Disfluencies in Public and Private Speech

This study investigates how speakers adapt their use of disfluencies in public versus private speech settings. Existing studies suggest systematic differences in disfluency rates, depending on who we are communicating with, how interactive the communication is, how difficult the topic is, whether the interaction is broadcast or not, and whether the speech is pre-scripted or not. We aim to improve this understanding through analysis in the Slovenian language, using data from the Training Corpus of Spoken Slovenian ROG-Artur. We investigate whether quantitative differences in the use of disfluency exist between private and public speech, and aim to explain these differences by investigating the relationship between disfluency functions and the physical, social, cognitive, and other factors influencing communication behavior. Our results revealed significant differences in disfluency patterns: disfluencies, in general, are more frequent in private speech, whereas filled pauses, unrepaired pronunciations and blocks, are more common in public speech. We group disfluency functions into two general categories. In contextual analysis, we interpret that speakers reduce disfluencies in public speech due to its high relevance, formal expectations, partial pre-scripting, time constraints and advanced speaker skills, while the higher frequency of filled pauses, unrepaired pronunciations and blocks in public speech reflect the impact of longer dialog turns, time constraints and emotional stress. The findings of this study should be interpreted with caution, given the interpretative nature of qualitative analysis and the potential confounding effect of the involvement of different speakers in the public and private speech samples.