Hesitation Particles (2016)

sound composition (5:29)

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Filler words are a type of discourse particle often called hesitation particles used in most languages to mark a pause or hesitation in speech. As positive signifiers of linguistic gaps, they are uniquely poised in the space between sound and language.​ This audio composition is comprised of original recordings collected through one-on-one interviews with 31 native speakers of distinct languages. The arrangement emulates linguistic immersion and the sensation of a crowd, allowing viewers to encounter the individual and the collective at once. The composition ebbs and flows as the prosody of the speakers converge and diverge, diminishing specific lexical value and moving toward a generalized study of the poetics of the utterance. 

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