Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

4 Possible 
pragmatic functions of 
I mean
: Overall results
When considering the possible pragmatic functions of 
I mean
in a given 
speech event category, the following factors are taken into consideration in the 
present chapter: position of 
I mean
within the turn (i.e. initial, medial, and final), 
the position of the turn in which the marker 
I mean
occurs within the sequence 

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of turns, the co-occurrence of 
I mean
with other pragmatic markers, such as 
well, 
you know, so
, and with some kind of hesitation phenomena, such as repetitions, 
false starts, slips of the tongue, and pauses, and in particular the entire situational 
context, which also includes the discourse participants themselves, their mutual 
relationships and the background encyclopedic knowledge they share, since 
all the elements of the act of communication determine the character of the 
exchange of meaning and thus the negotiation of meaning in the context of the 
communicative situation (cf. Dontcheva-Navratilova 2004).