By Gina Park, CNN
(CNN) — As someone who’s originally from Southern California and now lives in the South, it’s not uncommon for me to get Valley girl comments.
I have a habit of throwing in a quick “you know, like” or “so like” in between every few sentences.
Those are called “filler words,” which are defined as words, sounds or phrases that we use, often unintentionally, to fill pauses when we don’t know what to say.
I use them so often that I don’t process how many times I’m saying them. In fact, most of us probably aren’t counting the amount of filler words we use in a sentence (but I bet you’re counting now).
There is even an ongoing TikTok trend, in which online users like Aleeya Hutchins and John Spina try to speak for one to three minutes straight without using any filler words.
“It’s difficult for us to be in the present moment and speak freely without taking pauses,” Hutchins said in her video.
“Every time I see this trend on my ‘for you’ page, it looks really easy, but every participant in this challenge sounds like they’re suffocating on every word,” Spina said in his video.
I feel it, too. Many of these videos are filled with comments from people expressing discomfort, anxiety or even anger at the number of pauses participants trying to avoid filler words are taking.
Pausing is just one of the many ways people are advised to cut filler words from their speech. Other methods include taking a deep breath or speaking only after formulating a full thought.
So, like, do you really want to remove those filler words from your speech? What are they there for? One expert told me that constantly trying to stop myself from saying filler words could worsen my communication with others.
Where do filler words come from?
If you’ve ever spoken to people from different regions or even been online, you’ve probably noticed that different people use different filler words.
More known regional accents include the Valley girl accent, which involves repetitive use of the words “like,” “totally” and “whatever.” A newer version, known as influencer-speak or TikTok voice, involve “you know” and “vibe.”
Everyone speaks differently and we know that, but where are these filler words coming from?
This is a hard question to answer because we’ve always used filler words.
“Filler words are part of your mental dictionary, even things like um or uh,” said Dr. Idan Blank, assistant professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Although most people might not think of filler words as words, “it is a word as far as our mind is concerned,” he added. “And so, if you, as an individual, want to use a filler word, which filler word you use is the one that you’ve used the most. Because that’s the one that is easiest for you to pull out.”
If you take that to a larger, regional scale, you get things like the Valley girl accent, which is created by cultural comfort with certain filler words.
“The way we use language changes from speaker to speaker, and some ways of speaking get conventionalized. We all want to be able to communicate, so we often mimic the way other people speak. And of course, a big part of language is habits,” Blank said.
Why do we use filler words?
There are two main goals in language: delivering information and having that information be understood, whether that’s factually or emotionally.
The easiest way to do this is through speech. By talking to people, we can build a rhythm that allows us to achieve these goals, and filler words can be a great tool in maintaining conversational momentum.