媽媽般地關心著學生各方面瑣事，提供建議和鼓勵，和老師總是可以很開心地聊很多生活上的話題，互相交換意見和想法。在學術上，老師更給予許多的協助，如果沒有老師的指導，我想我的論文是無法完成的。再來，我要感謝我的兩位口試委員: 蘇席瑤老師和謝富惠老師。我的論文初步構想是在席瑤老師的「社會語言學」課程產生的。席瑤老師在當時就給了我很多的建議和鼓勵，也提供了很有幫助的文獻讓我參考。如今，我能夠更完整的展現論文主題，席瑤老師絕對是那個幕後功臣，大大地推了我一把! 接下來，我要隆重地介紹謝富惠老師，因為富惠老師是我大學時的老師，更是教導我語言學的啟蒙老師。從大四申請語言學的研究所開始，到進入師大就讀，更到目前完成論文的階段，每每我遇到任何學術上或是在學校發生的困難，幾乎第一時間都會想起去請教富惠老師，而老師也總是不辭辛勞的細心耐心教導我，鼓勵我，讓我受益甚多。我能夠順利完成研究所的學業及論文，富惠老師絕對是功不可沒，因為一直以來富惠老師總是以她一派的幽默和笑容，感染著我、鼓勵著我，讓我對自己更勇敢更有信心。除了這四位老師之外，我也想感謝師大英語系曾經教導過我的老師: 陳純音老師、詹曉蕙老師、吳曉虹老師、張妙霞老師、林蕙珊老師及謝妙玲老師。很開心能夠修習這些老師們開的課，因為每一堂課都讓我收穫良多，更扎實我的能力。另外，還有一群很重要的夥伴們，我要好好的致謝，那就是這三年半來陪伴我學習、成長的同學們: 陳淑芬(Amy=阿咪=阿花)，胡淞筌 (Nick=阿尼)，林彥呈 (Shawn)及陳冠元(Francis)。在苦悶的研究生涯當中能夠遇到這群好朋友們，互相分享生活上的大小事，我真的覺得自己很幸運! 超級喜歡你們! 我要特別感謝「花尼卡」的成員，謝謝阿咪，常常陪伴我幫忙我處理很多事情，愛使你了，還有謝謝阿尼，和你一起聊天談心真的很愉快!能夠結識你們，卡比真的很幸福。接下來，我還要鄭重地感謝幫忙分析「可愛語料」的大軍們，沒有你們的腦力激盪，友情力挺，我是不可能完成論文的。首先，感謝 Amy, Eliza, Nick, Shawn & v.

(7) Andrew, 謝謝你們擠盡腦汁的幫忙! 再來，感謝下一屆的 Louisa & Kelvinn，你們真的是太優秀了!給了我非常多非常棒的想法! 還有，我要特別感謝我的「江子翠好鄰居們」，同時，他們也是我大學同班同學—Abby & Elaine。兩位美女實在是非常厲害! 還記得那時初夏午後，我們三人待在一間咖啡店近四小時，分析了一百多筆語料最終找出了準則! 感謝所有的語料大軍們，謝謝你們如此用心，不嫌辛苦的幫忙! 家人們，是我最終要好好感謝的對象。謝謝媽媽和爸爸，出錢出力提供我一個無憂的環境讓我可以好好念書，完成我的研究所學業。謝謝你們默默的支持。還有，謝謝 Mr.Hsieh，謝謝你的陪伴鼓勵與理解支持，謝謝你。最後，我想說的是，感謝師大讓我有個圓夢的機會，一直以來我都是一個很重視學業表現的人，並且期許自己能夠拿到碩士學位；在師大的這三年半來，我的收穫遠遠大於我當初所預期的，也看到自己相當大的蛻變、成長，雖然這一路走來的種種壓力真的不小，卯足了勁也吃足了苦頭，但我一點都不後悔，因為這一場語言學的冒險之旅實在是太有趣，太過癮，太值得了!. vi.

(8) TABLE OF CONTENTS Chinese Abstract English Abstract Acknowledgements Table of Contents List of Tables List of Figures Abbreviation. Chapter One. i iii v vii x xi xii. Introduction. 1. 1.1. Motivation and Background. 1. 1.2. Specific Purposes of this Study. 3. 1.3. Significance of the Thesis. 6. 1.4. Organization of the Thesis. 8. Chapter Two 2.1. Literature Review. 9. Studies of Kawaii in Japanese. 9. 2.1.1 McVeigh (1996). 10. 2.1.2 Yomota (2006). 12. 2.1.3 Asano-Cavanagh (2014). 16. 2.2. Studies of Kěài in Mandarin. 18. 2.2.1 Farris (1988). 19. 2.2.2 Farris (1995) & Chuang (2005). 20. 2.2.3 Yamauchi (2011). 21. 2.3. An Emergent View of Lexical Semantics. 25. 2.3.1 Huang (1998). 27. 2.3.2 Bybee (1998). 28. 2.3.3 Tao (2003). 29. 2.3.4 Why Emergent Semantics is Adopted in This Study. 32. vii.

(9) 2.4. Chapter Summary. Chapter Three. 33. Data Collection. 36. 3.1. Data Collection. 36. 3.2. Sinica Corpus and Data Retrieval. 39. 3.3. Social Media Platforms and Data Retrieval. 41. Chapter Four 4.1. The Descriptive Range of Kěài. The Classification Criteria of Kěài-Objects and Kěài-Properties. 47 47. 4.1.1 Classification Criteria of the Descriptive Range of Kěài. 48. 4.1.2 Examples of Kěài Objects and Properties. 55. 4.1.2.1 Examples of Human Beings. 55. 4.1.2.2 Examples of Non-human Beings. 63. 4.1.2.3 Examples of Events. 68. 4.1.3 Short Summary 4.2. 69. Results of Analyzing the Descriptive Range of Kěài. 70. 4.2.1 Descriptive Range of Kěài in the Sinica Corpus. 70. 4.2.2 Descriptive Range of Kěài in the Social Media Platforms. 77. 4.3. Similarities and Differences of the Descriptive Range of Kěài in the Two Sets of Data. Chapter Five 5.1. 84. Semantics and Pragmatic Functions of Kěài. The Semantics and Pragmatic Functions of Kěài in the Sinica Corpus. 5.1.1 The Meanings of Kěài in the Sinica Corpus 5.1.2 The Pragmatic Functions of Kěài in the Sinica Corpus 5.2. 91 91 91 103. The Semantics and Pragmatic Functions of Kěài in the Social Media Platforms. 105. 5.2.1 The Meanings of Kěài in the Social Media Platforms. 106. 5.2.2 The Pragmatic Functions of Kěài in the Social Media Platforms. 118. viii.

