Filling social space with fillers: gains in social dimension after studying abroad
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Fillers do not merely fill pauses in speaking.They play important cognitive and social functions in discourse.This paper examines how learners' use of such fillers developed among five male English-speaking learners of Japanese while studying abroad for one academic year in Japan.The quantitative and qualitative analyses of fillers in Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPI) conducted before and after study abroad reveal that while their use of fillers prior to studying in Japan seemed to be driven almost exclusively by cognitive needs (e.g., searching for words), upon return the learners' fillers more frequently served social/interpersonal purposes (e.g., mitigating comments of negative evaluation), demonstrating that language gains may be missed in studies that emphasize quantitative rather than qualitative analysis.
Author: Noriko Iwasaki
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2109611908