Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish: How Speakers Attenuate Expressions 1138584657, 9781138584655

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
How the Book Started
The Aim of the Book
How the Book Is Organized
Note
References
1 Linguistic Mitigation
Introduction
A Brief on Mitigation
Mitigation in the Field of Socio-Pragmatics
On Vagueness and Mitigation
On Indirectness and Mitigation
Summary
Notes
References
2 Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish
Introduction
Past and Present Connection
Modulation
Empirical Research on Mitigation in English
Parentheticals and Reduced Parenthetical Clauses
Earlier Research on Strategies and Devices
Deictic Expressions
‘Sort of’, ‘kind of’
Mitigation in Institutional Discursive Settings
Academic Lectures and Text; Internal and External Modifications
Several Comparative Studies of English and Spanish Mitigation
Silence and Discourse Markers
Mitigation in Literature
Other Interactions
Parent-Child Interaction
Sign Language
Empirical Research on Mitigation in Spanish
Operationalizing Attenuation in Spanish
Un poquito (a little)
Age of Acquisition
Kinesic and Non-Verbal Behavior
Passive Voice
Power and Distance
Dialect Variation
The Use of Polysemic bastante (Enough, Too Much)
Social or External Factors: Gender, Age, Generational Differences in Mitigated Linguistic Behavior
Institutional Discourses and Mitigation
Imposition and Certitude and Mitigation
Suggested Universalized Taxonomy
Summary
Notes
References
3 Several Theoretical Perspectives
Introduction
Politeness Theory and Mitigation
Speech Acts Theory and Mitigation
Psychological-Social-Affective Theory and Mitigation
The Socio-Pragma-Rhetorical Cultural Aspect and Mitigation
Pragmatic Variation and Mitigation
Summary
Notes
References
4 Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies
Introduction
Discourse and Mitigated Messages: Institutional and Non-Institutional Talk
Several Categories of Linguistic Devices, Features, and Strategies Employed to Mitigate
Impersonal Constructions as Shields
The Omission of Referents
Passive Voice Construction
Epistemic and Non-Epistemic Disclaimers
Parenthetical Verbs
Morphological Diminutives
Deictic Expressions
Other Linguistic Forms That Serve to Mitigate
Discourse Markers
Tense, Mood, and Aspect
Tag Questions
Cajolers
Prosodic Features
Proverbs and Sayings as Mitigating Devices
El qué dirán (What Others Will Say) and guardar las apariencias (Guarding Our Image or Appearances)
Summary
Notes
References
5 Putting It All Together
Introduction
Examining the Expression of Mitigated Utterances
Intensification vs. Mitigation
Summary
Note
References
6 Methodological Considerations
Introduction
The Benefits of Using Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches
Identifying a Corpus and Data Collection
Elicitation Methods
Oral Narratives
Conflict Talk
Identifying Appropriate Data and Data Collection
Metalinguistic Awareness
Coding Data
Summary
Notes
References
7 Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate
Introduction
On Teaching Pragmatics
Explicit Instruction
Sample Presentation
On Teaching Learners of Spanish and English How to Mitigate
Assessing the Acquisition of Mitigation: Instructional Interventions
Awareness Building
Variability in Learner Behavior
Summary
Notes
References
8 Bridging the Gap
Introduction
Digital Communications: An Initial Step
Natural-Occurring Speech
Institutional Discursive Settings
A Model to Inform Instruction and Research
Assessing Acquisition in Instructional Settings
Suggested Initial Instructional Interventions
Summary
Note
References
9 Concluding Thoughts
Reference
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish

This volume offers a comprehensive examination of mitigation in speech in English and Spanish, exploring how it is defined and theorized, and the various linguistic features employed to soften or downgrade the impact of a particular message across a range of settings. Building on the body of work done on mitigation in English and Spanish, the book begins by discussing how it has been conceptualized in the literature, drawing in part from Politeness Theory, among other perspectives from pragmatics, and highlighting increasing research on mitigating linguistic behavior in native and bilingual Spanish speakers and learners of Spanish. The volume explores examples from a variety of discursive contexts including medical, legal, and instructional environments, to unpack mitigation as it occurs in spontaneous speech through different lenses, looking both at the actual units of discourse but also taking a broader view by examining differences across dialects as well. The book also looks at the ways in which conclusions drawn from this research might be applied pedagogically in language learning classrooms. This volume will serve as a jumping-off point for a broader discussion in the field of socio-pragmatics and will be of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis, in addition to language teaching practitioners. Nydia Flores-Ferrán is Associate Professor in the Department of Learning and Teaching in the Graduate School of Education and in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA. Dr. Flores-Ferrán began as an English as a second, and foreign language instructor and gradually transitioned to Spanish linguistics. During her expansive career, her research and teaching have centered on sociolinguistics and pragmatics. She has investigated the variable use of several linguistic features among bilingual speakers for over 20 years. Her first book was on the variable use of subject pronouns in oral narratives.

Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics

Racialization and Language Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Peru Edited by Michele Back and Virginia Zavala Discourses of Identity in Liminal Places and Spaces Edited by Roberta Piazza Language Policy in Superdiverse Indonesia Subhan Zein Re-positioning Accent Attitude in the Global Englishes Paradigm A Critical Phenomenological Case Study in the Chinese Context Fan (Gabriel) Fang Revivals, Nationalism, and Linguistic Discrimination Threatening Languages Kara Fleming and Umberto Ansaldo Crosslinguistic Influence in Singapore English Linguistic and Social Aspects Ming Chew Teo Chinese-English Interpreting and Intercultural Communication Jim Hlavac and Zhichang Xu Ageing Identities and Women’s Everyday Talk in a Hair Salon Rachel Heinrichsmeier Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish How Speakers Attenuate Expressions Nydia Flores-Ferrán For more information about this series, please visit www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Sociolinguistics/book-series/RSSL

Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish How Speakers Attenuate Expressions Nydia Flores-Ferrán

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Nydia Flores-Ferrán to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-58465-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-50586-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgmentsix Introduction How the Book Started  4 The Aim of the Book  4 How the Book Is Organized  5 Note 8 References 8

1

1 Linguistic Mitigation Introduction 10 A Brief on Mitigation  10 Mitigation in the Field of Socio-Pragmatics  12 On Vagueness and Mitigation  17 On Indirectness and Mitigation  19 Summary  22 Notes  23 References 23

10

2 Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish Introduction 26 Past and Present Connection  27 Modulation 28 Empirical Research on Mitigation in English  29 Parentheticals and Reduced Parenthetical Clauses  29 Earlier Research on Strategies and Devices  30 Deictic Expressions  31 ‘Sort of’, ‘kind of’  32 Mitigation in Institutional Discursive Settings  33

