A contrastive study on interjections in english and vietnamese

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯỢNG

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY ON
INTERJECTIONS IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE
NGHIÊN CỨU SO SÁNH ĐỐI CHIẾU THÁN TỪ
TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT
M.A. THESIS

Field: English Language
Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2015
i


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯỢNG

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY ON
INTERJECTIONS IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE
NGHIÊN CỨU SO SÁNH ĐỐI CHIẾU THÁN TỪ
TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT
M.A. THESIS

Field: English Language
Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Dr. HỒ NGỌC TRUNG

Hanoi, 2015
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CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report
entitled A contrastive study on interjections in English and Vietnamese
submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master
in English Language. Except where the reference is indicated, no other
person‘s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the
thesis.
Hanoi, 2015

Nguyễn Thị Phượng

Approved by
SUPERVISOR

Dr. Hồ Ngọc Trung
Date:……………………

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not have been completed without the help and
support from a number of people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to
Dr. Hồ Ngọc Trung, my supervisor, who has patiently and
constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and
whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired
me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher.
A special word of thanks goes to the teachers at Faculty of Post
Graduate, Hanoi Open University and many others, without whose
support and encouragement it would never have been possible for
me to have this thesis accomplished.
Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family, my husband,
for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this
academic work.

ii


ABSTRACT
This study sets out to focus on finding out the grammatical,
pragmatic and cultural features of English and Vietnamese
interjections and discussing the similarities and differences of
interjections in English and Vietnamese. To achieve this end,
descriptive method and contrastive analysis are employed as the
major methods. In addition to that, experimental method, error
analysis and statistical technique are applied as the supporting
ones to carry out the research efficiently. Basing on the qualitative
and quantitative approaches, the study has pointing out the various
features of English and Vietnamese interjections. Morphologically,
both English and Vietnamese interjections can be reduplicative,

onomatopoeic, and even they are loan words. Syntactically, this
special means of expression in the two languages can be in the
form of single words, a group of words. Also, interjections can
combine with another interjection or other word classes to form
complete and incomplete sentence. In terms of pragmatics,
interjections have different functions to convey various states of
emotion such as joy, anger, sympathy, surprise, doubts, fears, pity,
pain, and the like. Furthermore, the cultural aspect is also embeled
in interjections of the two languages. The above features of
interjections and their similarities and dissimilarities are discussed
in details in the following chapters.

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Figure 2.1. Vietnamese parts of speech classification according to

9

Diệp Quang Ban and Hoàng Văn Thung
Table 2.1. Speech Acts‟ classification by Austin and Searle

10

Table 4.1. Interjections as complete reduplication in English

26

Table 4.2. Interjections as partial reduplication in English

27

Table 4.3. Interjections as loan words in English

28

Table 4.4. Interjections as onomatopoeia in English

30

Table 4.5. Interjections as complete reduplication in Vietnamese

32

Table 4.6. Interjections as partial reduplication in Vietnamese

32

Table 4.7. Interjections as loan words in Vietnamese

35

Table 4.8. Interjections as onomatopoeia in Vietnamese

36

Table 4.9. Interjections as word groups in English

38

Table 4.10. Interjections as complete sentences in English

39

Table 4.11. Interjections as incomplete sentences in English

39

Table 4.12. Interjections as single words in Vietnamese

41

Table 4.13. Interjections as group of words in Vietnamese

42

Table 4.14. Interjections as incomplete sentences in Vietnamese

44

Table 4.15. Summary of cultural features of English and Vietnamese

68

interjections

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certificate of originality

i

Acknowledgements

ii

Abstract

iii

List of tables and figures

iv

Table of contents

v

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

1

1.1.

Rationale for the research

1

1.2.

Aims of the research

2

1.3.

Objectives of the research

2

1.4.

Scope of the research

3

1.5.

Significance of the research

3

1.6.

Structural organization of the thesis

4

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

5

2.1.

Review of previous studies

5

2.2.

Review of theoretical background

8

2.3.

Summary

18

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY

19

3.1.

Research-governing orientations

19

3.2.

