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From: Lisa LaSalle
Date: 07 Oct 2009
Time: 20:07:06 -0500
Remote Name: 69.222.77.73
Thanks, Joseph. Sure, "mazes" are a term first used by Loban (1976) regarding Communication units or C-units (post-MLU analysis for school-age children). They are aptly named because they are circuitous routes or "mazes" around the final message. They include within-word disfluencies but more commonly (in the school-age children that Loban had in his sample) they include: interjections (e.g., "uh" "um"), phrase repetitions (e.g., "and the other-and the other"), and revisions (e.g., "you could-- I would really like it if you could"). Mazing can improve one's final message but it can also distract from it.