The steam was still coming out of my mouth but I wasn’t cold anymore
Why do people say “um” and “er” when hesitating in their speech?
This question can actually be split into two: why do people say anything at all while hesitating and why do they say “er” and “um” instead of other possible sounds?
To answer the first question, linguists known as conversation analysts have observed that people vocalise in a conversation when they think it is their turn to talk, and there are several ways of negotiating the taking of those turns. One of them is the relinquishing of a turn by the current speaker and another speaker taking the floor. Therefore, silence is often construed as a signal that the current speaker is ready to give up his or her turn.
So, if we wish to continue our speaking turn, we often need to fill the silences with a sound to show that we intend to carry on speaking. If we always thought out thoroughly everything we were going to say in a conversation, or memorised our lines perfectly there would be no hesitation at all. But, as it is, we do a lot of what is called local management, or improvisation, during conversation for many reasons not least because we cannot predict the reactions of our interlocutor. In order to keep the floor while we hesitate, we place dummy words in the empty spaces between our words, much as we might drape our coats on a seat at the cinema to prevent others from taking it.
The second question, as to why “er” and “um” are used instead of say, “ee” or “choo” is not as easy to answer.
“Er”, in British English, is a transcription of the phonetic schwa sound found in unstressed syllables of English words (such as the vowel sound in the first syllable of “potato”). In traditional phonetics this was called the neutral sound because it is the vowel sound produced when the mouth is not in gear, that is, not tensed to say any of the other formed vowels such as “e”. The “um” sound is more difficult to explain unless it is just a bad transcription of the same neutral sound with a consonant that closes the mouth in preparation for another real word.
{ NewScientist }
artwork { Kitagawa Utamaro }
