A cross-cultural study of pauses and time-fillers in some american and vietnamese films

A cross-cultural study of pauses and time-
fillers in some american and vietnamese films

Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nhung

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Ngôn ngữ học Anh; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: GS.TS. Nguyễn Quang
Năm bảo vệ: 2012

Abstract: The present study is a comparative and exploratory study of the use of
silence/pauses and time-fillers in American and Vietnamese films. Its aims are to
investigate: (i) How the Vietnamese characters perform silence/pauses and time-fillers
in the contexts studied, (ii) How the American characters perform silence/pauses and
time-fillers in the contexts studied, and (iii) What the major differences between
American and Vietnamese characters in performing silence/pauses and time-fillers are.
Data are collected from four Vietnamese and four American films. They are analyzed
against the three reference points of availability, proportionality and manifestability to
find out major similarities and differences between American and Vietnamese
characters (and hopefully, the American and the Vietnamese) in using silence/pauses
and time-fillers. The results show that American and Vietnamese characters have
different preferences for using silence/pauses and time-fillers in the films under
investigation. They are significantly different not only in the number of pause and
time-filler occurrences, but also in the duration and location. Moreover, the variables
of power such as „high-to-low‟, „low-to-high‟, or „equal‟ tend to have a significant
influence on the occurrence, the duration and the location of silence/pauses and time-
fillers for both groups.

Keywords: Giao văn hóa; Tiếng Anh; Ngôn ngữ học

Content

PART A. INTRODUCTION
I. RATIONALE

Silence/Pauses and time-fillers exist in all social interactions in any culture. They are
used to show respect, anger, hostility, disinterest, or any other emotions. However, when and
how to use time-fillers or silence/pauses are not the same in different languages and cultures.
Therefore, the study of similarities and differences of using silence/pauses and time-fillers in
interaction would help not only for the success of American-Vietnamese cross-cultural
communication but also in communicative language teaching/learning.


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II. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
Although intralinguistic (vocabulary, grammatical rules, phonetic rules ) and
extralinguistic (facial expressions, postures, proximity ) factors, to a great extent, play a
vitally important role in communication, they are beyond the scope of this study. This study
only focuses on pauses and time-fillers in some American and Vietnamese films for the
discovery of major similarities and differences between the two groups.
This research is confined to studying only the factor of power [colleague to colleague
(equal); boss to employee (high to low); and employee to boss (low to high)] that are readily
manageable and lend themselves to quantitative analyses.
Similar plots, characters and scenes that involve similar communicative events/
situations are intentionally chosen for contrastive analysis.
III. AIMS OF THE STUDY
The aims of the study are:
- To investigate the use of silence/pauses and time-fillers under the variables of power in
chosen situations in some American and Vietnamese films.
- To find out major American- Vietnamese cross-cultural differences and similarities in using
silence/pauses and time-fillers in the situations under investigation.
IV. METHODOLOGY

The main method of this study is the quantitative one. All the considerations, remarks,
interpretations, comments and assumptions given in the study are largely based on data
analysis with due reference to publications.
The data were collected from four American and four Vietnamese socio-psychological
films. The instrument to construct validation is used to tap individual assessment of social
power (SP).

V. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The study consists of three parts:
Part I. Introduction, which provides the rationale, scope, aims and methods of the sudy.
Part II. Development, which consists of three chapters.
Chapter 1. Theoretical preliminaries. This chapter covers the relationship between
language and culture, language and communication, cross-cultural communication, high-
context and low-context culture, non-verbal communication and paralanguage.
Chapter 2. Silence/pauses and Time-fillers. This chapter reviews the issues relevant to
the study including silence/ pauses and time-fillers. Then the notions of silence/ pause and
time-filler definitions and usages are discussed.

