Pragmatic functions of wara in Japanese text messages
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Ryo Takamura
Abstract
This study illustrates the pragmatic functions of 笑 (wara), the kanji or Chinese character meaning “laughter,” on the text messaging application LINE, and identifies the online communication strategies using it across 68 text message chats shared by Japanese university students who insert this and other laughter characters in their text conversations. The study’s results suggest that various laughter characters, including (笑), 笑 and w, act as contextualization cues at the end of the sentence, performing three distinct functions: acknowledging humor in the preceding proposition, inviting laughter, and softening the illocutionary force. Analyzed using politeness theory, the second and third functions are respectively categorized as positive politeness and negative politeness. This study also argues that the first function reflects the writer’s subjectivity, whereas the second and third reflect the writer’s intersubjectivity.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to two anonymous reviewers and the editor. Their careful reading and feedback massively enhanced the original draft. My gratitude also goes to Ryoko Suzuki, who kindly encouraged me to conduct this study in her graduate course. All the remaining errors are my own.
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Deverbal psych nominals and nominative-accusative object case alternation in Japanese: an experimental study
- A misleading syllable-based generalization about Japanese SJ+/zu/ compounds
- “Pseudo-dialect” or “role language”? Speech varieties in three Japanese translations of Gone with the Wind
- Pragmatic functions of wara in Japanese text messages
- Book Reviews
- Timothy J. Vance: Irregular Phonological Marking of Japanese Compounds: Benjamin Smith Lyman’s Pioneering Research on Rendaku
- Hideki Kishimoto: Analyzing Japanese Syntax: A Generative Perspective
- Yoshio Ueno: Gendainihongo no Bunpōkōzō: Keitaironhen [The Grammatical Structure of Modern Japanese: Morphology]
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Deverbal psych nominals and nominative-accusative object case alternation in Japanese: an experimental study
- A misleading syllable-based generalization about Japanese SJ+/zu/ compounds
- “Pseudo-dialect” or “role language”? Speech varieties in three Japanese translations of Gone with the Wind
- Pragmatic functions of wara in Japanese text messages
- Book Reviews
- Timothy J. Vance: Irregular Phonological Marking of Japanese Compounds: Benjamin Smith Lyman’s Pioneering Research on Rendaku
- Hideki Kishimoto: Analyzing Japanese Syntax: A Generative Perspective
- Yoshio Ueno: Gendainihongo no Bunpōkōzō: Keitaironhen [The Grammatical Structure of Modern Japanese: Morphology]
