Temporal Characteristics of Speech: The Case of the Hesitant Stripper

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This chapter focuses on an aspect of human message behavior that is as fascinating as it is subtle. The temporal characteristics of speech (e.g., silent pauses, speech rate) belong to the category of nonverbal cues termed vocalics (or paralinguistics) which encompasses all the features of vocal behavior other than the words themselves. Thus, vocalics includes properties such as pitch, loudness, vocal characterizers (e.g., laughing, yawning, clearing the throat), filled pauses (e.g., “er,” “um,” “ah” vocalizations), and so on. The temporal characteristics of speech that are of primary interest in this chapter can conveniently be divided into those occurring prior to the onset of speech and those manifested during the course of speaking. The former, then, includes the time span that it takes to initiate a speaking turn, while the latter involves various indices of silent pausing and phonation while speaking.