awkward how reassuring i find this
well ya duh society shames speech patterns associated with young women
“Speech fillers” are just a human’s way of saying “wait a sec I’m thinking”. It means we think more before we speak, always trying to find the right way to say it. Every language has them. And people shouldn’t be annoyed by it, ever.
Fun fact: even Deaf people and ASL users have a “filler” and depends on the person. Sometimes it’s almost like a wave, other times it’s wiggling fingers.
When I was a teenager I had so many adult men get so uptight about me using ‘like’ as a filler word. I’d just say something like “oh it’s like three blocks from here” and a male teacher or uncle or something would butt in with “oh is it like three blocks from here or is it actually three blocks from here?” and lecture me about how it made me sound less intelligent and made it harder to take what I said seriously. I mean I’m sure this type of unnecessary language policing happens in other gender combinations, but I only seemed to experienced adult men doing it to teenage girls.
Now that I know about filler words and how universal they are and the important purpose they serve I wish I could go back in time to counter-lecture them about what filler words are and how there’s no shame in using them in conversations, instead of just sitting there feeling ashamed.