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Chapter 3. Findings and Discussions. The strategies of using silence/pauses and time-
fillers are identified and major cross-cultural differences and similarities discussed.
Part III. Conclusion, in which the main findings are reviewed, the implications for
cross-culture interactions, the limitations of the study pointed out and suggestions for further
research offered

PART B. DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1. Theoretical preliminaries
1.1. Language, culture and communication
1.1.1. Language and communication
By age four, most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral

language. By age six or seven, most humans can comprehend, as well as express, written
thoughts. These unique abilities of communicating through a native language clearly separate
humans from all animals.
In 1994, in Time magazine, an article appeared titled ‘How man began’. Within that
article was the following bold assertion:
‚No single, essential difference separates human beings from other animals”.
Yet, in what is obviously a contradiction to such a statement, all evolutionists admit that
communication via speech is uniquely human - so that it often is used as the singular, and
most important, dividing line between humans and animals.
Language is the development of the basic form of communication between human beings, and
in a society. And just as it is the basic form, it is also the most developed. We can not
communicate in any real sense without language, other than through gestures; we do
communicate through some non-verbal forms like the visual arts - painting and sculpture - and
through dance, but the culmination of true, articulate, communication is through language. It
could naturally take a number of forms. It could be unvarnished, workaday prose, it could be
poetry, it could be drama; but all of these are forms of language, written, spoken and read. The
way in which the language is being used is making it pretty. Thus, a successful communicator
must own a good command of language at first.
1.1.2. Language and culture
Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning ‚to cultivate‛) is a
term that has different meanings. And, the word ‚culture‛ is most commonly used in three
basic senses:
 excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture

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 an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the
capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
 the set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes an institution,
organization or group.
(

The notion of communicative competence is one of the theories that underlies the
communicative approach to foreign language teaching. Canale and Swain (1980: 1-47) define
communicative competence in terms of four components:
1. Grammatical competence: including vocabulary, word formation, sentence
formation, pronunciation, spelling and linguistic semantics;
2. Sociolinguistic competence: addressing the extent to which utterances are produced
and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual
factors such as status of participants, purposes of the interaction, and norms or conventions of
interaction;
3. Discourse competence: concerning mastery of how to combine grammatical forms
and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres.
4. Strategic competence: composed of mastery of verbal and non-verbal
communication strategies that may be called into actual situations or to sufficient competence
in one or more of the other areas of communicative competence and to enhance the
effectiveness of communication.
A more recent survey of communicative competence by Bachman (1990) divides it into
the broad headings of "organizational competence," which includes both grammatical and
discourse (or textual) competence, and pragmatic competence, which includes both
sociolinguistic and illocutionary competence. Through the influence of communicative
language teaching, it has become widely accepted that communicative competence should be
the goal of language education, central to good classroom practice. The understanding of
communicative competence has been influenced by the field of pragmatics and the philosophy
of language concerning speech acts.
Research results from contrastive analysis of discourse and acts such as compliment,
apology indicate that appropriateness in a particular situation in one culture may not become
the same in another culture. So acquiring sociolinguistic norms is actually acquiring the
culture in which the language is used.
Savignon (1997) adds that there exists the interrelation among the four components in
increasing communicative competence.

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1. Linguistic knowledge (verbal and non-verbal elements, patterns of elements in
particular speech event, range of possible variants, meaning of variants in particular
situations)
2. Interacting skills (perception of salient features in communicative situations;
selection and interpretation of forms appropriate to specific situations, role and relationship;
norms of interaction and interpretation; strategies for achieving goals)
3. Cultural knowledge (social structure, values and attitudes, cognitive map/schema,
enculturation processes)
Nguyen Quang (2001: 68) states that communicative competence is the shared part of
the three components mentioned above.
Despite the disagreement among scholars about its components, all researchers
postulate the existence of communicative competence.
A popular cultural framework was proposed by Hall (1973, 1990), in which he states
that all cultures can be situated in relation to one another through the styles in which they
communicate. In some cultures, such as those of North America and much of Western
Europe, communication occurs predominantly through explicit statements in text and speech,
and they are thus categorized as low-context cultures. In other cultures, such as Asia, much of
the Middle East, Africa, and South America, messages include other communicative cues
such as body language and the use of silence, and thus, known as high-context cultures.
Essentially, high-context communication involves implying a message through that which is
not uttered. This includes the situation, behavior, and para-verbal cues as integral parts of the
communicated message. These terms such as “high-context and low-context culture”, “non-
verbal communication” and “paralanguage” will be investigated in the following sections.
1.2. High-context culture vs. Low-context culture
1.2.1. Definitions and differences
High-context (HC) culture and the contrasting low-context (LC) culture are terms
presented by Hall in his book Beyond Culture (1976). Hall states that HC transactions feature
pre-programmed information that is in the receiver and in the setting, with only minimal
information in the transmitted message. LC transactions are the reverse. Most of the

information must be in the transmitted message in order to make up for what is missing in the
context.
High-context culture refers to a culture's tendency to use high-context messages over
low-context messages in routine communication. This choice of communication styles
translates into a culture that will cater towards in-groups; an in-group being a group that has

