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Part of
Voices Past and Present - Studies of Involved, Speech-related and Spoken Texts: In honor of Merja Kytö
Edited by Ewa Jonsson and Tove Larsson
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 97] 2020
► pp. 11–30

Chapter 2
Pragmatic noise in Shakespeare’s plays

| Lancaster University
| Lancaster University

Pragmatic noise, first coined in Culpeper and Kytö (2010), refers to the semi-natural noises, such as ah, oh, and ha, that have evolved to express a range of pragmatic and discoursal functions. Taking advantage of the regularised spellings and grammatically tagged texts of the Enhanced Shakespearean Corpus (Culpeper 2019), this study considers the frequency, distribution and functions of pragmatic noise across Shakespeare’s plays and characters. It reveals and discusses, for example, the facts that: whilst particular types of pragmatic noise maintain a steady presence across all the plays, there is variation in token density; female characters have a much greater density of pragmatic noise tokens compared with male; and characters in the middle of the social hierarchy use pragmatic noise particularly often.

Keywords: characterisation, corpus-based methods, pragmatic noise, Shakespeare, social groups
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pragmatic noise
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1The Enhanced Shakespearean Corpus
    • 3.2A method for pragmatic noise extraction
  • 4.Distribution of pragmatic noise across Shakespeare’s plays
    • 4.1Overview of distribution by play
    • 4.2Discussion of distribution by play
  • 5.Distribution of pragmatic noise across Shakespeare’s social groups of characters
    • 5.1Overview of distribution by social groups
    • 5.2Discussion of distribution by social groups
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 5 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.97.02cul
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Evans, Mel
2023. Interjections and individual style: A study of restoration dramatic language. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 32:3 ► pp. 297 ff. DOI logo
Lutzky, Ursula
2021. The sociopragmatic nature of interjections in Early Modern English drama comedy. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 22:2 ► pp. 225 ff. DOI logo

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