1887
image of Listener and reader perceptions of um and uh
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Corpus-based research on the “filled pauses” and has shown that is gaining frequency relative to , with used more frequently by women and younger people. There has been some speculation that the rise of is linked to a new discourse function or meaning, but this has not yet been fully substantiated. This paper approaches the problem from a perceptual angle, reporting the results of two experiments investigating participants’ judgments of the indexicalities of the “filled pauses” and in two media: instant messaging and speech. Participants’ qualitative and quantitative responses suggest that readers and listeners associate the use of with hesitancy, femininity, politeness, and thoughtfulness, but that is primarily associated just with hesitancy. I argue that these indexicalities may be linked to the ongoing change, with indexing a potentially more desirable type of hesitation than .

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/prag.23060.gad
2025-08-01
2026-09-10
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Addington, David W.
    1968 “The Relationship of Selected Vocal Characteristics to Personality Perception.” Speech Monographs (): –. 10.1080/03637756809375599
    https://doi.org/10.1080/03637756809375599 [Google Scholar]
  2. Biemans, Monique
    2000 “Gender Variation in Voice Quality.” PhD thesis. Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall
    2005 “Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach.” Discourse Studies: –. 10.1177/1461445605054407
    https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445605054407 [Google Scholar]
  4. Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn
    2010 “The Sociolinguistic Variant as a Carrier of Social Meaning.” Language Variation and Change (): –. 10.1017/S0954394510000177
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394510000177 [Google Scholar]
  5. Christensen, R. H. B.
    2019 “ordinal — Regression Models for Ordinal Data.” www.cran.r-project.org/package=ordinal/
  6. Clark, Herbert H., and Jean E. Fox Tree
    2002 “Using Uh and Um in Spontaneous Speaking.” Cognition (): –. 10.1016/S0010‑0277(02)00017‑3
    https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00017-3 [Google Scholar]
  7. de Leeuw, Joshua R.
    2015 “jsPsych: A JavaScript Library for Creating Behavioral Experiments in a Web Browser.” Behavior Research Methods (): –. 10.3758/s13428‑014‑0458‑y
    https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0458-y [Google Scholar]
  8. Dlugan, Andrew
    2011 “How to Stop Saying Um, Uh, and Other Filler Words.” Six Minutes. sixminutes.dlugan.com/stop-um-uh-filler-words/
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Eckert, Penelope
    2008 “Variation and the Indexical Field.” Journal of Sociolinguistics (): –. 10.1111/j.1467‑9841.2008.00374.x
    https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00374.x [Google Scholar]
  10. Farris, Catherine S.
    1995 “A Semeiotic Analysis of Sajiao as a Gender Marked Communication Style in Chinese.” InUnbound Taiwan: Closeups from a Distance, edited byMarshall Johnson, and Fred Y. L. Chiu, –. Chicago: Center for East Asian Studies.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Fruehwald, Josef
    2016 “Filled Pause Choice as a Sociolinguistic Variable.” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (): –.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Gadanidis, Tim
    2018 “Um, About That, Uh, Variable.” MA research paper. University of Toronto.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Gadanidis, Tim, and Derek Denis
    2021 “Uh, What Should We Count?” InDiscourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change: Theory, Innovations, Contact, edited byElizabeth Peterson, Turo Hiltunen, and Joseph Kern. Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Jucker, Andreas H.
    2015 “Pragmatics of Fiction: Literary Uses of Uh and Um.” Journal of Pragmatics: –. 10.1016/j.pragma.2015.05.012
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.05.012 [Google Scholar]
  15. Koo, Hyun Jung, and Seongha Rhee
    2013 “On an Emerging Paradigm of Sentence-Final Particles of Discontent: A Grammaticalization Perspective.” Language Sciences: –. 10.1016/j.langsci.2012.07.002
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2012.07.002 [Google Scholar]
  16. Lakoff, Robin
    1973 “Language and Woman’s Place.” Language in Society (): –. 10.1017/S0047404500000051
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500000051 [Google Scholar]
