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

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.