Research methods

22

3.3.

Summary

24

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

25

4.1.

25

Grammatical features of interjections in English and Vietnamese

4.1.1. Morphological features of interjections in English and Vietnamese

25

4.1.1.1.

Morphological features of interjections in English

25

4.1.1.2.

Morphological features of interjections in Vietnamese

30

4.1.2. Syntactic features of interjections in English and Vietnamese

36

4.1.2.1.

Syntactic features of interjections in English

36

4.1.2.2.

Syntactic features of interjections in Vietnamese

40
v

4.1.3. Grammatical similarities and differences of interjections in English

46

and Vietnamese
4.2.

Pragmatic features of interjections in English and Vietnamese

48

4.2.1. Pragmatic features of interjections in English

48

4.2.2. Pragmatic features of interjections in Vietnamese

56

4.2.3. Pragmatic similarities and differences of interjections in English and

63

Vietnamese
4.3.

Cultural features of interjections in English and Vietnamese

65

4.3.1. Cultural features of English interjections

65

4.3.2. Cultural features of Vietnamese interjections

66

4.3.3. Cultural similarities and differences of English and Vietnamese

69

interjections
4.3.4. Summary

70

4.4.

70

Implications of the research for the teaching, learning and translating
of English interjections at HUBT

4.4.1. Questionnaire reports

70

4.4.2. Implications of the research for the teaching, learning and translating

72

of English interjections at HUBT
4.4.2.1.

Implications of the research for the teaching and learning of

72

English interjections at HUBT
4.4.2.2.

Implications of the research for HUBT students to translate

73

English interjections
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION

76

5.1.

Recapitulation

76

5.2.

Concluding remarks

76

5.3.

Limitation of the research

77

5.4.

Recommendations for a further research

78

REFERENCES

vii

APPENDICES

xii

vi


CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1.1.

Rationale

It is obvious that communication plays a vital role in our daily lives.

Communication helps us exchange information, and solve problems at work
as well as in our personal situations. In addition to that, it is also a great
factor to bridge the gap between cultures. When communicating, words,
phrases, and sentences are widely used to express the speakers‘ opinions
and thoughts. Furthermore, we even use forms which can be uneasily
defined as words, but which have to be seen as phonemic clusters with or
without certain meaning assigned to convey various messages. These
messages might not be ideas or thoughts, but rather feelings or emotions.
The forms conveying emotional and expressive values used in
communication are called interjections.
In my teaching of English language as well as my research for
teaching, a great number of interjections have been found both in literature
books and other documents like newspapers, movies and the like. However,
the teaching of interjections has long been ignored by language teachers in
my university in particular and in Vietnam in general. In speaking lessons,
language teachers fail to provide students with grammatical and pragmatic
knowledge of English interjections, which, unfortunately, gives rise to
students‘ being unable to establish a successful oral communication when
interacting with both native and non-native speakers.
In addition to that, for nearly ten years of teaching English at Hanoi
University of Business & Technology (HUBT), I have experienced that the
majority of my students encounter problems in using English interjections.

1


Especially, when having interjections in textbooks and relevant materials,
they find it difficult to translate these forms into Vietnamese.

For all the reasons above, I have the desire to do research into the
field. With the study entitled A Contrastive Study of Interjections in
English and Vietnamese, I do hope the research can help my students in
HUBT use and translate English interjections appropriately in every single
context.
1.2.

Aims of the research
The study is aimed at finding out the grammatical, pragmatic and

cultural features of English and Vietnamese interjections and discussing the
similarities and differences of interjections in English and Vietnamese in
order that Vietnamese students in general and HUBT students in particular
could have a better understanding of interjections and translate them
properly according to contexts given.
1.3.

Objectives of the research

The study is intended to:
- describe the grammatical, pragmatic and cultural features of
interjections in English and Vietnamese.
- point out the similarities and dissimilarities between English and
Vietnamese interjections in terms of grammar, pragmatics and
culture.
- propose the implications of the research to the teaching, learning and
translating of English interjections into Vietnamese at HUBT.

