Interjections and emotions (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”)

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Author(s)
Goddard, Cliff
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2014
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
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 paper 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 one leading linguistic approach (natural semantic metalanguage [NSM]) ...
View more >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 paper 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 one leading linguistic approach (natural semantic metalanguage [NSM]) 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.
View less >
View more >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 paper 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 one leading linguistic approach (natural semantic metalanguage [NSM]) 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.
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Journal Title
Emotion Review
Volume
6
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2014 SAGE Publications. This is the author-manuscript version of the paper. Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.
Subject
Cognitive and computational psychology
Linguistic structures (incl. phonology, morphology and syntax)
Philosophy