Kěài ‘Cute’ in Mandarin: Its Meanings, Uses, and Changes in the Recent Decade

• Main Authors: Chen, Yu-Chieh, 陳鈺潔
• Other Authors: Li, Jen-i
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/8625y4

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 106 === In Mandarin, the word kěài, literally meaning “lovable” or “adorable”, is usually translated into cute in English. In fact, the meaning and use of kěài is far beyond what is given in the dictionary or that of its English counterpart. Although there is literature explicating the semantics of the cuteness term kawaii in Japanese and there is a contrastive study comparing Chinese kěài and Japanese kawaii, no research has been devoted to thoroughly examining the meanings and uses of kěài in Taiwan Mandarin, let alone possible innovative usage of kěài after the popularity of social media platforms. In view of this, this study aims to detailedly examine (a) what Mandarin kěài can describe (i.e. its descriptive range), (b) the semantics of kěài, along with its pragmatic functions, and (c) whether the meanings and uses of kěài are different in different times – the time before and after the invention of social media platforms. This study adopts the data-based approach to examine kěài in different contexts and different times. A total 800 tokens of kěài were collected – 400 tokens from the Sinica Corpus (fourth edition) and the other 400 tokens from two widely used social media platforms, Facebook and Dcard. The set of data from the Sinica Corpus, in which the texts were written from 1981 to 2007, represents the data before the invention and popularity of the social media platforms while the set of data from Facebook and Dcard gives us texts from 2007 to 2017. Based on the two sets of data, the descriptive ranges, meanings, and functions of kěài and its possible changes are investigated. The results of kěài in this study consist of three parts: (a) the descriptive range, (b) the semantics, and (c) the pragmatic functions. In terms of (a) the descriptive range of kěài, what kěài most frequently describes in both the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms is Human beings, such as children and adults, followed by Non-human beings, such as animate and inanimate objects, and finally Events. But the properties for those objects to be described as kěài in the two sets of data are different in some way. In the Sinica Corpus, over half of the Human beings to be described as kěài are due to their “external features”; however, in the social media platforms, most Human beings to be called kěài lie in their deportment, including their manner, behavior, attitude and personality. As to Non-human beings, the property of those inanimate objects to be called kěài is mostly their external features in both sets of data. The last main type that kěài describes is Events and there is an obvious difference between the two sets of data: in the social media platforms, up to 12.1% of kěài is used to describe the whole situation and the event; however, in the Sinica Corpus, such usage of kěài only takes up 0.8%. In terms of (b) the semantics of kěài, kěài is found to convey positive meanings most of the time in both the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms. Despite the similarity, there are differences. Kěài is found to have a new meaning—“entertaining” in the social media platforms. Besides, the top three meanings of kěài in the Sinica Corpus is “adorable” (62.3%) “praiseworthy” (11.9%) , and “innocent” (8.6%) while in the social media platforms such ranking becomes “adorable” (49.9%), “entertaining” (12.1%), and “amusing” (10%). In terms of (c) the functions of kěài, although kěài is found to be used as hedges in both the Sinica Corpus and the social media platforms, among the data of social media platforms, kěài has another function: show a person’s surprised mental state. Through this study, it is hoped that we can have a better understanding of the various senses of kěài and its functions that foreground aspects of communication in different social interactions.