Verbal Fillers, Innit?

[naomi_jay]

I'm not entirely sure why this is filed under "love and sex," but I just found an interesting article on Yahoo about verbal fillers. Interesting to me, anyway, because my spoken conversation consists almost entirely of filler because my mouth can't keep up with my brain, and because I adore the English language.

I'm definitely a massive user of "...you know..." and end a lot of sentences this way. The article claims that this is because ",,,you will only use these words when you patently don’t know what you’re talking about or what to say." This is sometimes the case, but more often I end a sentence with "you know" because I'm implying there's no need to finish the sentence; what I'm about to say is so painstakingly obvious, you should be able to fill in the gap yourself.

I'm also a big user of "right" to signal I've got something important to say, dammit. I use "so." in the same manner, as readers of my blog may have noticed. I do not use the phrase "innit" unless I am mocking chavs who use the phrase "innit" as if it was a real, serious word.

They have missed off my favourite verbal filler ever though, which is "obviously." I preface so much of my speech with that word. And usually what I'm about to say is obvious only to me, or I'm going to say something so random and complex and obscure, or make something so simple so complicated it's painful, rending it even less obvious.

I'm also big on "anyway" to signal a change of subject, even if I don't have anything to follow it up with, something else readers may have noticed. In real life, this means I'll say "anyway!" in a really chirpy manner and then just sit in silence while everyone waits to see what'll happen next. I use "like" when I mean "said," as in "I was like... anyway, obviously, innit?" And I'm also a big fan of just trailing off mid-sentence and pulling faces. The more I think about it, the less I can believe I'm a published author when my vocal communication skills are clearly so poor.

Anyway. I think it's an interesting article. That's pretty much it.

Comments

[naeko.livejournal.com]

Thanks to my mother's brutal parenting, my only filler word is "anyway." I don't say um, uh, you know, or any of those. I don't even use "like" unless I'm actually using it to convey similarity or affection.

I do use anyway as a segue WAY too often. I also don't finish sentences, in the same way as you use "you know." I'll occasionally trail off and just go, "... anyway" to indicate I'm ending my thought process. I really notice when people use filler words, too. If I'm hanging around people, I get bitchy and point it out; if I'm listening to someone on TV or on a podcast or something and someone is using an excess of filler words, I can't listen. It's too annoying!

[naomi-jay.livejournal.com]

My mum is terrible for replacing words with "thingy, whatsit, and doo-das" if she can't think of what she really means. I think I've picked up a lot of fillers from her because of that.

[six-old-cars.livejournal.com]

I fear I'm also guilty on the "anyway" front. I don't think I do too much um, err, etc. but I do sometimes freeze in a rictus of about-to-speak-ness (which often means I know what I want to say but haven't yet figured how to do so without being really offensive). I leave sentences unfinished, normally just with a blank (though I can't ever bring myself to do so in writing) but at least I don't follow that with my mum's trick of continuing the same sentence three conversations later and without any warning. I do NOT abuse the word "like".