Due to many deadlines and a fantastic, but quite taxing, Winter school in Amsterdam on Linguistics, I have not been able to update, so I hereby apologize for that!
One of my papers was, of course, on Jane Austen’s language (which is why my previous posts were on analyzing her use of hyphenations, swearing and taboo words). My topic was Austen’s use of interjections over the course of her writing career (from age 11/12 till 41).
If you don’t know what interjections are, you probably do know a couple of them and use them occasionally (or even, quite frequently). Ever heard of the phrase, Oh My God! (or shortened OMG!, ), Interjections, as defined by Ameka (2006: 743), are words or phrases that express the mental state or reaction towards something, be it present in speech or in the non-linguistic environment (for example, something unexpected happening). The interjections I focussed on were the primary interjections (such as Oh! and Ah!) which are little words or sometimes called ‘non-words’ as they are syntactically independent and non-elliptical (understandable out of context) (Ameka 2006:744).
As I was analyzing a Grammar from the late 18th century (A New Grammar of the English Language by Daniel Fenning), to see what interjections were perceived of during Austen’s time, I stumbled upon a wonderful interjection that might sound familiar to those that have seen Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, namely Heigh-Ho! Which, according to Fenning’s Grammar, meant that the speaker vocalized languor (OED: mental suffering, state of longing, or weakness of the body/fatigue), which probably in the case of the dwarfs would probably refer to fatigue after a hard working day (or well, that is my inference).
But I digress, my study was on several interjections used by Austen that I discovered in a preliminary search: Oh, Ah, Ha, Ho, Phoo, La, Psha, Hush, Hum, Humph. These instances were manually analyzed, as well as by the use of WordSmith Tools, to see the frequency per text and in that way, over time as well, as I had ordered the texts from earliest till latest. What I looked at was the interjections over time (as I expected them to increase as Austen’s ear for the idiosyncracies of language would mature over time), and in male and female speech as females generally tend to be more emotive in their speech and therefore, I’d expect them to use more interjections.
What I found was the following:
| Interjections | Oh | Ah | Phoo | La | Ha | Hush | Humph | Hum | Psha | Ho | Total |
| The Visit |
4 |
4 |
|||||||||
| L&F |
12 |
4 |
16 |
||||||||
| J&A |
4 |
2 |
6 |
||||||||
| Evelyn |
2 |
2 |
|||||||||
| LC |
4 |
5 |
9 |
||||||||
| Catharine |
41 |
41 |
|||||||||
| Lady Susan |
3 |
3 |
|||||||||
| S&S |
70 |
9 |
6 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
88 |
||||
| P&P |
96 |
5 |
3 |
104 |
|||||||
| NA |
78 |
7 |
1 |
2 |
88 |
||||||
| TW |
9 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
14 |
||||||
| MP |
79 |
8 |
4 |
4 |
1 |
96 |
|||||
| Emma |
193 |
48 |
2 |
4 |
4 |
1 |
252 |
||||
| Persuasion |
56 |
9 |
4 |
2 |
71 |
||||||
| Sanditon |
17 |
2 |
19 |
||||||||
| Total |
668 |
101 |
10 |
9 |
8 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
2 |
1 |
813 |
What this shows is that, in terms of variety, Austen tends to get more variable over time (as her works are ordered from earliest till latest) and only after her Juvenilia (her early work untill Catharine), which I took as a cut off point, do more interjections occur that are not oh and ah, but these interjections (which are probably the most basic and most used ones) are used the most often even in her later work, oh being the most frequent of all.
Emma, as can be seen, uses interjections the most, even when normalizing the data (so that texts that are shorter or longer are equalized (mathematically) in length so that the results are comparable), Emma still stands out, at least in Austen’s published works as well as her post-Juvenilia work (1.54 instances per 1,000 words).