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similar experiences and expectations, from which inferences are drawn. In a high-context
culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain. Words and word choice
become very important in higher context communication, since a few words can communicate
a complex message very effectively to an in-group (but less effectively outside that group),
while in a lower context culture, the communicator needs to be much more explicit and the
value of a single word is less important.
LC culture refers to a culture’s tendency to cater towards in-groups. Low context
cultures, such as Germany or the United States make much less extensive use of such similar
experiences and expectations to communicate. Much more is explained through words or
verbalization, instead of the context.
Viet Nam and most Asian countries are classified as HC cultures. The U.S.A and
Canada, along with Northern European countries, are classified as LC. This is, of course, an
oversimplification. Within a LC culture, we'll find ourselves in high-context situations and
vice-versa. For example, within a LC American culture, communications among family
members are generally HC because of the high level of shared experience. For our purposes,
though, we will rely on the broad-brush definition.
While these terms are sometimes useful in describing some aspects of a culture, one
can never say a culture is "high" or "low" because societies all contain both modes. "High"
and "low" are therefore less relevant as a description of a whole people, and more useful to
describe and understand particular situations and environments.
1.2.2. High and low context situations
Every culture and every situation has its high and low aspects. Often one situation will
contain an inner HC core and an outer LC ring for those who are less involved.

For instance, a PTA (parent-teacher association) is usually a low-context situation: any
parent can join, the dates of the meetings, who is president, what will be discussed, etc. are all
explicitly available information, and it is usually fairly clear how to participate in the
meetings. However, if this is a small town, perhaps the people who run the PTA all know
each other very well and have many overlapping interests. They may "agree" on what should
be discussed or what should happen without ever really talking about it, they have
unconscious, unexpressed values that influence their decisions. Other parents from outside
may not understand how decisions are actually being made. So the PTA is still low-context,
but it has a high-context subgroup that is in turn part of a high-context small town society.
When we enter a HC situation, it does not immediately become a LC culture just
because we came in the door. It is still a high-context culture and we are just ignorant. Also,

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even low context cultures can be difficult to learn: religious dietary laws, medical training,
written language all take years to understand. The point is that that information has been made
conscious, systematic, and available to those who have the resources to learn it.
High contexts can be difficult to enter if we are an outsider (because we do not carry
the context information internally, and because we can not instantly create close
relationships). Low contexts are relatively easy to enter if we are an outsider (because the
environment contains much of the information we need to participate, and because we can
form relationships fairly soon, and because the important thing is accomplishing a task rather
than feeling our way into a relationship).
Many researchers have found that people in high-context cultures tend to be more
implicit in verbal codes, perceive highly verbal persons less attractive, tend to be more reliant
on and tuned into non-verbal communication, and expect to have more non-verbal codes in
communication.
1.3. Non-verbal communication
Communication is the transfer of information, ideas and emotions from one person to
another. Most of us spend about 75 percent of our waking hours communicating our
knowledge, thoughts, and ideas to others. However, most of us fail to realize that a great deal

of our communication is of a non-verbal form as opposed to the oral and written forms.
The last decades have seen a tremendous upsurge in research and popular interest in
the phenomena of nonverbal communication. In its narrow and accurate sense, nonverbal
behavior refers to actions as distinct from speech. It thus includes facial expressions, hand and
arm gestures, postures, positions, and various movements of the body or the legs and feet. It
may also include the way we wear our clothes or the silence we keep. Therefore, we can say
that silence/pauses are considered as one of non-verbal behaviors.
In his book, Nonverbal communication, Albert Mehrabian (1972) states that nonverbal
communication (NVC) is the act of imparting or interchanging thoughts, opinions, or
information without the use of spoken words. Nonverbal communication is used as a key
variable to determine people's attitudes, values, and beliefs. For example, an observer
watching a focus group will pay special attention to the nonverbal cues of group interaction,
such as body language, facial expressions, and eye contact, to identify group members' true
feelings about an issue.
In The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, nonverbal communication is defined as
communication without the use of spoken language.