26

vi  Contents Academic Lectures and Text; Internal and External Modifications 33 Several Comparative Studies of English and Spanish Mitigation 36 Silence and Discourse Markers  37 Mitigation in Literature  37 Other Interactions  37 Parent-Child Interaction  37 Sign Language  38 Empirical Research on Mitigation in Spanish  39 Operationalizing Attenuation in Spanish  39 Un poquito (a little)  42 Age of Acquisition  43 Kinesic and Non-Verbal Behavior  44 Passive Voice  44 Power and Distance  45 Dialect Variation  46 The Use of Polysemic bastante (Enough, Too Much) 47 Social or External Factors: Gender, Age, Generational Differences in Mitigated Linguistic Behavior  47 Institutional Discourses and Mitigation  49 Imposition and Certitude and Mitigation  50 Suggested Universalized Taxonomy  51 Summary 52 Notes 53 References 53 3 Several Theoretical Perspectives Introduction 59 Politeness Theory and Mitigation  60 Speech Acts Theory and Mitigation  67 Psychological-Social-Affective Theory and Mitigation 72 The Socio-Pragma-Rhetorical Cultural Aspect and Mitigation 74 Pragmatic Variation and Mitigation  77 Summary 81 Notes 82 References 82

59

Contents vii 4 Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies Introduction 86 Discourse and Mitigated Messages: Institutional and Non-Institutional Talk  89 Several Categories of Linguistic Devices, Features, and Strategies Employed to Mitigate  91 Impersonal Constructions as Shields  91 The Omission of Referents  95 Passive Voice Construction  97 Epistemic and Non-Epistemic Disclaimers  99 Parenthetical Verbs  99 Morphological Diminutives  100 Deictic Expressions  103 Other Linguistic Forms That Serve to Mitigate  107 Discourse Markers  107 Tense, Mood, and Aspect  109 Tag Questions  112 Cajolers 113 Prosodic Features  114 Proverbs and Sayings as Mitigating Devices  117 El qué dirán (What Others Will Say) and guardar las apariencias (Guarding Our Image or Appearances) 121 Summary 127 Notes 127 References 128

86

5 Putting It All Together Introduction 134 Examining the Expression of Mitigated Utterances  134 Intensification vs. Mitigation  141 Summary 146 Note 146 References 146

134

6 Methodological Considerations Introduction 148 The Benefits of Using Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches 149 Identifying a Corpus and Data Collection  156 Elicitation Methods  157

148

viii  Contents Oral Narratives  159 Conflict Talk  161 Identifying Appropriate Data and Data Collection  162 Metalinguistic Awareness  164 Coding Data  165 Summary 167 Notes 167 References 168 7 Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate Introduction 172 On Teaching Pragmatics  175 Explicit Instruction  176 Sample Presentation  181 On Teaching Learners of Spanish and English How to Mitigate 184 Assessing the Acquisition of Mitigation: Instructional Interventions 184 Awareness Building  192 Variability in Learner Behavior  193 Summary 197 Notes 197 References 197

172

8 Bridging the Gap Introduction 201 Digital Communications: An Initial Step  203 Natural-Occurring Speech  205 Institutional Discursive Settings  207 A Model to Inform Instruction and Research  207 Assessing Acquisition in Instructional Settings  208 Suggested Initial Instructional Interventions  211 Summary 214 Note 214 References 215

201

9 Concluding Thoughts Reference 220

217

Bibliography221 Index238

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to those who have enlightened me with their speech. In particular, I thank my husband, Simon Lawrence, who has supported me throughout the writing of the book and has put up with my long hours of work. His British English has propelled me to look at ways in which we attenuate our expressions in a different English dialect. And, he has contributed my understanding of those instances in which ‘we’ as in ‘we have to tend to the garden’ does not necessarily include me. I am fortunate to have been gifted with this wonderful partner. I must also thank my brother, Luis, who has provided me with unwavering support for the work I have done during my academic career. Also, I am grateful to my mother, who has guided me even though she is no longer with us. My passion for work, writing, and academia were borne from my father’s passion for study, his never-ending quest for knowledge. Lena and Jesse, my niece and nephew, have also contributed to my thoughts; Lena’s North Carolina linguistic behavior and Jesse’s knowledge of digital technologies have acquainted me with newer generations of talk. To write this book, I made every effort to dig into many of the transcripts and data I have saved over the years. I spent arduous hours reviewing every detail and, thus, cannot go without thanking the speakers who provided me with material for this book. Finally, I would like to thank all the scholars I mention in the text. In particular, I am grateful to Dr. Kelly Lovejoy, a former doctoral student, who took it upon herself to write her dissertation on this phenomenon in learner contexts, a project that has also inspired many of my thoughts.

Introduction

In socio-pragmatic research, the phenomenon of linguistic mitigation (henceforth mitigation or attenuation) has been the object of study for several decades. Mitigation refers to how we modify our expressions to make them more pleasing or acceptable to others, how we convey uncertainty and express indirectness, and how we modify our communication to decrease the force of a message. In general, we can say that we mitigate our expressions to be safe. This linguistic phenomenon is also known as attenuation.1 In general, we attenuate our utterances to manage our interactions with others. Our thoughts take into account the addressee, situation, context, and stylistic choices we have in our linguistic repertoire. That is, we consider many factors when we attenuate while also attempting to achieve our goals. Therefore, we can say that linguistic mitigation conveys, to a certain extent, caution and consideration for our hearer and ourselves. Said differently, mitigation is a socio-pragmatic and affective concern, not only a linguistic one, and when we attenuate, we consider our hearer, how we wish to be seen as an emissary of a message, how we communicate a message, and the effect it has on its hearer. Mitigation is a complex linguistic phenomenon. When we attenuate, we are using an inventory of resources that are shaped by many external and internal factors. Among them are: linguistic (e.g., the grammar we use), stylistic (e.g., formal or informal ways we express our utterances), psychological (e.g., mental—conscious and unconscious, and emotional ways in which we convey our messages), and pragmatic (e.g., situational and socio-cultural contexts). Puga Larraín (1997) suggests that the foundations of mitigation are anchored in human psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Take, for example, the following excerpt issued by a Spanish-speaking gardener living in the U.S. who was attempting to present an expensive invoice after having completed his service (as he stood to wait for his payment): Buenos días. ¿Cómo están? Espero que le haya gustado el servicio. (hace entrega de la cuenta). Cuando tenga un momentito, déjeme saber, y paso a recoger el pago.

