Pragmatics, Cognition, and Japanese Language Learning (I)

Author: Xu Changhua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: This book is a work that applies the theoretical research of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics to the study of modern Japanese. Both fields hold significant positions in contemporary linguistics. Applying this theory to Japanese research yields explanatory results. The pragmatics section of the book includes speech acts and discourse comprehension. The former conducts an in-depth examination of three speech acts—blaming, denigrating, and persuading—and analyzes the pragmatic functions of speech acts in the Japanese translation of Fortress Besieged. The latter introduces the author's insights into understanding Japanese discourse, providing examples of words and sentence structures and explaining their semantics and usage in detail. The cognitive linguistics section covers external world cognition and cognitive studies on certain Japanese linguistic phenomena. The former explores issues such as spatial/locative cognition, temporal cognition, interpersonal cognition, and verbs. The latter investigates the cognitive patterns of Japanese, examining topics like autonomous verbs, passive sentences, and the expressive functions and ways of adjectives from a cognitive perspective. Renowned Japanese linguist and honorary professor of Tokyo Metropolitan University, Mr. Keiichiro Okazaki, in the preface, calls this book "a work that covers many linguistic phenomena in Japanese and presents excellent descriptions. I believe Professor Xu's book will make significant contributions to the development of Chinese Japanese studies."