um, er, well

[Mai Kuha]

On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Elizabeth Phillips wrote:

> Might anyone have some insight into the frequent (written and spoken) use
> of "um," "er" or "well" to call attention to what is about to be said? For
> example: "The wounds of the primary campaign have, um, not exactly healed."

Um, here are a few sources:

Brinton, Laurel J. 1996. Pragmatic Markers in English. Berlin and New
York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Andreas H. Jucker and Yael Ziv (eds.) 1998. Discourse Markers:
Descriptions and Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Studies in Interactional
Sociolinguistics, 3. London: Cambridge University Press.

The Filled Pause Research Center:
http://www.cisnet.or.jp/home/rlrose/pause/Default.htm

-Mai
_____________________________________________
Mai Kuha                  mkuha at bsuvc.bsu.edu
Department of English     (765) 285-8410
Ball State University