  17. Levelt, Willem J. M.
    1983 “Monitoring and Self-Repair in Speech.” Cognition (): –. 10.1016/0010‑0277(83)90026‑4
    https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(83)90026-4 [Google Scholar]
  18. Maclay, Howard, and Charles E. Osgood
    1959 “Hesitation Phenomena in Spontaneous English Speech.” Word (): –. 10.1080/00437956.1959.11659682
    https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1959.11659682 [Google Scholar]
  19. Maddeaux, Ruth, and Aaron Dinkin
    2017 “Is Like Like Like?: Evaluating the Same Variant Across Multiple Variables.” Linguistics Vanguard (). 10.1515/lingvan‑2015‑0032
    https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2015-0032 [Google Scholar]
  20. McKay, Brett, and Kate McKay
    2012 “Becoming Well-Spoken: How to Minimize Your Uh’s and Um’s.” Art of Manliness. https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/becoming-well-spoken-how-to-minimize-your-uhs-and-ums/
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Miller, Laura
    2004 “You Are Doing Burikko!: Censoring/Scrutinizing Artificers of Cute Femininity in Japanese.” InJapanese Language, Gender, and Ideology, edited byShigeko Okamato, and Janet S. Shibamoto Smith, –. Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780195166170.003.0009
    https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195166170.003.0009 [Google Scholar]
  22. Ochs, Elinor
    1992 “Indexing Gender.” InRethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, edited byAlessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. R Core Team
    R Core Team 2018R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Rezvani, Selena
    2014 “Four Ways to Stop Saying ‘Um’ And Other Filler Words.” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2014/12/17/four-ways-to-stop-saying-um-and-other-filler-words/
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Rauniomaa, Mirka
    2003 “Stance Accretion.” Paper presented at theLanguage, Interaction, and Social Organization Research Focus Group, University of California, Santa Barbara, February 2003.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Silverstein, Michael
    2003 “Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life.” Language & Communication (): –. 10.1016/S0271‑5309(03)00013‑2
    https://doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2 [Google Scholar]
  27. Staley, Larssyn, and Andreas H. Jucker
    2021 “‘The Uh Deconstructed Pumpkin Pie’: The Use of Uh and Um in Los Angeles Restaurant Server Talk.” Journal of Pragmatics: –. 10.1016/j.pragma.2020.11.004
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.11.004 [Google Scholar]
  28. Tottie, Gunnel
    2011 “Uh and Um as Sociolinguistic Markers in British English.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics (): –. 10.1075/ijcl.16.2.02tot
    https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.16.2.02tot [Google Scholar]
  29. 2016 “Planning What to Say: Uh and Um Among the Pragmatic Markers.” InOutside the Clause: Form and Function of Extra-Clausal Constituents, edited byGunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer, and Arne Lohmann, –. John Benjamins. 10.1075/slcs.178.04tot
    https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.178.04tot [Google Scholar]
  30. 2017 “From Pause to Word: Uh, Um and Er in Written American English.” English Language & Linguistics (): –. 10.1017/S1360674317000314
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674317000314 [Google Scholar]
  31. Tübben, Ilenia Tonetti, and Daniela Landert
    2022 “Uh and Um as Pragmatic Markers in Dialogues: A Contrastive Perspective on the Functions of Planners in Fiction and Conversation.” Contrastive Pragmatics (): –. 10.1163/26660393‑bja10049
    https://doi.org/10.1163/26660393-bja10049 [Google Scholar]
  32. Wasserstein, Ronald L., Allen L. Schirm, and Nicole A. Lazar
    2019 “Moving to a World Beyond ‘p < 0.05’.” The American Statistician (): –. 10.1080/00031305.2019.1583913
    https://doi.org/10.1080/00031305.2019.1583913 [Google Scholar]
  33. Wickham, Hadley
    2016Ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. Springer-Verlag New York. https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org. 10.1007/978‑3‑319‑24277‑4
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24277-4 [Google Scholar]
  34. 2017Tidyverse: Easily Install and Load the ‘Tidyverse’. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=tidyverse
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Wieling, Martijn, Jack Grieve, Gosse Bouma, Josef Fruehwald, John Coleman, and Mark Liberman
    2016 “Variation and Change in the Use of Hesitation Markers in Germanic Languages.” Language Dynamics and Change (): –. 10.1163/22105832‑00602001
    https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-00602001 [Google Scholar]
  36. Wiltschko, Martina, Derek Denis, and Alexandra D’Arcy
    2018 “Deconstructing Variation in Pragmatic Function: A Transdisciplinary Case Study.” Language in Society (): –. 10.1017/S004740451800057X
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740451800057X [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/prag.23060.gad
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/prag.23060.gad
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error