Speech
Disfluency and the Structure of Knowledge
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Stnaley
Schachter, Nicholas Christenfeld, Bernard Ravina, and Frances Bilous
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| Abstract |
| It is generally accepted that filled
pauses ("uh," "er," and "um") indicate time out while the
speaker searches for the next word or phrase. It is hypothesized that the more
options, the more likely that a speaker will say "uh." The academic
disciplines differ in the extent to which their subject matter and mode of thought require
a speaker to choose among options. The more formal, structured, and factual the
discipline, the fewer the options. It follows that lecturers in the humanities
should use more filled pauses during lectures than social scientists and that natural
scientists should use fewest of all. Observations of lecturers in 10 academic
disciplines indicate that this is the case. That this is due to subject matter
rather than to self-selection into disciplines is suggested by observations of this same
set of lecturers all speaking on a common subject. In this circumstance, the
academic disciplines are identical in the number of filled pauses used. |
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| Schachter,
S., N. Christenfeld, B. Ravina, & F. Bilous 1991 Speech Disfluency and the
Structure of Knowledge. In Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60/3:
362-367. |
