In some cases, these 'fillers'or 'filled pauses' may be hesitation phenomena, self-prompters, time buyers: check the website for Jean Fox Tree http://psych.ucsc.edu/faculty/foxtree/ and see pubs While many analysts omit such tokens when analyzing content, my colleague and I find them essential when tracking issues such as confidence; see www.linguistic-insights.com and see research Hope this helps, Boyd