1658: The Affirmative: 'Right?' Jun 29, 2019

In writing, punctuation helps to clarify breaks in speak, tone, and other things that might be lost without the natural pacing of speech, but that suggests that speech would have a sort of conversational comma, for instance. The most obvious way this happens is with literal pauses, but speech is much sloppier and more convoluted than writing tends to be, so other cues emerge. One of these is the use of certain words, such as 'right?' after a statement, which does a number of tasks, in between two utterances. One is to give the speaker a moment to think without interruption which a normal pause does not necessarily allow, but unlike 'um', which also serves that function, 'right?' draws focus to the first statement, by asking the listener to agree, before making a connection thematically to a following statement, thus lending more weight to the speech. This is a tactic frequently used in political interviews, for instance.

For more on 'um', see here.