(10) 5.3. Similarities and Differences of the Meanings and Functions of Kěài in the Two Sets of Data. 5.4. 124. Meaning Extension of Kěài Based on the Framework of Emergent Lexical Semantics. Chapter Six. 129. Concluding Remarks. 135. 6.1. Summary of the Findings. 135. 6.2. Implications of the Study. 142. 6.3. Limitations. 143. References. 146. ix.

(11) LIST OF TABLES. Table 1.. Kěài-objects in the Sinica Corpus. 71. Table 2.. Kěài-properties in the Sinica Corpus. 74. Table 3.. General results of the descriptive range of kěài in the Sinica Corpus. 76. Table 4.. Kěài-objects in the social media platforms. 78. Table 5.. Kěài-properties in the social media platforms. 81. Table 6.. General results of the descriptive range of kěài in the social media platforms. Table 7.. 83. The percentage of kěài-objects in the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms. Table 8.. 84. The percentage of the gender of human beings described with kěài in the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms. Table 9.. The general distribution of kěài-objects in the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms. Table 10.. 86. 89. The percentage of kěài-properties in the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms. 89. Table 11.. The meanings of kěài in the Sinica Corpus. 93. Table 12.. The meanings of kěài in the social media platforms. Table 13.. The percentage of the meanings of kěài in the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms. 107. 125. Table 14.. The distribution of the syntactic category of kěài in the Sinica Corpus 133. Table 15.. The distribution of the syntactic category of kěài in the social media platforms. 133. x.

(12) LIST OF FIGURES. Figure 1.. The classification of kěài-objects. 53. Figure 2.. The properties of the objects that kěài describes. 55. Figure 3.. The bar chart of the percentage distribution of the meanings of kěài in the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms. xi. 124.

(13) Abbreviation. Conventions for literal translation CL classifier DE Mandarin morpheme de DM discourse marker DUR durative aspect marker PART particle PFV perfective PROG progressive marker Q question particle/marker ZHE Mandarin morpheme zhe. xii.

(14) Chapter One Introduction. 1.1 Motivation and Background Kawaii, an adjective in Japanese, meaning “cute” and “adorable”, is usually used to represent something small, delicate and immature (Burdelski and Mitsuhashi 2010: 65). Contemporary Japan is usually considered the land of cuteness for her flourishing “kawaii culture”. Seemingly influenced by this kawaii culture, people in Taiwan today are obsessed with the aesthetics of cuteness or the kěài trend. The term kěài (可愛) ‘cute’ is commonly heard and frequently used in modern Taiwanese society, especially in the recent decade after social media platforms have been invented and widely used. In Mandarin, the adjective kěài, literally meaning “lovable” or “adorable” according to the online Chinese dictionary of Chinese WordNet, 1 is usually translated as “cute” in English. However, McVeigh (1996) points out that it is hard to capture the meaning of cuteness because of its ambiguous nature. He (1996: 293) suggests that “cuteness is a concept of great cultural ubiquity and is often used to characterize objects (toys, small things), persons (children, young girls, women), behavior (certain. 1. The link of the Chinese WordNet: http://cwn.ling.sinica.edu.tw/ 1.

(15) words, facial expressions), and attitude (one’s feelings toward a thing or person).” In other words, cuteness is a versatile concept which can be used not only to refer to the external features of things and people but also people’s behavior and attitude. According to McVeigh (1996), almost anything and everything may be called cute and what is cute seems to be limitless. If the notion for cuteness is so rich, the terms for cuteness, such as kawaii in Japanese or kěài in Mandarin Chinese, may likewise be rich in meaning. In fact, Farris (1988) has already pointed out that even though the word kěài is commonly defined as adorable or lovable, it has a broader descriptive range than its English gloss. This indicates that kěài is a semantically rich term, having various meanings. Previous studies, such as McVeigh (1996), Chang (2005) and Asano-Cavanagh (2014), on the phenomenon of cuteness mostly examine cuteness from the perspective of material culture and anthropology, focusing on the external features of objects or its relation to gender. These studies pay much attention to the “visual impact” that cute things cause on the person who sees them and they primarily investigate what external properties an object or a person has to possess in order to be called “cute”. The semantics and pragmatic functions that words of cuteness such as kěài denote in various social interactions have been largely neglected. Moreover, although there is literature explicating the semantics of the cuteness term kawaii in Japanese 2.

(16) (Asano-Cavanagh 2014) and there is a contrastive study comparing Chinese kěài and Japanese kawaii (Yamauchi 2011), no research has been devoted to thoroughly examining the meanings and pragmatic functions of kěài in Taiwan Mandarin at least to my knowledge, let alone possible innovative usage of kěài after the popularity of social media platforms. In view of this, the two main purposes of this study are (a) to detailedly examine how Mandarin kěài is used and (b) to investigate whether there are differences in using kěài in different times – the time before and after the invention of social media platforms. Besides, this study also discusses the descriptive range of kěài, including the “objects” that kěài can describe and “the properties” that those objects may possess to be described as kěài. These two aspects are examined not only because they are seldom investigated but also because such features may indirectly affect the meaning and function of kěài.. 1.2 Specific Purposes of this Study The present study aims to thoroughly examine the semantics and the pragmatic functions of the term kěài in Mandarin within different contexts and in different times. Hence, 800 tokens of kěài were collected – 400 tokens from the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese (fourth edition), simplified as Sinica Corpus, and the other 400 tokens from two widely used social media platforms, Facebook and 3.

(17) Dcard. The set of data from the Sinica Corpus, in which the texts were written from 1981 to 2007, represents the data before the invention and popularity of the social media platforms; the set of data from Facebook and Dcard gives us texts from 2007 to 2017. Based on the two sets of data, the meanings and pragmatic functions of kěài and possible changes of the meaning and usage of kěài are investigated. The specific purposes of this study are stated as follows. As mentioned above, previous studies suggest that it is hard to define cuteness because of its ambiguous nature and kěài in Mandarin is found to have a broader descriptive range than its English gloss (McVeigh 1996, Farris 1988). With this view, the first purpose of this study is to examine the descriptive range of kěài in the two sets of data, including the objects that kěài can describe and the properties that those objects may possess to be described as kěài. Then, since little attention has been paid to the linguistic analysis of the words of cuteness and there is no research devoted to examining the meanings and pragmatic functions of kěài in Taiwan Mandarin, the second purpose of this study is to examine the semantics of kěài in Mandarin and see how many meanings of kěài can be found based on the data collected from the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms respectively. At the same time, how and why different meanings of kěài have extended from its original lexical meaning is also discussed based on the framework of Emergent Lexical Semantics, which is the third 4.

