Cover not available
Part of
Outside the Clause: Form and function of extra-clausal constituents
Edited by Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer and Arne Lohmann
[Studies in Language Companion Series 178] 2016
► pp. 97–122

Planning what to say

Uh and um among the pragmatic markers

| University of Zürich

Based on data from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English, this paper argues that the vocalizations [ə(:)] and [ə(:)m]), usually transcribed uh and um, can be regarded as pragmatic markers, rather than as undesirable disfluencies or hesitation markers. It is shown that they are especially frequent in registers and contexts that require more planning by speakers, like narrative passages in conversation and in task-related contexts, especially in long turns. The term planner is therefore proposed as an appropriate designation. Co-occurrences of uh and um with other pragmatic markers such as well, you know, I mean and like as well as with and and but are shown to support this view.

Published online: 3 October 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.178.04tot
References
Aijmer, Karin
2002 English Discourse Particles: Evidence from a Corpus [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 10]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Understanding Pragmatic Markers. A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
2015a Pragmatic markers. In Corpus Pragmatics, Christoph Rühlemann & Karin Aijmer (eds), 195–218. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015b  What I mean is - what is it doing in conversational interaction? The European English Messenger 24: 29–36.Google Scholar
Andersen, Gisle
2001 Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation: A Relevance- Theoretic Approach to the Language of Adolescents [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 84]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Archer, Dawn, Aijmer, Karin & Wichmann, Anne
2012 Pragmatics. An Advanced Resource Book for Students. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward
1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Bortfeld, Heather, Leon, Silvia D., Bloom, Jonathan E., Schober, Michael. F. & Brennan, Susan E
2001 Disfluency rates in conversation: Effects of age, relationship, topic, role, and gender. Language and Speech 44:123–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J
1996 Pragmatic Markers in English. Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 The Comment Clause in English. Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace
1980 Some reasons for hesitating. In Temporal Variables in Speech: Studies in Honour of Frieda Goldman-Eisler, Hans W. Dechert & Manfred Raupach (eds), 169–180. The Hague: Mouton. Reprinted 1985 in Deborah Tannen & Muriel Saville-Troike (eds), Perspectives on Silence, 77–89. Norwood NJ: Ablex. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. & Wasow, Thomas
1998 Repeating words in spontaneous speech. Cognitive Psychology 37: 201–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. & Fox Tree, Jean E
2002 Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking. Cognition 84: 73–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E
2013 Turn-constructional units and the transition-relevance place. In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, Tanya Stivers & Jack Sidnell (eds), 150-166. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
D'Arcy, Alexandra
2007  Like and language ideology. Disentangling fact from fiction. American Speech 82: 386–419. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Leeuw, Esther
2007 Hesitation markers in English, German, and Dutch. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 19: 85–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, John W., Schuetze-Coburn, Stephan, Cumming, Susanna & Paolino, Danae
1993 Outline of discourse transcription. In Talking Data. Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research, Jane A. Edwards & Martin D. Lampert (eds), 45–89. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Edmondson, Willis
1981 Spoken Discourse. A Model for Analysis. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Erard, Michael
2007 Um... Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean. New York NY: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Erman, Britt
1987 Pragmatic Expressions in English [Stockholm Studies in English]. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Faerch, Claus & Kasper, Gabriele
1982 Phatic, metalingual and metacommunicative functions in discourse: Gambits and repairs. In Impromptu Speech: A Symposium. Meddelanden från Stiftelsens för Åbo Akademi Forskningsinstitut 78, Nils Erik Enkvist (ed.), 71–103. Åbo: Åbo Akademi.Google Scholar
Fischer, Kerstin
2000 From Cognitive Semantics to Lexical Pragmatics: The Functional Polysemy of Discourse Particles. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 Frames, constructions, and invariant meanings: The functional polysemy of discourse particles. In Approaches to Discourse Particles, Kerstin Fischer (ed.), 427–447. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle
2008 Hesitation markers among EFL learners: Pragmatic deficiency or difference? In Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics. A Mutualistic Entente, Jesús Romero-Trillo (ed.), 119–149. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle & De Cock, Sylvie
2011 Errors and disfluencies in spoken corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 16(2):141–172. Reprinted 2013 in Errors and Disfluencies in Spoken Corpora, Gaëtanelle Gilquin & Sylvie De Cock (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erwin
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goldman-Eisler, Freda
1961 A comparative study of two hesitation phenomena. Language and Speech 4:18–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Götz, Sandra
2013 Fluency in Native and Nonnative English Speech [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 53]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Green, Georgia M
2006 Discourse particles and the symbiosis of natural language processing and basic research. In Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning. Neo-Gricean studies in pragmatics and semantics in honor of Laurence R. Horn [Studies in Language Companion Series 80], Betty J. Birner & Gregory Ward (eds), 117–135. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jucker, Andreas
1993 The discourse marker well. A relevance-theoretical account. Journal of Pragmatics 19: 435–452. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014  Uh and um as planners in the Corpus of Historical American English . In Developments in English: Expanding Electronic Evidence, Irma Taavitsainen, Merja Kytö, Claudia Claridge & Jeremy Smith (eds), 162-177. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kjellmer, Göran
2003 Hesitation. In defence of ER and ERM. English Studies 84:170–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lester, Nicholas
2013 It’s, uh, complicated: Modeling uh and um as functions of difficulty and complexity. In Paper presented at the Cognition and Language Workshop (CLaW 2013) . Santa Barbara, CA.
Levinson, Stephen C
1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
2013 Action formation and ascription. In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, Tanya Stivers & Jack Sidnell (eds), 103–130. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Maclay, Howard & Osgood, Charles E
1959 Hesitation phenomena in spontaneous English speech. Word 15:19–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian & Osser, Harry
1977 Verbal planning functions in children's speech. Child Development 48: 978–985. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mey, Jacob
2001[1993] Pragmatics, 2nd edn. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Miller, Jim & Weinert, Regina
1995 The function of LIKE in dialogue. Journal of Pragmatics 23: 365–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, Neal R
2015 Interjections. In Corpus Pragmatics. A Handbook, Karin Aijmer & Christoph Rühlemann (eds), 291–325. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O'Connell, Daniel C. & Kowal, Sabine
2004 The history of research on the filled pause as evidence of the written language bias in linguistics (Linell, 1982). Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 33: 459–474. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Uh and Um revisited: Are they interjections for signaling delay? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 34: 555–576. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Östman, Jan-Ola
1982 The symbiotic relationship between pragmatic particles and impromptu speech. In Impromptu Speech: A Symposium, Nils Erik Enkvist (ed.), 147–177. Turku: Åbo Akademi.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A
1993 Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26: 99–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 Some other “uh(m)s” . Discourse Processes 47: 30–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A., Jefferson, Gail & Sacks, Harvey
1977 The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 55: 361–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah
1987 Discourse Markers. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shillcock, Richard, Kirby, Simon, McDonald, Scott & Brew, Chris
2001 Filled pauses and their status in the mental lexicon. Paper presented at DiSS '01 (Disfluencies in Spontaneous Speech) August 29-31, Edinburgh.
Schneider, Ulrike
2012 Do uh and um have different meanings? A clustering approach using dendrograms. Poster presented at DGKL (German Society of Cognitive Linguistics) Conference in Freiburg.
2014 Frequency, Hesitations and Chunks. A Usage-based Study of Chunking in English. PhD dissertation, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg in Breisgau.Google Scholar
Schourup, Lawrence C
1985 Common Discourse Particles in English Conversation. New York NY: Garland.Google Scholar
Schourup, Lawrence
2001 Rethinking well . Journal of Pragmatics 33:1025–1060. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siegel, Muffy
2002  Like: The discourse particle and semantics. Journal of Semantics 19: 35–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stenström, Anna-Brita
1990 Pauses in monologue and dialogue. In The London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English. Description and Research, Jan Svartvik (ed.), 211-252. Lund: LUP.Google Scholar
Svartvik, Jan
1980  Well in conversation. In Studies in English Linguistics for Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik (eds), 167–177. London: Longman.Google Scholar
The Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English
[URL]
Tottie, Gunnel
2011 Uh and um as sociolinguistic markers in British English. The International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 16(2):173–196. Reprinted 2013 in Errors and Disfluencies in Spoken Corpora, Gaëtanelle Gilquin & Sylvie De Cock (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 On the use of uh and um in American English. Functions of Language 21: 6–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015a Turn management and “filled pauses”, uh and um . In Corpus Pragmatics. A Handbook, Karin Aijmer & Christoph Rühlemann (eds), 448–483. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015b  Uh and um in British and American English: Are they words? Evidence from co-occurrence with pauses. In Linguistic Variation: Confronting Fact and Theory, Nathalie Dion, André Lapierre & Rena Torres Cacoullos (eds), 38-55. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
2105c From pause to word: Uh and um in written language. Paper presented at ICAME 36 , May 27–31, Trier.
Forthcoming. Uh or um – are there functional differences?
Wieling, Martijn, Grieve, Jack, Bouma, Gosse, Fruehwald, Joseph, Coleman, John & Liberman, Mark
2016 Variation and change in the use of hesitation markers in Germanic languages. Language Dynamics and Change.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 9 other publications

