2008mar02. Excerpts from Um ... Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean by Michael Erard.
Transcribers at the Federal News Service in Washington, D.C., encounter bucketloads of verbal blunders every weekday morning. [ ... ] The transcripts have to be readable, so the transcribers generally clean up people’s speaking, as instructed by an in-house style guide that cautions, “Don’t type ‘um,’ ‘ah,’ ‘er,’ or partial words.” The style guide also stipulates that transcribers should “clean up a false start or starts consisting of only one or two words if the omission of the words does not affect the meaning.” There is one exception to those rules: “DO NOT clean up major policymakers, including the president,” the style guide says, “since not only what they say but how they say it often makes the news.” [pg 1]
People around the world fill pauses in their own languages as naturally as watermelons have seeds. In Britain they say “uh” but spell it “er,” just as they pronounce the “er” of “butter” (“buttah”). (footnote: If you actually pronounce “er,” you’re saying it incorrectly – there’s no pause filler with an “r” sound. People who do say it have been influenced by the British spelling of the word, in which the final “r” is silent) The French say something that sounds like _euh,l and Hebrew speakers say ehhh. Serbs and Croats say ovay, and the Turks say mmmm. In Dutch you can say uh and um, in German _äh and ähm. In Swedish it’s eh, ah, aaah, m, _mm, hmm, ooh, a, and oh_; in Norwegian, e, eh, m, and hm. According to the William Levelt, a Dutch speech scientist, “uh” is the only word that’s universal across languages. [pg 55]
If you find yourself saying “um,” he suggested converting it into a slow “yum,” to make yourself more conscious of what you’re saying. “When you start hearing yourself go ‘um,’” Glickstein recommended, “start saying ’yum,’ and turn your ‘ums’ to ‘yums, um, umm, yummm, mmmm, mmmm.’” [pg 113]
Indeed, some elocution books taught myriad methods of disciplining the body, now mostly forgotten: illustrations showing the beauty of holding the left hand to the forehead, clasping both hands to the chest, turning the wrist and ankle just so. [pg 120]
Robert West, in his radio handbook, So-o-o-o You’re Going on the Air!, called the preelectric orators “leather-lunged word hurlers who depended on stentorian power to carry their voices to three counties at one time.” Once electromagnetism displaced sound waves in the air as the vehicle of the voice, the elocutionary standards of the nineteenth century were rendered obsolete. The elocution manuals had provided elaborate instructions about when to pause and how long to do it. It was a mechanical necessity – the orators needed a space in which to take a breath. Yet that same pause may have given the speaker a moment to plan what to say next. When the need to project the voice disappeared, so did the luxury of the pause. In this way the utilitarian pauses of oratory might have become the useless hesitations of the electrically amplified public speaker. It was in these hesistant moments that the “ums” are likely to have been spoken and recognized. [pg 130]
Some sound artists have produced pieces editing out words and leaving only disfluencies, laughter, throat clearing, and other vocal marginalia. The Books, an electronic folk group, have a fifty-five-second piece called “ps,” and the Seattle-based composer, David Hahn, turned a recorded interview between a journalist and a CEO into a piece called “Corporate Coitus.” Hahn used the “ums” and “uhs” as “compositional building blocks” to create a piece with the crescendos of sexual intercourse. [pg 139]
Otherwise, how can speakers be made more fluent – more umless? If people have to pay money for each “uh” or “um,” repeated word, or interrupted sentence, their fluency will increase. Verbal reprimands help. So do electric shocks. [pg 141]
The use of “um” and “uh” is a tactic of speakers who are speaking self-consciously, argue Christenfeld and a colleague, Beth Creager. They observed drinkers in bars and found that drinking alcohol reduced “um,” though the method is somewhat impractical for everyday use: to become fully umless, a drinker would need to drink nineteen beers. [pg 142]
It appears that every type of spoken disfluency also exists in sign language. In Deaf culture, slips of the hand are opportunities to make a joke or feel embarrassed, and signers who often fill their pauses are considered distracted. To make the sign for “um” in American Sign Language, hold your dominant hand in front of you, palm facing up, your five fingers slightly apart. Now circle your forearm away from you and return it, repeating the gesture. [pg 142]
Around 414 BCE, the early rhetorician Gorgias warned that speech could charm, like witchcraft. It also worked like a drug, creating emotions in listeners that they couldn’t control. “For just as different drugs dispel different secretions ... so also in the case of speeches, some distress, others delight, some cause fear, others make the hearer bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion.” [pg 149]
“Today’s American audiences want information in an entertainment package,” Brooks added. In Europe and Asia, adults don’t need a stand-up comedy routine to be tricked into learning. “In Europe, you can stand behind a lectern and read from notes and most people will like it,” he says. “I spoke at Volvo once in Sweden and when it was all over, they said, “We like you. You’re not a typical American speaker. You have knowledge, and you can give it to us in a format that’s not an over-the-top style.’ An American style is not a compliment – that means you’re showy, and preachy, but light on content.” [pg 161]
