Japanese Adverbs Zenzen and Mattaku: Pragmatic and sociolinguistic analysis
- DOI
- 10.2991/icollite-18.2019.82How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Zenzen, Mattaku, Japanese Adverbs, Pragmatics, Sosiolinguistics, Corpus
- Abstract
Zenzen and Mattaku are Japanese adverbs that are synonyms and used as complete negation expressions meaning “not at all”. However, recently many younger people also use these adverbs to express positive response. This change is important to be studied further to prevent misuse in communication, especially by Japanese language learners. The study aims to examine pragmatic function of zenzen and mattaku, and to analyse their use based on the users’ social background. The data in this study collected from Corpus Spontaneous Japanese which includes 580 participants with 661 hours of voice records. Collected data then categorized based on their pragmatic functions and social background of the users. The results showed that zenzen and mattaku have the same positive function with similar semantic meanings which are “at all”, “really”, and “completely”. Moreover, the pragmatic functions of these adverbs are similarly expressing affirmation, denial and ignorance. However, the use of zenzen tends to be based on assumptions, whereas mattaku based on facts. From sociolinguistic perspective, the use of zenzen and mattaku influenced both by gender and age of the users.
- Copyright
- © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Nuria Haristiani AU - Anggia Septiani Putri PY - 2019/03 DA - 2019/03 TI - Japanese Adverbs Zenzen and Mattaku: Pragmatic and sociolinguistic analysis BT - Proceedings of the Second Conference on Language, Literature, Education, and Culture (ICOLLITE 2018) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 372 EP - 376 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/icollite-18.2019.82 DO - 10.2991/icollite-18.2019.82 ID - Haristiani2019/03 ER -