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Features 4 and 5: Fillers and backchannels

Fillers are words and utterances like “er,” “well,” “hmm,” and “um” that do not have a specific meaning but rather fill time and allow the speaker to gather his or her thoughts (Willis 2003). Backchannels, on the other hand, are words and utterances like “uh-huh,” “oh,” “yeah,” and “I see” that are used to acknowledge what the speaker is saying and encourage him or her to continue (Stenström 2004).

Both fillers and backchannels are common in English conversation because they serve important communicative and interpersonal functions, and it would be both difficult and awkward to have a conversation without them (Willis 2003).