pausering

Pausering is a term used in linguistics and communication studies to describe the deliberate use of pauses in spoken language to structure discourse and manage interaction. It encompasses silent pauses, filled pauses (such as "uh" and "um"), and the timing and length of these interruptions. Researchers examine pausering to understand how speakers signal turn-taking, emphasize information, or signal stance.

Pausering occurs at multiple levels: between clauses or sentences, at syntactic boundaries, and within phrases, and it interacts with intonation, rhythm, and voice quality. The phenomenon is language- and culture-dependent, with cross-linguistic differences in preferred pause length and placement, which are influenced by speaking style, context, and social norms.

In practice, pausing can aid comprehension by giving listeners time to parse complex ideas, or it can convey hesitation, politeness, or emphasis. In performance and broadcasting, pausing is used to control pacing, create suspense, or accommodate processing time for audiences. In speech synthesis and human-computer interaction, pausering is implemented to improve naturalness by inserting context-appropriate pauses based on linguistic and processing cues. Methodologically, pausering is studied using acoustic measurements of pause duration, spectral characteristics of the voice around pauses, and alignment with syntactic and prosodic boundaries in speech corpora.

The term is primarily encountered in academic literature as a descriptive or analytical concept rather than as a prescriptive practice, and may be described differently across disciplinary perspectives.