“Ah, pox o’ your Pad-lock”: Interjections in the Old Bailey Corpus 1720–1913

Abstract

In Early Modern English Dialogs: Spoken Interaction as Writing (2010), Jonathan Culpeper and Merja Kytö discuss the function and distribution of interjections such as Ah, Oh, and “pragmatic noise” such as Tush in Early Modern English, as represented in A Corpus of English Dialogs 1560–1760. Although they recognize trials as major sources of data close to speech, Culpeper and Kytö mention them only briefly in connection with interjections. I explore the use of the interjections Oh, O, Ah, Ay(e), and Ha(h) in the Modern British English Old Bailey Corpus (1720–1913). As might be expected from trial records, the interjections are used with low frequency. Most appear in narratives by defendants and witnesses, but a few also occur in interactions among courtroom participants. After identifying the inventory of interjections used in the Old Bailey Corpus, I analyze their functions, and the extent to which they evidence change between Early Modern English, as described by Culpeper and Kytö, and Modern English as represented in the later parts of The Old Bailey Corpus.