Why do some people say "obviously" for no reason? Its just a sentence filler.?

Question

Its totally doing my head in to the point that i cant concentrate on what these people are actually trying to say! e.g.

"Obviously i'll talk to my manager but obviously there's nothing more i can do"

None of that is obvious. The only obvious thing is that you are dull! And nobody else seems to have this issue! Am i the only one?? Its actually worse than "basically" i think.

...but i am solely referring to people who use it in way that actually detracts from the merit of what they are saying. It is coutner productive. Listen to any interview with Michael Owen and you will see what i mean.

BTW: i meant 'totally' and 'actually'...actually!

Answer 1

Yes, there are many such sentence fillers, which indicate that the speaker's mind is "basically" on auto-pilot.
Perhaps the most overused filler is a phrase that TV commentators got hold of a couple years ago: "if you will." Always meaningless, "if you will" has become downright obnoxious.

Answer 2

Obviously, like, yeah, they are kind of question fillers so people can, like, obviously fill in the like, gaps in their sentences, know what I mean?

But truthfully, I find it really annoying aswell. Even more annoying than things like 'totally' and 'like', because most of the time, what they're saying isn't actually obvious at all. I couldn't agree with you more.

I'm not against fillers as a whole, as sometimes they help a sentence to flow and they're useful for when you don't have much to say. But obviously is worse as it totally alters the meaning of the sentence rather than just being a harmless little 'um' or 'well...'.

I suppose the reason is that they hear someone say the word 'obviously' in a sentence, and take it to be some kind of filler, and start using it even though they don't know what it means? But I guess it's just habit for many.

Answer 3

I find that British people use it a lot. Not only Michael Owen, but watch any footballer or football manager interviews (football on TV seems to be the best place to find the most number of British people talking). There is an interview today on BBC Sport about the Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers who was "obviously" learning from United boss LvG. How many "obviously" do they have to use in a single sentence??

Answer 4

Life is full of sentence fillers, obviously :) Conversation would be pretty boring without the little "um"s and "well"s and "ok"s. For that matter aren't the words "totally" and "actually" in your question sentence fillers ? After all, the meaning could still be put across with out them.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

Adjectives like "obviously" are commonly inserted in speach for one of two reasons:

1. To provoke the listeners to "think" about the "completeness" of the statement made by the speakers -- i.e., make audience think/express of alternative views.

2. To prolong the discussion or time-of-speech (fillers, as you called them).

It is not entirely unreasonable to use such adjective in formal or informal arguments/opinions.

Answer 7

Whenever people inadvertently insert meaningless qualifiers I make this an opportunity to drive them nuts by taking the word completely literally at every opportunity. Every time he said "obviously" I would say something like "Obvious to you maybe." Or if they kept saying "actually" I'd interrupt them every time to say "But not virtually?" This would put the kibosh on their antics toot suite and make them rue the day they repetitiously uttered that gratuitous non sequitur cavalierly

Answer 8

Obviously!

Answer 9

People tend to say 'obviously' when they are excusing themselves for stating the obvious! Or they are using it for emphasising the point. It is strange that once a word starts to annoy us, everyone seems to use it!

Answer 10

Obviously they are oblivious to the obvious fault in their speech which even the most obvious moron would find quite obvious. Obviously they are obfuscating to keep you from seeing what would otherwise be obvious; i.e. they are obviously idiots.