Everyone wants to sound fluent. To speak in fully formed sentences, without gaps, as though they know what they are talking about. Anxiety over stumbling or tying yourself in knots trying to find the right words – a condition called glossophobia – puts many people off public speaking entirely. But linguists may now be able to offer a crumb of consolation to nervous speakers.
Hesitating, even for as little as 300 milliseconds, can change how your audience perceives you – and in a surprisingly positive way. A study in the journal Lingua has found that speech that contains “unfilled pauses” – noticeable silences between words that don’t have anything to do with punctuation – is judged more “articulate” and “educated” than speech without gaps. In short, we may finally have proof of what Ronan Keating told us two decades ago: you say it best when you say nothing at all.
There is a downside: these same speakers are also thought of as less “authoritative” and “confident”. The paper’s author suggests that listeners believe unfilled pauses indicate someone is thinking carefully about what they’re saying – and as a result, they assume that the person is more intelligent. Conversely, he says: “Those who think and deliberate may not be regarded as assertive.” This is backed up by earlier work showing that unfilled pauses are seen as less relaxed. But what you lose in swagger, you make up for in intellectual appeal.
Although the study did not compare silences with so-called filled pauses – the “ums” and “ers” that pepper so much of our speech – it may be worth trying to keep them to a minimum. Previous research has found that speakers with high “um” rates are judged “less credible”, “less truthful” and “less competent”. On the other hand, filled pauses are not totally useless. There is evidence that they alert listeners to the fact that something complex or difficult is coming up. If your priority is sounding smart, however, do not be tempted to stuff your silences with meaningless syllables.
The lesson seems to be that, if you need thinking time, you should not be scared to just take it. A mini-hiatus is not going to make you seem stupid, or incapable of expressing yourself properly. It could have quite the opposite effect. After all, as a sage once said: “He who knows, does not speak.”
David Shariatmadari is the author of Don’t Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language
