Perception of disfluencies in English

This study examines the effects of speaker gender and disfluency type (‘uh’ vs. ‘um’) on listeners’ perceptions of English speakers, in terms of both status and solidarity traits. Participants were 33 native speakers of American English who were asked to listen to and rate recordings of six speakers (three males, three females) on several status and solidarity traits. The recordings were spliced together to make three different versions for each speaker (‘um’, ‘uh’, and fluent). Each participant heard and evaluated one version of each of the six speakers’ utterances, using Latin-square design to ensure that each set included one recording from each of the six speakers, two of which contained ‘uh,’ two of which contained ‘um,’ and two of which were without disfluencies. The results showed a small but significant effect of gender on status perceptions, but the study did not find a significant difference in perceptions of ‘uh’ versus ‘um.’