Kirjavainen, Minna & Alexandre Nikolaev
2022. Investigation into the linguistic category membership of the Finnish planning particle tota . Pragmatics & Cognition 29:2 ► pp. 370 ff. DOI logo
Kosmala, Loulou
2022. Exploring the status of filled pauses as pragmatic markers. Pragmatics & Cognition 29:2 ► pp. 272 ff. DOI logo
Kosmala, Loulou & Ludivine Crible
2022. The dual status of filled pauses: Evidence from genre, proficiency and co-occurrence. Language and Speech 65:1 ► pp. 216 ff. DOI logo
Lingard, Lorelei
2019. Beyond the default colon: Effective use of quotes in qualitative research. Perspectives on Medical Education 8:6 ► pp. 360 ff. DOI logo
Lingard, Lorelei & Christopher Watling
2021. Effective Use of Quotes in Qualitative Research. In Story, Not Study: 30 Brief Lessons to Inspire Health Researchers as Writers [Innovation and Change in Professional Education, 19], ► pp. 35 ff. DOI logo
Niculescu, Oana
2023. Acoustic Correlates of Filler Particles in Romanian Connected Speech. Philologica Jassyensia 38:2 ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo
Revis, Melanie & Tobias Bernaisch
2020. The pragmatic nativisation of pauses in Asian Englishes. World Englishes 39:1 ► pp. 135 ff. DOI logo
TOTTIE, GUNNEL
2019. From pause to word:uh, umanderin written American English. English Language and Linguistics 23:1 ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2024. Beyond Disfluency [Advances in Interaction Studies, 11], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.