Pauses in spontaneous oral texts and in spoken texts

Abstract

This paper aims at investigating the position and the function of pauses in spontaneous speech and during oral readings. Taking as a starting point Cruttenden’s work (1986) and the framework of the French school of Discourse Analysis, we examine the hypothesis that, in addition to indicating the boundaries of intonational groups and of being part of the hesitation phenomenon, pauses are also material forms of the language, operating as sites of significance and identity.