Disfluency markers and their facial and gestural correlates. preliminary observations on a dialogue in French

The aim of this article is to try to establish any observable regularities between the vocal and the visual expression of disfluency markers in a French spontaneous dialogue. The data show different configurations for different types of disfluency markers. Thus “euh”s are typically accompanied by mutual eye contact and no gesture; interrupted eye contact takes place less frequently, on occasions where speech planning is more seriously impaired (syntactical disruption and combination of “euh” with other disfluency markers). False starts seem to be typically accompanied by gesture production whereas eye contact can be maintained if the speaker relies or not on the listener to resolve the speech production problem. The article takes up the idea that disfluency markers can be classified along a continuum throughout the speech formulation process, going from the most discreet to the most prominent. It suggests that the more prominent the disfluency, the more likely is the visual channel to play a role (interrupted eye contact and gesture production).