Interjections in Marlowe’s Edward II

Interjections often occupy peripheral positions: they dwell at the periphery of the lexicon, are often found at the periphery of utterances (especially at the beginning) and have been considered “peripheral to the ‘real’ concerns of language” (Wilkins 1992: 119) for a long time. Interjections are one of the most difficult word-classes to define, but are experiencing a new Renaissance, especially in diachronic investigations. Historical pragmaticists have recognised the importance of this part of speech in spoken interactions, and some contributions have successfully described the usage and distribution of interjections in Early Modern English. None of these contributions has specifically dealt with any of Marlowe’s productions. The present paper investigates the forms and functions of interjections in Marlowe’s Edward II, by applying Culpeper and Kytö’s (2010) functional taxonomy. It discusses a set of criteria to isolate interjections from other lexical items according to a prototype-based model and illustrates some problematic cases for their identification.