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In: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

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Planning what to say

Uh and um among the pragmatic markers

 | University of Zürich
Published online: 3 October 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.178.04tot
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.
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