(18) purpose of the study. The fourth purpose of this study is to probe into the pragmatic functions of kěài based on the data collected from the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms respectively. The last purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the meanings, the pragmatic functions and the descriptive ranges of kěài found in the data retrieved from the Sinica Corpus and that from the social media platforms since the meanings and functions of kěài found in the first set of data representing its usages in the time between 1980 and 2007 and those found in the second set representing the usages of kěài after 2007 till now, 2017. Our aim is to investigate whether today’s frequent social interactions among people in online communication are related to the change of the meanings and functions of kěài. If differences are found between the two sets of data, the reasons and causes behind the differences will also be explored. To make the five purposes of this study even clearer, they are listed one by one as the following research questions: 1. What is the “descriptive range” of kěài, including the “objects” that kěài can describe and the “properties” that those objects have to be described as kěài, in the two sets of data respectively? 2. What are the meanings of kěài found in the two sets of data respectively? 3. Based on the framework of Emergent Lexical Semantics, how have different 5.

(19) meanings of kěài extended from its original lexical meaning? 4. What are the pragmatic functions of kěài based on the two sets of data respectively? 5. In terms of kěài’s descriptive range, meaning, and pragmatic function, what similarities and differences can be found between the two sets of data?. 1.3 Significance of the Thesis The cuteness phenomenon has been widely discussed before; however, most studies analyze cuteness from the perspective of anthropology, exploring people’s viewpoints about cuteness through questionnaires or interviews (Chang 2005, Yomota 2006), and little attention has been paid to the linguistic analysis of the words of cuteness used in different languages. This study, however, presents a detailed linguistic analysis of kěài in Mandarin, which is the first contribution of the present study. Although Yamauchi (2011) investigates the semantics of Chinese kěài from a linguistic perspective, there are inadequacies in Yamauchi’s analysis and the data that Yamauchi uses is from the CCL Corpus (i.e. Centre for Chinese Linguistics Peking University), which contains language data used in China and may be different from the usage of kěài found in Taiwan. This study, however, collects data from the 6.

(20) Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese, which is developed and maintained in Taiwan, and the social media platforms, Facebook and Dcard. To probe into the power of kěài ‘cute’ in Taiwan Mandarin, this study not only investigates the meanings and the pragmatic functions of kěài, but its descriptive range. Different from Yamauchi (2011), whose classification criteria of kěài’s descriptive range are vague and include objects only, the classification criteria of kěài’s descriptive range in this study are clearly defined and include both objects and their properties. At the same time, to make the meanings of kěài easier to understand, Chinese words, English counterparts and English paraphrases are also given in the tables. Rapid technological developments in the digital revolution era have changed our way of communication. Nowadays, thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet service and smartphones, people use popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, to communicate and interact with their friends and the public. By analyzing data collected from the rapid rising social media platforms, we may know the meanings and functions of kěài used in online communication within the recent decade and find out the meaning and functional differences of kěài between the texts in the Sinica Corpus and those in the social media platforms. In other words, this study may reveal the effects of frequent social interactions among people in online communication on the meaning and function change of kěài. Besides, how and why the meanings of kěài 7.

(21) have extended from its basic meaning is discussed as well. This study is presumably the first one that presents such kind of analysis. In short, this study is different from previous studies in that rather than paying attention to the social phenomenon of kěài, such as limitless cute commodities or the shifting power of cuteness between gender relation, this study focuses on the linguistic analysis of the word kěài by investigating its descriptive range and further exploring how and why kěài can be used in various kinds of contexts with different meanings and functions.. 1.4 Organization of the Thesis This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One briefly introduces the motivation and the purposes of the present study. In chapter Two, previous studies related to the issue of cuteness are reviewed. Chapter Three presents how the data used in this study is collected. Chapter Four displays the descriptive range of kěài, including the objects and properties that kěài is found to describe in the two sets of data. Detailed semantic and pragmatic analysis of kěài is given in Chapter Five. Finally, Chapter Six summarizes the findings of this study and makes closing remarks.. 8.

(22) Chapter Two Literature Review. The present study aims to examine the descriptive range, meanings and functions of kěài in Mandarin as well as their changes in the past ten years. Since few studies have been devoted to investigating kěài in Mandarin, this chapter first reviews the studies of the cuteness word kawaii in Japanese in Section 2.1 for kawaii is the source from which the phenomenon of cuteness originates and flourishes. And the findings from these kawaii studies are seen as basis in analyzing kěài in this study. Then, in Section 2.2, studies related to kěài in Mandarin are introduced. Section 2.3 presents studies supporting the framework of Emergent Semantics, which is used to explain the various meanings of kěài found in this study. Finally, Section 2.4 summarizes the discussion in this chapter.. 2.1 Studies of Kawaii in Japanese In this section, three studies discussing Japanese kawaii from different perspectives are reviewed. McVeigh (1996) explores the concept of cuteness in Japan and explains why cuteness is ambiguous in meaning, Yomota (2006) examines the features of kawaii, and Asano-Cavanagh (2014) explicates the semantics of kawaii in 9.

(23) Japanese.. 2.1.1 McVeigh (1996) McVeigh (1996) analyzes the phenomenon of cuteness in the Japanese society from an anthropological perspective. According to him, “cuteness” is a unique and important cultural element in the Japanese daily life; from brightly colored advertisements, everyday small objects, to the baby-faced mascot of governmental authorities, cute things are seen everywhere in Japan and they are used as communicative strategies to notify, advise, and shape opinions. McVeigh (1996: 291) suggests that the reason why cuteness can provide communicative potency is because cuteness is more than a feeling or a way of description; instead, it is a sentiment that has been “objectified, commodified and commercialized” within Japanese everyday lives, and from the objects’ materials, shapes, to their sizes, all of these characteristics embed and encode this sentiment and none of them are immune to this aesthetics. As McVeigh (1996) suggests, cuteness is a ubiquitous concept and since it can be used to describe almost everything, including people, animals, small things and even people’s behavior and their facial expression, the meaning of cuteness may be hard to define. In his attempt to capture the meaning of cuteness, McVeigh takes cuteness as a key symbol in the Japanese society and employs Turner’s (1967) four 10.

(24) properties of symbols to explain why symbols are effective for communicating people’s conceptions about the social world. 2 According to Turner, the first property of a symbol is multivocality or polysemy, showing that a symbol can represent different things with diverse meanings; the second property is condensation, which means that one symbol unifies many diverse meanings and different meanings of a symbol are associated with and interact with other meanings; the third property is ambiguity, meaning that a symbol has more than one meaning and people can use the same symbol in different ways; the fourth property is the two-sided aspect of a symbol: one is conceptual or ideological side and the other one is perceptual or sensory side, which mutually define and reinforce each other. By employing Turner’s symbolic analysis, McVeigh explains why cuteness can have such a broad descriptive range and be able to describe all varied objects. Moreover, taking “cuteness” as a key symbol in the Japanese society, McVeigh (1996: 293) argues that it is the symbol’s four properties that “do justice to the multifaceted, ambiguous nature of cuteness”. With this view, we suggest that if the notion of cuteness is so semantically rich, the terms for cuteness, such as kěài in Mandarin, which is the focus of this study, also have diverse meanings accordingly. The aspect of McVeigh’s findings related to this study is that he investigates the. 2. According to sociology, the social world refers to a social construct. People construct the social world, and even reality is socially constructed. 11.

