総合研究11 日・英慣用表現の対照研究
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概要
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This research has been undertaken to study contrastively the idiomatic expressions of Japanese and English in order to determine the extent to which the idioms of the respective cultures show distinctive ways of looking at the world. With the specific purpose of offering to the more advanced language learner a greater familiarity with the relationship between a language and the emotional life it expresses, we have focused on those idioms that relate the emotions to the parts of the body. Methodologically, the study has been organized as two interrelated and parallel projects, one for Japanese, the other for English, with each proceeding with a comparable list of body parts and a generally parallel list of emotions. The English group presented the findings as Part I of the study in "A Contrastive Study of Japanese and English Idiomatic Expressions , " Annals of The Institute for Comparative Studies of Culture, Tokyo Woman's Christian University, Vol.58 (1997). The Japanese group, whose findings are presented here, began with the examination of Japanese idiomatic expressions that relate the emotions to the parts of the body. The schema used for the analysis of Japanese emotions parallels to the schema used forthe analysis of the English emotions. The research followed these steps: 1) all the parts of body used in the Japanese idioms of emotions were analyzed using the lexical schema of parts of body in Japanese (cf. Table 1); 2) the Japanese idiomatic expressions, the emotions, and their distribution were examined (cf. Table 2); 3) the emotions expressed in the idioms were classified along with the respective parts of body used (cf.Table 3) ; and 4) the parts of body related to the emotions in the Japanese idioms were classified into respective emotions (cf.Table 4). These results are here contrasted with the findings of the English group. Of the 304 Japanese idiomatic expressions, over one third are associated with four parts of the body, i.e., ki (kimochi) 'spirit' (42) , mune 'chest' (36), kokoro 'heart' (20), and kao 'face' (23), 121 in all, of which the top most ki (kimochi) has no corresponding body part in English. In English, the most frequently used parts of body are heart (35), eye (34), face (25), and head (25). Of the 42 emotions establishedby the schema, the six most frequently occurring in idiomatic expressions are kandoo 'appreciation' (26), yamashisa 'shame' (24), odoroki 'alarm' (22), fuman 'discontent' (22), shimpai 'worry' (21), and ikari 'anger' (19), of which the top most kando and yamashisa characterize the Japanese emotions, where as their English counterparts are anger (50), anxiety (28), fear (28), contempt (28), indifference (22) and sorror (19). Both in Japanese and English, more than two thirds of the total idiomatic expressions are applied to the negative emotions such as anger. Among three levels of emotions established by the schema , the frequency of idiomatic expressions decreases in Japanese in the order of those levels of interpersonal emotions such as anger, of natural emotions such as fear , and of social emotions such as indifference. In English, on the other hand, the frequency of idiomatic expressions increases in the order of those levels of natural emotions, of interpersonal emotions and social emotions. The fact that the frequency of the idiomatic expressions referring to the social emotions in Japanese is the lowest and that in English is the highest, while the frequencies of the idiomatic expressions referring to the natural and interpersonal emotions show similar tendencies, may suggest the expressions of the social emotions are supressed in Japanese while they are not in English. The parts of body most used in the Japanese idiomatic expressions are the parts visible when facing the front side of the body, while the parts of body used in English include such parts as back (14) and buttocks (11) as frequently mentiond ones. Lastly, it should be noted that in Japanese, idiomatic expressions of emotion referring to the first person are differentiated from those referring tothe rest, as the use of Japanese adjectives of emotion for the first person is differentiated from that for the rest. In English, the use of adjictives of emotion does not share this aspect.