2

1.4.

Scope of the research

1.4.1. Academic scope
Within the academic scope of the study, interjections examined in the
thesis will be in both English and Vietnamese. A great number of
interjections and their given contexts are collected from such various
sources like English and Vietnamese textbooks, novels by different writers,
films and even songs. In addition to that, internet is also a great source of
information

for

English

and

Vietnamese

interjections.

Moreover,

interjections studied in the research will be mainly in written texts and little
in spoken discourse.
1.4.2. Social scope
The study collects data regarding features, the use and the translation
of English and Vietnamese interjections from books, novels, films, websites

and survey questionnaires. The survey questionnaires designed in this
research focus primarily on the use of English and Vietnamese interjections
and on the translation of English interjections into Vietnamese ones in the
scope of family and society. The participants of the research would be 100
English-major students in their second academic year at HUBT. They are in
their early twenties and the number of females participating in the research
is equal to the number of males.
1.5.

Significance of the research
Theoretically, apart from completing my M.A course, the research

helps my colleagues and my students use and translate English interjections
more accurately; it might also help adjust the curriculum in my faculty.

3


Practically, through the research, I can have extensive knowledge
about English interjections to help my students use and translate English
interjections properly in the relevant context.
1.6.

Structural organization of the thesis
This thesis shall be presented in five chapters, starting with

Introduction and ending with Conclusion. The second chapter, named
Literature Review, gives a critical review of the previous studies relating to
the research problem under investigation and presents the theoretical
background employed as tools for conducting the whole research. The

Methodology chapter provides the information by which the research is
conducted with a method section answering two main questions: how the
data was collected or generated; and how it was analyzed. The forth chapter
includes all the findings and a thorough evaluation of the investigation,
which logically lead to inferences and conclusions.

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CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Review of Previous Studies
2.1.1. Review of Previous Studies Overseas
Over years, various studies have been done on the area of
interjections. One of them relates to Wierzbicka‘s (1992) research in which
a number of interjections from English, Polish, Russian, and Yiddish
rigorous semantic formulae are proposed which can explain both the
similarities and the differences in their use. For example, the English
interjection yuk! is compared with its nearest Polish and Russian
counterparts fu!, fe!, and tfu! The author concluded that while the meaning
of interjections cannot be adequately captured in terms of emotion words
such as disgust, it can be captured in terms of more fine-grained
components, closer to the level of universal semantic primitives.
Other scholars, Meng and Schrabback (1999), conducted a study relating
to the acquisition of forms, interactive functions, and discourse type
constraints of German interjections, in particular ha and na. The data consist
of two sets of child-adult conversations—picture book interactions in family
and psychodiagnostic settings. By comparing the adults and the children‘s
use of interjections, it was revealed that children had managed to acquire
interjectional forms and functions as well as discourse type constraints.
According to Ameka (1992), a semanticist, there are two types of

interjections: primary and secondary interjections. The primary ones are
words or non-words that can stand alone as an utterance and do not
come into other word classes. Secondary interjections ―are those words
which have an independent semantic value but which can be used

5


conventionally as utterances by themselves to express a mental attitude or
state‖ (Ameka, 1992: 111).
Goffman (1981: 99), the sociolinguist,

proposes that an interjection

―doesn‘t seem to be a statement in the linguistic sense.‖ He discusses
interjections according to socio-communicative roles they play rather
than according to any linguistic content they may have.
Wharton (2000, 2001, 2003) proposes that interjections do not have
conceptual meaning, but a procedural meaning that helps the hearer
recover the higher-level explicatures of the utterance they accompany.
As a consequence, interjections have no contribution to the truthconditions of the utterance which they accompany. In his own words,
interjections encode an instruction which ―merely encourages the hearer to
embed the proposition expressed under speech-act or propositionalattitude description by constructing higher-level explicatures‖ (2001:
148). Therefore, he regards interjections as ―indicators of higher-level
explicatures containing speech-act, or propositional-attitude information‖
(2003: 54).
Lin (2006) studied the language of emotion in Kavalan and found that
the four primary interjections in Kavalan, one of many aboriginal languages
in Taiwan, signal different attitudes of the speaker.
Chao