(25) concept of cuteness and finds out cuteness is a versatile concept which can have a broad descriptive range to describe almost everything, including inanimate objects such as toys and small things, persons such as children and young women, and even people’s behavior and attitude. Although McVeigh has pointed out why the nature of cuteness is ambiguous and the various things that can be described as cute, he does not classify “the objects” and “the features of those objects” to be described as cute in a systematic way, since he mixes the external features, such as small and young, and behavioral properties and attitude, with the objects, such as children and toys. That is, the descriptive range of cuteness is not clearly defined and hence its usages are hard to capture. Viewed in this light, if we would like to have a better understanding of the descriptive range of a cuteness term in Mandarin, namely kěài in this study, the objects and the features of those objects to be described as kěài must be separately discussed and more systematically categorized.. 2.1.2 Yomota (2006) In his book “Kawaii ron”, Yomota (2006) rigorously investigates the phenomenon of kawaii and analyzes the features of kawaii. Using questionnaires with opening questions, Yomota examines people’s thoughts and attitudes toward the word kawaii from two main aspects: (a) the situations to be described as kawaii, and (b) the 12.

(26) antonyms and the synonyms of kawaii. The questionnaires were completed by Japanese college students, including both males and females. According to Yomota, regarding the first aspect of the questionnaire, the results show that the situations that both males and females considered kawaii were their childhood, the time when they changed their hair style/clothes or when they interacted with the other gender. Different from males’ experiences, kawaii was also used by females to describe the time when they were “petite” or when they consciously acted cute, i.e. burikko, in Yomota’s survey. Moreover, regardless of gender, Yomota found that people were also described as kawaii in a specific situation, namely, “unexpected failure situation”. For example, a girl expressed that she was once described as kawaii for she unconsciously spoke with a “broad accent”. According to Yomota, the reason is that girls who make fool of themselves by accident are more kawaii than those perfect girls who never make mistakes and if the girl who makes mistakes is described as kawaii by other people, this just means that she has safely passed the crisis. Viewed in this light, Yomota suggests kawaii has the function of controlling the distress of the situation and protecting the person involved. Regarding the second aspect of the questionnaire—the antonyms and synonyms of kawaii, Yomota asserts that the meaning of kawaii is most obvious when it contrasts with utsukushii (美しい) ‘beautiful’. According to him, utsukushii means 13.

(27) flawless and perfect and such features are opposite to imperfect and immature, which are the characteristics of kawaii. However, Yomota further asserts that those seemingly weak features may turn out to be strengths; in other words, being imperfect or immature can be seen as being ‘kind’, ‘reachable’, ‘touchable’ and ‘approachable’ from a different viewpoint. Thus, Yomota suggests that this may be the reason why the thing/person described as kawaii always arouses people’s desire to touch it and to protect it. Moreover, based on the questionnaire survey, Yomota found what is opposite to kawaii is ‘not touching’, ‘boring’, ‘unkind’, and ‘ordinary’; besides, there are ‘adult-like’, ‘complete’, and ‘calm’, and these antonyms are based on the concept of maturity. Other antonyms of kawaii found in Yomota’s survey include ‘flawless’, ‘keen’, and ‘brilliant’ based on the concept of knowledge. With this view, Yomota argues that kawaii excites and stimulates people’s interest and enthusiasm in their life; with some immaturity always, kawaii makes peoples’ heart beats, encouraging and arousing their curiosity. He strongly suggests that since the Japanese word kawaii is associated with features such as immature and imperfect, it is different from the English word cute because the etymology of cute is actually the shortening of acute, which means clever. Thus, Yomota contends that after the personification of kawaii, a girly, childish, corky but gentle image appears instead of a beautiful and mature image. 14.

(28) Finally, Yomota concludes that although it may seem difficult to define the meaning of kawaii since it has multiple features, such as small and immature, kawaii may not really refer to some specific items but refer to a kind of fictional state within relationships. In other words, Yomota believes what cuteness or kawaii actually means is not that important, it is when kawaii is used and in what kind of relation it is used that matters. Since it is hard to capture the meaning of the semantically rich word kawaii, Yomota (2006) analyzes kawaii’s synonyms and antonyms instead of finding out what features may constitute kawaii. When Yomota contrasts utsukushii ‘beautiful’ with kawaii, the meaning of kawaii becomes more obvious because of the features that utsukushii represents. According to Yomota, utsukushii incorporates features such as flawless and perfect while the features of kawaii are imperfect and immature. In other words, the meaning of kawaii may be close to something incomplete and imperfect. And such findings about the features of kawaii may help explain kawaii’s meanings when it is used in different kinds of situations, such as the situation when kawaii describes the external features of things or the behavior of people. Yomota’s findings about the features of kawaii in Japanese may give important implications in analyzing the semantics of kěài in Mandarin in this study.. 15.

(29) 2.1.3 Asano-Cavanagh (2014) According to Asano-Cavanagh (2014), kawaii seems to be a culturally specific word that reveals a fundamental aspect of the material and popular culture in the Japanese society. In order to capture the exact meaning of kawaii, Asano-Cavanagh adopts the framework of natural semantic metalanguage approach (NSM) to examine this term. The NSM approach, or deductive paraphrase, is proposed by Anna Wierzbicka (1991) to explicate complicated meanings of words in different languages by means of exact paraphrases composed of words simpler than the original ones. In other words, the NSM approach is based on the idea of clarity and simplicity (Goddard 2011) to help people understand the meaning of words by using the metalanguage derived from natural languages to paraphrase or explain words with semantic primes. Semantic primes refer to words that cannot be analyzed or further explained, such as I, you, know and because, and they are accessible in almost every language in the world. Thus, semantic primes are part of the universal grammar (Wierzbicka 1991). Through rigorous semantic analysis by using the NSM, Asano-Cavanagh suggests that the complete meaning of kawaii can be portrayed as follows:. This something is kawaii: (a) this something is something small of this kind 16.

