Cultural Keywords in Discourse

With a point of departure in the Japanese keyword kawaii , roughly, “cute”, this chapter explores contemporary Japanese social discourse. Using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage to explicate kawaii , the two kawaii compounds ita-kawaii and otona-kawaii and the related keywords itai and otona , this study breaks new ground into the understanding of the conceptual basis of kawaii and its elaborations in discourse. As the conceptual configurations of kawaii and related concept are analysed, a view