Abstract
Wierzbicka (1991, 1997) analyzes cultures through their key words. She gives Japanese culture a semantic analysis of seven Japanese key words of amae, enryo, wa, on, giri, and omoiyari, based on her way of representation making use of "Natural Semantic Metalanguage." My pragmatic analysis of some basic Japanese colloquial words including doozo/dooka, hai/ee, ne and others, in contrast with their English corresponding expressions, shows they share the common feature "exocentric". This can be defined as a pragmatic feature of usage in that an expression is used with its perspective oriented not in the speaker (but in the addressee or some social standard that (the speaker assumes) has social gravity) or, at least out of much consideration for such a perspective. We can find easily that the feature "exocentric" is concealed in some places of her semantic analysis of the key words, but this isn't captured in her way of semantic representation. The feature "exocentric" is compatible with the self-image of the Japanese delineated in the traditional studies of Japanese culture.
