Tut, Pooh, and Hum: A Corpus-Driven Pragmatic Analysis of Onomatopoeic Interjections in Sherlock Holmes and Contemporary Fiction

Abstract

While reading Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series, I noticed the frequent use of the interjection tut in character dialogues, but its meaning was not immediately clear to me. Most online dictionaries define tut as an exclamation expressing disapproval or annoyance. However, these definitions were insufficient for me, a non-native English speaker, to fully grasp the precise emotions or communicative functions conveyed by such interjections, especially when they appeared in narrative contexts. This observation led me to question whether other interjections in the Sherlock Holmes series might also pose challenges for readers due to the lack of phonetic, prosodic cues in the reading of written text.