(30) (b) when people see this thing, they can’t not feel something very good, like people often can’t not feel something very good when they see a small child [m] 3 (c) often when people see something like this, they think like this: ‘this is something very good, I want it to be mine’ (d) at the same time, they can think like this: ‘if I touch this thing with my hands [m], I can feel something good – because of it, I want this; if I touch it with my hands [m] at many times, something bad can happen to it – because of this, I don’t want this’ (e) many other things of this kind are not like this. (Asano-Cavanagh 2014:352). Detailed explanations from (a) to (e) represent the characteristics of kawaii. In terms of the external features, Asano-Cavanagh points out that if one thing is considered kawaii, that thing must (a) be small in shape and (d) have the characteristics of being delicate and even fragile. Also, Asano-Cavanagh suggests that kawaii items can evoke a kind of strong positive feeling; namely, kawaii is closely related to a favorable emotion. With this view, (c) expresses a person’s wish to possess the kawaii items. In addition, Asano-Cavanagh specifies that kawaii can also be used to describe something which is (e) special and unique, that is, features which are quite different from ordinary things. Most importantly, Asano-Cavanagh suggests that the core meaning of kawaii lies in (b): “when people see this thing, they can’t not 3. [m] refers to semantic molecules, which are decomposable into semantic primes; semantic primes are basic meanings to fundamental human concepts (Goddard 2012). 17.

(31) feel something very good, like people often can’t not feel something very good when they see a small child”. In other words, when people see the kawaii object, they experience a kind of uncontrollable affection towards it, and this is the same feeling when they see a small adorable child (Asano-Cavanagh 2014). Viewed in this light, for something to be described as kawaii, the thing must possess a property: “being like a small child”. Moreover, since kawaii is closely associated with the notion of children, it is “not something artificial, but it has a natural quality to be adored like an innocent child” (Asano-Cavanagh 2014: 349). Asano-Cavanagh has paraphrased the meanings of kawaii in a clear and understandable way; however, most of her explanations of kawaii are about the external features of objects. In other words, there is no explanation about the meaning of kawaii in terms of people’s behavior or attitude, which has been mentioned in McVeigh (1996) and Yomota (2006). Thus, when the semantics of kěài in Mandarin is examined in this study, the meanings of kěài used in describing both external features and behavioral features of people and objects should be analyzed.. 2.2. Studies of Kěài in Mandarin In this section, four studies related to kěài in Mandarin are reviewed. The first. study is Farris (1988), which investigates gender-marked terms in Chinese and in 18.

(32) which kěài is suggested to be covertly marked as feminine. Then, Farris (1995) and Chuang (2005) are discussed. These two studies share the same viewpoint suggesting that the speech style of sājiāo (撒嬌)‘being affectionate’ can be seen as the most widespread aspect of kěài in Taiwan. Finally, Yamauchi (2011) is a contrastive study of Mandarin kěài and Japanese kawaii, in which the cross-linguistic differences of cuteness are revealed.. 2.2.1 Farris (1988) Farris (1988) suggests that there is evidence from the Chinese language which strongly indicates that masculine is the canonical or unmarked gender in most situations; however, it is not a cognitive imperative which marks the feminine. Unlike Indo-European languages, Chinese does not have grammatical genders. Yet, Farris argues that Chinese possesses a pervasive covert gender system at the lexical level. In her paper, Farris lists some Chinese terms that are marked for gender by common usage and one of the words that she specifically mentions about is kěài. Farris suggests that kěài is covertly marked as feminine. She explains that even though the word kěài is commonly defined as “adorable” or “lovable”, it in fact has a broader descriptive range than its English gloss. According to Farris (1988: 299), kěài “basically seems to be appropriate to describe anything that is diminutive, the relative. 19.

(33) size alone apparently taking on endearing connotations”; hence, since children are small, they can all be described as kěài. Besides, small animals, insects and inanimate objects which are small are also considered kěài by Farris. While children of both genders are often described as kěài, Farris asserts that this term becomes covertly marked indexing females in early adolescence, and boys are no longer described in this way; on the contrary, young unmarried women are often described as kěài and they consciously strive to elicit such response with their dress and deportment. Based on Farris’ argument so far, kěài in Chinese may bear the semantic features <+small>, <+child> and <+feminine> at a covert level.. 2.2.2 Farris (1995) & Chuang (2005) Farris (1995) asserts that sājiāo (撒嬌) ‘being affectionate’ is a kind of “adorable” communication style in Taiwan. Chuang (2005) also suggests that the most widespread aspect of kěài in Taiwan is the “sājiāo” speech style based on her own interviews with young men and women. According to Farris (1988, 1995), sājiāo is a communication style of young women and preschool spoiled children of both genders when they seek to get their way from an unwilling boyfriend, husband or parent. Similarly, Chuang (2005) suggests that the sājiāo speech style is a kind of female infantilization in communication, or simply referred to as “baby talk”. The sājiāo 20.

(34) style of communication can be encoded verbally and nonverbally; in terms of the verbal communication cues, Farris (1995) suggests that nasal style and voice qualities which emphasize feminine qualities, such as being young, immature, warm and bashful, are noticeable verbal features of sājiāo. She asserts that native speakers of Chinese conceive such sājiāo style of communication as “pointing to the essential nature of women and small children” (Farris 1995: 10). Thus, Farris further argues that sājiāo bears the semantic features <+feminine> and <+child> at a covert level. If we compare the semantic features of sājiāo and kěài proposed by Farris (1988, 1995), we may find that there are two overlapping features: <+feminine> and <+child> and that may be the reason why Farris (1995: 13) describes sājiāo as the “adorable petulance of a spoiled child or young woman”. In other words, the sājiāo style of communication makes people feel kěài. With this view, sājiāo and kěài are closely related with each other in the Chinese culture.. 2.2.3 Yamauchi (2011) According to Yamauchi (2011), although Chinese and Japanese belong to different language families, some of the words in Japanese were borrowed from Chinese since there has been a long intercultural communication between China and Japan, which makes Japanese somehow influenced by Chinese. The words for. 21.

(35) cuteness, such as kěài (可愛) in Chinese or kawaii (可愛い) in Japanese, are frequently used as adjectives in our daily lives. Even though the words for cuteness in Chinese and Japanese use the same Chinese characters (i.e.可愛), Yamauchi (2011) suggests that the semantics and pragmatics of the cuteness terms in these two languages are in fact quite different. Yamauchi finds that the word kěài in Chinese was originally compounded with the auxiliary kě (可) ‘can’ and the verb ài (愛) ‘love’; however, since kě and ài are often used together as an adjective, the meaning of kě has been grammaticalized and the root ài represents its basic meaning instead. Kěài, thus, becomes a compound in modern Chinese (Yamauchi 2011). At the same time, Yamauchi finds that there are 11 different meanings of kěài from the data retrieved from CCL Corpus (i.e. Centre for Chinese Linguistics Peking University) and the meanings are: (1) lìng rén xǐ ài (令人喜愛) ‘adorable’, (2) zhí dé ài de (值得愛的) or yīng gāi ài de (應該愛的) ‘worthy to be loved’, (3) lìng rén mǎn yì de (令人滿意的) or lǐ xiǎng de (理想的) ‘satisfactory’, (4) kě jìng de (可敬的) or jié chū de (傑出的) or chóng gāo de (崇高的) ‘respectable, outstanding’, (5) yǒu yì yì de (有意義的) ‘meaningful’, (6) bǎo guì de (寶貴的) or zhēn guì de (珍貴的) ‘precious’, (7) zhí dé xīn shǎng de (值得欣賞的) or ràng rén xiǎng shòu de (讓人享受的)‘praiseworthy’, (8) jīng cǎi de (精彩的) ‘impressive’, (9) měi lì de (美麗的) ‘beautiful’, (10) kě yǐ ài de (可以愛的) or wēn xīn de (溫馨的) or 22.