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Many scholars indicate that NVC is usually understood as the process of
communication through sending and receiving wordless messages. NVC can be
communicated through gestures and touch, by body language or posture, by facial expressions
and eye contact. NVC can be communicated through object communication such as clothing,
hairstyles or even architecture, symbols and inforgraphics. Speech contains nonverbal
elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, emotion and speaking style, as well
as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress. Dance is also regarded as a
nonverbal communication. Likewise, written texts have nonverbal elements such as
handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words, or the use of emoticons.
1.4. Paralanguage
Paralanguage refers to the vocal and nonverbal elements of communication used to modify
meaning and convey emotion. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously,

and it includes the pitch, volume, and, in some cases, intonation of speech. Sometimes the
definition is restricted to vocally-produced sounds. The study of paralanguage is known as
paralinguistics.
The term ‘paralanguage’ is sometimes used as a cover term for body language, which is
not necessarily tied to speech, and paralinguistic phenomena in speech. The latter are
phenomena that can be observed in speech but that do not belong to the arbitrary conventional
code of language.
Paralanguage is part of the nonverbal communication and convey emotions and attitudes.
It may not only be expressed consciously or unconsciously but also include vocalizations such
as hissing, hushing, and whistling, as well as speech modifications such as quality of voice or
hesitations and speed in talking. Some examples of paralanguage are laughing, crying,
whispering, snoring, sucking, sneezing, sighing, etc. Tone of voice plays a fundamental role in
telephone interactions.
According to Robbins and Langton (2001), Paralanguage is communication that goes
beyond the specific spoken words. It includes pitch, amplitude, rate, and voice quality of
speech. Paralanguage reminds us that people convey their feelings not only in what they say,
but also in how they say it.
Literature has shown that it is possible to convey the full gamut of emotions in text. The
real problem is that it takes a long time and a lot of talent to do this. Consequently, it is not
that text does not have emotional clues, but it is so difficult to put them in. To that end, with
text, paralinguistic clues are:
 Explicit: Emoticons, cartoons, call-out descriptions.

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 Style: Typography, layout, color, location.
 Implicit: Rhetoric, rhythm, sound, flex, vocabulary.
The paralinguistic properties of speech play an important role in human speech
communication. There are no utterances or speech signals that lack paralinguistic properties,
since speech requires the presence of a voice that can be modulated. This voice must have
some properties, and all the properties of a voice as such are paralinguistic. However, the

distinction ‚linguistic vs. paralinguistic‛ applies not only to speech but to writing and sign
language as well, and it is not bound to any sensory modality. Even vocal language has some
paralinguistic as well as linguistic properties that can be seen and even felt.
In text-only communication such as email, chatrooms and instant massaging,
paralinguistic elements can be displayed by emoticons, font and color choices, capitalization
and the use of non-alphabetic or abstract characters. Nonetheless, paralanguage in written
communication is limited in comparison with face-to-face conversation, sometimes leading to
misunderstandings.
CHAPTER II. SILENCE/PAUSES AND TIME-FILLERS
2.1. Silence/ Pauses
According to Clark (1996), pauses are powerful cues for what is happening in a
conversation. To use them as a basis for analyzing culture-specific behavior, we first
have to check carefully what purposes pauses may serve in conversations and how the usage
differs across cultures. As we want to build a computational model for American English
and Vietnamese, those two cultures are of special interest.
In the book of Conversational organization ” Interaction between speakers and hearers,
Charles Goodwin (1981) describes his research on gaze behavior and manipulation.
According to him, gaze is used to manage turn taking and to signal understanding or
attentiveness. If attention signals of the listener are missing, pauses are used by the speaker to
regain attention. In this case the duration of the silence is dependent from the nonverbal
signals of the hearer.
2.2. Time-fillers
Time-fillers (TFs) are prevalent in Vietnamese and English spontaneous speech and
pose a major problem in Vietnamese and English speech recognition.
TFs are parts of speech which are not generally recognized as purposeful or containing
formal meaning, usually expressed as pauses such as uh, like and er, but also extending to
repair ("He was buying a black uh, I mean a blue, a blue shirt"), and articulation problems
such as stuttering. This is normally frowned upon in mass media such as news reports or films,
but they occur regularly in everyday conversations, sometimes representing upwards of 20%

