Expressivity - ways and means of its expression in Japanese

The present thesis is focused on what linguist Anna Wierzbicka defined as the characteristic features of Japanese language in relation to expressing emotions verbally, which is the essence of expressivity. The research is based on a Japanese speakers' conversations corpus created for the purposes of this thesis and which takes into account factors such as age, social status, gender and various circumstances in which the dialogues are taking place. The thesis examines the area of rather negative emotions. The primary aim of the thesis is to verify the assumptions made by Wierzbicka on the characteristics of Japanese using language analysis of the corpus, and adjust her findings as the case may be. In addition, the thesis will investigate and summarize the most prominent language strategies and means used in expressive communication by Japanese speakers and to determine possible socio-linguistic or cultural factors involved