Understanding Japanese culture through a semantic analysis of kawaii 'cute', itai 'pitiful' and ita-kawaii 'pitifully trying to be cute'

This paper examines three Japanese words kawaii 'cute', itai 'pitiful' and ita-kawaii 'pitifully trying to be cute'. Japanese women frequently say kawaii to show positive feelings towards objects or people. However, too much kawai is considered undesirable. A compound w...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Asano-Cavanagh, Yuko
Other Authors: Henderson, J.
Format: Conference Paper
Published: Australian Linguistic Society 2013
Online Access:https://sites.google.com/site/als2012uwa/proceedings
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/38136