Response Cries or Response Statements? A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Interjectional Expressions in Japanese and English

Abstract

Goffman (1978: 800) claims that “[a] response cry doesn’t seem to be a statement in the linguistic sense (even a heavily elided one),” which suggests that such cries do not have the linguistic structures of statements (or descriptions) of either a speaker’s emotion/sensation or evaluation of a situation. This study conducted a questionnaire survey targeting Japanese and American English speakers to investigate expressions they will produce under eight circumstances of Goffman’s response cries. The results were contrary to Goffman’s claim. About half of the Japanese response cries were “descriptive interjections” like Ita(i) ‘Painful’ and Yaba(i) ‘Awful,’ and so were about 17 percent of the American response cries. On the other hand, non-descriptive interjections (swear words, vocatives) were more favoured by American English speakers, but extremely rare in Japanese. This study also addresses the questions of sociality and/or dialogicity of response cries in the two languages.

On and off the common ground: Japanese final particles as (un)grounding devices

“…Table 1 represents the number of utterances by mode of speech in Ulysses "Hades" and M Hyakkaten: 5 4 Whether or not the production of monologic speech is always conceptualised as communicating with oneself is another issue to be raised in the studies of monologue. This issue is mentioned in our article concerning monologue produced in the context of absolute solitude (Izutsu et al 2022; see also Hirose 1995: 235-237;Hasegawa 2010a: 182-193).…”

“…For example, when one finds rotten lemons in the fridge, one may utter "Ew, what the heck!" even without anyone around, or when one tries to lift a large box and realises that it is heavy, one may say aloud "Woo, that's hefty" (Izutsu et al 2022). An athlete, when alone, might produce self-talk like "you can do it!"…”