A friend was noting that his daughter would occasionally start sentences with the phrase "I mean, " simply for emphasis, not for clarification:
Friend: How was the Miley Cyrus concert?
Friend's daughter: I mean, it was the best concert ever!
I have typically seen "I mean" used to join two statements – for example, as a correction:
This juice is orange. Well, I mean, more of a yellowish-orange.
or for clarifying emphasis:
This juice is orange. I mean, it's the most neon orange you've ever seen!
However, his daughter's usage seems to combine the two parts of the "emphasis" example, creating a single independent statement that begins with "I mean":
I mean, this juice is the most neon orange you've ever seen!
Considering that teen girls are leading language change, has "I mean" just been co-opted as an interjection?
Best Answer
"I mean", like other discourse particles, is tough to nail down. But every discourse element does serve a function, it is just normally a function that is a bit different from other types of words.
Here is some current theory on what "I mean" means. All of my information comes from Fox Tree & Shrock (2002).
The paper has a slightly different focus, so I am picking out part of the article that summarizes some of the literature that explores possible discourse functions of I mean (so don't consider this a complete summary of that paper).
This article also mentions some research into "I mean" as a device used to assist turn management in a conversation (i.e. how the back-and-forth of a conversation is managed). Specifically, "I mean" can be used when Speaker A takes another turn talking, and wants to indicate that Speaker A is "skipping" what Speaker B just said and continuing the thought that Speaker A was conveying before Speaker B talked. For example, imagine this spontaneous spoken conversation, where each line almost interrupts the one before it:
(The above is my example — I hope it's clear what I am talking about.)
Other uses mentioned in the article:
Repair:
Monitoring:
Organizational: