German oh: Marking an Emotional Change of State

Abstract

Working within a conversation analytic framework, this article analyzes the use and function of oh in conversational German and compares it to ach in German and oh in English. The analysis shows that both ach and oh are change-of-state tokens like English oh, but while ach is typically used for cognitive changes of state, oh is typically used to mark affective changes of state. The emotions communicated by oh are varied, and both the phonetic realization and the sequential placement of the token contribute to its meaning. The article discusses the implications of the findings for the study of emotions and cross-cultural comparisons of tokens.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Doug Maynard for inspiring me to write this article. Thank you also to Emma Betz for providing me with additional data samples and to Amanda Huensch and Peter Golato for feedback on earlier versions of the article. All remaining errors are my own.

Notes

¹The data were transcribed using the transcription convention developed by Gail Jefferson as described in Atkinson and Heritage (1984). For ease of reading, the transcripts contain three lines: The first represents the original German, the second an interlinear gloss, and the third, printed in italics, an idiomatic English translation. If the interlinear gloss is identical to the idiomatic translation, the transcript only contains two lines. All names and place references have been changed to protect the anonymity of the participants.

²One of the reviewers suggested that this turn may also be seen as a (surprised) request to continue the sequence to provide further information. However, the intonation of the turn has a fairly flat intonation contour and does not exhibit the same features typically associated with astonished questions (Selting, 1996).

³In fact, all the studies mentioned previously on oh in responses to questions, in assessments, and in topic initiations explain how oh in these environments exploit oh's main function of a change-of-state token.

⁴One reviewer asked why Karen is handing over the phone to Heiko so quickly if she is pleasantly surprised to hear from Ingo. The call was made in 1996, when a phone call from the U.S. to Germany was still relatively expensive. Given that Heiko is Ingo's primary friend (and not Karen's), I believe that she quickly passed Heiko the phone to keep the call cost down.

⁵Klaus may be expected to provide some additional information or some empathy, neither of which is forthcoming. As it turns out, he accounts for his silences in line 24 with a no-knowledge claim.

⁶Due to poor quality of the tape at this moment, it was not possible to generate a pitch contour of scheiße in Praat.

⁷For detailed conversation analytic work on surprise, see Wilkinson & Kitzinger (2006).

⁸I am using the terms emotion and affect as synonyms in a theory-neutral way.

⁹I would like to thank Amanda Huensch for analyzing the ohs within Praat.

¹⁰ arm/“poor” refers here to having fewer than four trump cards.

¹¹A reviewer wondered if Excerpts 7 and 8 are first pair-parts, given that the speaker reacts to nonverbal moves. I think it is more precise to say that the speakers are reacting to visual information that is in their environment; the nonverbal moves of the coparticipants (or by the speakers themselves) were not designed to elicit a reaction from the coparticipant.

¹² Nudellas is a play on words, possibly to make it sound Italian. Nudellas sounds like a cross between nudeln/“noodles” and Nutella, a well-known hazelnut and chocolate spread—a connection the interactants topicalize in a subsequent repair sequence (not displayed).

¹³The ochs form a second collection and are not part of the 73 instances of oh.

¹⁴It so happens that all oh-prefaced second assessments in the present corpus are negative assessments (i.e., evaluating something as sad or lamentable); thus, no observations can be made about affiliating oh-prefaced positive second assessments.