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From: Avoidance or Natural Interjections?
Date: 18 Oct 2010
Time: 12:38:21 -0500
Remote Name: 64.85.180.18
Wonderful work and I greatly enjoyed the book that was linked! I have a related question that I would like an opinion about. I am currently working with a teenage fluency client that interjects “um” as a transition between thoughts 80% of the time in conversational speech. It does not affect the message or intelligibility of his speech and has often times appeared to be a verbal filler for time sake. I have brought it to his attention several times and we have worked on the reduction of the interjections; however this paper has got me investigating the avoidance perspective. Because this client is relatively fluent, it has been overlooked that this occurrence of “um” may actually be a cover up for the rewording of thoughts. I had originally considered it to be a natural use of interjections, as so many of us are guilty of! What are some suggestions on revealing this idea that it may be an avoidance behavior or how to further investigate the true etiology of “um”?