Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

5 Possible 
pragmatic functions of 
I mean
: Discussion 
Let me now consider one after another the individual pragmatic functions of 
I mean
recognized in this chapter and discuss their use, in particular with regard 
to some previous research mentioned in Section 2 above. 
(5) (OFC355SU094.7)
S2
 hm. okay.
S1
okay. yeah I’ve I’ve sat through lots of talk by um, by Mark and uh, uh, 
Giles, and, I think I understand what they’re doing when I’m watching 
them do it, but then I go off and try to do it and I think why am I going 
to all this trouble? 
I mean
what’s it getting me? It looks more like, 
 that, than this.  <
S2
: LAUGH> that’s 
gonna be hard to capture on the tape probably.  [
S2
: hand 
gestures.] oh well. details.
Example (5) shows 
I mean
in the function of reformulation. With its 16 
occurrences in my data, which means 0.34 tokens per 1,000 words, it is the 
least represented function of all. Speakers use 
I mean
in this function in order 
to modify what they want to say, either because they are not sure that what they 
have just said is quite clear to their hearers, i.e. they want to make a new start or 
rephrase what has already been uttered, or because they want to specify it, either 
narrowing (cf. the diminishing force of
 I mean
mentioned above) or softening 
the propositional content of what they have just said while indicating that the 

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whole conversational situation is to be considered informal (cf. Crystal 1975, 
Swan 1995, both discussed above). When speakers use 
I mean
for reformulation 
as a rule
they place it in M position within the turn, i.e. after the part of the 
text they intend to reformulate. Therefore it is not surprising that 
I mean
in this 
function has not been found in the other turn positions. Finally, it can be stated 
that 
I mean
used for reformulation is close to what Quirk et al. (1985: 1313) label 
‘mistake editing’; it clearly participates in planning and organizing discourse, 
thus enhancing the negotiation of meaning between discourse participants and 
fostering the establishment and maintenance of discourse coherence, as discussed 
above.
(6) (OFC355SU094.9)
S2
and she suggested that, all of my participants, come from either, this 
country, or the countries where they speak, their native languages. so, 
she’s