In Other Words and I Mean:

Reformulation and Metarepresentation

 

Takahiro Otsu

Kyushu University

 

It has been commonly asserted that discourse markers in other words and I mean contribute to the discourse relation with the preceding utterance by way of restatement. They contribute to similar discourse functions including replacement repairs (Schiffrin 1987: 302). I mean and in other words are multifunctional and have some overlap in their discourse functions: they have a micro-level (or phase-level) use that modifies a speaker’s ideas as repairs or replacement repairs on the one hand, and a macro-level (or a discourse-level) use that modifies a speaker’s intention or communicative act producing various discourse functions on the other. However, the meaning of these two expressions has not been clearly differentiated. If we wish to describe the meaning of in other words and I mean, we need to investigate the cognitive mechanism in the use of these expressions, not the surface-level discourse functions including modification, adjustment, correction or clarification, all of which seem to be a coherence or speech act notion. This paper attempts to investigate the distinctive procedural constraint encoded by in other words and I mean — both of which serve as reformulation markers in discourse — within a relevance-theoretic framework. A reformulation is a verbal act based on the interpretive resemblance between the original utterance and the reformulation. In the case of, in other words, the reformulated utterance is used to represent the original utterance, and the interpretive resemblance is formed between the original utterance and the interpretation of the utterance. Meanwhile, in the case of I mean, the reformulated utterance is used to represent the thought encoded by the original utterance, and the interpretive resemblance is formed between the original utterance and the interpretation of the though encoded by the utterance. The instruction of I mean is to process the reformulation as a representation of a thought encoded by the original; the instruction of in other words is to process the reformulation as a representation or interpretation of the original. Thus, these two distinctive procedural constraints involve the resolution of a cognitive gap in the encoding and decoding process of verbal communication, respectively. At first glance, reformulation and restatement do not seem to be an efficient verbal act. However, such acts increase cognitive effect to offset extra processing effort.