Week 3, Zanna: Filler Words

The Exercise: Become aware of the use of "filler" words and phrases and try to eliminate them from your speech.  Fillers are words that do not add meaning to what you're saying, such as "um," "ah," "so," "well," "like," "you know," "kind of," and "sort of."  Additional filler words enter our vocabulary from time to time. Recent additions might include "basically" and "anyway."

As is typical for me, I had grand plans to make this one interesting (read: difficult). Those of you who read last week's blog and made it to the end may have noticed the "ask me about how you can help, it could be lucrative for you" sentence.  No one did.  That's OK, I tried to recruit some people to help, but mostly I forgot to ask.  I decided to add a monetary value to the filler word challenge, and charge myself a quarter for each.  At the end of the week, whoever helped me catch the words would be entered into a drawing to win the pot.  I guess I can just give the $23.75 for fillers that I caught myself to charity, or more likely, lunch.

"I, um, you know, like... have a dream... and stuff"

Catching your own filler words is notoriously difficult, but anyone who has ever been associated with Toastmasters has a bit of training with it.  Within Toastmasters, it is the job of the Grammarian to catch and log all of the filler words uttered during the meeting.  This is good because it makes you very aware of how frequently they are used.  On the other hand, this is bad because it makes you very aware of how frequently they are used.  The most compelling speakers don't use them at all. Everyone else uses them ALL THE TIME, to the point that even with monetary incentive, we can barely hear them. But we do feel them. Words have power. Filler words suck the life out of the important words so that the meaning gets diluted.  Fillers tend to make you sound less confident. Which to me, is part of their appeal. I was taught (by a team consisting of Midwestern Scandinavians, demure Southerners, and playground bullies) to not be a braggart; it is unseemly. Fillers let you live vaguely and free of commitment. Sadly, fillers are also lily-livered conversational crutches. 

"So, uh... well, basically, it was like
four score, and kinda like, I dunno,
like seven years ago...anyway..."

The other part of the assignment was to pay attention to why we were using these words. From what I could  tell, the filler-meter went up the quickest when I was less certain of what I was talking about, and had to think and speak at the same time....AND (used here as a filler) um... to... um... signal the listener that I wasn't done talking yet (conversational filibuster!)  

Interestingly, I've found it difficult to minimize my filler words whilst writing this blog. I like to write this thing as if I'm talking to you in person. Filler words make it seem more conversational, and less stuffy....and... um... stuff. Yeah. That's it.