Transcript of AEE: Beware of the Loaded Pause

This is the All Ears English podcast, "Beware of the Loaded Pause." Welcome to the All Ears English podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American hosts, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS quiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.

Hey, Lindsay. How are you doing?

Hey, Aubrey. How's it going?

Great. What do you think of my new hat?

It's, uh, well, it's different. I'll give you that.

Nice. You got a good loaded pause there. I'll go ahead and— I took this off my husband's shelf. He has all this random stuff on the shelves you can see behind me.

Yeah.

You can come to YouTube if you want to see me wearing an interesting hat there. I'm not much of a hat person, are you, Lindsay?

No. I would wear hats now just to keep the sun off my face, but not really fashionable hats like that one. That one was very cool.

Great. That was fashionable. Sometimes I'll wear like a ball cap when I'm playing sports outside, but.

Yeah.

Even sun hats. I don't love, like, a big floppy sun hat, which I know they're good for protecting my face, though.

Yeah, I don't love the floppy ones. I'll wear the ball cap just for the sun, but sometimes I wonder how much it helps. But anyways, side point, Aubrey, there was a bit of a loaded pause there that I gave you. What are we getting into today?

Yeah. I think you guys could tell from Lindsay's response that she didn't really love the hat I made. I was like, "You got to give us a loaded pause here, Lindsay."

Yep. Yep.

We got a great question about these kinds of pauses in YouTube. Do you want to read the question for us, Lindsay?

Yes. This is from Sophia over in YouTube. "I listen to your show every morning with my coffee, and it always makes my mornings better." Aubrey, don't you just love that idea of our listeners sitting down with coffee and All Ears English? It's so cool. It's so cool.

Yeah, what a great way to start the morning.

I know. I love it. It's fantastic. So we're glad to be a part of your morning, Sophia. And here's the question. I have a question about the phrase "that was something else." It feels a little loaded to me because I've noticed it's often used when talking about something negative. Can it also be used for something positive or amazing, or does it usually have a negative meaning? Thank you. All right. So, guys, first of all, go on over to YouTube and hit subscribe on All Ears English podcast because you'll get to see Aubrey with that hat, right?

Yeah.

And this is where Sophia came from. There are so many listeners that prefer maybe to watch the show, and you can totally do that over on YouTube.

Yes, and it's the best place to leave a comment, just like Sophia did with a question. So yeah, right there in the YouTube video comments, you can leave your questions for future episodes.

Exactly. And if you are a hardcore podcast listener, which I am, I'm really a podcast listener. I'm not a YouTuber personally. Go ahead and hit the follow button right here in the podcast. There's no reason to change. If you love our show, if you love audio, want to go for a walk with your dog, hit follow on the show. Let's talk about it, Aubrey. A loaded pause. What the heck does that mean?

Yes. This I love how Sophia said this feels a little loaded, and it is, right? Often, pauses are what we call loaded pauses. What is that, Lindsay? What's a loaded pause?

It's really a deliberate, intended silence in a conversation, and it shows something beyond just stopping to think. It shows that sense of hesitation. It creates tension because of the silence, emphasis, anticipation, maybe doubt, right?

Exactly. It's intentional, right? There are these pauses. And for yours, you were kind of adding, like, "It's, well, uh," like, and sometimes you will add these other sounds to the pause. And sometimes it's just silence. Either way, it's loaded because there's a reason for it. It's not just that we're trying to think of what we think about it or what we want to say. Like, we're pausing for a reason. And we do this for a few different reasons in English.

Yeah. And this is so contextual, right? So we need to be very present, understand the players in the room, who's speaking, what's going on. But there are kind of some buckets of what it means. What's the first bucket of what a loaded pause can mean, Aubrey?

Yeah. The first one, they are used to imply criticism or judgment. So Sophia shared a really good example. "That was something else. This will never be positive. The reason that pause is there is to imply some kind of criticism, some kind of judgment. This is negative. This definitely implies that you didn't like it. That was something else with that loaded pause means you did not approve."

Right. And I think the pause happens, in theory, because we're trying to think of a word that's more politically correct or softer, right? I mean, that's where it comes from.

