Alyson Leong

Linguistic fillers can only be found in speech, and even then they are considered an "errors". In the Ted Talk Why do we, like, hesitate when we, um, speak?, I learned that there is more to filler words than I originally knew. Fillers may be used to say that the speaker has not finished their train of thought and the pause in conversation is not an invitation to interrupt or reply. They are a type of hesitation phenomena and help buy time and recollect your thoughts.

“Why Filler Words Like “Um” and “Ah” Are Actually Useful” is an article published by Harvard Business Review on April 19, 2019. It was written Allison Shapira, a teacher/coach and expert in public speaking. In this article, Shapira shares strategic reasons to use fillers, those being: to be diplomatic, to hold the floor, and to jump in. She also shares fillers one should avoid.

In reading this article, I learned that, despite the popular opinion, fillers do have a place in public speaking, and when used correctly, can heavily influence your speech for the better. This article does increase my interest as it demonstrates a different facet of fillers: public speaking and its place and importance within it. It also speaks against the stigma fillers have in “proper speech”.

This is my first article that connects fillers and public speaking, so it does add a new perspective on the subject. It is also a short article with a clear purpose and a small, relatable anecdote, so it is an easy read.

This is an academic article published by Ljubljana University Press in 2010 and written by Loredana Frǎţilǎ.

In this article, Frǎţilǎ analyses interviews conducted by Larry King for the different fillers used, and categorizes them. This results in a final list of possible functions for fillers; first in broad categories: as discourse markers and interactional signals; then as sub-categories. Frǎţilǎ highlights specific markers within the discourse presented and presents them under the different categories. These categories are not always defined in compact words, but rather explained according to the situation they are most often used in.For example, when explaining the use of I mean and actually, she writes: “the speaker needs to make a new start or rephrase what s/he was going to say in the middle of a turn, often because the listener shows that s/he cannot follow or is not convinced” and later gives this type of marker a title: moniter markers.

This article is more in-depth than my first source ("Why do we, like, hesitate when we, um, speak? - Lorenzo García-Amaya"), breaking down the different situations and different markers used in discourse. A very interesting and engaging read.

“Use of the discourse marker like in interviews” is an article by Janet M. Fuller. It was published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics in 2003.

Fuller analyses the use of “like” in interviews. She concludes that it functions to indicate both focus and approximation. The use of “like” allowed for the interviewers to bring the conversation to a more casual style and hopefully create a friendly report between themselves and the interviewee. She remarks a drastic difference in the usage of “like” by the interviewer in certain interviews where the interviewee is more reticent and speaks less or just barely more than the interviewer. She concludes the “like” “appears to be a form which is employed at variable rates due to the interactional needs of speakers.”

“Like” remains elusive in how we apply it in speech, but its intended purposes, to create a casual atmosphere in this case, become clearer. An interesting read with transcriptions from the interviews. It covered different angles, for example: the use of “like” based on age, the social stigma surrounding it, and its different rate usage according to gender.

“Folk notions of um and uh, you know, and like” is an article published in the journal Text & Talk in 2007 by Jean E. Fox Tree. Fox Tree conducts an experiment to determine whether laypersons are aware of how fillers are each unique and not interchangeable, and uses the fillers “um”, “uh”, “like” and “you know” as examples. She does this by asking them how frequently they use them, if their use varies depending on who the recipient of the message is, their opinion on the use of fillers in communication (does it affect communication?), what they believe the specific fillers mean and in what situation they would be used.

This article is more focused on how people view fillers and discourse markers rather than how these might be used in speech. It is a dry read, and a bit tougher to get through, but informative nonetheless, though with multiple repetitions to previously established information.

“Um . . . Who Like Says You Know : Filler Word Use as a Function of Age, Gender, and Personality
” is an article by Charlyn M. Laserna, Yi-Tai Seih and James W. Pennebaker. It was published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology in 2014. Laserna is a medical student with an undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Houston Medical School. Seih received his PhD at the University of Texas and works for the Department of Psychology there. Pennebaker is a professor and chair for the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. The article was written in order to examine the potential link between filler words (filled pauses and discourse markers) and age, gender, social class and personality.

In this article, which also examines previous studies, it is noted that filled pauses are associated with age, while discourse markers are associated with both age and gender. In these studies it is shown that younger, college age females (among others) use discourse markers more predominantly in speech, and the rate drops in the older age groups for male and female. In filled speech, the rates only lower based on the age group, not gender. Concerning the use of filler words and personality, the information gathered that conscientious people used more discourse markers, which proves that filler words can in some way determine personality.

This article is slightly more advanced and in a different field (psychology), so there is some foreign vocabulary, but it is otherwise a straightforward read. Compared to the previously examined articles, this one focuses more on how filler words can define a person rather than define what filler words are themselves.

“Do age-related word retrieval difficulties appear (or disappear) in connected speech?” is an article by Gitit Kavé and Mira Goral. The article was published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Kavé and Goral discuss and review multiple tests that were conducted on subjects of varying ages to determine how aging could affect discourse in word retrieval. They approached with four hypotheses: “(1) Significant retrieval difficulties would lead to reduced output in connected speech. (2) Significant retrieval difficulties would lead to a more limited lexical variety in connected speech. (3) Significant retrieval difficulties would lead to an increase in word substitution errors and in pronoun use, as well as to greater dysfluency and hesitation in connected speech. (4) Retrieval difficulties on tests of single-word production would be associated with measures of word retrieval in connected speech.”

By the end they conclude that word output does not decrease in old age, older adults produces a wider, more varied lexical diversity compared to younger adults, studies surrounding their third hypothesis had mixed results, and the fourth lacks studies to begin with.

I found this article interesting, but a bit difficult to understand and a bit off my main topic which is discourse markers. However I was interested in it as it somewhat answers the question of “do we use more fillers as we age and forget certain words?”