(2009) investigated exclamations in

Southern Min, the

predominant language spoken by Taiwanese. She classified interjections
in Southern Min into three types according to their pragmatic functions.
First, the majority of interjections in Southern Min express the presumption
of the speaker and signal feelings of surprise or confusion. Second, some
interjections express the emotion of the speaker. Third, some interjections
6


play the role of structuring discursive turn-taking in conversation. Chao
(2009) also noted that the intonation of the interjection can influence
the function of that interjection.
2.1.2. Review of Previous Vietnamese Studies
Diệp Quang Ban and Hoàng Văn Thung (1998: 150) listed such words
as a, ôi, ối, ái, ồ, chà, ái chà, ô hay, ôi dào, ôi chao, ối giời ơi, chết, chết
thật, bỏ mẹ, hứ, hé…as interjection or exclamatory words.
According to Nguyễn Thị Kim Dung et al. (2005), interjections are
words used to express emotion, feelings and attitude of the speaker or they
can be used as addressing terms. Interjections are normally positioned at the
beginning of a sentence or it can act as a special sentence.
Other Vietnamese linguists, Nguyễn Khắc Phi et al. (2004), classify
Vietnamese interjections into two major types: emotional interjections like
a, ái, ơ, ối, ô hay, than ôi,… and addressing ones like này, ơi, vâng, dạ, ừ,…
In “Từ điển tiếng Việt Phổ Thông” (2004:97), interjections are defined
as separate words having no grammartical relations with other words in the
utterance and expressing emotion, they are used to express delights,

complaints, swears… and they are also used as addressing terms.
From the review of all previous studies above, it is obvious that
researchers in Vietnam as well as in other countries have gained deep
insights and made significant findings in this field. However, the contrastive
study of Interjections in English and Vietnamese still awaits deeper
investigation, which is why the present study hopes to fill in the gap to make
significant contribution to the teaching, learning and translating English
Interjections in Vietnam in general and at HUBT in particular.
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2.2.

Review of Theoretical Background

2.2.1. English and Vietnamese parts of speech
According to Quirk et al. (1972, 1985), parts of speech are usually
grouped into two categories: the major and minor word classes. The major
word classes - nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs - are termed "major"
because they carry most of the content or meaning of a sentence. Such
classes are also "open" in that new words are added as they are coined. The
other category, the minor word classes, plays a more structural role in a
sentence and each of its classes is more "closed," in that normally no new
words are added. Classes in this category include, but are not limited to,
auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions and
interjections.
The

open–closed

distinction

is

related

to

the

distinction

between lexical and functional categories, and to that between content
words and function words. Open classes are generally lexical categories in
the stricter sense, containing words with greater semantic content, while
closed classes are normally functional categories, consisting of words that
perform essentially grammatical functions. In inflecting languages, it is
chiefly open-class words (content words) that inflect, although some closedclass words, such as pronouns, determiners and verbal auxiliaries, may do
so as well.
In the book “Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt”, Diệp Quang Ban and Hoàng
Văn Thung have divided Vietnamese parts of speech into two major groups:
Thực từ (content words) and hư từ (functional words), in which thực từ
consists of danh từ, động từ, tính từ, đại từ, số từ whereas hư từ covers phụ
từ (định từ, phó từ), kết từ, tiểu từ (trợ từ, tình thái từ).

8


Figure 2.1. Vietnamese Parts of Speech classification according to Diệp
Quang Ban and Hoàng Văn Thung

Vốn từ Tiếng Việt

Thực từ

Dan
h từ

Động
từ

Tính
từ

Hư từ

Số
từ

Đại
từ

Phụ
từ

Định
từ

Quan
hệ từ

Trợ
từ

Thán
từ

According to another Vietnamese linguist, Đinh Văn Đức,
Vietnamese parts of speech can be devided into three major groups: Thực
từ: danh từ, động từ, tính từ, số từ, đại từ; Hư từ: từ phụ, từ nối; and Tình
thái từ: tiểu từ, trợ từ (1986: 100-186).
2.2.2. Speech Acts Theory
Speech acts are generally defined as the actions that are involved
when one says something.
According to Searle (1965), language is part of theories of action, and
speech acts are such verbal acts as promising, threatening and requesting
that one performs in speaking.
There have been various classifications of speech acts by different
linguists. However, the thesis will focus on speech act types proposed by
Austin (1962) and Searles (1975).
The theory of speech acts is developed mainly by Austin (1962) and
Searle (1969, 1979). The central assumption in the theory of speech act is
that the minimal unit of communication is not a sentence or other
expressions but rather language act. In another term, human language can be
9


viewed as actions. Individuals perform things by saying different kinds of
language acts such as refusals, requests, promises, and the like. Austin
(1962, p. 67) studied speech acts from the following perspective: ―to
consider from the ground up how many senses there are in which to say

something is to do something, or in saying something we do something and
even by saying something we do something.‖ According to his view, any
utterance is composed of the following acts: the locutionary act (the actual
words the speaker is saying), the illocutionary act (the intention of the
speaker) and the perlocutionary act (the effect of utterance on the hearer).
According to Ho Ngoc Trung (2013), Austin and Searle respectively
grouped speech acts into five classes as in the table below.
Table 2.1. Speech Acts Classification by Austin and Searle
Austin’s
Speech Acts

Verdictives

Searle’s
Representatives

Exercitives

Directives

Commissive

Commissives

Behabitives

Expressives

Expositives

Declarations

2.2.3. Interjection Theory
2.2.3.1. Definition of Interjections
The term interjection, as it is stated in the Oxford English Dictionary
2 on CD-ROM (1992), version 1.01, OUP, Oxford, entered the English
language probably in the 13 th or 14th century from Latin interjicere (jacere) with the meaning to throw or cast between, from inter between +
jacere to throw.
Traditionally, interjections have often been regarded as peripheral
to language. Latin grammarians

characterized

them

as

non-words,
10


unrelated to syntax, expressing only feelings or states of mind. The
linguists in the 19th century viewed them as para-linguistic, even nonlinguistic occurrences

(Benfey 1869:295). Sapir (1970:7) categorized

interjections as ―never more, at best, than a decorative edging to the ample,
complex fabric of language".
Such views can still be encountered in contemporary literature:
Quirk et al. (1985:853) describe interjections as "purely emotive words

which do not enter into syntactic relations"; Trask (1993:144) describes
an interjection as "a lexical item or phrase which serves to express emotion
and which typically fails to enter into any syntactic structures at all"; Crystal
(1995:207) defines an interjection as "a word or sound thrown into a
sentence to express some feeling of the mind".
Biber (1999) noted that interjections have many functions including
the followings: greetings and farewells, e.g. good morning, goodbye,
discourse markers, e.g. well, right, attention signals, e.g. alright, okay,
responses, e.g. yeah, alright, hesitators, e.g. er, various speech act formulae,
e.g. thank you, please, sorry and expletives, e.g. Jesus.
One definition of interjection given by Bruti and Pavesi (2008) is:
―an outcry to express pain, surprise, anger, pleasure or some other emotion,
interjections belong to the oldest forms of speech and represent the most
primitive type of sentence‖ (p.104)

or

―Interjections

are

generally

uninflected function words and have sometimes been seen as sentencewords, since they can replace or be replaced by a whole sentence (they
are holophrastic)‖ (p. 105).

11


Cuenca (2000:332) defines interjections as ―communicative units

(utterances) which can be syntactically autonomous, and intonationaly
and semantically complete‖.
Ameka (1992:111) defines primary interjections as "words that cannot be
used in any other sense than as an interjection." He further states that "these
items are non-productive in the sense that they do not inflect and are not
movable between word-classes."
Wharton (2003:58) sees interjections as context-restrictors that ― guide
the comprehension process by narrowing the hearer‘s search space and
‗indicating‘ the general direction in which the intended meaning is to be
sought‖. They contribute to optimal relevance by decreasing the hearer‘s
processing effort in his interpretation. Interjections encode computational
instructions regarding the type of assumptions that a hearer should activate,
or the cognitive effects that he may expect in a particular situation (Wharton
2003: 59). Those instructions prompt the hearer to activate different
attitudinal concepts or types of concepts (Wharton 2003: 60). Accordingly,
an interjection such as Wow! activates attitudinal descriptions comprising
delight, surprise or excitement, yuk! activates an attitudinal description of
disgust. Interjections may activate a wide range of possible propositionalattitude descriptions, but the precise one the hearer may operate with
depends on the context he selects and his inferential abilities. When
interjections are used alone, they may communicate at an implicit level
(Wharton 2003: 62).
Diệp Quang Ban, a famous Vietnamese linguist, gives a pretty detailed
definition of interjections: “Thán từ là từ- tín hiệu phản ánh các trạng thái
tâm – sinh lý, chúng gần với tiếng kêu tự phát nhiều hơn. Thán từ có nét

12


riêng về cú pháp là nó có thể một mình làm thành câu riêng, hoặc là một vế
câu cùng với vế câu khác chỉ sự việc làm thành một câu ghép (2009:347).

(Interjections are words – signals reflecting the psychological –
physiological state, they are similar to spontaneous sounds. The unique
syntactic feature of interjections is that they themselves can form a simple
sentence, or a clause combined with another clause to make a compound
sentence.)
According to Lê Biên (1999:173), interjections are words or phrases like
ái, ối, ôi, ồ, chà, vâng, dạ, than ôi, ối trời ơi, and the like.
2.2.3.2. Classification of interjections
Ameka (1992) categorised interjections in terms of functions into three
types. They are:
(i)

Expressive interjections

(ii)

Conative interjections

(iii)

Phatic interjections

David Cram (2008) considers interjections as a peripheral part of speech,
as minor sentence type, and a unit on the margins of language.
Diệp Quang Ban (2009) classifies interjections in terms of their
formation into three groups:
(i)

Thán từ gần nguyên dạng

(ii)

Thán từ không nguyên dạng

(iii)

Từ gọi – đáp

2.2.3.3. Interjections and reduplication
In linguistic terms, reduplication is when a word, an element of a
word, or a phrase is repeated. This can often result in the change of meaning
13


or tone. It happens in many languages, not just English, and there are many
types of reduplication. There‘s rhyming reduplication (razzle-dazzle, hoitytoity), exact reduplication (bye-bye, din-din), ablaut reduplication (dingdong, zig-zag), and shm-reduplication (baby-shmaby, fancy-schmancy).
/>Concerning the relationship between interjections and reduplicatives,
interjections and reduplicatives are said to have a partial relationship to each
other. An interjection can be a reduplicative and a reduplicative may act as
an interjection. However, only a small number of reduplicatives are
interjections. When an interjection is formed by a partial or complete
reduplicative, its value can be greater. This can be said that reduplicatives
play a role in the practical value of interjections.
2.2.3.4. Interjections and onomatopoeia
The term onomatopoeia is originated from Latin roots, „onoma‟ and
„poiein‟. As its Greek suggests, onomatopoeia is the making ‗poiein‘ of a
name or word ‗onoma‘ from natural sounds. Tonge (2005) mentions that
onomatopoeia is a word whose sound imitates the actual sound to which it
refers, such as pop, sizzle, and crash. Onomatopoeia is also defined as the
meaning of thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with

it (Whitman: 2001). However, onomatopoeia can be defined as formation of
word or words whose sounds are like the action or thing they name or refer
to. Linguists suggest that onomatopoeia included in sound-symbolic which
refers to a direct correlation between the sounds and the senses of language.
Therefore, they argue that onomatopoeia may reverse the theory of
arbitrariness because of the direct link between the form and the meaning.

