What role do interjections like kandoushi play in emotional communication in Japanese

Interjections like kandoushi in Japanese play an important role in emotional communication by expressing feelings such as pleasure, admiration, annoyance, or confusion. These emotive interjections serve as immediate vocal expressions of internal emotional states during conversations, helping convey attitudes and reactions beyond the literal meaning of words. Understanding and using such interjections is crucial for grasping the speaker’s intent and emotional nuance in Japanese communication. They function not only to express emotions but also to regulate interaction by showing approval, protest, or realization in social exchanges. ¹

In addition to kandoushi, Japanese also use phenomena like aizuchi—frequent short interjections made by listeners to indicate active listening and engagement, which is a culturally valued communication style emphasizing respect and mindfulness. This illustrates how interjections in Japanese go beyond mere emotional signals to include important interpersonal and cultural functions in communication. ²

Overall, interjections in Japanese contribute richly to emotional expression, social interaction, and conversational flow by signaling a wide range of affective states and listener responses. ^{1, 2}

References

• A Contrastive Analysis of Emotive Interjection (Kandoushi) in Japanese and Indonesian

• Approach to teaching active listening in the age of artificial intelligence: Lessons from the Japanese art of aizuchi.

• Response Cries or Response Statements? A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Interjectional Expressions in Japanese and English

• JNV Corpus: A Corpus of Japanese Nonverbal Vocalizations with Diverse Phrases and Emotions

• JVNV: A Corpus of Japanese Emotional Speech with Verbal Content and Nonverbal Expressions

• Japanese Directive Speech

• A corpus-assisted analysis of indexical signs for (im)politeness in Japanese apology-like behaviour

• Affect-Loaded Questions in Japanese Storytelling: An Analysis of Grammar, Prosody, and Body Movements of Story Recipients’ Questions

• Facial Expressions of Basic Emotions in Japanese Laypeople

• A Kinetic Approach to Understanding Communication and Context in Japanese

• Algorithmic voice transformations reveal the phonological basis of language-familiarity effects in cross-cultural emotion judgments

• Audiovisual emotion perception develops differently from audiovisual phoneme perception during childhood

• Algorithmic voice transformations reveal the phonological basis of language-familiarity effects in cross-cultural emotion judgments

• Vowel Length Expands Perceptual and Emotional Evaluations in Written Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words

• Vowel Length Expands Perceptual and Emotional Evaluations in Written Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words

• Conceptuality and Context-Sensitivity of Emotive Interjections