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of "words" in conversation. TFs can also be used as a pause for thought, for example: ‚I need
four um oranges and mm three apples‛.
In linguistics, a TF is a sound or word that is spoken in conversations by one
participant to signal to others that he/she has paused to think but is not yet finished speaking.
Different languages have different characteristics of TFs; in English, the most common TFs
are uh /u/, er /ə/ and um /əm/, "Like", "you know", "actually", and "basically" are more
prevalent among youths; in Vietnamese we can find: ừm, anh/chị biết đấy, thực ra thì, kiểu
như, đại loại là, nói thế nào nhỉ? (Nguyen Quang, 2001)
A TF occurs most often when a speaker is thinking. It is a time-filler in that the
speaker actually breaks off speech while continuing to articulate. However, the articulation is
neither a word, nor part of a word.
There are some of the common TFs that are found in most conversations. Even though
it is quite alright to use these TFs once in a while during informal conversations, over a period
of time they become a habit and finally are a part and parcel of our speaking style and diction.
In formal situations, especially, they can become quite annoying to the listener, and the
speaker could unknowingly become more and more conscious and use these TFs to make up
for the awkwardness he or she feels.
CHAPTER III. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Much work has been devoted to the treatment of hesitations in particular time-fillers.
The way in which people hesitate may to some extent be language-specific. This study will not
only concentrate on silence/pauses and time-fillers but also on their actual operations in some
Vietnamese and American films, in which TFs such as well, er (ừ, ờ); you see (anh/chị thấy
không); you know (anh/ chị biết không); oh/ er/ um let me see (ờ/ ừ/ ừm để tôi xem) appear.
3.1. Research methods
3.1.1. Subjects
There are three social factors: relative power, social distance and the ranking of
imposition that relate to the data analysis procedure. But only the second one is focussed on in
the present study.
The subjects chosen for this study includes conversations in which silence/ pauses and

time-fillers are used by characters in 4 Vietnamese and 4 American films. The characters use
silence/pauses and time-fillers in similar settings and with similar conversational topics.
Besides, all the chosen subjects are American in American settings and Vietnamese in
Vietnamese settings. Relationships between subjects are chosen with the factor of power in

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view, mainly focussing on the relationship between two colleagues (equal), boss to employee
(hing to low), and employee to boss (low to high). The reasons for the author’s choice are:
+ The films have similar themes (socio-psychological) with similar conversational situations.
+ The author has watched the films and discussed with her Vietnamese and American
colleagues and friends who have already seen them.
+ The author believes that the study of the American and Vietnamese films made in the US by
American crews and in Vietnam by Vietnamese crews will offer an access to close-to-
authentic speech. Furthermore, the understanding of the subjects’ record is believed to be
necessary for data analysis; therefore; the following parameters are taken into consideration:
3.1.2. Research questions
Based on the aims set in Chapter One, the present study addresses the following
research questions:
1. How do Vietnamese characters perform silence/pauses and time-fillers in the
contexts studied?
2. How do American characters perform silence/pauses and time-fillers in the contexts
studied?
3. What are the major differences between American and Vietnamese characters in
performing silence/pauses and time-fillers?
3.1.3. Research method and data collection instruments
The strategical method used in the present study involves inductive method, which
means considerations and evaluations mainly come from analyzing statistical data. The
theoretical background shown in chapters I and II are mostly based on the research by
Vietnamese and international authors on silence/pauses and time-fillers.
Data are collected in some Vietnamese and American films and analyzed against the

three reference points of availability, proportionality and manifestability to find out major
similarities and differences between American and Vietnamese characters (and hopefully, the
American and the Vietnamese) in using silence/pauses and time-fillers.
3.2. Findings and discussion
3.2.1. Vietnamese findings
The research was mainly based on the data collected from the chosen films, in which
silence/pauses and TFs are used in Vietnamese spontaneous speech by the characters. There
are 22 chosen conversations, which have complete speaker information. In addition, in order
to see how silence/pauses and time-fillers vary across cultures, some parameters (age, sex,
marital status, job, etc) are also used for identifying distinctive forms of TFs and pauses in
Vietnamese.

