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Part of
The Cultural Pragmatics of Danger: Cross-linguistic perspectives
Edited by Carsten Levisen and Zhengdao Ye
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 346] 2024
► pp. 41–63

Chapter 3
A Japanese pragmatics of danger

The rise of jishuku ‘self-discipline’ and dōchō-atsuryoku ‘peer-pressure’ as pandemic keywords in Japan

ORCID logo | Curtin University
| Curtin University

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”.

Keywords: jishuku ‘self-discipline’, dōchō-atsuryoku ‘peer-pressure’, Japanese culture, pragmatics of danger, the NSM approach, Covid-19 pandemic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Jishuku and dōchō-atsuryoku
  • 3.Analysing keywords with the NSM approach
    • 3.1Methodology and corpus
    • 3.2Meaning of jishuku ‘self-discipline’
    • 3.3The meaning of dōchō-atsuryoku ‘peer pressure’
  • 4.Japanese cultural scripts associated with the Covid-19 pandemic
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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