210 Forms of Say
him- or herself from the opinion stated by not taking responsibility for it, or by
defl ecting any argument, rebuttal or censure by suggesting that it is simply “talk.”
The form is a kind of “rhetorical backoff,” in which the speaker “reaffi rms his
or her commitment to the truth of what was just said but not to the implications
that could be drawn from having made those claims” (Lee- Goldman 2011 : 77).
The expression may be used disingenuously or ironically and thus is often seen
as a “ruse” or “scam.” It may also be possible to use it humorously. O’Connor
and Kellerman ( 2013 ) suggest that it can be compared to introductory “Don’t
take this the wrong way, but ...”/ “No offense, but ...,” what they call a kind of
“postcatalepsis.”
7.3.3.1 (I’m) Just Saying in the SOAP Corpus. In order to test the
intuitions and speculations found in online sources concerning the functions of
(I’m) just saying/ sayin’ , I examined its use in the SOAP corpus, which contains
represented speech from 2001 to 2012 and hence provides a relatively large
number of examples. The numbers for sentence- fi nal I’m just saying/sayin’ ,
which – unlike sentence- initial and medial forms – do not have literal meaning
but serve almost exclusively as comment clauses , are shown in Table 7.3.^20
The functions of ( I’m) just saying/ sayin’ in SOAP can be categorized as
follows:
(a) The speaker is saying something rude to the hearer:
And also, you’re not the best cook. I’m just saying. (2007 YR)
you’re not the most excitin’ man I ever met. Just sayin’. (2012 GH)
20 A random sample of 100 examples of (I’m) just saying/ sayin’ in the SOAP corpus suggests that
the form is used more often by male than female speakers: 35% were used by female speakers,
64% by male speakers, and 1% of the names were indeterminate. However, since I do not know
the relative proportions of speech by female and male speakers in the corpus, these fi gures
must be taken with caution.
Table 7.3 Instances of sentence- fi nal (I’m) just sayin(g) in the
SOAP corpusaForm Number
I’m just saying [period] 282
Just saying [period] 37
I am just saying/ sayin’ [period] 0
I’m just sayin’ [period] 22
Just sayin’ [period] 6
I am only saying [period] 1a. Searched August 9, 2015.