Grammaticalization and social meaning in the Japanese causative-benefactive construction: Celebrities crafting connections with their audience

Abstract

This paper examines how semantics and pragmatics interact in the process of grammaticalization to generate social meaning in the Japanese causative-benefactive construction, -(s)ase-te itadak-u. The construction’s original meaning is that one humbly receives permission from a respected party (a specific causative benefactor) to do something beneficial to oneself. It has, however, grammaticalized to develop synchronic, contextual variation, as shown in the data for this study, taken from a celebrity TV talk show. From the perspective of interpersonal pragmatics, this study argues that celebrities in this talk show employ the construction to express involvement with their audience when they describe their own actions and, thereby, project a positive celebrity persona. This social meaning of involvement stems from two aspects of grammaticalization: semantic generalization, which decreases the specificity of the original causative benefactor to various degrees, and semantic persistence, which maintains the speaker’s sense of humility and benefit. In the most prominent use of the construction in the data, this allows speakers to involve their audience as non-specific, highly generalized senses of benefactors who somehow facilitate the speaker’s actions and to express humility concerning these actions and gratitude for the opportunity to perform them.