Tag: (E) Yikes!

(2014) English, Cantonese, Polish – Interjections


Goddard, Cliff (2014). Interjections and emotion (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”). Emotion Review, 6(1), 53-63.

DOI: 10.1177/1754073913491843

Abstract:

All languages have ‘emotive interjections’ (i.e. interjections expressing cognitively based feelings), and yet emotion researchers have invested only a tiny research effort into interjections, as compared with the huge body of research into facial expressions and words for emotion categories. This article provides an overview of the functions, meanings and cross-linguistic variability of interjections, concentrating on non-word-based ones such as Wow!, Yuck!, and Ugh! The aims are to introduce an area that will be unfamiliar to most readers, to illustrate how the NSM approach deals with interjectional meaning, and to start a discussion about an interdisciplinary research agenda for the study of emotive interjections. Examples are drawn from English, Polish, and Cantonese.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

(2016) English – Interjections


Gladkova, Anna; Vanhatalo, Ulla; & Goddard, Cliff (2016). The semantics of interjections: An experimental study with Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(4), 841-865.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716415000260

Abstract:

This paper reports the results of a pilot experimental study aimed at evaluating NSM explications of English interjections. It proposes a novel online survey technique to test NSM explications with language speakers. The survey tested recently developed semantic explications of selected English interjections used to mark either ‘surprise’ (wow, gosh, gee, yikes) or ‘disgust’ (yuck, ugh). The results provide overall support for the proposed explications and indicate directions for their further development. It is interesting that respondents’ preexisting knowledge of NSM and other background variables (age, gender, being a native speaker, or studying linguistics) were shown to have little influence on the test results.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners