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## Interjections, phonetics, and the body

Tina Th ode Hougaard Aarhus University nortth@cc.au.dk

Abstract: Emotive interjektioner forbindes normalt med det talte sprog, men i  denne artikel undersøges brugen af to interjektioner ( åh og puha )  som de skrives  på  to  sygdoms-  og  mindesider  på  Facebook:  'Fighting  for  Magnus (Miv)'  og  'Mindeside  for  Lærke  Rønde  Timm' .  Interjektionerne  betragtes som aff  ektive  udtryk  fordi  de  afspejler  nogle  af  de  kropslige  reaktioner  der er  afl  edt  af  at  overvære  og  deltage  i  interaktionen  på  disse  Facebooksider.  I artiklen argumenteres der for at deltagernes kroppe (når de læser og skriver på Facebook eller ser dokumentaren om Magnus og e ft erfølgende skriver om det på Facebook) er i aff  ekt, og at deltagerne skriver netop disse to interjektioner ( åh og puha ) som en reaktion på aff  ekten. Ved hjælp af fonetiske forklaringer ses interjektioner som en kropsligt udløst og forankret reaktion.

## 1. Introduction

In this article, I will focus on the use of two interjections, åh ' oh'  and puha 'whew'  in  written  communication  on  Facebook. Th ese  belong  to  the  kind Ameka  (1992)  calls  the primary  class (the  secondary  being  words  and expressions  functioning  as  interjections  rather  than  being  interjections). Following Scherer (1994:179) these are defi  ned as 'aff  ective expressions' or 'aff  ect vocalization' . Th e argument in the article is that interjections, although normally associated with the spoken language, fi  nd their way into the written language in certain situations as a way to refl  ect the body and bodily reactions. Normally, written interjections are associated with the more exaggerated and ostentatiously spirited examples of poetry and drama, åh ' oh' being one of the most frequently used interjections in those genres. But with the emergence of social media, written interjections have become a more common part of everyday written online interaction 1 (Hougaard 2013, 2017; Jørgensen 2018). I  have  investigated  two  Danish  Facebook  groups  built  around  the  illness and death of two young children in 2015: 'Fighting for Magnus (Miv)' and 'Commemorative site for Lærke Rønde Timm' . Amongst other remarkable things  to  be  observed  in  these  groups,  a  word  count  showed  a  very  high frequency  of  the  interjections åh ' oh'  and puha 'whew'  (Hougaard  2017) . Consequently, these interjections form the starting point of my investigation and discussion of interjections as aff  ective signs.

## 2. Th e aff   ected body creates aff  ective signs

Social media plays a crucial part in the creation of new public gatherings around serious illness and death and thereby challenges existing ways of mourning by enabling the creation of intentional memorializing on grief-specifi  c sites, e.g.  cyber  cemeteries,  and  on  non-grief-specifi  c  sites,  e.g.  Facebook  RIP pages (Klastrup 2015). Th e digital aff  ect cultures of these gatherings can be investigated and understood through diff  erent kinds of language used by their participants (Stage & Hougaard 2018).

Th e  main  argument  in  the  article  is  that  the  participants  in  the aforementioned  cases  write  interjections  as  a  way  to  deal  with  aff  ective extraordinary experiences. Ethnographic data show that the almost real-time experience of a child's death - even though this was mediated by social media - aff  ected the participants and provoked a reaction, leading them to transmit aff  ects in various ways, e.g. in-the-heat-of-the-moment responses with tokens like hesitations dots, emojis and interjections (Stage & Hougaard 2018).

We o ft en hear the expression 'words fail me' , used as a way to explain our hesitation faced with the diffi culty of expressing bodily or mental experiences that the mind is perhaps struggling to understand. We do not always know how  to  communicate  a  refl  ected  verbal  response  to  such  experiences  and perhaps a refl  ected response is not what is required. In situations of severe crisis,  the  involved  people  o ft en  turn  to  diff  erent  kinds  of  'bodily  actions' (Scherer 1994); for example, making sad facial muscle movements or bodily contractions,  or  they  use  some  kind  of  'non-communicative  expression' (Poggi 2009). To raise your voice (to use a term from the research on aff  ect) is a way to eliminate and remove the aff  ective stagnancy and despair from your body, to do 'aff  ective dumping' (Brennan 2004); the agent produces a physical perceivable stimulus to give vent to or to 'obtain relief from his internal state' (Poggi  2009).  But,  when  it  comes  to  social  media,  this  face-to-face  action repertoire is not available, just like sympathetic sounds cannot be transmitted. In order to mark their presence, the participants in the groups in question either pressed a 'social button' (Gerlitz & Helmond 2013), posted a picture, e.g.  of  a  heart  or  a  candle,  or  wrote  a  comment.  A  lot  of  these  comments started with the interjections åh ' oh' or puha 'whew' . Instead of expressing their sympathy in a verbally articulate manner, some of the participants expressed their aff  ects through interjections.

In the two cases, the participants followed the development for a long period  of  time,  some,  in  fact,  for  months,  as  the  ill  body  of  the  children weakened.  In  a  likely  scenario,  this  accumulated  tension  may  have  had  a physical  eff  ect  on  them,  paralysing  them  physically  in  some  sense.  When the tension was suddenly released, as the child died, the tense and stressed body  of  each  participant  collapsed.  While  reading  the  sad  report  of  the death of the child, the participants may have been holding their breath, both metaphorically and literally speaking, and when the child died, the air would have to leave their pressured body in order to let the tension go. Th ey may have exhaled fi  ercely and intensely, and perhaps quickly. When a great volume of air leaves the body rapidly through a small aperture (the mouth), the result is (for physiological reasons) always audible. Th e greater the amount of air, and the greater its speed (owing to the fact that the air is constrained), the greater the noise. Th e noise made in these situations is o ft en described as a sigh, or even as a moan, and can be written down as åh ' oh' . In the following I will elaborate this bodily oriented explanation of the high frequency of åh ' oh' , and of puha ' whew ' as well, in the data.

## 3. Some theoretical suggestions

Following this short description of the circumstances, I propose a two-sided theoretical approach to the cases with a view to broadening our understanding of interjections caused by the body. Th ese two sides are respectively the 'theory of aff  ect' , and a reinterpreted version of 'phono-semantic analysis' . My aim is not to schematise a universal theory covering all interjections, but on the one hand to deepen our comprehension of the practice of writing interjections in social media (specifi  cally on commemorative sites on Facebook), and on the other hand to see certain primary interjections as a function of the body or bodily expressions, i.e. spontaneous transmissions of instinctive reactions into sounds and decipherable words or holophrastic expressions.

## 3.1 Emotional interjections

In line with what Goff  man calls 'response cries' (Goff  man 1981:78f), I see interjections  as  a  more  or  less  impulsive  and  fi  erce  reaction  to  something that  happens  at  the  moment  that  the  interjection  is  articulated.  Goff  man's o ft en  cited  description:  'a  natural  overfl  owing,  a  fl  ooding  up  of  previously contained  feelings,  a  bursting  of  normal  restraints,  a  case  of  being  caught off    guard'  (Goff  man  1981:99)  contains  important  explanations  of  primary interjections and emphasises their uncontrolled and impulsive nature. Some may understand the word 'impulse' as a mental drive or instinctual urge. However,  this  should  not  be  understood  as  something  unintentional  or involuntary. It seems likely that all sounds produced in interaction to some extent  are  socially  motivated  and  therefore  have  a  more  or  less  refl  ective intention, like Goff  man's notion that 'most primary interjections are under our conscious control' (Wharton 2003). As Jeff  erson has shown (2004), even laughter (one of the most spontaneous and uncontrolled of human actions) can be repressed if repression serves a special purpose.

When we choose to express ourselves using audible elements, we want to make ourselves understood, to communicate, i.e. to establish a common understanding of the situation. We may not know exactly why we are using this  particular  distinctive  sound  or  set  of  sounds,  but  we  do  not  just  emit sounds arbitrarily and haphazardly. Even though the aim of this paper is to underline the bodily element in our choice of interjections, it should also be acknowledged that interjections as well as other language elements are the result of interpersonal conventionalisation and cultural socialisation (Ameka 1992; Häuser 2011; Goddard 2014).

Th e approach to the data in this paper refl  ects the idea that language signs do not only transport meaning; signs are also used and produced by specifi  c  and  aff  ectively  involved  bodies,  which  are  more  or  less  present and visible  in  sign  production  (Knudsen  &  Stage  2015).  According  to  Zizi Papacharissi,  social  media  enable  the  creation  of  dynamic  aff  ective  publics defi  ned  as  'networked public formations that are mobilized and connected and disconnected through expressions of sentiment' (Papacharissi 2015:125).

When  it  comes  to  spoken  interjections,  the aff  ected body  as  a trigger (Scherer 1994) has a remarkable infl  uence on the choice of specifi  c interjections in several ways. First of all, the aff  ected body activates the need to communicate using 'more or less instinctive, natural reactions' (Wharton 2003); secondly, the bodily tension makes certain sounds more obvious and apparent than others because they are bound to our exhalation as well as our non-exhalation when we hold our breath or let it go; furthermore 'there is an intimate connection between interjections and gestures in general' (Ameka 1992).

Ulrike Stange points out (2016:29) that it is fruitful to make a distinction between interjections used emotively and interjections used emotionally. Th e term 'emotive interjection' refers to interjections that express feelings in the emotional sense, i.e. 'cognitively based feelings' . Th e emotional use is seen as a spontaneous, unintentional leakage or bursting and is therefore very diff  erent from the emotive use, which is strategic, persuasive, interactional and otherdirected. Th e focus in this article is on the emotional - or aff  ective - use of interjections, even though we, as Wharton warns, 'should be careful not to overestimate the expressive, instinctive nature of these primary interjections' (Wharton 2003). Th is warning comes even more to its rights because of their written status in the data.

To some extent I take inspiration from the scattered thoughts of what might  be  placed  under  the  umbrella  of  'phono-semantics'  (Jakobson  & Waugh 1979); but I want to examine the phonetics of particular interjections as a result of the interaction between the body, the nervous system, and the mouth and breath. Th e pivotal point of phono-semantics seems to be sound symbolism  or  sound  meaning,  building  up  an  understanding  of  certain sounds bearing certain abstract meanings, as contrasted with the Saussurian view that the relationship between the signifi  er and the signifi  ed is arbitrary (unmotivated). While phono-semantics concentrates on the interrelatedness of form and content, my analysis of aff  ective interjections has a stronger focus on the interrelatedness of form (sound) and body.

As I will show, the aural element plays a diff  erent role in interjections than in onomatopoeias, which are o ft en seen as closely related to interjections (Brink 1998; Hansen & Helto ft 2011). Onomatopoeias are imitative wordings delivering a reported sound, e.g. imitating the sound of an incoming e-mail: Sploing .  Interjections,  on  the  other  hand,  contain  a  situated  pointing  and referring element; they are indexical (Wilkins 1992). While onomatopoeias are reverberations that shape or reshape the sound and thereby the experience and impression of what has happened (or may happen) as a stylised imitation, interjections are less stylised and more spontaneous  articulations of what is happening emotionally right now, i.e. they are signifying feelings, sensations and  states  of  mind.  Being  'exclamations'  (Ameka  1992:103),  the  primary interjections (e.g. ugh! ) express complex immediate emotions; they do not just describe feelings (e.g. I'm disgusted ) or imitate the sound made by or associated with  an  act  or  an  animal  (e.g. miaow ).  Both  word  classes  (onomatopoeias and interjections) though, belong to the expressive area of language use and intensify and vitalise the communication and the involvement.

It has always been a challenge to operationalise interjections as a word class (Ameka 1992; Wilkins 1992). In a way they are on the edge of language because they occasionally sound like something which is not decipherable as language, i.e. something which does not have a precise and conventionalised meaning, called 'non-words' (Ameka 1992). In this fi  eld, perhaps we should operate with a continuum of expressions going from indistinct and slurred humming or other kinds of non-standardised noise-making to the defi  nite and more or less consistent and conventionalised articulation of well-known and  normatively  accepted  interjectional  sounds,  as  suggested  by  Goddard (2014). Th is  continuum  encompasses  a  delimitation  concerning  sounds expressed non-deliberately, i.e. without some kind of intentionality. And it is precisely in this area that we fi  nd marginal cases of the interjections studied in this article. In this article we focus on their written use, meaning that the participants in the Facebook groups have adapted this aff  ective outburst to fi  t an existing conventionalized form.

When it comes to spelling, the problems seem to grow, since conventional spelling  is  not  always  adequate  to  represent  pronunciation  and  since  only a  few  of  the  existing  interjections  are  codifi  ed  in  the  offi cial  dictionary  of Danish standard orthography. Take for example the interjection that could be spelled hmpf . Th is interjection is probably thought of as an expression of doubt or contempt, but what is the diff  erence between hmpf and pf , why does the spelling contain no vowels, and how is the former interjection actually articulated  (with  a  silent p or  not?).  In  this  article  the  12  diff  erent  Danish versions  of  the  interjection puha 'whew' ) made  me  question  my  original thoughts about whether these interjections did the same aff  ective job: puh, puu, puha, pu ha, phuha, puhha, puhhhhh haaaa, pyh, pyyy, pyhaa, phyyha, pyyyyyyyh . However, I do not seek to analyse the variants any further in this article. Rather, this calls for a study in its own right.

## 4. Th e interjections åh 'oh' and puha 'whew' and the body

In this section, the study of the use of åh ' oh' and puha 'whew' in two diff  erent Facebook groups is presented.

## 4.1 Data

Th e  data  consist  of  all  the  blog  posts,  comments,  likes  and  pictures  on  the Danish commemoration sites of the two children (Lærke and Magnus), who both died of cancer in 2015. I have used the Danish web-based so ft ware called 'Digital Footprint' , which has been developed at Aarhus University, to collect and quantitatively analyse the data - including counting the 100 words which are  used  most  frequently.  I  have  read  all  the  blog  posts  and  comments  on Lærke's site (249 blogposts and 2,675 comments), and I have read posts on selected dates (the date of death and the date of the documentary Kampen for  Magnus ( Th e  Fight  for  Magnus )  that  was  broadcast  on  national  Danish television) from Magnus's group (which contains a total of 5,224 blog posts and 44,777 comments). As regards the ethical issues, permission to examine the  language  used  by  the  participants  was  granted  by  the  mothers  of  both children.  Still,  the  quotations  have  all  been  anonymised  in  order  to  secure discretion  of  those  participants  whose  consent  I  have  not  asked  for. Th ere was a huge number of participants, and the Facebook group was open to the public. Even though both commemoration sites can be regarded as published material  and  the  information  given  is  neither  private  nor  sensitive,  I  have chosen this procedure in order 'to do no harm' , inspired by the AoIR ethical guidelines from 2012 (Markham & Buchanan 2012).

Th e  data  considered  here  reveals  a  frequent  use  of åh ' oh'  and puha 'whew' . Th ese  fi  ndings  were  surprising  since  the  serious  theme  might  have been expected to cause a more solemn and ritualised language use. For the sake of completeness, it should be added that the participants also wrote about their empathy and condolences in a less aff  ective and more formal way (Stage & Hougaard 2018); but in this article the focus is on the aff  ective perspective. Th us,  the  following  phonetic  analysis  of  the  interjections  concentrates  on the interaction between the speech organs, the breath and the whole body. I claim that the phonological and physical circumstances are important to the participants when they choose these interjections, even though in a written context of communication.

## 4.2. Åh 'oh'

On the day Magnus died, the interjection åh ' oh' was used 262 times (the 82nd most frequently used word of the day); and on the day Lærke died, the interjection åh ' oh' was used 27 times (the 36th most frequently used word of the day). In the written version of åh ' oh' , the h is a marker of the prolongation of the vowel. In combination with the vowel å ' o ' , which is the deepest vowel demanding very little tension of the speech organs, the interjection åh ' oh' must be the sound made by the body when relaxing a ft er  literally  holding your breath. Sometimes the vowel is followed by the grapheme r ( årh ), which is a graphic convention pointing to an intensifi  ed deep and dark quality of the vowel (in Danish this is called ' r -påvirkning' (r infl  uence)). Åh ' oh' is o ft en combined with the negations nej 'no' (an attempted denial of the facts) and is typically placed at the beginning of the comment, i.e. turn-initial:

Example 1

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M Åh nej altså, hvor er det uretfærdigt og slet ikke til at bære. Rip

(Translation: Oh no how unfair it is and not at all to bear. Rip)

Th is position could be interpreted as a way of loosening the tied tongue, i.e. as an outburst of the detained body, and as in example 1 the interjection is o ft en followed by interjectional use of negations and adverbs in combination with more elaborated expressions. Most of the åh ' oh'' s  are  written  as  a  reaction to  information  which is  diffi cult  to  cope  with  (diagnosis,  rehospitalisation, death), and could naturally be seen as a potential echo of the followers' own physical  reactions.  In  their  expressions  of  sympathy,  the  followers  employ interjections to show and to characterise their aff  ective involvement. And in some situations, an interjection is the only lexical vocalisation (see example 2) o ft en accompanied by unhappy emojis intensifying the sadness and showing the reader that the interjection is an expression of sympathy and an attempt to deny the facts.

```
Example 2 C Åhhh nej (Translation: Ohhh no)
```

## 4.3. Puha 'whew'

In some situations, the followers choose another interjection, namely puha 'whew' . In Lærke's case this interjection only occurs 15 times, but in Magnus's case puha 'whew' is used 206 times, 198 of them on the day of the broadcast (the 92nd most frequently used word of the day). In contrast to åh ' oh ' ,  this interjection carries some kind of relief or detaching oneself from the situation.

Th e dictionaries explain this interjection as a surprised, dismayed or relieved reaction  to  something  perceived  as  unpleasant  or  nasty.  But  why  do  the followers choose puha 'whew' in this precise context? Th e key to understanding this may lie in the fact that puha 'whew' is mostly used when the followers comment on something that is undoubtedly very diffi cult to endure, namely the  aggravation  of  the  illness  or  the  fi  nal  death  sentence  issued  by  one  of the parents, or, in Magnus's case, when they watched the intimate broadcast following Magnus right till the end - showed just three months a ft er his death.

Like åh ' oh' , puha 'whew' in the spoken version consists of an exhalation sound and a vowel or a complex set of vowel sounds, but there are minor diff  erences:  in  Danish  the  interjection  is  more  complex  since  it  has  two syllables and consequently two vowels: the u and the a . As for the consonants, the initial sound in Danish is a plosive in which the vocal tract is blocked via the lips so that all airfl  ow  is  fi  rst  stopped  and  then  immediately a ft erwards released (Grønnum 2009:132). Th e initial sounds are hindered, which causes a breathy voicing, i.e. aspiration through exhalation. When someone says puh , the initial aspirated sound represents the exact moment when the closing of the mouth and the holding back of the breath is no longer maintained. Th e Danish puha could be seen as an even stronger release of the accumulated energy held back by the closed mouth.

In Lærke's case the news that the illness is terminal and cannot be cured, and the news later on of her death, generate an increase in contributions; and in Magnus's case the broadcast boosts the level of involvement (Stage & Hougaard 2018). In both cases the high number of comments and interjections could be read as situations with very strong aff  ective potential. A likely scenario for the participants using the written version of puha 'whew' in the case of Magnus could be this: With bated breath, they have followed the development of the child's illness (either in real time or via the broadcast three months later); and when this bodily anxiety and the intense and hopeful waiting time is suddenly replaced by a feeling of emptiness and hopeless despair - exaggerated by the dramatizing and powerful broadcast - the body of the followers collapse into an åh ' oh' or puha 'whew' - an articulation which is an almost palpable puff of  air.  And  this  they  put  down  in  writing  as  soon  as  possible,  i.e.  with  the necessary delay due the process of writing.

## Example 3

T Puhha bare treaseren til jeres dokumentar trækker tårer frem må huske kleenex på søndag

(Translation: Whew just the teaser to your documentary draws tears must remember the kleenex next Sunday)

Example 4

K Puha der fi  ndes ingen ord føler med jer (Translation: Whew words fail me feel for you)

Of course,  we  do  not  know  for  sure  whether  this  is  actually  happening  to their bodies, but we can observe that the participatory investment and use of interjections are reinforced on specifi  c dates. In example 3 the participant complements  her  use  of puhha by  describing  her  tears  and  thereby  she exhibits a strong inner-focus, but the puha 'whew' is also used sympathetic: In example 4 the participant illuminates the impoverishment of the language when it comes to severe crises and the diffi culties  he  has  fi  nding  the  right words  of  comfort,  and  in  example  5  another  participant  uses  a  metaphor ( heavy steps ) to describe the funeral from the perspective of the bereaved; by using Pyyyyyyyha she both relates to and animates the scenery:

## Example 5

C Pyyyyyyyha det er nogle tunge skridt I skal tage i dag og sende jeres elskede Magnus ud på hans sidste rejse....

(Translation: Whew some heavy steps you are going to take to day sending your beloved Magnus on his last journey….

While åh ' oh' has a rather stable spelling form (it is only prolonged occasionally by a number of å ' s ' ååå ' or h ' s ' åhh ' and a few time by r ' årh ' ) , the use of puha 'whew' is aberrant and more variable. Th e spelling of the Danish puha varies in at least 12 diff  erent ways as showed in section 2. In fi  ve of the variants the vowel y replaces the u ,  which could be seen as equivalent to the diff  erence between relief and disapproval. In the data the alternate uses show no clear pattern,  but  further  investigation  might  reveal  whether  certain  spellings eventually will come to outmatch the others in the long run.

## 5. Writt  en interjections as aff  ective expressions

Spoken  interjections  are  spontaneous  and  intense  -  and  used  in  written inter  action  they  communicate  presence.  In  the  two  cases  the  interjections in question could be seen as a way to accentuate and thereby intensify the compassion. Th e  followers  are  not  just  telling,  but  actually  performing compassion and involvement; doing a compassionate 'being there with you feeling it with you' , thereby creating a joint and intense process of grief.

Th e function of the interjections could be seen as a ventilation of the emotional alarm system and as a way of putting the inexpressible into words. Interjections  are  useful  when  you  cannot  fi  nd  'the  right  words'  to  console another person or describe your own feelings or aff  ective experience, because any words would only aggravate the situation or make it awkward. Th is  is relevant both to spoken and written communication.

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What the present way of analysing interjections has picked up from both aff  ective theory and phono-semantics is the body as a base. As a lot of other studies  of  interjections  (Ameka  1992;  Goff  man  1981;  Poggi  2009;  Scherer 1994), I see the spoken primary interjections as sounds caused by the body or bodily felt emotions, and thereby identify and emphasise the connection between the bodily felt experience that triggered the sign (the interjection) and the physical production of the sign. In relation to aff  ect theory I therefore plead  for  an  approach  to  the  primary  interjections  as  indexical  reactions towards the body making certain aff  ective sounds or experiencing some kind of aff  ectiveness. Th eir written versions borrow some of this aff  ective energy, whereby the written åh ' oh'' s and puha 'whew''s perform presence despite the physical distance.

In  the  two  cases  the  pervasive  use  of  emotional  interjections  reveals a  use  of  language  that  departs  from  sharing  abstract  accounts  of  events  in a  straightforward  and  well-planned manner (Stage & Hougaard 2018) - at least  when  they  are  characterised  by  redundancy  (e.g. åhhhh )  or  forceful exclamations  (e.g. PUHA or puhhh!! ).  Even  though  the  writing  process implies  certain  cognitive  elements  (e.g.  awareness  of  audience  and  other pragmatic circumstances), whose importance calls for attention (and further research), I have tried to show how the use of interjections could be seen as a transformation of the aff  ective energy into the sign production. 'Signs do not always refer to matter in the world by the use of convention or resemblance, as they can also trace physical and aff  ective processes taking place in relation to the production of the sign' (Stage & Hougaard 2018:26ff  ).

Th e  use  of  interjections  is  an  effi cient  and  economical  way  to  communicate (Hougaard  2013),  owing  to  their  brevity  and  immediate  decoding.  Even though you could call this a reduced and poor way of grieving or mourning, it may be the closest we get to the immediate emotions or aff  ect - perhaps the true face of grief, anguish and sympathy - and a vernacular communication of grief and mourning in social media.

To articulate is both to understand and to place something in the world. In this article, interjections are seen as a way to bring the aff  ective experience into the world, making this experience and the reactions exist, making them real and at the same time letting them go in order to be able to live on. To use certain interjections is seen as a bi-directional use of language. It is a response to the aff  ective and bodily experience as well as a signal about experiencing this aff  ect. Th e aff  ects both engage and occupy the body, the tension dominates the system in a way that is not durable for long, and therefore the followers let go of the aff  ects and their intensities - sometimes via interjections.

## Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer and my editor, Eva Ska ft e Jensen, for insightful comments and suggestions. Eva Ska ft e Jensen has encouraged me and vigorously and thoroughly pointed to crucial points of improvement.

## Notes

- 1 Earlier, written interjections were mostly seen in comics (Forster, Borgwaldt & Neef 2012; Bojsen 1996).

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