The affective meanings of bowing in a web corpus of Japanese

This paper explores, through the lens of the Theory of Affective Pragmatics (TAP), the metadiscourse around bowing in a web corpus of Japanese. Bowing is a highly routinised non-verbal behaviour that, I argue, has come to be associated with specific functions and emotions in the Japanese context. Specifically, the study examines 136 mentions of bowing. These instances were identified through lexical searches and discuss, evaluate or prescribe the act of bowing, assigning specific meanings to it. The focus is on (a) (the representation of) the pragmatic functions of bowing; and (b) the emotions it is taken to express and/or elicit. The findings suggest that bowing is an emotional expression that can be used to engage in multiple and often overlapping speech acts (apologising, requesting, thanking, acknowledging/greeting) and based on which specific emotions (e.g. regret, shame, gratitude) can be inferred. • Bowing is a multifunctional emotional expression. • Different bow types convey different emotions and do different things. • Bowing is closely related to the notions of indebtedness and reciprocity. • The study of emotional expressions in corpus data can contribute to TAP.