14


Regarding the relationship between interjections and onomatopoeia,
interjections may relate to onomatopoeia in some ways. As interjections
express our emotional world, it can be words or group of words resembling
a sound. Accordingly, some onomatopoeia may be interjections like ẹc, ha
ha. However, onomatopoeic words are various, only some of this type can
play the role of an interjection.
2.2.3.5. Politeness Principles and Interjections
The phenomenon of politeness has been defined and interpreted from
various perspectives. So far, many other scholars have made significant
contribution in theorising the concept of politeness.
Leech (1983) defines it as ―strategic conflict avoidance, which can be
measured in terms of the degree of effort put into the avoidance of a conflict
situation, the establishment and the maintenance of comity‖.
Leech (1983) classifies politeness in four different categories
according to the inherent functions of communication acts. The convivial
function of politeness manifests in cases when illocutionary and social
communication aim coincide, as in when interactants are greeting,
congratulating, offering, inviting, and so on. The collaborative function
refers to contexts in which the illocutionary and the social aim are
independent of one another, when speakers declare, assert, report or

announce. The competitive function of politeness is realised in situations
where the illocutionary goal competes with the social goal and the speakers
order, ask, demand or beg. The conflicting function entails a conflict
between the illocutionary and the social goal and occurs when speakers
threaten, accuse and, in general, express negative feelings and reactions.

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As for the relationship between interjections and politeness
principles, interjections have the important role in politeness principles.
Interjections are added into the utterance to show the speaker‘s emotion and
also to make the utterance more polite. Without interjections, sentences and
utterances may not achieve the complete goal in communication. It is in
communication that both speakers and listeners wish to obtain the politeness
principles, and they can reach their goal partly by using interjections.
2.2.3.6. Face Threatening Act (FTA) and Interjections
Goffman (1967: 5) describes the concept of face as ―the positive
social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others
assume he has taken during a particular contact‖, but its conclusive defining
is as challenging as that of politeness. Non-Western scholars frequently
criticise this definition, pointing out that it is essentially individualistic and,
therefore, cannot be applied to prevailingly collectivistic cultures. Chinese
scholars suggest that face is a public and positive category, situationally
constructed and framed by the interlocutors‘ interpersonal relations (Lim
1994; Ho 1994). Furthermore, Japanese notion of face, apart from the
relation to others, delineates speakers‘ individual rights, whereas African
and Islamic researchers emphasise the group rather than individual face
interests (Villki 2006). However, there is a consensus on its dynamism; face
can be enhanced, preserved, damaged or even lost.

Face-threatening acts are acts which in some way threaten the 'face' or
self-esteem of another person. Some people think that all communicative
acts are potentially threatening. In fact, the potential does exist to threaten
'face' with every act of communication. Whether the act is actually a threat
depends not so much on the intent of the speaker but on the perception of
the listener.
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Face-threatening acts include acts rather than spoken or written
language. Very often we can threaten others' face by a look, an expression
or some other non-verbal communication.
Everyday communication involves the use of face-threatening acts
(FTA), ―that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee
and/or of the speaker‖ (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 65). FTAs can threaten
both the speaker‘s and the hearer‘s face. Also, they can obstruct both
positive and negative aspect of one‘s face.
Negative FTAs obstruct the speaker‘s or the hearer‘s freedom of
action and freedom from imposition. FTAs which threaten the speaker‘s
negative face are those that pose an offence to one‘s face, for instance,
expressing thanks, accepting the hearer‘s thanks, apology or offers, excuses,
responses to hearer‘s faux pas, unwilling promises and offers.
Positive FTAs inflict damage to one‘s face by denoting the
interlocutor‘s lack of appreciation and/or approval for one‘s feelings, wants,
desires, and the like. The speaker‘s positive face is threatened by acts which
indicate that one has made a transgression or lost control over the situation,
for example, apologies, confessions, admissions of guilt or responsibility,
acceptance of compliments, self-humiliation, selfcontradiction, and emotion
leakage.
As far as the relationship between FTA and interjections is

concerned, in everyday communication, politeness is regarded pretty
important. Therefore, when using interjections, speakers are advised to be
careful in order not to lose face of both speakers and listeners. By
employing interjections, speakers can please their partners with a polite
behavior, like in this example:
[1]

Well done! You‟ve do a good job.
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