First published in 1985, this book studies several common items in English conversation known variously as 'discourse particles', 'interjections', 'discourse markers', and, more informally, 'hesitations' or 'fillers'. While the analysis primarily focuses on 'like', 'well' and 'you know', the larger concern is the entire set of items of which these are members and as such 'I mean', 'now', 'oh', 'hey', and 'aha' are also examined. These discourse particles are analysed at length and then a framework is proposed in which their use individually makes sense and allows revealing comparisons to be made between them. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics