Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse

S2
: okay] yeah, for sure
S2
 okay.
Example (8) comprises 
I mean
in the function of delay device. As shown 
in Table 3-1 and Table 3-2 above, 
I mean
in this function has 35 occurrences 
in my data, which represents a normalized frequency rate of 0.74 tokens per 
1,000 words. It usually occurs in M and sometimes in I position when the current 
speaker cannot find an appropriate word or an adequate way of expressing his/
her communicative intentions, or when he/she can see that the current hearer(s) 

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cannot follow what has already been uttered. 
I mean
is usually used to allow 
the current speaker to think of what next to say and/or just to indicate that he/
she wants to go on talking (cf. 
fillers in Leech and Svartvik 1994 and inserts 
in Biber et al. 1999, both discussed in Section 2), thus being clearly connected 
with planning and organizing discourse. 
I mean
in this function often co-occurs 
with hesitation features, for example, 
um
, 
like,
kind of, sort of
, pauses, false 
starts (most of which are illustrated in the above examples). Verbal 
fillers such 
as the marker 
I mean
, especially in the function of delay device, indicate that 
the speaker is busy planning what to say as he/she goes along, i.e. a feature 
typical of impromptu speech, and as such they are
therefore also connected 
with the organization of discourse (cf. monitoring features in Leech et al. 1982). 
According to Stenström (1994), there are two main hesitation areas, namely at 
the beginning of the turn and at what looks like the end but is in fact the middle 
of the turn. These are evidenced by occurrences of 
I mean
in my data. The former 
case, i.e. the hesitation area at the beginning of a turn, is shown in Example (8).