Um, honestly it’s sort of okay to speak like this — the controversy of conversation fillers

For centuries, language purists have treated the “ums,” “errs,” and “likes” of our vocabulary like weeds in a manicured garden. From the rigid oratory of Ancient Greece to the red pens of modern English teachers, these “disfluencies” have been dismissed as symptoms of a lazy mind. Even the legendary Noam Chomsky brushed them off as mere “noise”— errors that occur when the brain’s engine misfires.

However, the persistent survival of these sounds suggests something far more complex. If these words were truly useless, they would have been pruned from the human lexicon millennia ago. Instead, they appear in every language on Earth, including sign language. Far from being errors, these sounds are the invisible scaffolding of human empathy and cognitive processing.

The conversational traffic controller

In the wild, natural speech is messy. We don’t speak in edited paragraphs, and usually think of things to say as we speak. This is where “filled pauses” (the technical term for um and uh) become a buffer, a moment to think before one speaks.

Recent linguistic studies have turned the “distraction” myth on its head. It turns out that listeners actually pay more attention to what follows a hesitation. When a speaker says “uh,” the listener’s brain prepares for high-value or complex information. For toddlers, these pauses are educational cues; they are significantly better at learning the names of new objects when those names are preceded by a filled pause. The “um” is a flare sent up to say, “Pay attention — something new is coming."

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Holden Caulfield’s linguistic shield

While linguists look at how these words help us understand each other, literature shows us how they help us survive each other. Perhaps no character in fiction utilizes the “disfluency” as brilliantly as J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye.

To a traditional grammarian, Holden’s speech is a disaster. He leans heavily on the passive voice —  style typically discouraged because it creates distance between the subject and the action. Holden, however, needs the barrier.  By saying “The reason I was standing…” instead of “I stood,” he detaches himself from the painful reality of his own life (in this case, being expelled).

The most telling feature of Holden’s voice is his obsession with the phrase “sort of.” It appears a staggering 179 times in the novel. Whether he is describing his mental state as “pretty run-down” or “sort of” liking someone, he is using linguistic hedging. By refusing to commit to definitive language, Holden protects himself from the vulnerability of being truly known or rejected.

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The conscientious speaker

Beyond protection, discourse markers like “you know,” “well,” and “look” serve as the social glue of dialogue. Interestingly, research suggests that conscientious and empathetic speakers tend to use these markers more frequently.

These words function as checking-in points. When you say “you know” or “I mean,” sometimes you are monitoring the listener’s engagement. You are ensuring the bridge between your mind and theirs remains intact. These markers provide a real-time window into the speaker’s thought process, allowing the listener to predict and interpret the emotional weight of what comes next.

The “ums” and “sort ofs” of our lives are the fingerprints of human thought, proof that we are navigating the complex, often frightening world of communication in real-time. They are the very things that make our language human.