2  Introduction [“Good morning. How are you? I hope you have liked the service. (He hands over an invoice). Whenever you have a tiny moment, let me know, and I’ll come by to pick up the payment.”] The gardener employed multiple linguistic devices and strategies to convey his message: Two salutations: “Good morning. How are you?”, which we can consider polite linguistic behavior. He also formulated a request that his service is considered of value or be appreciated: “I hope you have liked the service.” He expressed an attenuated directive for payment with no timeline which contains the diminutive -ito: “Whenever you have a (tiny) moment” (although he stayed waiting and did not leave). This segment was followed by yet another directive: “let me know”, followed by an assertion: “I’ll come by to pick up the payment.” He could have issued: “Good morning. Here’s the invoice for this week’s work.” Alternatively, “Good morning . . . Here’s your bill,” or “Good morning, you owe me $xxx for this week’s work; I’ve included the bill here.” In sum, and while we can attest to the utterances related to politeness, this excerpt is illustrative of how he was cautious, considerate, and careful with the aim of achieving his goal (i.e., receiving payment). It was also illustrative of how he employed culturally and pragmatically acceptable linguistic devices and strategies in Spanish to mitigate his request for the payment. This example also points to how mitigation may intersect at times with politeness. In another instance, which took place many years ago in the tropical heat of an afternoon in our kitchen, a similar interaction took place. This time a plumber (an adult) asked me, a 12-year-old, for water as he was working in the kitchen: ¿Me puedes regalar un poquito de agua? [Can you give (‘gift’) me a little bit of water?] In the previous example, we find the request contained an attenuated verb regalar (to gift) as opposed to dar (to give), forms which are semantically dissimilar. We also notice the use of the morphological ending -ito, which is similar but not exact in meaning to ‘a little’ or ‘tiny’, when we both knew he was requesting a full glass of water. The plumber had options to formulate his request as ¿Puedes darme agua? (Can you give me water?) since he was older than me and he could have issued a directive altering the syntactic structure to form a question. However, we should note that the power dynamic was in his favor. A directive would have still been considered pragmatically acceptable behavior, but it would not have represented a mitigated statement. The fact that the utterance was syntactically formulated as a request is also indicative of how he attenuated his speech. If he had issued a directive such as Dame agua, por favor. (Give

Introduction 3 me water, please.), he may have violated a pragmatic principle, that of issuing a command or directive regardless of employing the polite phrase por favor (please). Thus, the illocutionary force of his message was softened by the use of the syntactic and lexical choices he made. We should note that I was much younger than he was, and, it would have been pragmatically appropriate to issue a directive. However, he was providing a service to my family, and social distance and status may have played a role in how he formulated his request. Therefore, in this case, he used his pragmatic knowledge (e.g., formality and distance) and opted to use a verb regalar (to gift) to pad or soften his request to achieve his goal. The illocutionary force related to the requests issued by both the gardener and plumber invoked my response: In the first request for payment, I immediately issued a check and did not leave him waiting. In the second excerpt, I rapidly grabbed a large pitcher of water from the refrigerator and served the plumber. Thus, even though age, distance, and formality may have influenced how their requests were formulated, the illocutionary force yielded a similar rapid reaction which satisfied their goals. Thus, we consider the phenomenon of mitigation as part of human interaction since it is shaped or conditioned by the speaker and hearer relationships. Furthermore, mitigation is ubiquitous in our speech, and while it is a common communicative strategy that we all tend to employ, we are not so aware of it and the ways we construct and cushion or pad an expression. It is related to or may entail politeness, yes, but it is not equal to it (Fraser, 1980, p. 341). Further, Schneider (2010, p. 225) posits that mitigation facilitates the handling of interpersonal relations in that it makes an utterance “as acceptable as possible”. He suggests, like Caffi (1991, 1999, 2007), that it covers all strategies by which a speaker avoids the risks arising from an interaction. For instance, ‘thank you’ and gracias represent polite utterances but not mitigated ones. However, if I am visiting a close friend, and we are having dinner, and I say, “Pass me a little salt”, this utterance is considered attenuated in that I am asking for the salt shaker, not a few grains of salt and I am expressing the request in a direct manner, one which may not be characteristic of polite speech. That is, terms or phrases such as ‘please’, ‘kindly’, ‘can you do me a favor?’ were not issued in this particular request to pass the salt. Moreover, the interaction was between two friends, suggesting that levels of familiarity influence how we mitigate our expressions. One of the primary tenets of mitigation or attenuation is that it represents ways in which we avoid conflict and risk; a way in which we may mask our real intentions and protect ourselves, and show consideration for others. In essence, it entails both selflessness and self-seeking; being considerate of our hearers and adjusting our language in such a way as to ensure our own goals are met.

4  Introduction Mitigation also represents one of the ways we save and protect ‘face’ (Fraser, 1980). We say ‘one’ since we argue throughout the text that the cultural notions proposed by other scholars (e.g., Placencia, 1996) such as ‘el qué dirán’ (what will others say), ‘guardar las apariencias’ (guard our appearances), ‘quedar bien’ (to get along) and ‘el compromiso social’ (a sense of social obligation), also have been found to fuel the use of attenuated expressions.

How the Book Started Since 2008, I have been investigating attenuated linguistic behavior in Spanish and in English. An initial study (Flores-Ferrán, 2009) which examined why speakers tended to alternate the use of uno ‘one’ with yo ‘I’ in Spanish, revealed that these two forms were not mere alternations. The study uncovered that speakers tended to avoid speaking of themselves and others (e.g., avoided using yo (I), nosotros (we), tú (you)) and, instead, tended to employ uno ‘one’. Since then, I was made aware of how native speakers of Spanish tend to circumlocute, reduce the illocutionary force of messages, and avoid saying ‘no’ when resisting or issuing a negative response or utterance. After receiving a grant which investigated indirect ways in which clients in therapy were not directly expressing that they were not adhering to treatment, I began to examine how they attenuated their expressions during their therapy sessions. The statements they issued that were related to non-adherence became the object of study, and these manifested in mitigated expressions. The project led me to a heuristic path in which I began to unravel the mitigating strategies and devices that were being issued by clients, ones that were not detected in therapy as a sign of non-adherence to treatment.

