An analysis of speech disfluencies of Turkish speakers: Influence of educational background

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the influence of educational background on Turkish native speakers’ production rates of speech disfluencies. 56 native speakers of Turkish between ages 33-50 years and over 50-year-olds took part in the study. Each group was divided into two sub-groups according to the educational background of the participants. Prepared and unprepared speech samples of each participant were gathered via face-to-face interviews that were recorded and transcribed. As a result, participants with higher education levels produced more filled gaps than elementary/middle school graduates. In the prepared speech, over 50-year-old male elementary/middle school graduates produced more hesitations than male professors, and 33-50-year-old male elementary/middle school graduates produced more slips of the tongue than males with higher education. In unprepared speech situation, 33-50-year-old male elementary/middle school graduates produced more false starts than bachelor’s/master’s-doctoral degree holder males; however, over 50-year-old female professors produced more false starts than elementary/middle school graduate females. Keywords: Linguistics, speech production, Turkish speech, speech disfluencies, educational background