5.2 (2009): 241 270
DOI: 10.2478/v10016 009 0015 9
∗
MIGHT INTERJECTIONS ENCODE CONCEPTS?
MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
This paper reflects on the conceptual nature of interjections. Although there
are convincing reasons to claim that interjections do not encode concepts,
arguments can be adduced to question such claim. In fact, some pragmatists
have contended that they may be conceptual elements. After reviewing both
the non conceptualist and conceptualist approaches to interjections, this
paper discusses some reasons that can be given to reconsider the
conceptuality of interjections. Nevertheless, it adopts an intermediate
standpoint by arguing that the heterogeneity of interjections, with items
incorporated from other lexical categories, and the openness of the word
class they constitute, which results in the coinage of certain interjections or
the innovative usage of some elements, could indicate the existence of a
continuum of more and less conceptual items. In any case, this paper
suggests that those items with conceptual content would not encode full
concepts, but some schematic material requiring subsequent pragmatic
adjustments.
Interjections, conceptual meaning, procedural meaning, relevance theory.
In spite of the marginal place many linguists have given to interjections, owing
to their phonological, morphological and syntactic anomalies (Quirk et al. 1985;
∗ Departamento de Filología Inglesa
Universidad de Sevilla
c/Palos de la Frontera, s/n.
41004 Sevilla (Spain)
e mail: mpadillacruz@us.es
,242 Manuel Padilla Cruz
Might Interjections Encode Concepts? More Questions than Answers
Ameka 1992a, 2006; Cueto Vallverdú and López Bobo 2003; Buridant 2006;
Kleiber 2006; Światkowska 2006), over the history of linguistics interjections have
been accompanied by much speculation and polemics about their semantic content.
Most linguists have regarded them as elements without a semantic content and
given several reasons to prove this. In pragmatics, the relevance theoretic analysis
of interjections proposed by Wharton (2000, 2001, 2003) has adhered and
supported their non conceptual description and, therefore, reinterpreted their
semantics in procedural terms. Other linguists, on the contrary, have defended that
interjections must have some conceptual content (Wierzbicka 1991, 1992; Wilkins
1992, 1995).
This paper does not aim to offer a definitive answer to the question of whether
or not interjections really encode some conceptual content. Rather, on the basis of
some arguments that can be adduced to preserve the assumption that they might be
conceptual elements, it suggests that interjections may move along a continuum
including some more conceptual items, other less conceptual items and items that
do not encode any conceptual content at all. Those more conceptual items,
however, would not encode full concepts – if there really are lexical items that
encode them (Sperber and Wilson 1997) – but some very schematic notion that
needs subsequent contextual fleshing out. In addition to hypothesising the
existence of such continuum, this paper also argues that there may be a certain
degree of variation among speakers of a language as regards their conceptual
mappings onto interjections, so that there would be speakers for whom some
interjections may be unequivocally associated with some specific concepts and
others for whom the same interjections may be linked to different concepts or no
concepts at all. Such variation may also occur across time, as there might be
interjections that arise in a language without any conceptual load, but progressively
acquire and even modify it.
This paper starts with a section that reviews the extant non conceptual analyses
of interjections, stemming mainly from some semanticists and semioticians. These
emphasise the peculiarities of interjections, but make it clear that their
heterogeneity prevents us from making generalisations over them. Its third section
addresses the conceptualist approach to interjections suggested by some
pragmatists, who claim that interjections must have some conceptual concept, even
if vague or general. Then, this paper addresses the procedural shift in the analysis
of interjections, which originated as a reaction to the conceptualist approach, and
rejects the claim that interjections encode concepts. Finally, the last section of this
paper reflects on some reasons that can be given to preserve the assumption that
interjections are conceptual elements, discusses the type of conceptual content they
might encode and whether all interjections might encode it.
For the sake of simplicity, the interjections considered here will be
referring to “[…] the official business, or topics, of the discourse […]”
, 5.2 (2009): 241 270 243
DOI: 10.2478/v10016 009 0015 9
(Clark and Fox Tree 2002: 78) – i.e. those used in overt, intentional
communication– as opposed to , which refer to the speaker’s
verbal performance. Furthermore, the argument put forward will be developed
taking into account only two broad categories of interjections: or
interjections, which are those expressing feelings and emotions, and
or interjections, which are those functioning as orders
(Wierzbicka 1991, 1992; Ameka 1992a, 2006). Other subtypes of interjections
have been distinguished in the literature (e.g. Alcaide Lara 1996). If the proposal
made in this paper is right, its applicability to account for those subtypes should
then be tested.
For many authors it is clear that interjections do not encode concepts as nouns,
verbs or adjectives do. Interjections can and do refer to something related to the
speaker or to the external world, but their referential process is not the same as that
of lexical items belonging to the grammatical categories mentioned, for the referent
of interjections is difficult to pin down. In fact, on many occasions interjectional
utterances are so indeterminate that the outcome of their interpretation can be a
whole proposition, although there is not a one for one correspondence between the
interjection and what the hearer recovers because no phrasal constituents can be
distinguished in interjectional utterances. Thus, in a context in which an individual
has accidentally hit his finger with a hammer and shouts (1), the hearer may
interpret this interjection as communicating any of the propositions in (2):
(1) Ouch!
(2) a. It hurts!
b. It hurts a lot/so much!
c. My finger aches!
d. My finger aches a lot/so much!
e. I feel pain in my finger!
f. I feel a rather intense pain in my finger!
Regarding the nature of interjections as signs, their indeterminacy and
openness, which may lead hearers to recover a wide array of propositions, have
made semanticists and semioticians regard them as special types of .
Nouns, adjectives or verbs can be defined in a more or less precise way by means
of paraphrases or by resorting to synonyms. However, it is almost impossible to
find appropriate contextual synonyms for many interjections or to paraphrase them.
Although we could probably say that is a shriek we emit when we feel pain,
