Bonus 8: So, like, what’s up with, um, discourse markers? Hark, a liveshow! (Patreon)

There are all these little words and phrases that we use all the time - y'know, anyway, okay, right, so, however, I mean, uh, and then... They aren't strictly necessary, and yet our speech would feel so weird without them. Welcome to the world of discourse markers! 

In this special Lingthusiasm live show, recorded in Montreal at Argo Bookshop, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne ensure you can say YES the next some someone says ‘y'know?’ 

We look at how regular words get transformed into discourse markers, why they’re so important for making speech flow, the fancy kinds of discourse markers in writing and historical texts, and just why they get some people wound up. We also discuss why discourse markers make life tricky for subtitlers and computers, but are so necessary in everyday conversation. 

Here's a picture from the liveshow - what an excellent audience of books and people!   

Links

• Janus-faced but 
• camel vs candle [PDF] 
• Why do Americans say ‘Uh’ and ‘Um’ and British People Say ‘Er’ and ‘Erm’? [Mental Floss]
• Separated By A Common Language, on uh, er, um, erm and eh
• Language Log on um and uh 
• Deborah Schiffrin (Wikipedia)
• Discourse Markers (Wikipedia)
• A fairly long list of discourse markers in English 

You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript is available for this episode as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.  Email us at lingthusiasm [at] gmail [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page.

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Emily Gref and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. Recorded on September 23 2017 at Argo Bookshop in front of a live audience. Photo courtesy of Adele-Elise Prevost.