[BigV]

I recently had occasion to ask the utterer of the "Yeah, no...." phrase what he meant when he said it. SonofV didn't offer it in reply at all, he began a new topic of conversation after a brief lull with the phrase. I interrupted him, "stop, stop, stop. When you said that 'yeah, no', what did you mean by it?" He thought, surprised by my question, and said it didn't really mean anything, he was just getting started talking, that it was just a habit.

*That* is the annoying kind.

I can hear tone, inflection, nuance, etc (usually). I can hear sarcasm, implied punctuation, all that I get. Those usages aren't the ones that grate on my ear. It's the kind that SonofV uses, the ones with no meaning that produce a giant eyeroll in my mind, one that often distracts me from what they're really trying to say.

Oh well.