Psycholinguistics and Language Teaching

Prof. Dr. Sri Samiati Tarjana

Speech Error in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Debate: A Psycholinguistics Study

By:
Agung Septian Hidayat
(S891408002)

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

POST GRADUATE PROGRAM
TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY
SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY OF SURAKARTA
2015

SPEECH ERROR IN THE 2008 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

Abstract
Producing speech seems require very little thought and effort. Word is set in our mind,
then, our mouth spontaneously produces it. However, this simple thing will not happen when
someone speaks something difficult, for instance, a debate. This article is aimed to give a clear
description of speech error phenomenon which occurs in the 2008 U.S. presidential debate. This
research-based article is basically to figure out the types of speech error and the frequency of it
in the debate. The type of the article is a descriptive qualitative research. The writer employs
documentation as the technique of collecting data. The data itself are the utterances containing
speech error uttered by both Barack Obama and John Mc. Cain as debaters.
From the data analysis, the researcher identifies some types of speech error: silent pause,
filled pause, repeat, false start unretraced, false start retraced, correction, interjections, stutters,
selections error, blends and anticipation. The writer also reveals the frequency of each type of
speech error in the 2008 U.S. presidential debate.
Key Words: Psycholinguistics, Speech Production, Speech Error

INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Producing speech is not a difficult thing. Speakers are often fluent in constructing it,
word by word flows fluently, they think a word at the same time their tongues and their
mouths automatically utter it. Everything seems so easy of uttering daily conversation but
this easiness actually may not be found if they are in a situation like giving speech, telling a
story, describing abstract object, debating, and so forth that they rarely do it or talk about it.
If people are talking something difficult that they rarely talk about, not all speech goes well,
it also can go wrong. It is called speech error.
Speech error is a mistake in speech production. Speech error occurs because there is
breakdown of the speech plan and execution. Clark and Clark (1977: 224) stated that,
There are two activities in speech productionplanning and execution.
Speakers first plan what they want to say based on how they want to
give effect to their listeners. They put their plan into execution, utter
anything which make up the plan.
The breakdown or speech error may exist when speaker utters segments, words, phrases,
clauses, or sentences. The execution is sometimes filled by various types of pause (i.e. silent

pause and filled pause), repeat, false start (i.e. false start retraced and false start unretraced),
correction, replacement, and even slip of the tongue.
As what the writer has mentioned above that speech error may occur when speakers
are faced by a difficult situation that they are not familiar with. Debate is actually a kind of it.
A debate is, basically, to argue. Two or more people or team called debaters who have
different point of view give their arguments about a given topic in the debate. One example
of a debate is presidential debate. A presidential debate is held in order to give the voters in
general election a view about the capacity of the president or vice president candidates as
well as to know the way how they will solve the problems of the nation if they are later faced
by. In 2008, United Stated of America held such event too. The 2008 U.S. presidential
debaters were John McCain, United States Senator from Arizona and Barack Obama, United
States Senator from Illinois, both of them were the U.S. presidential candidates. Obama came
from Democrat party and Mc Cain came from Republic party.
Based on the phenomena above, the writer of this article is interested in conducting a
study of speech errors which are committed during the 2008 U.S. presidential debates uttered
by both Barack Obama and John Mc Cain as debaters.
B. Problem Statement
The problem statements of the study are:
1

What are the types of speech errors committed by both Barack Obama and John Mc Cain
in the 2008 U.S. presidential debates?

How often do Barack Obama and John Mc Cain commit the speech errors in the 2008
U.S. presidential debates?

C. Objective of The Study

In relation to the problem statement above, the writer decides the objective of the research as
follows:
1

To identify the types of speech errors committed by both Barack Obama and John Mc
Cain in the 2008 U.S. presidential debates.

To investigate the frequency of speech errors made by both Barack Obama and John Mc
Cain in the 2008 U.S. presidential debates.

D. Benefit of The Study

1

Theoretical Benefit
a

This research will give contribution to develop psycholinguistics study, especially in

speech error.

This research will give more view about speech error to the readers.

This research can be used as an additional reference for the next researcher, especially
for those who are interested in conducting a study of speech errors and/or any study
else that uses the 2008 U.S. presidential debates as their data.

Practical Benefit
a

This research will make the reader to be careful in producing speech after knowing
that some people do some speech errors and to keep the effectiveness as well as
efficiency of speaking.

The finding of the study can be a good input for readers in understanding speech
errors.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A. Speech Error
When the plan of speech is already in our mind, sometimes it does not flow well
when we execute or produce it. Sometimes the speech execution often filled by pauses,
hesitations, corrections, repeats, replacements and slip of tongue. It is called speech error.
According to Fauziati (2008:137) speech error is as product of the intermixture between
planning and execution. Bussmann, Trauth and Kazzazi (1996:442) define speech error
(slip of the tongue as well) as disruption in the speech production of speech through a
conscious or unconscious linguistic deviation from the apparently intended form of an
utterance.
1

Types of Speech Error

According to Clark and Clark (1977: 263), the common types of speech errors
are listed and illustrated in the table 1 below:
Table 1: Common Types of Speech Errors

Name of Speech Errors

Silent Pause
Filled Pause
Repeats
False Starts (unretraced)
False Starts (retraced)
Corrections
Name of Speech Errors
Interjections
Stutters

Example
Turn on the / heater switch
Turn on, uh, heater switch
Turn on the heater / the heater switch
Turn on the stove / heater switch
Turn on the stove / the heater switch
Turn on the stove switchI mean the heater switch
Example
Turn on, oh, the heater switch
Turn on the h-h-h heater switch

Slip of Tongue
Turn on the sweeter hitch
The elaboration of the speech errors in the table is as follows:
a

Silent pause
Silent pause is a period of no speech between words, the speaker pause for a while
before moving on to the next word.

Filled pause
Filled pause is a gap filled by filler, like ah, er, uh, mm, etc.

Repeats
A repeat error is repetition of one or more word in a row.

False start
False start is a correction of a word. False start is broken into two: retraced false
start and unretraced false start. Unretraced false start is when there is a correction
of a word. Then, retraced false start is when there is repetition of one or more
word before the corrected word.

Correction
Correction is almost similar with false start. However, in correction there is
correction phrase before the corrected word like, I mean, that is, or rather.

Interjection
It is like hesitation pause. It indicates that the speakers have had to stop to think
about what to say next. The interjections in English often emerge with the sound
oh, ah, well, say.

Stutter
Speaker who stutters speaks rapidly the same sound or syllable.

Slip of the tongue

Slip of the tongue is a speech error in which a speaker utters a word, syllable, or
sound in a way other than he/she intended. (Aitchison, 1998, p. 107) According
to Aitchison (1998: 244-249), there are some types of slip of tongue: (1) semantic
errors, (2) malapropism, (3) blend (two words are blended together to form a new
one. The blend word is usually a mixture of two words which come from the half
of the first word and the half of the second word), (4) transpositions or
Spoonerism, (5) anticipations (anticipation errors occur when a speaker
anticipates what he is going to say by bringing in an item too early) and (6)
repetition (a speaker repeats one or more words in a row).

B. Debate
Debate is a clash of arguments. A debate is a contest or perhaps like a game where
two or more speakers present their arguments intent to persuading one another.
1 2008 U.S. Presidential Debate
Unlike the common debate competition which has motion, definition, team
split, adjudication, adjudicator and so on. The 2008 U.S. presidential debate has its
own concept and format. There were actually 3 presidential debates:
The first presidential debate was held on Friday, September 26, 2008, 9
p.m. EDT at the University of Mississippi's Gertrude C. Ford Center in Oxford,
Mississippi. It was moderated by Jim Lehrer, executive editor and anchor of The
NewsHour on PBS. This debate was originally planned to focus on foreign policy and
national security. Due to the 2008 financial crisis, a portion of the debate focused on
economic issues.
The second presidential was held on Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 9 p.m. EDT
at Belmont University's Curb Event Center in Nashville, Tennessee. It is moderated
by Tom Brokaw, special correspondent and former evening news anchor for NBC
News. This debate had a town hall meeting format.
The last presidential debate was held on Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 9 p.m.
EDT at Hofstra University's Hofstra Arena in Hempstead, New York. It is moderated
by Bob Schieffer, CBS News chief Washington correspondent and host of Face the
Nation. This debate focused on domestic and economic policy.
C. Theory of Counting Frequency
The researcher determines the frequency of speech error in this research by
referring to the theory of Walizer edited by Sadiman (1993: 96). The formula is stated
below

F
x 100%
N

Notes:
P: The percentage
F: The frequency
N: The sum of the frequency

The researcher, then, elaborates the frequency of each speech error by counting
and using modified formula of the formula above as follows

Total Number of Speech Error

x 100%
Total Number of All Speech Error

RESEARCH METHOD
A.

Type of The Research

The writer employs the descriptive qualitative research in conducting this research. It
is called descriptive qualitative research because it just collects the data, classifies the data,
then analysis them, and as the end of it, the researcher draws conclusion about the data.
Nurkamto (2003: 2) stated that, Qualitative research is type of research usually does not
include a calculation/enumeration in analyzing, because the data produced are in the form of
word, and the data are collecting by observing, interview, and documentation. Moleong
(1995: 6) said Descriptive qualitative research is a type of research which results the
descriptive data in the form of written or oral words from observed object or the data source.
In this research, the writer wants to describe speech errors which occur in the 2008
U.S. presidential debates and the frequency for each type of errors.

B.

Subject and Object of The Research

The subjects of this research are Barrack Obama and John Mc Cainthe 2008 U.S.
presidential debaters. While the object of this research is speech errors committed by both
Barack Obama and John Mc Cain in the 2008 U.S. presidential debates.

C.

Data and Data Source

The data in this research are all utterances containing speech errors made by both
Barack Obama and John Mc Cainthe 2008 U.S. presidential debaters, while the source of
the data is the 2008 U.S. presidential debates videos and its transcript. The writer finally
finds speech errors committed by Barrack Obama are 577 utterances and 391 utterances by
John Mc Cain during the three U.S. 2008 presidential debates that were held. The writer now
uses the data of the speech errors above as list of data.

D.

Method of Data Collection

The writer applies documentation technique in collecting data. The documents are the
2008 U.S. presidential videos and its transcripts. In collecting the data the writer commits
several steps below:

1.

Downloading the three videos of the 2008 U.S. presidential debates from
youtube.com and looking for its transcripts in order to make the writer easier to
understand the utterances which are uttered by the 2008 U.S. presidential debaters.

2.

Watching the video while looking the transcript and paying attention if there is a
speech error committed by the debaters.

3.

Coding the utterances which contain speech errors, writing the time counterthe
time when the errors happen.

4.
E.

Putting the utterances containing speech errors into the list of data.
Technique of Data Analysis
In analyzing the data, the writer applies two theories, those are: a theory of common

speech error by Herbert H Clark and Eve V Clark, and a theory of slip of tongue by Jean
Aitchison. The writer analyzes the data by adopting some steps as follows:
1.

The writer firstly classifies the data of errors which have got into each type of errors.
In classifying the type of speech errors the writer uses the Clark and Clark framework
and Aitchison framework.

2.

Then, writer states the frequency of each type of errors and the dominant of the
speech errors in the data.
RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

A. Research Findings
The researcher at last finds some findings as mentioned: Barack Obama commits 577
utterances containing speech errors. 213 utterances (or 36.9% of his whole speech errors) of
silent pause errors, 198 utterances (or 34.3%) of filled pauses, repeats (45 utterances or
7.8%), false starts unretraced and interjections (10 utterances or 1.74%), false starts retraced
(5 utterances or 0.90%), corrections (6 utterances or 1.04%), stutter errors (72 utterances or
12.47%), selection errors (15 utterances or 2.60) and blend errors (3 utterances or 0.52).
Meanwhile, John Mc. Cain commits 391 utterances containing speech errors. 136
utterances (or 34.78% of his whole speech errors) of silent pause errors, 70 utterances (or
17.90%) of filled pause errors, repeats (83 utterances or 21.23%), false starts unretraced (20
utterances or 5.12%), false starts retraced (3 utterances or 0.77%), corrections (19 utterances
or 4.86%), interjection (8 utterances or 2.05%), stutters (40 utterances or 10.23%), selection

errors (7 utterances or 1.79%), blends (4 utterances or 1.02) and anticipation (1 utterance or

0.25%).
Chart. 1. The Percentage of Each Type of Speech Error Uttered by Barack Obama
and John Mc. Cain
40
35
30
25
20

