Methods, Finding, Discusssion, and Conclusion (Types and Functions of Fillers)

()          the act of doing something when speaking

After transcribing, I started to identify those fillers.

3.3 Data Analysis

3.3.1    Identifying the Data

            I limited the part of the conversation that would be identified in order to get the valid data from all conversations. The greeting and the farewell parts of the conversation would not be identified. Only the utterances related to the three questions about the main topic, Petra Square Apartment, would be identified. To mark fillers in the conversation in the table, I put a small superscript number before those fillers. The number will be in order.

In identifying fillers in those conversations, I used three principles. First, I identified the same fillers from the examples given in the primary sources, such as well, you know, basically, I think, sort of, kind of, like, I mean, if you see what I mean, ee, err, ehm, huh, ah, uh, and so on (Brown and Yule, 1983, p.129) (Hatt, 1998, par.5), (Rose, 1998, p.7). In addition, I also used Yule's theory (2006, p.242), that fillers are a break in the flow of speech, so every silence in the conversation would be identified as fillers.

Then, to make sure that they are fillers, I used a second principle from Baalen (2001, par.7) that fillers could be deleted from the sentence without a change in content. I read the sentence with and without deleting the sounds and/or the words that were assumed as fillers to check whether the content was changed or not.

            Finally, I used the third principle to make sure whether the sounds and/or the words were fillers or not, that is by listening to the recorded data for at least two times. According to Wu (2001, p.2) fillers do not flow within the context of the conversation. In addition, Carter, Goddard, Reah, Sanger, and Bowring (1997, p.201) mention that fillers happen when the speakers are planning and thinking about what s/he wants to say next. By listening to those conversations again, I could check whether the sounds and/or the words flew within the context or not, and whether the speaker was planning and thinking about what s/he wants to say next or not. In short, by applying those three principles explained above, I could identify fillers as my data.

           

3.3.2    Classifying the Data

            I classified the data into two big classifications, that is the types of fillers and the functions of fillers.