The Aim of the Book The book aims to issue an invitation: To open a discussion between researchers, second language acquisition experts, and language instructors on this aspect of pragmatics, mitigation. This phenomenon has already received attention from researchers in English, Italian, and Spanish. The depth of research conducted on mitigation in Spanish and English has expanded to examine its manifestation among natives, bilinguals, and learners of Spanish and English. The book proposes to unpack the phenomenon of mitigation; what it is, how it is issued, and the linguistic features which point to the softening, padding, cushioning, or downgrading the force of a message. Its primary goal is to open a conversation among linguists, researchers, young scholars, language instructors, and text and curriculum developers and create awareness since this phenomenon is not explicitly taught to

Introduction 5 learners and, with regard to native speakers, it tends to go undetected. Therefore, individuals who examine oral and written (including digital) communication are not so aware of the devices and strategies that are used to attenuate, and they are not aware of the reason why we employ them. The book explores mitigating devices and strategies that speakers tend to use in institutional and non-institutional discursive settings, all within the context of spontaneous speech, but there are instances in which mitigation in writing and digital communication is also discussed. To approach these aims, the book discusses various theoretical perspectives and explores empirical research conducted on this aspect of pragmatics. Towards the end, the text addresses instruction, protocols used for language instruction, and it also deals with bridging the gap between research and language instruction. In sum, and building upon this aim, the book’s objectives address the following broad questions: 1. How is mitigation defined in the field of socio-pragmatics? 2. What theories have been introduced by researchers? 3. Is it plausible to characterize or depict mitigation in English and Spanish by way of the type of strategies speakers tend to employ? 4. Are there normative ways of mitigating in English and Spanish? 5. What linguistic behaviors related to attenuation can be incorporated into instruction? Today, there are aspects of mitigation which are still being unpacked and have not been thoroughly investigated in English and Spanish. For instance, in reading Cabedo Nebot’s (2016) work among several others, we find a dearth of research related to prosodic features and how these contribute to reducing the illocutionary force of a message. Apart from the theoretical perspectives and review of research, the book also discusses several mitigating strategies employed by speakers in two categories of discourses (e.g., institutional and non-institutional) and attempts to reflect upon this phenomenon using excerpts gathered from a variety of scholarly research. Finally, we also attend to how we can increase awareness of mitigation and teaching pragmatics and weave this phenomenon in instructional settings. I take this matter as urgent in that we need to engage instructors in our research, and language instructors need to collaborate with researchers to increase awareness of this phenomenon that is so pervasive in our linguistic behavior.

How the Book Is Organized Chapter 1 discusses the phenomenon of linguistic mitigation, its definition, and how it is conceptualized in the field of socio-pragmatics, including my

6  Introduction own perspective. While some have argued that we attenuate our speech to be polite, the text suggests that we broaden our perspective and reach out to scholarship that has posited that mitigation is pervasive and not only associated with politeness. The chapter also discusses how mitigation intersects with vagueness and indirectness, somewhat unrelated to politeness. In Chapter 2, we attempt to review empirical research, which points to how mitigation or attenuation manifests in English and Spanish, but we recognize that not all studies can be addressed in this text. In the chapter, we explore how mitigation or attenuation has been defined and operationalized in the field of socio-pragmatics in both these languages and in several instances we refer to Caffi’s (2007) work on Italian mitigation. We also show that mitigation is not equal to politeness and the different goals this phenomenon serves. Chapter 3 introduces the theoretical perspectives posited by scholars. In it, we discuss mitigation using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Theory, which has been used to frame much of the earlier research on attenuation. We also anchor our perspective following much of the work documented by Caffi (2007) on mitigation in Italian since it provides a more expanded outlook on what speakers do when they mitigate. Speech Act Theory is also discussed in relation to attenuation, and after this section, the chapter goes on to discuss cross-cultural aspects proposed by Placencia (1996), among others, that have been found to mediate attenuated expressions in Spanish. We also explain in Chapter 3 the stressors and pressures that may prompt speakers to mitigate since it is considered a communicative strategy that affects speakers and hearers in an interaction (Czerwionka, 2012). Since mitigation has its foundation in human psychology, anthropology, and sociology (e.g., Czerwionka, 2010; Martinovski, 2006; Martinovski, Mao, Gratch, & Marsella, 2005; Puga Larraín, 1997), we have named this construct the Psychological-Social (psycho-social). In other words, we conceptualize mitigation beyond its relationship with face and politeness. The chapter presents the reasoning for situating this phenomenon within the psycho-social perspective. Towards the end, the chapter touches upon pragmatic variation concerning the realization of attenuation, how speakers may vary their mitigating devices according to their respective dialects and how strategies may differ among and within speakers of English and Spanish. Chapter 4 provides a detailed discussion of how to detect mitigation in communication. In it, we explain and detail the complexities involved in identifying this phenomenon and what researchers have considered linguistic features, devices, and strategies. We also go beyond the microlinguistic features and devices related to mitigation in this chapter to discuss proverbs, figurative language, cultural notions including religious sayings, and how these linguistic expressions may intersect with attenuated propositions following the work of Placencia (1996), among others.

Introduction 7 We begin Chapter 5 by providing an analysis of mitigating devices and strategies using multiple theoretical perspectives. The chapter serves as a review and exercise and it dissects and explains the expression of multiple strategies and devices in longer stretches of discourse rather than short excerpts. We also briefly discuss escalation or intensification as opposed to mitigation. We introduce methodological considerations when researching mitigation or attenuated expressions in Chapter 6. It provides a detailed example of how my research began and how it has unfolded using mixed methods. In this chapter, we underscore the importance of Briz and Abelda’s (2013) theoretical proposal, which describes a constellation of factors (linguistic and non-linguistic) we need to consider when analyzing attenuated communication. Since one of the goals of the text is to open a conversation, we cast a wide net to reach out to language instructors and researchers in Chapter 7. The chapter delves into the socio- and pragma-linguistic aspects that language instruction needs to take into account since learners of any language require explicit instruction on how to pad or cushion their utterances. This chapter discusses interventions and protocols employed in research and instruction and ways to measure the acquisition of mitigation. Finally, Chapter 8 calls upon researchers and language instructors to partner together to bridge the pragmatic lacunae in language teaching and research. We specifically address how to increase research on mitigation in social interactions, and we explain protocols, activities, and assessment techniques that can be applied to instructional contexts. The chapter expands on data proposed by Culpeper, Mackey, and Taguchi (2018), Ishihara and Cohen (2010), and Taguchi (2019), among others. We conclude the book by drawing together various aspects of mitigation discussed in the book by way of questions so that readers can use them to reflect upon mitigation and the state-of-the-art of current research. Another objective of the conclusion is to reflect on what has been narrowly described as mitigation. The final aim of Chapter 8 is to propose a brief declaration about attenuation, a rally that can impact the way we investigate this phenomenon in language instruction and how language instruction can inform researchers. Throughout this book, we provide empirical evidence related to mitigation in communication in institutional and non-institutional discursive settings. For instance, I recall a doctor in my community who, at the time, lived about ten doors from our house and had neighbors in for checkups. I overheard him speaking to my grandmother when she was not feeling well and he said, “Tienes bronchitis. ¡Tienes que parar el cigarillo!” (You’ve got bronchitis. You need to stop smoking!), when he could have softened his message by saying, “Your lungs are being affected by smoking.” Alternatively, “It would be best if you stopped smoking.”

