Recent research has challenged the long-held belief that utterances like 'um,' 'wow,' and 'mm-hmm' are irrelevant noise in conversations. Linguists now argue that these interjections play a significant role in regulating dialogue and ensuring mutual understanding among speakers. Mark Dingemanse from Radboud University highlights that one in every seven spoken utterances consists of such interjections, suggesting they are fundamental to language's complexity. This shift in perspective emphasizes the importance of spoken language analysis, which contrasts sharply with the historical focus on written language.
Listen carefully to a spoken conversation and you'll notice that the speakers use a lot of little quasi-words- mm-hmm, um, huh? and the like- that don't convey any information about the topic of the conversation itself.
Here is this phenomenon that lives right under our nose, that we barely noticed, that turns out to upend our ideas of what makes complex language even possible in the first place.
One in every seven utterances are one of these things, says Dingemanse, who explores the use of interjections in the 2024 Annual Review of Linguistics. You're going to find one of those little guys flying by every 12 seconds.
Think of it as a tool kit for conducting conversations, a way to signal to the other participant how engaged you are in the dialog.
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