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In:Emancipatory Pragmatics: Innovative approaches to pragmatics incorporating the concept of “ba”
Edited by Yoko Fujii, William F. Hanks, Sachiko Ide, Scott Saft and Kishiko Ueno
[Culture and Language Use 24] 2025
► pp. 36–67

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Ba pragmatics

A paradigm complementary to the Western theory of politeness

 | Japan Women’s University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 2 December 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.24.02ide
Abstract
This paper proposes ba pragmatics as a paradigm complementary to the existing theories of pragmatics. Ba pragmatics makes it possible to logically interpret some Japanese language phenomena such as politeness that appear to be puzzling from the viewpoint of Western researchers. After the discussion on what ba is, three premises of ba pragmatics: that is, “the two-domains of the self”, “the internal perspective” and “the improvisation model” are explained. After an outline of Hanks’ contributions to ba theory, some puzzling Japanese language phenomena are explained using ba pragmatic theory, which is rooted in the relationship between language use and culture. Finally, by introducing Izutsu’s model of the structure of consciousness, possibilities for future development of this expanded paradigm are suggested.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Japanese language phenomena considered puzzling
    • 2.1Non-active speech
    • 2.2Use of honorifics according to wakimae
  • 3.Ba pragmatics
    • 3.1What is ba pragmatics?
    • 3.2The background of ba pragmatics
    • 3.3The premises of the pragmatics of ba (1): The two-domain model of the self
    • 3.4The premises of ba pragmatics (2): The internal perspective
    • 3.5The premises of ba pragmatics (3): The improvisation model
  • 4.Ba pragmatics by Hanks
  • 5.The logical interpretation of puzzling Japanese
    • 5.1Non-active speech
    • 5.2Addressee honorifics according to wakimae
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (41)
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