(36) shū fú de (舒服的) ‘heartwarming’, and (11) lìng rén yī liàn de (令人依戀的) or lìng rén juàn liàn de (令人眷戀的) ‘sentimentally attached’. In addition to the detailed meanings of kěài, Yamauchi also points out the objects that kěài usually describes. She states that since the Chinese society considers ài ‘love’ the foundation of morality and polity, the objects that this Chinese character ài can describe may be relatively broad. With this view, Yamauchi suggests that kěài may have the same characteristics just as ài does, which means that the descriptive range of kěài may be broad as well. Using the data from CCL Corpus, which contains language data used in China, Yamauchi categorizes the objects that kěài is used to describe into 11 kinds, and they are: (1) the appearance, behavior, and personality of children, (2) the appearance, behavior, and personality of those who are not children (e.g. young women and men, elder people, parents, etc.), (3) small things or images, (4) artworks or art performances (e.g. movies, calligraphy, paintings), (5) the name of articles, people, things, or theories, (6) animals, (7) plants, (8) events, (9) views and things in nature, (10) motherland, cities, and home, and (11) precious things (e.g. life and fortune). On the other hand, Yamauchi finds that kawaii in Japanese is used mostly on the appearance of children, women and small things. She asserts that kawaii may be more limited than kěài in its descriptive range and its meaning may be relatively simple since the external features are the main focus of what kawaii is used to describe. 23.

(37) Besides, Yamauchi suggests that there are three reasons that make kawaii and kěài different in meanings and usages. First, Yamauchi asserts that the objects described with ài, a morpheme of kěài and the core meaning of it, in Chinese and those in Japanese are quite different even though these two languages use the same Chinese character 愛 in 可愛. According to Yamauchi, in ancient Japanese, ai’s (愛) meaning and usage (i.e. objects that it described) was rather simple; it was almost always used to describe the love between a couple or the love that parents gave to their children. However, in ancient Chinese, since ài was the foundation of morality and polity, the range that ài could describe was relatively broad, including Confucian thoughts (Yamauchi 2011). The second reason that Yamauchi points out is that there are cultural differences in Japan and China. In Chinese, ài is significantly influenced by Confucian thoughts and thus full of political and moral nature while ai in Japanese is not the case. The third reason proposed by Yamauchi is that kěài in Chinese and kawaii in Japanese may have new usages respectively due to the fact that they are used so frequently in modern lives. Although Yamauchi (2011) has investigated the semantics of kěài, categorizing its meanings into 11 kinds, there are several meanings within each kind, which means that there are actually more than 11 meanings of kěài. Viewed in this light, the semantics of kěài awaits to be further explored in a clearer way. Besides, though 24.

(38) Yamauchi has also categorized the objects that kěài is used to describe into 11 kinds, the categories of the objects are rather vague for she only lists the examples of what can be described as kěài without giving those objects a general title. For example, one of those 11 categories that Yamauchi lists is “motherland, cities, and home”, without giving this category a title, such as “space”. This kind of classification may be incomplete and unclear. As to the pragmatics of kěài, though Yamauchi has pointed out that kěài can be used to describe a broad range of things in the world than kawaii does, little has been done to examine the pragmatic function of kěài when it is used in different contexts. The inadequacies found in Yamauchi (2011) indicate that the semantics and the pragmatics of kěài in Mandarin await to be further explored. In addition, the data that Yamauchi uses is from the CCL Corpus, which contains language data used in China. That is to say, the usages of kěài in Taiwan Mandarin and in this Internet era have not been examined yet.. 2.3. An Emergent View of Lexical Semantics In this section, the framework of “Emergent Lexical Semantics” is introduced. to explain why there are various meanings of kěài in different contexts found in this study. Hopper (1987, 1988) proposes the term “Emergent Grammar” to capture the 25.

(39) view that grammatical structures are arising out of discourse practice. He takes the term “emergent” from an essay by the cultural anthropologist James Clifford, and argues that the grammar of language is just like culture, which is “always deferred, always in a process but never arriving, and therefore emergent” (Hopper 1987: 141). Besides, Hopper (1987) also views the structure of language as a real-time social phenomenon, and therefore is temporal, emergent and disputed just like culture. With this view, the notion of Emergent Grammar is meant to argue that “structure, or regularity, comes out of discourse and is shaped by discourse as much as it shapes discourse in an on-going process” (Hopper 1987: 141). Hopper (1987: 141) further suggests that grammatical structures are not “fixed templates but are negotiable in face-to-face interaction in ways that reflect the individual speakers' past experience of these forms, and their assessment of the present context, including especially their interlocutors, whose experiences and assessments may be quite different.” The theory used in this study to explain the extended meanings of kěài in Mandarin is not Emergent Grammar, even though the notion is closely related, but “Emergent Semantics”, namely the dynamic nature of meaning of lexical entities. While there are extensive studies elucidating Emergent Grammar in different languages, relatively little has been done to explore the emergent nature of semantics. As has been discussed by Huang (1998), Bybee (1998), and Tao (2003), the principles 26.

(40) of Emergent Grammar can be applied to lexical semantics, and they argue that the lexical meanings are emergent and negotiable between participant interactions. The following subsections introduce the findings of Emergent Semantics by Huang (1998), Bybee (1998) and Tao (2003) respectively.. 2.3.1 Huang (1998) Based on the extension of the idea of Emergent Grammar, Huang (1998: 129) argues that “meaning is not merely a fixed relation between utterances and objective reality.” Toward an emergent view of semantics, Huang (1998: 129) suggests that the fixed meanings codified in traditional dictionaries are “merely sedimented or stabilized structures that emerge as negotiated recurring patterns that have achieved cross-textual consistency”. He points out that based on sense frequency, lexicographers tend to seek the common meanings of lexical items cross-textually and present these meanings as normative while deliberately leaving out the emergent and the negotiated meaning as insignificant, giving the impression that lexical semantics is static and fixed. Even though the most common and usual meaning of a word may work quite well in most cases, Huang suggests that such normative view may mislead in cases where potential meanings of a word is implicated in processes of “social contestation”. He proposes that in actual daily interactions, speakers and addressees 27.