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3.2.1.1. Availability
From the author’s own data, there are two types of hesitation: silence/pauses and time-
fillers. Silent/Pauses can be considered as pauses produced in conjunction with an inspiration,
swallowing, any laryngo-phonatory reflex, or a silent expiration. Time-fillers correspond to the
perception of a voiced section in the speech signal. Or, that is when the speaker utters
conventional ‘planning markers’ at the beginning/end of an utterance or utters adjacent to
unfilled pauses.
The characteristics of pauses and time-fillers are reported in a style of spoken
discourse and in the same setting (at work): 22 dialogues (10 dialogues between colleagues
and 12 dialogues between the boss and the employee) from the conversations in four
Vietnamses films. The author’s corpus can be considered examples of different power
respectively. To study the different characteristics of these, the author calculates the data so
that she could make a direct comparison.
3.2.1.2. Proportionality
Tables 4, 5, 6 show the proportion of pauses to utterances and the duration of time-
fillers (which occur adjacently to pauses) compared to the total duration of pauses.
The proportion of pauses is the greatest in the employee-to-boss turn. The data indicate that in

the interaction with the boss, the employee tends to use longer pauses
3.2.1.3. Manifestability
When speaking, we all experience time when we can not seem to think of a particular
word we want to say, or when we need more time to organize our thought before we speak; we
sometimes use silence/pauses or add time-fillers to give us extra time we need. In Vietnamese,
there are common time-fillers, for example: ừ, à, ừm, ờ, anh/cậu biết đấy, để nghĩ xem nào,
nói thế nào nhỉ, kiểu, kiểu như, etc. (Nguyen Quang: 110)
3.2.2. American findings
3.2.2.1. Availability
Spontaneous human speech is normally disfluent. Speakers pause, hesitate, interrupt
themselves mid-phrase or mid-word, repeat or replace words, abandon phrases to start afresh,
and season their talk with some expressions, such as: ah, oh, am, mm, like, you know, or, so, I
mean, let see, kind of, in fact, I don”t know, well, etc. (Nguyen Quang: 110)
In the previous section, we have tried to dispel or at least clarify some myths about the
availability, proportionality and manifestability of silence/pauses and time-fillers in some
Vietnamese films. In this section, we go on examining those criteria in some American films.

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In order to answer the research questions, this present study estimates the rate of using
silence/pauses and time-fillers in 4 American films. The characteristics of silence/pauses and
time-fillers are reported in a style of spoken discourse and in the same setting (at work): 34
dialogues (17 dialogues between colleagues and 17 dialogues between the boss and the
employee). The data are collected from the dialogues between different powers: colleagues
(equal), boss to employee, employee to boss, and then calculated so that the author can get a
direct comparison.
3.2.2.2. Proportionality
In order to examine silence/pauses and TFs more comprehensively, not only is it
important to study the availability and proportionality, but also the manifestability in the
conversations. Therefore, the location where silence/pauses and time-fillers occur is also
examined in this study.

3.2.3. Concluding remark
* Major differences:
As shown in the results, the occurrence, length and frequency of pauses and time-
fillers in Vietnamese films greatly differ from American ones across role relationships in
terms of power. In the Vietnamese films, it is found that speakers use pauses at highly varying
rates; and they tend to use silence/pauses much more than TFs. Pauses appear very frequently
and naturally in the chosen dialogues. Besides, the proportionality of TFs in the selected
conversations is consistent among speakers.
By contrast, it is observed that, in the American films, the speakers tend to use TFs
much more than pauses and long silence is very rare. Pauses by American characters are
normally shorter than those by Vietnamese characters. Most of the pauses are followed by
TFs.
* Major similarities:
The findings show that most of TFs are used as expressions of nervousness, hesitation,
embarrassment, word choice or verbal struggle. The data also indicate that Uh (ờ) signals a
forthcoming pause that will be short and Um(ừm/mm) signals a longer pause. No pauses are
found and measured after TFs such as: you know(anh biết đấy), like (kiểu như), just(chỉ là),
so (vì thế), and (và).
Silence/Pauses are found as:
- providing a type of punctuation.
- emphasizing a point.
- drawing attention to a key thought.
- allowing listeners a moment to contemplate what is being said.