8  Introduction On another occasion, when he gave me a check-up as a preteen, he stated: “¡Estás gorda!” (You are fat!) as opposed to issuing a mitigated utterance such as “You’re a bit overweight.” The abrupt and abrasive manner in which he conveyed his messages was not attenuated whatsoever. In this case, there was an intensifying or strengthening effect (Holmes, 1984). Moreover, the illocutionary force, the intensity, of his messages expected an effect, a change in his patients’ behavior. While his utterances were perhaps altruistic and he may have attempted to influence our future health, his linguistic behavior on a scale of illocutionary force (i.e., the increased prosodic feature of stress included) conveyed an ascending value, perhaps an aggravating one. It should be noted that he was pragmatically competent in Spanish and had alternative ways to express his message. So while we measure intensity on a scale, we need to ask ourselves the following question: Is it just what is said that is important or is it how something is stated? (Culpeper, 2011). In sum, the doctor never used his linguistic inventory to disguise his message. However, from a pragmatic perspective, he was in charge, had a higher professional status, and was the most knowledgeable among us concerning health-related matters. Therefore, we can say that his linguistic behavior was conditioned by two external factors: power and status. And, we note he was not polite. Nonetheless, his utterances would probably be considered non-felicitous and pragmatically inappropriate in the 21st century. In the final chapter, we also call for a rally, to request that research and language instruction interact and fully embrace this phenomenon as it is essential that we open the lines of communication and execute our work together. To conclude, attenuated expressions (i.e., oral or written, including digital) are pervasive in our daily interactions. They serve a purpose and are constructed, influenced, and shaped by contexts, interlocutors’ intentions, and many more aspects that we discuss in the book. Much more can be stated about attenuation, but the current contents should work to frame a conversation about it and focus mitigation outside the realm of politeness.

Note 1. Throughout the book the terms ‘mitigation’ and ‘attenuation’ are considered to mean the same thing.

References Briz, A., & Albelda, M. (2013). Una propuesta teórica y metodológica para el análisis de la atenuación lingüística en español y portugués. La base de un proyecto en común (ES.POR.ATENUACIÓN). Onomázein, 28, 290–319.

Introduction 9 Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cabedo Nebot, A. (2016). La función de la atenuación y la configuración prosódica: un estudio a partir de un corpus de español coloquial. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 27, 55–73. Caffi, C. (1991). Aspetti pragmatici e testuali delle introduzioni a tesi di laurea e specializzazione in materie scientifiche. In C. Lavinio & A. A. Sobrero (Eds.), La lingua degli studenti universitari (pp. 71–98). Firenze, Italia: La Nuova Italia. Caffi, C. (1999). On mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 31(7), 881–909. Caffi, C. (2007). Mitigation. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Culpeper, J. (2011). It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it! Prosody and impoliteness. In Linguistic Politeness Research Group. (Eds.), Discursive approaches to politeness (pp. 57–83). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Culpeper, J., Mackey, A., & Taguchi, N. (2018). Second language pragmatics: From theory to research. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Czerwionka, L. A. (2010). Mitigation in Spanish discourse: Social and cognitive motivations, linguistic analyses, and effects on interaction and interlocutors (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com (AAI3428999). Czerwionka, L. A. (2012). Mitigation: The combined effects of imposition and certitude. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(10), 1163–1182. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2009). Are you referring to me? The variable use of UNO and YO in oral discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(9), 1810–1824. Fraser, B. (1980). Conversational mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 4(4), 341–350. Holmes, J. (1984). Modifying illocutionary force. Journal of Pragmatics, 8(3), 345–365. Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. London and New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Martinovski, B. (2006). A framework for the analysis of mitigation in courts: Toward a theory of mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(12), 2065–2086. Martinovski, B., Mao, W., Gratch, J., & Marsella, S. (2005). Mitigation theory: An integrated approach. In B. Bara, L. Barsalou, & M. Bucciarelli (Eds.), Proceedings of the conference on cognitive science (pp. 1407–1412). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Placencia, M. E. (1996). Politeness in Ecuadorian Spanish. Multilingua, 15(1), 13–34. Puga Larraín, J. (1997). La atenuación en el castellano de Chile: Un enfoque pragmalingüístico. Valencia, Spain: Universidad de Valencia-Tirant lo Blanch. Schneider, S. (2010). Mitigation. In M. Locher & S. Graham (Eds.), Interpersonal pragmatics (pp. 253–269). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Taguchi, N. (2019). The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and pragmatics. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

1 Linguistic Mitigation

Introduction This chapter centers on defining and operationalizing linguistic mitigation as a linguistic and socio-pragmatic-affective phenomenon. Several concepts are also discussed concerning how mitigation intersects with vagueness and indirectness. While most researchers have shaped their perspectives on mitigation through the lens of Politeness Theory, and have examined the expression of mitigation within the realm of speech acts, we discuss this phenomenon using a broad lens. We consider mitigation as a communicative strategy that goes beyond the realm of politeness. It serves to decrease the illocutionary force of a message to its listener, and it has a socio-affective function since, at times, it is related to increasing solidarity, negotiating, garnering support, masking intentions, and even deception, among many other functions, to presumably win over or gain acceptance.

A Brief on Mitigation Research on linguistic mitigation emerged as early as the 1970s–1980s when most work related to it was seen under the guise of vagueness or expressions of indirectness (i.e., hedges). Caffi (2007, p. 51), for example, explicates the emergence of the concept of mitigation was borne out of a concern of pragmatic research which attended to illocutionary acts within discourse. The seminal work of Goffman (1971) with the concept of thanks minimization (e.g., ‘not at all’, ‘my pleasure’, ‘don’t mention it’) seems to have prompted researchers to consider how speakers downgraded messages. We also found early discussions on mitigation in Labov and Fanshel (1977) within therapeutic discourse, a study that documented how a client’s utterances were considered mitigating or aggravating. The study also discussed a myriad of paralinguistic cues (e.g., prosodic) and linguistic forms such as ‘just a little’ and how they intersect with mitigation. Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989) also attended to issues related to

