Constructing the Japanese Self: Perspectives from Conceptual Metaphor Theory

In this paper, Conceptual Metaphor Theory and cognitive linguistic theories of metonymy and frame semantics are used to explore metaphors for the self in an analysis of Japanese grammar and lexicon. The analysis takes an embodied cognition stance on language-independent phenomena that happen to have (but are not isolated to) surface linguistic indexes. In so doing, this work aims to shed light on the ubiquity of what is hypothesized to be a universal set of primary conceptual metaphors surrounding the conceptualization of the self, and does so by analysis of one array of these linguistic manifestations in one particular language, Japanese. We hope that this analysis will shed light on the actual metaphors driving language change and language use, leading to a questioning of meta-analytic metaphors introduced by the anthropological narrative on the nature of ‘Japaneseness’. We specifically target the wrapping metaphor that has become ubiquitous in discourses about Japanese culture, society, and language. It is shown that the wrapping metaphor is not perennial to the Japanese language, and instead a true analysis of metaphors for self-conceptualization are proposed that are reflective of actual frame and metaphor patterns.