日本語の「受諾」と「断り」に関する一考察 －表現類型と意味公式の観点から－

Abstract

This paper explored how ‘acceptance’ and ‘refusal’ in Japanese language were presented through the type of expressions and the type of semantic classifications by analyzing examples from scenario series. In about 60% of the total combinations, ‘acceptance’ adopted ‘conveyance of emotion and will’ as the type of expression and mostly delivered the ‘clarification of acceptance’ as the semantic classifications. The refusal expressed as ‘statement that assumes acceptance’ through ‘conveyance of knowledge and information’ was a form of requesting information about specific behaviors to be taken after refusal, hence a more proactive form of ‘acceptance’ than ‘clarification of acceptance’. The results further indicated that the ‘conveyance of forms of expression’ was an ambivalent answer for an ‘acceptance’, confirming the possibility of misunderstandings depending on how words of appreciation or ambiguous expressions were interpreted. Some degree of bias was also found for ‘refusal’, where the main types of expressions were ‘conveyance of emotion and will’ and ‘conveyance of knowledge and information’. Delivering the same type of semantic classification using these two types of expressions resulted in different effects. Refusal predominantly employed ‘reason’, ‘resistance’, and ‘persuasion’ as the type of semantic classifications. However, using ‘conveyance of knowledge and information’ rather than ‘conveyance of emotion and will’ was seen as more proactive and indicative of a higher degree of refusal, particularly when accounting for the strength of justification in ‘reason’, the degree of defense versus aggression in ‘resistance’, and the convincbility in ‘persuasion’. The characteristics of less frequent combinations will be investigated in future studies.