Chapter 1 11 mitigation in their examination of speech acts of requests and refusals. For instance, Blum-Kulka et al. (1989, p. 287) discussed downgraders, lexical, phrasal, and syntactic mitigating supportive moves and preparatory formulas such as ‘I’d like to ask you something . . .’ among many other linguistic features that also manifest in Spanish (e.g., Me gustaría preguntarte algo . . .). These examples are representative of mitigated expressions which, as head acts, suggest that a direct or negative statement may be forthcoming. In essence, research on mitigation has persisted for approximately 50 years. Throughout the years, the scholarship produced on mitigation has referred to mitigation as hedging (Holmes, 1995), attenuation (e.g., Briz Gómez, 1995; Leech, 1983), and downgrading (e.g., House & Kasper, 1981), among others. While there have been several definitions attributed to mitigation, our first encounter with this phenomenon was borne from Lakoff (1972), who proposed that attenuation is related to the concept of hedging. Caffi (2007) further posits that there are different types of mitigation centered on the locutionary aspects of an utterance; the locutionary (i.e., vagueness or weakening of an act), illocutionary (i.e., the indirectness of the act), and perlocutionary acts (i.e., attenuating effects). So while we understand that mitigation entails vagueness and indirectness, we may ask how is it that attenuation is realized? Here are several examples that may be illustrative of her explanation: 1. Indirect expressions are not imperatives. (‘It’s hot in here.’ vs. ‘Open the window.’) 2. Questions can be formulated as indirect requests. (‘Don’t you think it’s hot in here?’ vs. ‘Open the window.’) 3. Preparatory formulas can attenuate a request. (‘Do you think it is possible for you to open the window.’ vs. ‘Open the window.’) 4. Responses can be indirect. (‘Well, I’ve tried to open it before.’ vs. ‘No, I can’t.’) The weakening effect is found in ‘it’s hot in here’, ‘don’t you think . . .’, ‘do you think it is possible . . .’, ‘well, I’ve tried to . . .’. We can claim that these expressions represent a modulation, a decrease in the strength of an utterance. For instance, ‘it’s hot in here’ can be realized by engaging the listener and issuing ‘Do you find it hot in here?’. Naturally, depending on the relationship of the interlocutors, the power dynamics, and other factors, the illocutionary force may produce different results. An addressee may merely agree while another may ask what can be done to alleviate the heat. A colleague of equal rank, for instance, may suggest: ‘Have you tried opening the window?’ whereas a student or an assistant may say: ‘Do you want me to open it for you?’ or ‘Why don’t I open the window?’.

12  Linguistic Mitigation We gather from this brief explanation that attenuated expressions entail a degree of indirectness and vagueness. More importantly, however, its manifestation relies on the speaker-addressee relationship and the contexts in which social interactions occur. In general, we modify our expressions to accommodate to the situation at hand. The decrease in illocutionary force of a message touches every realm of communication, albeit institutional talk or informal talk among friends. What is perhaps most important is that attenuation does not manifest with a set of specific syntactic structures, prosodic features, lexical items, and so forth. It is boundless, and it is highly dependent on the speakers’ need to soften, pad, or cushion a message, all conditioned by the addressee(s) involved in a particular interaction. We argue throughout this book that mitigation represents modulation— a cushioning, padding, softening of an expression—and that the degree of modulation is mediated by many factors surrounding the interaction and the speaker(s) and hearer(s). Czerwionka (2010, p. v) posits that mitigation represents a modification of language in “response to social and cognitive challenges (stressors) in contexts of linguistic interaction” following the work of Martinovski, Mao, Gratch, and Marsella (2005). Czerwionka argues that previous research attended to mitigation through word and utterance levels of language. However, her seminal work defines mitigation outside the realm of words, and she suggests that the manifestation of mitigation largely depends on two factors: A degree of uncertainty and a degree of imposition a speaker may face during an interaction. Also, in this book, we view mitigation as a psychological and socio-affective phenomenon, not only a linguistic one, an observation we will substantiate with authentic excerpts produced by speakers of Spanish and English.

Mitigation in the Field of Socio-Pragmatics Mitigation or atenuación (as it is known in Spanish) has been defined as what we do with language that results in softening the effects of a message or decreasing the harshness of a message. It does not manifest in specific linguistic forms and features (Schneider, 2013). Instead, it is how forms and features contribute to soften, pad, or cushion our messages. It refers to how we use our linguistic resources (e.g., lexical and non-lexical items, discourse markers, verb forms, syntactic structures, morphological and prosodic features) to reduce the illocutionary force of our messages. We can say that when we mitigate, we downgrade the strength and impact of our expressions and, in doing so, we tend to mask our real intentions (Briz Gómez, 1995). The phenomenon of attenuation can also entail the use of other linguistic features and behaviors such as prosodic or suprasegmental ones (e.g., rising intonation, stress, pauses), and even smiles, laughter, and

Chapter 1 13 silence have been found to co-occur with attenuating expressions (e.g., Cabedo Nebot, 2016; Kallen, 2011; Piatti, 2000). Fraser’s (1980, p. 341) classic example of an employer releasing an employee is illustrative of how a speaker can mitigate unwelcome news. His example: “You’re fired.” as opposed to issuing “It is my unpleasant task as Vice President to bring you the bad news that we are no longer able to retain you in our employ.” is representative of how a message can be attenuated. Fraser (1980, p. 342) also posits that mitigation involves several features and effects that arise as a consequence of an utterance. His perspective has associated mitigation with how speakers deal with facethreatening acts (e.g., to mitigate the force of criticism or bad news), and how speakers may use linguistic strategies to avoid risk whenever the act entails an unwelcoming effect. We should point out that defining precisely when communication is attenuated is highly challenging since linguistic features and grammatical structures cannot be isolated. That is, we need to consider how these features and structures, together with context, soften, cushion, or pad a message. Further, at times, attenuated messages1 go even undetected. In the broad sense, we can say that attenuation refers to how we use language, our linguistic strategies, to reduce the impact of what is being said. Scholars have conceptualized mitigation within the framework of Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987). However, our approach to this phenomenon rests outside the scope of politeness and face-threatening acts as we will discuss throughout the book. We consider linguistic politeness as a form of communication, a behavior, that is universal to all languages and it is culturally bound to societal norms. Leech (1983, p. 3) argued that what is meant to be polite is to “speak or behave in such a way as to (appear to) give benefit or value not to yourself but to the other person(s) you are conversing with”. We view mitigation differently; it does not necessarily always benefit the person we are speaking with; it benefits the speaker. Also, it is essential to dissect polite ‘behavior’ and polite ‘language’ to enable our researcher’s lens to visualize the difference between polite and mitigated language. The book focuses on language, mitigated or attenuated expressions, messages which may not be solely attributed to polite language. Watts (2003) approaches the technical term ‘politeness’ from a variety of perspectives. In general, he approaches the analysis of politeness with how it manifests in language usage, in language interaction. In other words, he focuses on ‘linguistic politeness’. While the manifestation of both politeness and mitigation may be culturally bound, they reflect different expressions of language, and they serve different communicative goals. Mitigation is not a speech act; it is the modification of the contents of the utterance (albeit oral or written) and the effects it has upon the hearer. Fraser (1980, p. 342) suggests that it is the modification of only

