5 - I mean

Summary

Introduction

In Present-day English, clause-initial I mean followed by a declarative clause without that is ambiguously a matrix clause or a parenthetical (Biber et al. 1999:1076), as in:

1. As it was he sold the goddamned things at my racket club. I mean he was only a member because of my husband (1991 Cody, Backhand 105 [FLOB]).

According to Stenström, however, I mean is rarely a main clause and serves “almost exclusively” (85% of the time) as a parenthetical (1995:296, 297, 299). The description of parenthetical I mean in the OED as “a filler, with no explanatory force” (s.v. mean v. 1, def. II6e) betrays its status as a pragmatic marker, as do descriptions of it as a “fumble” (Edmondson 1981), a “pragmatic expression” (Erman 1986; 1987), a “discourse marker” (Schiffrin 1987), a “discourse particle” (Goldberg 1980), or a “comment clause” (Stenström 1995:291).

This chapter explores the semasiological and syntactic development of parenthetical I mean. In her study of I mean in Present-day English, Schiffrin (1987) points out that the development of the pragmatic functions of I mean seems fairly transparent, as they can be traced back to the two primary senses of mean, namely, ‘to intend to convey or indicate’ and ‘to have as an intention’: “the literal meaning of the expression ‘I mean,’” she says, “suggests that I mean marks a speaker's upcoming modification of the ideas or intentions of a prior utterance” (302, 317–318).