"I mean, what was that about?”. Spontaneous and movie conversation compared

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Abstract

This paper explores the use of the discourse marker ‘I mean’ in American English, illustrating its pragmatic similarities and differences in spontaneous and movie conversation. Preliminary findings show that in both these conversational domains, ‘I mean’ is usually employed in utterance mid-position, and it generally serves to clarify previous statements. In the dubbed Italian versions of the movies, it is often lost in translation and the functions it performs in the original American movies are sometimes changed. Nonetheless, its most common function, which is the clarifying one, is still kept via compensating strategies.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)323-334
Number of pages12
JournalL'ANALISI LINGUISTICA E LETTERARIA
Publication statusPublished - 2010

Keywords

  • I mean
  • discourse markers
  • face-to-face conversation
  • movie language

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