14  Linguistic Mitigation those effects which are unwelcoming, but this modification may not be universal to all languages. To this perspective, we add that the scope of mitigation may also entail preparatory formulas and not only the unwelcoming segments of a message. Consider this example in which a spouse is telling her partner that she thinks he cannot do a household chore: Don’t you think . . . that seems too hard for you to handle? ¿No crees . . . que esto se te hace difícil manejar? In this example, ‘don’t you think’ operates as a head act, a preparatory formula, and an external modification. The main clause contains ‘seems’ which functions as a mitigating device since the wife could have stated ‘is’. In other words, she modified the message in three ways: Formulating a question, a syntactic strategy, prefacing the main clause with an external modification, and employing a verb whose semantic meaning denotes doubt rather than asserts. The same interpretation can be applied to the example in Spanish. Thus, and as mentioned earlier, mitigation manifests in different ways; it is a socio-pragma-affective-linguistic phenomenon and, as we will see throughout the book, it depends on a speaker’s motivations, linguistic preferences and repertoire, the arsenal of devices speakers have and wish to employ, and the context in which attenuated messages are conveyed. We also note that it is an affective phenomenon in that mitigated expressions may increase bonds and solidarity among the speakers. Caffi (2007, p. 16)2 uses ‘attenuation’ as a synonym of mitigation and posits that it is the result of a weakening operation or a modulation related to the intensity of a message. For instance, on the one hand, a speaker can intensify her message by adding ‘totally’ in English or totalmente in Spanish, by escalating the modulation: I totally agree with you. Well . . . I somewhat agree with you. The lexical items ‘well’ and ‘somewhat’ weaken the strength of the utterance while ‘totally’ increases the intensity. In Spanish the statement may also create the same effect; intensification or a weakening: Estoy totalmente de acuerdo contigo. Bueno . . . estoy un poco de acuerdo contigo.

Chapter 1 15 In both languages, these examples convey a similar meaning and they reflect similar degrees of intensity. Also, two functions overlap with the mitigating effects in both languages. For example, by expressing ‘somewhat agree’ or estoy un poco de acuerdo contigo, the speaker is attempting to convey opposition, not only minimizing the impact of the message. The discourse markers ‘well’ and bueno signal doubt and preface what is forthcoming, a negative statement. We may ask ourselves, why do we mitigate or soften our messages instead of being direct? When we attenuate, we downgrade, or minimize the impact of a message, and this linguistic behavior has been associated with a reduction of face loss (Caffi, 2007; Fraser, 1980; Leech, 1983). Caffi (2007), for instance, has noted that this linguistic behavior is pervasive in our speech. However, several scholars suggest that mitigation is more than a set of strategies (e.g., phrases, words, clauses) we employ to attenuate the impact of our messages (Briz Gómez, 2004; Caffi, 1999, 2007; Czerwionka, 2010; Fraser, 1980; Placencia, 1996; Sbisà, 2001, among others). We also argue that mitigation is not only related to politeness and saving face, a perspective we address more fully throughout the text. In brief, we can say here that we attenuate because we worry and are concerned with ourselves and others; that we worry about what others think of us. That is, we have our interlocutors’ interest in mind as well as our own and we wish to maintain some degree of solidarity, balance, gain acceptance, and we wish to be liked by others and please others. We also have cultural values that seem to mediate when and how we mitigate our messages, values unrelated to politeness. Briz Gómez (2004), for example, also uses a broader lens to capture instances of mitigation in Spanish. He suggests that attenuation, as a pragma-linguistic category, serves as a negotiating tool. Its purpose is to minimize what has been said by softening, repairing, or masking the real intention of the speaker to maintain equilibrium. For example, let us assume that we are in a meeting and a colleague of equal status has asked you to develop and contribute to a project, but you are currently very busy. You can mitigate your response by issuing a statement such as: ‘I’m probably going to have to pass on this project for now as I have several deadlines to meet this week.’

This response would be pragmatically acceptable in an interaction between colleagues. What you are attempting to convey is a negative response such as ‘I can’t work on this new project at the moment’ or ‘I am really too busy’. In the lengthy response, we are negotiating and providing some cushioning while, at the same time, we are attempting to maintain equilibrium between ourselves and our colleague. That is,

16  Linguistic Mitigation we wish to be liked, accepted, and be as professional as possible in this given context. However, we probably would not respond to our supervisor similarly. We may suggest a postponement such as: ‘I’d be happy to engage in this project at the beginning of next month, if possible.’ This latter response, while it may consist of a refusal, still allows the supervisor to opt to select someone else, accept our conditions, or negotiate. The ‘if possible’ can manifest with a rising intonation suggesting there is a question, not a demand being issued. Thus, the response functions as a negotiating tool and makes the interaction more manageable. It probably is pragmatically unacceptable to say ‘No, I cannot engage in this project’ since power relations play an essential role in how we attenuate our propositions. Mitigation also represents an adjustment we make to our speech (Sbisà, 2001), a means by which speakers manage interactions, making their utterances more effective (Caffi, 1999). The perspective provided by the previously mentioned scholars opens the phenomenon of mitigation to the realm of the affective since we are attempting to maintain equilibrium and increase solidarity, again unrelated to politeness. With these perspectives in mind, we thus define mitigation from a broad viewpoint beyond the framework of politeness, and we associate this socio-pragma-affective-linguistic phenomenon following several researchers such as Briz Gómez (2004), Czerwionka (2012), Caffi (2007), Delbene (2004), Placencia (1996), among others. Their work suggests that mitigation has an affective conditioning since it increases agreement and solidarity between interlocutors. We tend to cushion our expressions depending on several factors: the message we wish to convey, the purpose of the message, the addressee, the context, the stressors we face, and circumstances that surround that interaction. In some instances, we may mitigate to reduce the harshness of the message such as a criticism, or a message that attempts to convince the hearer that our opinion is correct. In other instances, we may attenuate because a request may entail a high degree of imposition. In other words, the motivations for mitigating our communication can be prompted by an imposition, the degree to which an interaction represents a burden to us, or it can be triggered by certitude (Czerwionka, 2012), related to a speaker’s degree of conviction about an issue (Lakoff, 1973). While this section does not entirely represent what we know about this complex phenomenon, throughout the book we discuss aspects of mitigation in Spanish and English to expose how we mitigate or attenuate

Chapter 1 17 and the motivations which may prompt speakers to do so. We also discuss the linguistic strategies and devices we use. However, to thoroughly understand how we attenuate, we need to delve into how this phenomenon intersects with indirect speech and vague language.