(41) usually do not assume a general normative approach to get the meaning of lexical entities because what they are more interested in is to negotiate the “particulars” that are closely related to their life experiences. In other words, Huang argues that interactional processes between participants may shape the meaning of lexical items, and the meaning emerging from conversation practices in actual interaction may bear little resemblance to the dictionary definition. Within interactions, Huang (1998) suggests that participants may utilize all sorts of information available to them in the context because the meaning they try to make sense of each other is context-sensitive. He believes the central project of semantics is to paraphrase Hopper’s (1987) idea: not of 'semantics', but of 'semanticization' of negotiated pragmatic meanings; that is, the speaker meaning is what really matters in daily interactions. Thus, Huang (1998: 142) argues that “the purpose of language use is not to endorse conventional meanings, but to achieve interactional ends − understanding of the particularities of speaker meaning”.. 2.3.2 Bybee (1998) Different from Hopper’s (1987) goal to explicate the view of grammar that arises from Emergent Grammar, Bybee’s (1998) goal and basic point is the view of the lexicon entailed by such a theory. She proposes that not only language structures (i.e., 28.

(42) grammar) but also lexical storage are highly affected by language use in our everyday practices. Bybee (1998: 421) argues that a lexicon is emergent from the storage of “linguistic experience” rather than “a storage area for all and only the content words or morphemes of a language” that the traditional conception of a lexicon would suggest. The point of her paper is to explore the properties of stored linguistic experience from an emergent view. She suggests that not only words, but phrases and utterances of a person's experience are not separately stored in our memory and this is because our “brain is a powerful categorization device for the efficient sorting and storing of the pieces of our experience, including the units of language use” (Bybee 1998: 431). According to Bybee, the role of the “linguistic context” is extremely important since the context itself may activate linguistic units, which makes relevant words and phrases easy to access under appropriate situations. But she also points out that the same units may be hard to perceive and interpret correctly or to access in production when they are in other contexts. In other words, textual use affects the meaning of the lexicon and different meanings of the same linguistic entity may emerge within different contexts and conditions.. 2.3.3 Tao (2003) Tao (2003) points out that although traditional semantic studies conduct extensive 29.

(43) etymological research on meaning changes of lexical entities, postulating such mechanisms as meaning expansion, meaning reduction or meaning shift, these studies only focus on individual items without explaining the dynamic nature of meanings and the role of participant interaction in shaping the lexicon. Using his own data, which consists of everyday conversations, Tao (2003) found that there is a special way in which meaning can emerge and be negotiated between participants. He suggests that in a situation, speakers may discuss the definition or some important attributes of a lexical item; what they are really focusing on is some aspects of meaning that interest them most when conversing, and these aspects of the meaning of the lexical entity may be totally different and absent from its standard definitions. For example, the dictionary definition of héchàng (合唱) ‘chorus’ refers to “different singers and different divisions of voice”. However, in one of Tao’s examples, the meaning of héchàng ‘chorus’ has been redefined to “require a conductor” in a situation when two speakers are conversing and one of the speaker says méi zhǐhuī bú jiào héchàng (沒指揮不叫合唱) ‘without a conductor it should not be called a choral composition’ and the other speaker says hǎoxiàng jiùshì dǎ pāizi (好像就是打拍子) ‘(the conductor) just controls the beat’. According to Tao (2003), the reason why the meaning of héchàng ‘chorus’ has been radically redefined is for the communicative purpose at hand since what interests the participants most is that the conductor is 30.

(44) important to the chorus. Another way for speakers to negotiate meaning suggested by Tao (2003) is by providing apparently novel and ad hoc taxonomies for the reference of a term, and even though this taxonomy is not complete, it would still suffice the communicative demands. For instance, a speaker in one of Tao’s examples was trying to establish two novel categories for the reference of the term shǎzi (傻子) ‘fool’: “those who are overzealous (tèbié rèqíng 特別熱情) and those who pretend to be cool (tèbié kù 特別酷)” (Tao 2003: 842). According to Tao, whether these two taxonomies can be legitimately established or not after the conversation is unknown and not important since these taxonomies have already helped the speaker to make a point in the conversation and this suffices the communicative needs of the moment. Viewed in this light, Tao (2003: 851) suggests that “speakers constantly negotiate meanings or aspects of meanings which may be absent from the perceived abstract lexicon of the language, but which are significant in terms of life experiences or communicative needs at the moment of talking”. Still another way that Tao (2003) suggests to look at the effect of language use on the emergence of lexical meaning is to compare the meanings of a set of synonyms and their association patterns, and from the distributions of synonymous lexical items in different contexts, the impacts of textual use and communicative demands are apparently seen. In other words, Tao argues that textual practice and communicative needs are the main factors 31.

(45) contributing to those synonyms’ emergent patterns and use. Since the instances of his own data can be appropriately accounted with the framework of Emergent Semantics, Tao (2003: 839) proposes that an emergent view of lexical semantics could entail minimally the following: a. Semantic meanings of lexical items and lexical combinations may emerge, be negotiated, and be acquired through language use. b. Meaning in isolation may be at variance with meaning in use. c. It is therefore indispensable to examine actual discourse practice to understand the nature of lexical semantics.. 2.3.4 Why Emergent Semantics is Adopted in This Study The above review of the theory of Emergent Semantics indicates that Huang (1998), Bybee (1998) and Tao (2003) all suggest that the meanings of lexical entities are not static and fixed, rather they are dynamic and highly affected by “language use” in our everyday interactions and practices. Emergent Lexical Semantics is adopted in this study because this theory applies well to explicate the meaning extension of the word kěài. The original meaning of kěài codified in the dictionary is “adorable” or “lovable”; however, some meanings which are quite different from these two are found in the two sets of data retrieved from the Sinica Corpus and social media platforms. In other words, the meaning of kěài is dynamic and varies with contexts. 32.

(46) and times. Viewed in this light, the extended meanings of kěài can be explicated under the framework of Emergent Semantics since this theory suggests that different meanings of a lexical entity may emerge due to textual use and the communicative needs at that moment.. 2.4. Chapter Summary In this chapter, studies related to the cuteness word kawaii in Japanese and kěài. in Mandarin are reviewed, and then the framework of Emergent Semantics used in this study to explain the meaning extension of kěài is introduced. According to McVeigh (1996), the concept of cuteness is ambiguous and cuteness can be used to describe not only the appearance of things and people but also people’s attitude and behavior. Yomota (2006) and Asano-Cavanagh (2014) suggest that the properties which constitute kawaii include features such as imperfect and immature, along with the quality of “being like a child”. These properties are seen as the most important elements for something or someone to be described as kawaii. Since it is hard to capture the exact meaning of kawaii, Yomota (2006) analyzes kawaii’s synonyms and antonyms instead and he contends that the meaning of kawaii may become obvious and close to something incomplete and flawed when we contrast the features of kawaii with the features of utsukushii ‘beautiful’, which indicates perfect 33.

