Grammatical Blocking of Universal Uptake in Japanese Ad-vertising Texts: Wake-Framing, Case Restriction, and Event Packaging

Abstract

This study examines Japanese advertising and product-information texts on Shiseido Japan’s official website (www.brand.shiseido.co.jp) that grammatically prevent readers from construing statements as universal claims (“always” or “true for everyone”). It addresses two problems: how universal readings are blocked through grammatical construction in this register, and how the main blocking mechanisms differ in limiting generalisation and managing scope. The data consist of sentence-level usage, precautionary, and quality-related statements that plausibly invite broad general interpretations. Seven analytically representative tokens are used as illustrative evidence, covering wake-negation, baai-based case framing, and event/occasion packaging with V-ru koto ga aru, including rare-event calibration with mare ni and layered conditional framing. The study employs qualitative, theory-driven grammatical analysis focusing on clause structure, embedding, nominalisation, connective relations, and the compositional contribution of key markers. The results identify recurring templates with distinct structural signatures. Wake-negation blocks over-strong uptake by denying a candidate inference (…to iu wake de wa arimasen). Case framing with baai shifts categorical commitments into situation-restricted possibility (…baai ga arimasu), including complex variants that add causal linkage, avoidance marking, and directive closure. Event/occasion packaging with koto plus existential predication (…koto ga arimasu) presents anomalies as contingent occurrences, and it can be triggered by causal conditions (e.g., temperature change) or conditional frames (…to). Rare-event marking with mare ni further calibrates frequency and often co-occurs with contrastive reassurance about quality. Overall, universal-blocking emerges as a set of non-redundant grammatical routes that constrain inference, situational domain, and event profiling in a compact public informational genre.