Another article unnecessarily criticizing filler words, this time in the New York Times; another blog post debunking it, this time by Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein. Excerpt of the blog post:
Among the many types of discourse markers are a subset sometimes known as verbalized pauses. People who are not linguists also call them “filler words” and “verbal crutches,” but those terms are misleading.
Why don’t we just get rid of them, the NYT article asks. After all, “verbal fillers that can make you sound, you know, nervous or not so smart.”
Well.
These kinds of pauses do give us time to think of what we’ll say next — but that’s not all they do. Compare the examples below with and without the discourse markers.
They allow us to soften disagreement or criticism by making it somewhat more polite.
- The thing is, she worked really hard.
- Um, it’s my not my favorite.
They emphasize whatever it is we’re going to say next.
- My teacher is, like, a total nutjob.
They allow us to introduce delicate topics.
- Sooooo, um, how are things at home?
- Have you, ah, thought any more about counseling?
They communicate subtle nuances of emotional stance.
- I’m feeling, you know, not too bad about that exam.
They allow us to indicate our degree of certainty.
- I must have had, like, seven hundred pages of reading to do.
- She was, I think, pretty pissed off.
As you can see, these discourse markers do an immense amount of important social and emotional work for us. They add nuance and richness to our speech. In fact, we can’t be socially appropriate human beings without them. Even if we got rid of particular markers — if we stopped saying um and so and like — we’d just end up using new ones in their place. […]
Mele writes: “Speakers who are well known in their professions but overuse verbal pauses are still perceived as credible because they have built a reputation. Audience members will chalk up those habits to just the way they talk, Ms. Marshall said. … But newcomers who use as many interjections as seasoned professionals will be seen as less credible because they do not have the years of experience.”
Yet he stops short of the obvious conclusion: there’s nothing wrong with using these words. The only people who are critiqued for using them are already low-status, and this critique helps maintain the low status of certain people and groups.
Previously: Alexandra D’Arcy on 800 years of “like”, teen girls as language distruptors, xkcd on quotative like and why linguists are hardcore.
Sending this to my partner who hates that i use like all the time but dude when i think at 8000000 mph i need filler words to sort out what im saying bc otherwise its a huge mess
Let’s stop demonizing “filler words”
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