Disfluencies

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Lillian Chanel and we’re from Park Falls, Wisconsin.

Hi, Lillian.

Hi.

My question is, these aren’t words that are in our dictionary and yet they’re used so much today

And it is really getting to be nerve-wracking to listen to people speak.

They’ll say something and then they’ll go, oh,

And another one is, oh, you know, and when they’re telling you something,

No, I don’t know. I’m listening to know what you’re talking about.

And then they always say, yeah, but.

And these are just words that just irritate me when we have to sit and listen to somebody on TV or radio speak,

And they use these, plus you’re everyday people.

Right. So you’re talking about they’re filling all the little holes in their language with things like,

You know, like, I mean, I just, or all.

Yeah, but, yeah, but.

They repeat themselves and interrupt themselves and re-say things over and over, right?

Right.

Lillian, I have a technique that I use that you might find useful.

It’s a way of kind of diverting your attention away from the fact that you’re annoyed about these things

And to maybe appreciating that they sometimes take on roles.

Sometimes and and those words actually have meaning.

In general, they’re called disfluencies.

It’s D-I-S-F-L-U-E-N-C-I-E-S.

And it just means, it’s kind of the opposite of fluent.

You know, they’re not speaking very clearly, right?

Right.

One study estimated, this is how often they occur, that they occurred six times per 100 words.

And that’s 6% of the words that people say might be a disfluency, an or an or a or whatever, an

And they happen, of course, because people aren’t sure what they’re going to say,

And maybe a question has been asked that they’re not ready to answer.

But they can have a real function.

Listen to this.

Sometimes, even professional storytellers,

These are people who go around the circuits,

And maybe they’ll do it for radio, or they’ll do it at a theater,

Or they’ll do it at fairs.

They’ll tell stories for a living, a story that they’ve told a thousand times.

If they insert or or whatever at the very beginning, people pay more attention.

By using these particular kind of devices to interrupt the flow of your speech,

You call people’s attention to what you’re about to say.

And research has shown that you are more likely to understand what comes after an or an than if I leave it out.

If I say the same sentence to you and leave out the or the you might get it less.

You’ll understand less of it.

What do you think about that?

Well, that’s possible.

So what I’m suggesting, and this might help you a little bit to not be quite so annoyed about it,

Just think that every time they say and pay attention to what happens after,

And you might find that it’s the most important thing that they have to say.

You might.

Lillian, I’ve been paying attention to you, and I haven’t heard an or an

So you’ve got the bar pretty high there.

I did hear some from you, Grant, just a second ago.

Yep, they happen.

Did you hear those, Lillian?

Yeah, well, yes it is, but you know, what brought this more to my attention was my one grandson would always say,

Every time his mother would say something to him, yeah, but.

And she was so angry with him for doing that all the time.

So I would charge him a quarter every time he said it, and I’d be darned if I didn’t say it,

And he owed me, you know, it was vice versa.

But when he went home after two weeks up here with us, my daughter says, he doesn’t say it anymore.

Well, there you go.

There you hit on something.

Once people’s attention is brought to the fact that they have these verbal tics,

And they’re made to be aware that they’re habitual,

I mean, they’re like tobacco or alcohol.

Actually, they’re more like a disease.

They’re catching.

A friend of mine, he uses the word dude all the time.

It seems like he starts every other sentence with the word dude.

He’s like, dude, we’ve got to go do this, or dude, we’ve got to go do that.

And when I hang around him, I go home with a bad case of dude,

And I have to work really hard to shake it.

And ums and errs and uhs and you knows and I mean and I like and I just and all those, they’re catching.

They’re like the flu or the common cold.

But if you pay attention to them, you can cut them out of your speech.

The best tactic to take is to replace them with a pause.

Because the thing is, if you’re saying if you’re saying you’re probably doing that because you need just a second to collect your thoughts.

So just take that second, but fill it with silence.

Don’t fill it with some utterance that’s more or less meaningless.

Well, Lillian, I’m glad we don’t have the quarter thing going on among ourselves

Because I think I’d be out several quarters.

Well, it was very nice to hear from both of you,

And it’s a pleasure to talk with you.

I’ll watch my language from here on out, Lillian.

Thank you very much.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye.

Well, don’t hem and haw.

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