Even when, looking at male compared to female speech, Emma still stands out:
| LS | S&S | P&P | NA | TW | MP | Em | Pers | San | |
| Male | 10.2%(9) | 3.8% (4) | 14.8%(13) | 71.4%(10) | 23.2% (22) | 25.8% (65) | 18.6% (13) | 52.6% (10) | |
| Female | 100% (3) | 89.8% (79) | 96.2% (100) | 85.2%(75) | 28.6% (4) | 76.8% (73) | 74.2% (187) | 81.4% (57) | 47.4% (9) |
Here you can see that, Emma stands out in terms of the novels/stories that have females as the most interjection using persons. Sanditon and The Watsons clearly stand out as males using most of the interjections, but these two texts are both unfinished which might have influenced the result. It could however be that, in the published novels, female speakers use more interjections because they have more dialogue.
To check this, I separated Emma (as well as Northanger Abbey as interjection usage was the second highest in the normalized data), in terms of male and female speech.
The normalized data of Northanger Abbey show that female speakers (4.37/1,000) use more interjections than male speakers (0.79/1,000). Moreover, hum is only used by men and psha is only used by women. Emma also shows that female speakers (3.63/1,000) use more interjections than male speakers (1.99/1,00o). However, the difference is less so than in Northanger Abbey. When we look at the most frequent interjections, oh and ah, we find that Oh is a predominantly female interjection (3.10/1,000 to male use 0.94/1,000), and ah more frequent for male speakers (0.77/1,000 to female use 0.47/1,000).
As I was dividing the text, I came across another ‘non-word’, hey.
“A pretty good thought of mine- hey?” (Northanger Abbey)
Which only occurred twice, and was only used by men.
Something else that struck me was that La, just as Psha, was only used by women. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary explained why, La is in fact the female affected pronunciation of Lo! (JohnsonOnline, s.v. la int.) as in Lo! and behold, and lo does not even occur in Austen.
“Oh, la! here come the Richardsons.” (Sense and Sensibility)
“La! You are so strange!” (Pride and Prejudice)
(Note: For those familiar with BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennet’s line in the first episode is therefore not an accurate one as she exclaims the following: “but lo, there in the very next, nothing would please him but to stand up with Jane again”)
After the more statistical data, I turned to more qualitative data and analyzed the interjections in their sense, both in the OED and Johnson’s dictionary. Phoo and Humph were the only two interjections which did not occur in Johnson‘s dictionary but they did occur in the OED, expressing something from rejection to disgust to relief (s.v. phoo int.) and doubt or dissatisfaction (s.v. humph int.). Most interjections can comprise several and quite diverse expressions of mental states and reactions, and so further analysis should be done to see in what way the many ohs and ahs differ in terms of pragmatic and collocational use (which I would very much like to do for my master thesis). Phoo was also the one that only occurred as Phoo! Phoo!, which I called a ‘twinterjection’. Hush, hush, for example, also occurred but it also occurred as a single interjection:
“The most unaccountable business! But hush, hush!” (Emma)
“‘Hush! they will hear you.” (Sense and Sensibility)
As you can see, even something as small as primary interjections or something regarded as ‘non-words’ can yield interesting results, and their occurrences in several dictionaries and Fenning’s grammar also show some insight into these quite telling parts of speech!
References:
Ameka, F. K. (2006). Interjections. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language & linguistics (2nd ed., pp. 743-746). Oxford: Elsevier.
Austen, J. (1789-1817). The Visit; The Watsons; Love and Freindship; Jack & Alice; Evelyn; Lesley Castle; Catharine, or the Bower; Lady Susan; The Watsons; and, Sanditon. In L. Bree, P. Sabor, and J. Todd (Eds.) (2013). Jane Austen’s Manuscript Works. Claremont: Broadview Editions. 58-385.
Austen, J. (1795-1816). Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Northanger Abbey; Mansfield Park; Emma; and, Persuasion. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/
Fenning, D. (+/- 1800) A New Grammar of the English Language… . ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online). Gale Cengage Learning. URL: http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2048/ecco/start.do?prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=leiden.
JohnsonOnline. (1755). A dictionary of the English language: A digital edition of the 1755 classic by Samuel Johnson. URL: http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/.
Jonker, D.E. (2014). Phoo! Phoo!: Interjections in Jane Austen’s Works. Leiden University course paper.
OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. URL:http://dictionary.oed.com/.
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