Barack Obama's Speech Error

John Mc. Cain's Speech Error

15
10
5
0
S

B. Discussion

Rep

Un FS R

FS

St

SL

After presenting the findings in the research finding part, the writer would like to
discuss the finding, The writer will only discuss one utterance containing speech error uttered
by either Barack Obama or John Mc. Cain as a representation.
Seen from Obamas utterance that was a tactic to / design, we can see that after
Barack Obama utters to, he stops or pauses for a while before moving on to the next word,
that is, design. It is called silent pause. Meanwhile, the utterance Senator Kennedy is, uh, in
the hospital shows us that there is a filled pause. After uttering Senator Kennedy is, he utters
filler uh before moving on to the next words, in the hospital. When Obama says, the second
point i want to make is / is the issue of energy. This utterance contains a repetition, repetition
of the word is. He says is and then he repeats it for twice. This is what is called repeat error.
He actually does not do that action of repeating, he just need to utter I want to make is the
issues of energy without repeating the number word is like what he has done above. One of
false start unretraced data committed by Barack Obama is reflected in the utterance put /
provide some relief to military family. Viewed from the datum there is correction of word. He
firstly says put as a verb and then he corrects it by uttering provide as a new verb.
The next error is false start unretraced. It is on Senator John Mc. Cains utterance I've
got a bracelet, too, from Sergeant / from the mother of Sergeant Ryan David Jopeck, has a
false start retraced error when it has a correction word from Sergeant to the mother of
Sergeant and the existing of repetition word from. There is a correction of a word and there is
a correction phrase before the corrected word is the indicator of correction error. Thus, when
Obama says our debt, I mean, our national debt was around $5 trillion. This utterance
contains a correction error when Obama corrects the words our debt to our national debt and
there is an existence of correction phrase I mean.
The last speech error is interjection. An example of it is we had the highest, oh,
fatalities among US troops. When Mc. Cain says we had the highest, the next words do not
follow the previous words fluently, he has to think what would be next words? What would
be the highest thing? While thinking, he inserts a filler or sound oh and starts uttering words
again fatalities among U.S. troops. The following utterance contains stutter error i-i-i-i-I
dont, I dont, I don't know where John is getting his figures. It happens when Obama speaks
rapidly the sound i for many times. The word I above is actually functioned as a subject of
that utterance, so it is not necessarily uttered more than once.
Slip of the tongue will be the next case which the writer wants to discuss. The first
utterance which contains a kind of slip of the tongue (selection error) is uttered by Barack

Obama. It happens when Barack Obama utters this has become such an thing, the a is an
article functioned as determiner or modifier of a noun. This kind of article consists of two
parts, a and an which used in a different way. If it is used with a word started with a vowel
sound, the article an should that be used. Yet if it is used with a word started with a consonant
sound, the article a should that be used. Barack Obama commits a slip of the tongue error,
that is, a selection error when he is wrong in choosing the appropriate word of his speech.
Another kind of slip of the tongue: blend, is also commit by both Barack Obama and
John Mc. Cain. One of them is reflected in the utterance you just want to add anditional tax
cut over the loopholes. When he utters this utterance, he speaks it rapidly, so he commits a
blend error. The blend error the writer mentioned is anditional, this blend word derives from
two words an additional, he speaks so fast, so this kind of error probably happens.
The writer only finds one anticipation error which committed by John Mc. Cain. He
says and it's time we had that bresh of freth air. This utterance contains an anticipation error.
When John Mc Cain tries or wants to say breath of fresh air, the words which occur are bresh
of freth air. In this situation the speaker intends to speak the first word, at the same time he
prepares to utter the next word, the first word that the writer meant is breath and the second
word is fresh. Because the speaker tries to utter the first word while preparing or anticipating
the second word, the anticipation error here happens, an item of the first word th and an item
of the second word sh are interchanged. The utterance that should be uttered is breath of
fresh air becomes bresh of freth air.
CONCLUSION
A.

Conclusion
Based on the research finding and discussion part above, it can be concluded that
many types of speech error occur in the 2008 U.S. presidential debate. Barrack Obama
commits 577 utterances while John Mc. Cain commits 391 utterances containing it. Even
though both Barack Obama and John Mc. Cain are native speakers of English language and
they are categorized as the people with high level of education, working as senators, they still
make so many speech errors in the debate. It is, then, true that if people talk about something
difficult issues like foreign policy, national security, financial crisis, domestic and economic
issues, it drives them to make such kind of speech error.
Seen from the number of speech error committed by both Barrack Obama and John
Mc. Cain, Obama commits utterances containing speech error more than Mc. Cain. It means

that Mc. Cain actually speaks better, more fluent, more effective than Barack Obama in the
debate. Even if John Mc. Cain win the debate by having more effective speech, the general
election still depends on the voters.
REFERENCE

______2008. Transcript of the First Presidential Debate. Retrieved from

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/26/debate.mississippi.transcript/ at 19:30 on
July 3, 2009.
______2008. Transcript of the Second Presidential Debate. Retrieved from
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/07/presidential.debate.transcript/. at 19:30 on
July 3, 2009.
______2008. Transcript of the Third Presidential Debate. Retrieved from
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/15/debate.transcript/index.html. at 19:30 on
July 3, 2009.
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Edition. London: Routledge.
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language and linguistics. New York: Routledge.
C-SPAN. 2008. C-SPAN: First 2008 Presidential Debate (Full Video). (Video File). Retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-nNIEduEOw
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