Speech Disfluency

Speech Disfluency

Speech disfluencies are any of various breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical vocables that occur within the flow of otherwise fluent speech. These include false starts, i.e. words and sentences that are cut off mid-utterance, phrases that are restarted or repeated and repeated syllables, fillers i.e. grunts or non-lexical utterances such as "uh", "erm" and "well", and repaired utterances, i.e. instances of speakers correcting their own slips of the tongue or mispronunciations (before anyone else gets a chance to).

• "The best part of my job is … well … the best part of my job is the responsibility."
• "The soup is too hot and it would burn if you … it would burn you if you tried to eat it."
• "Fool me once, shame on—uh, shame on you. If you fool me, you can't get fooled again."
• "Y'know, when I was asked earlier about, uh, the issue of coal, uh, you … under my plan, uh, of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket …"
• "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."