(47) and complete. Such findings of the features of kawaii in Japanese may be seen as the basis which helps analyze the semantics of kěài in this study. Farris (1988) investigates kěài in Mandarin, suggesting that kěài can describe anything that is diminutive, such as children and insects; meanwhile, she also finds that kěài is a feminine-marked term. With this view, she argues that kěài may bear the semantic features <+small>, <+child>, and <+feminine> at a covert level. Besides, Farris (1995) and Chuang (2005) share the same viewpoint asserting that sājiāo (撒嬌) ‘being affectionate’, which is a kind of speech style, can be seen as the most widespread aspect of kěài in Taiwan. Yamauchi (2011) contrasts Mandarin kěài used in China with Japanese kawaii in terms of their descriptive ranges and usages. She finds that the descriptive range of kěài is broader than kawaii since ài ‘love’, which is a morpheme of kěài, is the foundation of morality in ancient China. In addition, Yamauchi also points out there are different meanings of kěài, varying from contexts to contexts. Although the studies mentioned above all investigate kěài from different perspectives, such as the semantic features of kěài (Farris 1988), the social phenomenon of kěài in Taiwan (Farris 1995 & Chuang 2005), and different uses of kěài in China Mandarin and kawaii in Japanese (Yamauchi 2011), no research has been devoted to detailedly examining the meanings and uses of kěài in Taiwan Mandarin from a linguistic perspective and its possible changes in this Internet era. 34.

(48) Viewed in this light, this study aims to probe into the descriptive range, semantics, and pragmatic functions of kěài used in Taiwan before and after the invention of social media platforms. In order to explicate the extended meanings of kěài found in different situations in this study, the framework of Emergent Lexical Semantics is adopted. Toward an emergent view of semantics, Huang (1998), Bybee (1998) and Tao (2003) suggest that lexical meanings are dynamic and highly influenced by textual use instead of being static and fixed. Moreover, they argue that meanings may emerge, be negotiated, and be acquired through language use in our everyday practices.. 35.

(49) Chapter Three Data Collection. The present study adopts the data-based approach to examine the descriptive range, meanings and pragmatic functions of kěài in different contexts and different times. This chapter first presents the reasons to collect data from two different sources, namely the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms, in Section 3.1. Then, the Sinica Corpus and how the data was collected from it are introduced in Section 3.2. In Section 3.3, the social media platforms where the second set of data was from and how the data was retrieved from those platforms are introduced.. 3.1 Data Collection The major purpose of this study is to investigate how kěài is used in different contexts and times and to probe into whether the original meanings and functions of kěài has been changed due to people’s frequent online communication, interaction, and information sharing through the social media platforms in the recent decade. According to a survey named “A survey on broadband Internet usage in Taiwan” reported by Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC) 4 in 2016, among those. 4. The TWNIC is the unique neutral and non-profit organization that takes charge of the domain name registration and IP address allocation in Taiwan. 36.

(50) people with Internet access, the most commonly used device is mobile phones (77.1%) and 89.8% of them use social networking services or instant messaging services. Moreover, this survey shows that there is a change of communicating pattern after people use social networking websites and instant communication software since people with Internet access report that they contact their friends through these social media platforms more frequently than with mobile phones. Due to the popularity of Internet service and rapid development of communication technology nowadays, the dominant daily mode of communication between people and their friends or the public seems to be text messaging and interacting on the social media platforms. This way of communication is different from the one people used to communicate with each other a score or a decade ago when the Internet service or smartphones were not available to most people and the language used in communication may thus be different. Viewed in this light, this study collects data from two different sources—the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms to compare and contrast the meanings and functions of kěài in two different times—before and after 2007. The year 2007 is selected for two reasons: first, the texts in the Sinica Corpus were produced from 1981 to 2007; second, in September 2006, which is almost the end of 2006, Facebook, the most popular social media platform in the world, expands its registration so that. The link of TWNIC: http://www.twnic.net.tw/ The link of the survey reported by TWNIC: http://www.twnic.net.tw/download/200307/20160922d.pdf 37.

(51) everyone can join in. 5 According to Huang (2000: 474), a corpus “is a comprehensive set of empirical data of actual linguistic use”. He suggests that corpus-based studies can offer “(1) qualitative generalizations supported with empirical evidence; and (2) quantitative generalizations that are both replicable and verifiable” (Huang 2000: 274, 475). Viewed in this light, this paper collects data from the Sinica Corpus because it can be seen as an important source to investigate people’s actual uses of kěài. Moreover, as mentioned above, the data in the Sinica Corpus was collected from texts produced from 1981 to 2007, and such data may show the uses of kěài during that period of time. In contrast, data collected from the social media platforms may be quite new for these platforms just become popular within nearly a decade from now (2007-2017). 6 These two sets of data are needed because this study aims to investigate whether there are any differences in using kěài in different contexts and times and explore whether today’s frequent social interactions among people in online communication have influence on the meanings and functions that kěài can convey. As a result, 400 tokens of Mandarin kěài were collected from the Sinica Corpus and the other 400 from the two most popular social media platforms in Taiwan: Facebook and Dcard. To avoid. 5 6. Reference: https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ Take Facebook as an example for it is the most popular social media platforms in the world. The year 2007 may be the demarcation because since September 2006, anyone aged 13 and older is allowed to become a registered user of Facebook. Reference: https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ 38.

(52) subjectivity, during the process of analyzing the two sets of data, each and every case was discussed and double-checked by five peers including the author to make sure the judgment of the descriptive range, meanings and pragmatic functions of kěài are correct. For those controversial cases, the supervisor of this thesis was also consulted.. 3.2 Sinica Corpus and Data Retrieval Half of the data (400 tokens of kěài) examined in this study are from the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese (中央研究院漢語平衡語料庫), simplified as Sinica Corpus. 7 The Sinica Corpus was founded by the Institute of Information Science and Chinese Knowledge and Information Processing (CKIP) group in Academia Sinica in Taiwan. It is the first Balanced Modern Chinese Corpus with part-of-speech tagging and it is a hybrid corpus with texts collected from articles of different topic areas created during 1981 to 2007, including articles of literature, science, art, society, life, and philosophy. This corpus includes mostly written texts and a small portion of transcribed spoken texts. These texts are classified based on five criteria: genre, style, mode, topic, and source. Although the preliminary version of the Sinica Corpus was developed on a small-scale, the new version (Sinica Corpus 4.0) contains over 19 thousand texts, which consist of more than 10 million word. 7. The website of the Sinica Corpus: http://asbc.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ 39.