You know and you see are used as the empathizers to engage the listener and make her/him feel part of the conversation. They often appear at the beginning and at the end of a turn, but also elsewhere, for instance when the speaker appeals for feedback. If you know had been left out, the facts would have been the same, but the effect of A's utterance would not have been the same. What A said would have sounded more matter of fact and probably less friendly, and the listener might have felt less involved (Stenstrm, 1994, p.65). For example:
It was-you know- really interesting. (as cited in Fujita, 2002, par.3)
Fillers are the indicators used by the listener as a response in order to tell the sender or the speaker that the message is received, understood, or unclear, so the speaker knows that the listener is giving response to what he or she says (Jordan, 2001, p.12). Corley and Hartsuiker (2003, cited in Marback, 2009, par.2) also show that fillers can increase listeners' attention and help them to interpret the following utterance segment. Fillers can affect how the listener processes spoken language and have long-term consequences for the representation of the meaning (Corley, MacGregor & Donaldson, 2007, cited in Marback, 2009, par.2).
Mitigating
Fillers can also serve as mitigating devices. Fillers may express that the speaker is not committed to what s/he is saying and that they can be used to soften or mitigate utterances in order not to hurt the addressee's feelings (Baalen, 2001, par.6). Baalen also includes that fillers like ehm and ee can be used to express a speaker's reluctance to impose. It means that fillers can show the speaker's reluctance toward what they want to utter. Fillers can also be used to show disagreement (Cook, 1993, as cited in Fujita, 2002, par.1).
For example:
A : How about going to a movie Saturday?
B : Uh, I'm sorry. I already have another plan...
Most of filled pauses are used as the breathing pauses, such as pauses generally match semantic-syntactic boundaries (Stenstrm, 1994, p.7). Thus, filled pauses are used for mitigation purposes.
Another example:
A : Would you like to meet for lunch tomorrow?
