Wow, this chilli is hot! Interjections in student grammars of English: a lexical category that is not there.

Abstract

The paper examines how interjections have been treated in linguistic literature; on what grounds they have been separated from pure response cries; and what their relation is to iconic (onomatopoeic) vocabulary items. Second, the paper examines various English grammars intended for university level students, especially in second language contexts, to see how their treatment of interjections reflects what is said in linguistic literature. It will be shown that most such grammars ignore interjections almost entirely, which means student learners have very little change of learning about such vocabulary items only based on their grammar books.