Abstract
Spoken communication is characterized by a sizable portion of breathing and hesitation pauses
and fillers. When used as a strategy, pauses and fillers appear to facilitate word selection and
organization during speech. However, they are also a sign of disfluency, particularly when
speakers imbed words and phrases from foreign language through code-switching (Tissi, 2006).
The difficulty in selecting an appropriate foreign word, deciding its syntactic position and
pronouncing it correctly result into a great deal of hesitation which is largely ignored in
researching CS. The present study explores hesitation phenomenon in Pashto L1 bilinguals'
communication. By recording and scanning the spontaneous communication obtained from 12
informants selected through the „Social Network‟ sampling, the study examines hesitation as an
essential phenomenon of CS. The qualitative analysis shows that hesitation markers are the signs
of disfluency that are more manifested in participants‟ communication with switched elements
from foreign (English) language. Finally, the study concludes that the incorporation of hesitation
pauses and fillers are the essential features of bilingualism- both as a strategy and consequence
of CS. The study brings forth a sizable, but mostly ignored portion of bilingual‟ speech by
identifying and enlisting various types of pauses and fillers.
Usman Ali, Munir Khan, Muhammad Kamal Khan. (2019) Code-Switching in Pashto: An Analysis of Hesitation and Filled Pauses as a Consequence of CS, Balochistan Journal of Linguistics, Volume 7, Issue 1.
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