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My Interest in Pauses

My father spent the majority of his career as a University professor. While highly competent in his field of specialization and adept at teaching at it (these two qualities rarely go hand in hand...), one apparent flaw was ever-present in his lectures - an abundance of filled pauses. He apparently achieved some notoriety for this on- as well as off-campus. Even I remember as a youth when my father would speak at our church I would sit in back with friends keeping a tally and calculating my father's "um"-rate as in, "Hey Dad, today you averaged 23 ums-a-minute! Better watch yourself or you might get sent back down to the farm leagues!"

However, "The apple never falls very far from the tree" as they say. And so I too have developed the same habit in my speech. In a college speech class I was chided by the teacher for an excessive use of filled pauses. But a participant in a workshop I gave at a recent conference was a little more direct on a post-evaluation form: "Would you please stop saying 'Um'!"

Over the years I developed an interest in this phenomenon of human speech (in particular when I started learning Japanese and discovered that a pause can be articulated differently). Observing some stand-up comedians and actors (e.g., Bob Newhart, David Letterman, Jimmy Stewart) I recognized their 'natural' and humorous use of filled pauses. Thus, I have begun to wonder to what degree these pauses can really be classified as mental lapses or whether some are in fact a part of natural discourse used purposefully by the speaker and conveying some meaning to the listener? And now, as an EFL Teacher, I have begun to wonder what is the effect on communication between native and non-native speakers of English when the non-native speaker uses pause fillers indigenous to his/her own language? Finally, what does all of this mean for the language teacher: is there a cause to teach explicitly the communicative value of filled pauses and encourage their use?

My motivation to pursue this topic of study springs from these puddles of thought and experience.

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