Chapter 3. A Japanese pragmatics of danger

Abstract

This study investigates the meaning of two keywords which emerged in Japanese discourse during the Covid-19 crisis. These are: jishuku ‘self-discipline’, and dōchō-atsuryoku ‘peer-pressure’. Although the Japanese keywords jishuku and dōchō-atsuryoku can be roughly translated into English, literal translations do not convey the cultural nuances and complexities embedded in the expressions. Using the framework of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach, this study provides a new semantic analysis of jishuku and dōchō-atsuryoku, based on evidence from newspapers, news reports, and social media. The semantic analysis shows a contradiction between the values of “freedom of choice” and “sense of social obligation” and illustrates how an analysis of cultural keywords can help to disentangle the complexities of contemporary Japanese “pragmatics of danger”.