Right. What we really want to say is, "That was terrible," but we feel like that's too mean.

Off, kind of off, right? Yeah. That's too mean.

And socially, we're not that direct.

Something else.

Right. Exactly.

Yeah. And this is good.

And there are a few other things, though. We might say that might be, you know, "That song was," pause, "interesting," right? "Something else," "interesting." This is just as negative, right? This means, "I did not like it."

Yep. Or, "That jacket is unique."

And it's all about pausing that long on All Ears English.

Because if you just said, "That jacket is unique," that could be positive, right?

Right.

Right.

Because it's good for clothing to be unique sometimes. But with the loaded pause, this is an intentional pause. So this is where you can imagine, if you are a language learner and there's just pauses sometimes as you're trying to think of vocabulary, you do want to be careful with these phrases.

Yes.

Because if after a pause you say "something else" or "interesting" or "different" or "unique," that could definitely be interpreted as an intentional loaded pause for you, and the meaning would be, "I don't like it at all."

That's a really good point, Aubrey. So be aware of what you've said. Be aware of the vibe that you're setting, right? It's all context. But the second bucket, what could be the second reason we might use a loaded pause, Aubrey?

Yeah. Sometimes they can be positive, right? Because we use them to create suspense. For example, I might say, "And the winner is Sarah." And I have this intentional loaded pause there too, but it's not to criticize or judge. It's just to build up excitement and suspense.

Excitement, drama, the big reveal on something like this. "I got my test result this morning and I passed," right?

Yes, right? And we always write it with the ellipsis, the dot, dot, dot, "and..."

I passed.

Yeah. You're building up that excitement. You're getting your listener to, you know, pull in, listen. They're excited. It just builds interest in what you're saying.

And when it comes to that sort of thing, it's usually going to be that positive result, right? We're probably not going to do that if we didn't pass. That's I think that's probably intuitive. We're not going to.

That's a good point, right? You're not going to build up excitement for something that then is a letdown, right?

Yeah.

If you're like, "I got my test results and I did not pass."

I failed.

Wait, what? Why all the buildup?

No. You wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do that. Here's another one. Try the next one, Aubrey.

Sure.

Demo this one.

"So I turned around and saw my ex standing right behind me."

Oh, my gosh.

So I'm pausing there to build suspense, to build interest.

Yeah.

We might even say, "And guess who I saw?" And then we're pausing.

Right.

Usually, we don't actually expect them to guess. We're just pausing to build suspense.

Yeah. This is probably in the context of a larger story, right? Because it sounds like you're in the storytelling mode. So there's a lot more here, but just simply pausing does create that suspense. That's one of the things that it can do. When we come back from break in a minute, we're going to see what the third thing is that it could do and how we could use it, all right? Good. Okay, Aubrey, there is that third thing that we promised our listeners. What is it that the pause can do?

Yeah. So the third way that we have these loaded pauses is when we want to imply something without saying it. And this is really related to implying criticism or judgment, but it's not necessarily negative. So for example, I might say, "So I was wondering, what do you think about the fact that he hasn't texted me in a week?" So you can see how, like, I have this pause. "So I was wondering," and I'm kind of implying that I think something about it.

Yeah. It's all in the tone of voice with the wondering, right? Can you say it one more time to get the right intonation, Aubrey?

Yeah.

Make sure we understand.

"So I was wondering," what do you think about the fact that he hasn't texted in a week?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Okay. So we can say so much by just varying kind of our tone of voice, using these pauses. We talk a lot about tone of voice on this show, but we haven't talked very much about pausing. So I love this topic today.

Yeah. They're really related, right? Because when we have these loaded pauses, it would be strange to say this whole thing with a monotone. You can hear how our voice has also the tone is changing in order to also either imply that criticism or to build suspense. So it's about it's both, really, the pause. And it does matter which word you're pausing after, right? If you go back and listen to all of these examples we've given, it would be strange if we, like, add the pause at the wrong place.

That's true. It's really important to know. So let's get some more examples going, a couple of role plays, and we'll see if we can train this skill. So go ahead, Aubrey. Do you want to start us off?

Okay. So here's a role play same where we're implying something without saying it. "Do you think buying this car was a good idea?"

"Well, you seem happy with it."

Okay. Yeah. And this is interesting because there may be judgment and criticism. Like, maybe you don't like it, but maybe you're sort of remaining more neutral with this, right?

Yeah. But it's obvious that I don't think it was a good idea.

Right. But I'm letting you know.

Gushing. Yeah. Not gushing.

Yeah. And it might not be that you don't like the car, but maybe you think that financially, I was not in a good position, right? So you're sort of just trying to remain neutral with that pause.

Oh, that's fair. There's a lot of reasons that we could disapprove of the car, right? Let's go into a deeper role play now, Aubrey. So here, we're discussing a new restaurant that our friend has opened up. So we're supporting our friend, all right?

Yeah. So we'll have a few loaded pauses here, and then we'll come back and share which ones they are. I'll start us out.

Okay.

"You went to Michael's new Italian restaurant, right? What did you think?"

"The menu was definitely unique."

Uh-oh. That does not sound like a glowing review.

"Yeah. The atmosphere was great, though. Really nice place."

"But you didn't like the food?"

"I wouldn't say I didn't like it. I just probably wouldn't order the eggplant parm again."

"Oh. Good to know. Hopefully, it was just an off night." This is really interesting because I had to think a little bit like, okay, when we use these loaded pauses, it's because we're trying to save someone's feelings. We're trying to avoid being outright negative. And if you're asking about a restaurant that you have no personal connection to, you'd just be like, "The eggplant parmesan was not good." But because we know the person who opened the restaurant, we're trying to be polite. We're instead using these loaded pauses to try and not be so harsh with our feedback.

Exactly. We're going to be diplomatic. We're going to be polite. We're going to both understand that we didn't love it, that I didn't love it, but it's our friend. It's our friend's restaurant. So we have to be a little bit careful with how we say it. So let's go back through it again, Aubrey. You said, "You went to Michael's Italian place. What did you think?" And I said.

You said, "The menu was definitely unique." So you could definitely hear in both the tone and the pause, like, you didn't love it, but because this is a mutual friend, you are trying to really spin it positively. Like, what can I say that's nice?

Right. You could have said if again, if it wasn't a friend, you might have said, "The menu was horrible," right?

Right. You could just go really negative and critical, judgmental. But because it's a friend, we're using a loaded pause instead. Yes.

Exactly. Exactly. And then you said, "But you didn't like the food." And I said what? I said.

You said, "I wouldn't say I didn't like it. I just probably wouldn't order the eggplant parm again." So you've got another loaded pause here where you're like, really, if you were being honest, you know, you probably would be like, "Yeah. Actually, it was terrible. I hated it." But maybe you're worried that I'm going to go and tell Michael, like, "Lindsay went to your restaurant and said it was terrible." You don't want that, right?

Yeah. No, we don't want to speak negatively about anyone. Yeah. Yes. Exactly.

So instead, this is a great to be like, "I just probably wouldn't order it." We're just you're kind of trying to give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe just this one dish wasn't your favorite, and the rest is probably great.

And if you're using gestures, which you just did on YouTube, Aubrey, it's even more important to get it right. You want to be even more diplomatic, right? Just probably wouldn't go back again. I wonder if our listeners will be asking themselves, "How long do I pause?" And what I was just noticing about what you did, Aubrey, when you did that demo, I feel like you took a breath, like one breath. Do you think that could be accurate in terms of how long to pause?

I'll be like, "I just probably," like, kind of sucking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Air. Yeah. So is that about the amount of time, enough time to take a breath? I mean, you don't have to articulate the breath. You can if you want. I've heard in other cultures that is done a lot to show a sense of reservations or concern or horror, maybe.

Yeah. We do that in the States as well. I think that's a really good question. And I would say that's a good benchmark. The space of about one breath is a great time for a pause. Because if you pause too long, then it's strange. It's like, and the other person might feel like they need to prompt you.

Hello.

Right. But if you don't pause long enough, then it's the pause wouldn't even be noticed.

You too. See you guys next time. Bye.