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- giving turns.
They make the speech more effective than it might otherwise be. Subdividing the
silence/pauses and TFs into causal categories shows that the vast majority of them occur to
select wording appropriate to the meaning the speakers wish to express.

PART C. CONCLUSION
I. Summary of major findings
Collected data of silence/pauses and time-fillers have been critically discussed and
analyzed with three points of reference. They are: availability, proportionality and
manifestability.
Pauses and TFs have been investigated according to length, occurence and position. It
is discovered that different role relationships (with the factor of power in focus) in different
situations require different patterns of silence/pauses and TFs in both Vietnamese and
American films. It is also found that such parameters as sex, age and education do not seem to
exercise any significant effect on the use of silence/pauses and TFs. Previous works on
English silence/pauses and TFs show that time-filler rates are related to demographic factors
such as sex. Men produce significantly higher rates of TFs than women. However, the
author’s corpus does not reveal similar results in the Vietnamese selected films: sex does not
have any significant effect on the use of silence/pauses and TFs. In spite of that, characters’
residence turns out to be significant. The mean number of silence/pauses and TFs used by
Southern speakers is higher than that of Northern speakers. In addition, no significant effect of
education on the use of silence/pauses and TFs is found.
The research presents initial results of a study on Vietnamese and American
silence/pauses and TFs. With three types of turn in terms of power (colleague-to-colleague,
boss-to-employee, employee-to-boss), it reveals that, apart from uh (ừm) and mm, the
Vietnamese and American characters abundantly use phrases like you know, let see, anh biết
đấy, để tôi xem/ nghĩ nào/ đã nhé… as a common type of TF. Vocal interferences [uh/mm
(ừm)] differ in their distribution among syntactic contexts. Lexical TFs are more likely to be
accompanied by repetitions, false starts etc., while uh/mm are rarely accompanied by other
disfluencies.
Finally, the collected data reveal that most of pauses and time-fillers tend to appear at
some common positions, such as: before a clause, a predicate VPs, before complements or
within an NP (as between a modifier and a head noun).
Although more research on the availability, proportionality and manifestablity of
silence/pauses and TFs in social interactions is needed, the results of this study suggest that

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how to make appropriate use of silence/pauses and TFs is considerably important in
communication and communicative language teaching/learning. Cross-cultural interactants
and language learners should be aware of cross-cultural differences in the use of
silence/pauses and TFs for avoidance of misinterpretation and miscommunication.
II. Limitations
Shortcomings in the study are obviously unavoidable. It is reasonable to say that the
data collected from films are not as authentic as that of real-life conversations.
What is more, this study does not take into account speaker’s mood, feeling and
attitude which appear before or after they pause or use TFs; so it does not help see how that
emotion and attitude affects speakers’ speech and how their pragmatic performance develops.
Furthermore, being a novice linguistic researcher, the author lacks experience and
knowledge of the related field so as to be able to discuss thoroughly every similarity and
difference in the realization of pauses and TFs.
III. Suggestions for further study
Many dimensions still remain uninvestigated, of which the followings would be
suggested:
 Silence/Pauses and Time-fillers in two dialogues and read speech.
 Silence/Pauses – Time-fillers in some famous people’s speeches (Obama, Clinton,
Castro )
 The influence of communicating partners’ parameters on the use of silence/pauses – time-
fillers.

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24. Vietnamese film: Mùa lá rụng.
25. Vietnamese film: Lập trình trái tim.
26. Vietnamese film: Phía trước là bầu trời.
27. Vietnamese film: Cô gái xấu xí – Tập 69.
28. American film: Enchanted
29. American film: Smart people
30. American film: The ugly truth
31. American film: 27 dresses.

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