PURPOSE: this study aims at investigating the distribution and functions of silent pauses in oral discourse, particularly in narratives of TV programs with differentiated nature. METHODS: for this study, speech samples of two journalists from five TV programs were selected. The analyses were based on phonetic-acoustic analysis and the time of narrative and silent pauses was measured in milliseconds (ms) by means of PRAAT speech analysis program. RESULTS: the results indicate that the use of pauses vary according to the style of the narrative. CONCLUSION: terminal pauses are longer than intermediate pauses, which respect the higher order constituents (subject/predicate).
Speech; Narration; Journalism; Television
