The phonological length of individual segments, and the allophonic variation of duration of segments in response to their contextual and structural environment, were described in chapter 14 as part of the temporal structure of speech. At the other end of the scale of temporal organization lie the timing characteristics of whole utterances. This chapter discusses the continuity of utterances, in terms of fluency and hesitation, and the rate of speech, as a matter of overall tempo.

The continuity of speech and the rate of articulation of individual utterances are best thought of as non-linguistic in nature. To the degree that continuity and rate of speech are subject to conventional interpretation, reflecting the communication of such attitudinal or emotional states as impatience, deliberation, excitement, happiness, disappointment or sadness, for instance, then they are paralinguistic in nature. To the extent that continuity and rate are simply characteristic of the speaker as an individual, without culturally specific conventional paralinguistic interpretability, then they should be considered extralinguistic in nature.

A linkage exists between paralinguistic and extralinguistic attributions, however, in that the same speech phenomena may be involved in both cases. The momentary affective mood of the speaker may be perceived as exploiting a given phenomenon for short-term communicative purposes of paralinguistic communication, while habitual use of the same phenomenon may result in informative conclusions being drawn about the long-term marking of personality and identity. On first hearing a speaker produce a very hesitant utterance, for example, one might initially conclude that the speaker was uncertain about the message being expressed by the utterance.