Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

S1
 I doubt that.
S3
see like 
I mean
, like maybe I don’t know um 
I mean
 I think that you know 
a lot more about ac- like Detroit than I do and like things going on there 
and like, I don’t know.
S2
I know specific yeah like I know specific things but like philosophical or 
political wise I can’t.
S3
but have you taken mo- like I think you’ve taken more specific classes. 
Last but not least comes 
I mean
used for reformulation, since its normalized 
frequency rate 0.34 tokens per 1,000 words represents only 15 per cent of all 
occurrences in the data. However, the role of 
I mean
as a marker of reformulation 
cannot be underestimated, since, for example, in office hours it represents the 
most common function of all (0.37); its presence in this category may be caused 
by the fact that students usually attempt to express themselves as clearly as 
possible when talking in small groups of two to five interlocutors, which may be 
the case of the office hours under my examination (cf. also Example (5) below). 
Nevertheless speakers use the marker 
I mean
in the function of reformulation 
in all speech event categories, in particular when reformulating something they 
have already uttered in a way that could be improved upon, which often happens 
in impromptu speech where online planning is one of the main characteristics 
(cf. Povolná 2010). 
I mean 
used for reformulation is most frequent in study groups, 
where its normalized frequency rate amounts to 0.58 tokens per 1,000 words; this 
function when applied in study groups is shown in the following example:
(3) (SGR999SU146.7)