In addition, to a certain extent, the findings of this study will also be expected to provide contributions for the development of the theory, especially to sociolinguistics study since this study is based on sociolinguistics. I also hope that my study would give a clear explanation on the types and the functions of fillers that are may be influenced by the different length of studying time. Finally, I also expect that this study can help the students of the English Department majoring in linguistics as a reference and a comparison for the future study.
Scope and Limitations
The scope of this study is sociolinguistics because basically sociolinguistics is the study of language (including speech/actual utterances) in relation to society (Hudson, 1982, p.1). In addition, according to Wolfson (1962, cited in Hudson, 1982, p.4), the analysis of sociolinguistic rules of speaking is the analysis of the patterns and functions of language in use, including the types and the functions of fillers. Besides, people's language (including fillers) in interacting with one another (including face-to-face interaction like conversation or chit-chat) and their background (including the length of studying time) that influences the language used, are the concerns of sociolinguistics (Hudson, 1982, p.106).
This study is also limited to the fillers that are commonly used by the first and the seventh semester students of the English Department, Petra Christian University in a spoken interaction (role-play). Specifically, I limit the topic of fillers to the types and the functions of fillers. I also limit the number of my respondents, that is 20 people from each semester based on the length of the studying time in the English Department.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
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This second chapter deals with the explanation of the main theories concerning the types and the functions of fillers and deals with two related studies from the senior year students of Petra Christian University that have quite similar topic with my study.
Review of Related Theories
In the review of underlying theories, I use several theories that are related to my main topic, which is about the types and the functions of fillers.
Definitions of Fillers
According to the theory of spoken discourse by Brown and Yule (1983, p.129), a speaker may produce a large number of prefabricated fillers, such as err, ehm, well, I think, you know, if you see what I mean, and so on in his or her utterances. Along with that, according to Baalen (2001, par.7), those prefabricated fillers are defined as sounds or words or phrases that could appear anywhere in the sentence and that could be deleted from the sentence without a change in content. On the other simple words, Yule (2006, p.242) defines fillers as a break in the flow of speech.