On Vagueness and Mitigation The perspective for this book on mitigation goes beyond the scope of Politeness Theory and its manifestation in speech acts. To characterize mitigated expressions, we cannot only rely on speech acts (e.g., requests, refusals) or Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Theory of Politeness which, in particular, is rooted in Goffman’s (1955) concept of face-threatening acts. We argue and substantiate this perspective using authentic and spontaneous speech throughout the book, and we illustrate how attenuated expressions cannot be fully accounted for by these theories. If we define and operationalize mitigation within the context of vague and indirect speech, we are obligated to cast a broader net to account for a thorough depiction of mitigated speech. For instance, Caffi (2007) has explained that the term ‘mitigation’ can refer to the process itself or the result. Namely, we can use linguistic tools to mitigate our messages and, we can convey or send the hearer a message by being indirect. She further suggests that mitigation “is a relational notion, i.e., we tend to mitigate with (i) someone (ii) about something (iii) by using something else” (Caffi, 2007, p. 80). The key here, “by using something else”, is why we have to treat the mitigation using a broader lens to account for and interpret the data exemplified throughout the book. To explain the intersection between mitigation and vagueness, we first discuss Lakoff (1973), Ullman (1962), and Wierzbicka (1986), who may not share similar perspectives. First, we point out that Leech (1983) was instrumental in acknowledging the connection between indirectness, politeness, and mitigation.3 Lakoff (1973) first introduced the concept of ‘fuzziness’ from a semanticist’s perspective, noting that natural language concepts have ‘vague boundaries and fuzzy edges’ (458). He suggested that the meaning of sentences or categories within them is not as cut-and-dry as they seem. For instance, he noted that hedges (e.g., ‘kind of’, ‘sort of’, ‘more or less’, ‘rather’), depending on the context, function as mitigating devices; they serve to downgrade the force of an utterance. Lakoff (1973, p. 472) contended that in the examples of ‘sort of tall’ or intensifiers as ‘very’ in ‘very tall’ could not be accounted for under a two-way system or binary true or false proposition since these hedges modify the degree of membership of ‘tallness’. That is, there is an apparent implicit gradation. Lakoff’s semantic account of hedges suggested that category membership is a matter of degree, not a categorical yes-or-no matter. While most of the accounts of fuzziness or vague language were derived from the lens

18  Linguistic Mitigation of semantics, this perspective contributed to how researchers conceptualized vague language. To be more specific and apply these observations to mitigation, when we soften or cushion our messages, we can convey a message in a vague manner. Take the following example which is not contextualized: I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. Me siento un poco abrumada. Both the English and Spanish statements reflect vagueness. The use of ‘a bit’ or un poco does not equate to a numeric value, a quantifier, so we cannot distinguish how overwhelmed the speaker feels or the degree of gravity. Instead, the utterance may convey a high or low approximation. If we contextualize this same example by indicating that our boss has demanded that we spend more time in the office, and we indicate that we are feeling a bit overwhelmed, it now situates the response as a negative one. It suggests that we do not wish to comply with our boss’s request. So in this case, we do not need to quantify and say we are feeling ‘very’ overwhelmed or that you are 100% overwhelmed. The hint (a mitigating strategy) would suffice in stating: ‘I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed.’ This context also points to ways in which we express a negative response that does not necessarily touch upon being polite. That is, it can be considered impolite to respond to a supervisor in this manner. Prior to Lakoff’s (1973) work on vagueness, Ullman (1962, p. 118) also noted that “one of the principal sources of vagueness is the generic character of words”, and abstractness in words. Ullman (1962, p. 125) also posited that one of the factors that leads to vagueness is the lack of clear-cut boundaries in the non-linguistic world. With this in mind, we note that expressions that convey exaggeration such as ‘awful’, ‘dreadful’, ‘terrific’, and so on, may serve to intensify the meaning of a constituent, and to this we add that words such as ‘tiny’, ‘a little’, ‘sort of’, ‘kind of’, ‘probably’, ‘a bit’ may serve to de-intensify, or mitigate the content of their constituents. For instance, Lakoff (1972, p. 471) maintained that “just as very is an intensifier which conveys a high intensity, sort of is, in part at least, a de-intensifier”. Also, Lakoff noted that there are two distinct aspects of hedges. On the one hand, hedges may introduce fuzziness about a how a speaker may commit to the truth conditions of a proposition as in ‘He is sort of tall’ and, on the other, a speaker may not be sure or is doubtful as in ‘He seems rather tall’. A different argument was set forth by Wierzbicka (1986, p. 611) who maintained that most words and particles do have discrete meaning so we can discern what they exactly mean. She argued that while hedges such as ‘around’, ‘about’, ‘roughly’, ‘at least’, ‘at the most’, ‘only’,

Chapter 1 19 ‘merely’ and ‘just’ may be considered semantically fuzzy, they still can be accounted for under Gricean principles of interpretation, not necessarily under a semantic lens. Wierzbicka (1986, p. 612) noted that “hedges can be only elucidated by pragmatics”, and that vague terms or fuzzy words’ meanings can be stated using different formulae. So while these forms may be used to mitigate expressions such as in ‘Roughly speaking, I do not agree with you’ or, ‘At the most, this report is just okay’, a context may call for an attenuated utterance, and it may modulate the force of the message. These expressions are therefore exemplary of the intersection between mitigation and vague language. In particular, Lakoff (1973, p. 198) has noted that semantics and pragmatics are inextricably connected. With this inextricable connection in mind, we only then can recognize the intersection between mitigation and vagueness. To further elucidate on vagueness and its relationship to mitigation, Drave (2002, pp. 26–27) aligns the pragmatic functions of vague language with those of Channell (1994) and proposes that the primary functions of vague language are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Filling lexical gaps when a speaker cannot recall a word, Filling knowledge gaps, Emphasizing certain information, Deliberately withholding information, Conveying tentativeness, Conveying an evaluation of, or expectation about, a proposition, and Maintaining an atmosphere of friendliness, informality, or reference.

Keeping these functions in mind, we can now understand the intersection between the use of vague language and mitigation. For example, point 4. deliberately withholding information, 5. conveying tentativeness, 6. expressing an evaluation or expectation, and 7. maintaining friendliness represent only several of the pragmatic functions which have been attributed to mitigation. That is, we pad our messages with one, several, or all of these four goals in mind.

On Indirectness and Mitigation Another concern we need to discuss is the relationship between mitigation and indirectness. Concerning indirectness, Searle (1975, p. 59) maintains that the simplest cases of meaning are those in which the speaker utters a sentence and means exactly and literally what he says . . . but not all cases of meaning are this simple: hints, insinuations, irony, and metaphor—to mention a few examples—the speaker’s meaning come apart in various ways.

20  Linguistic Mitigation Taking Searle’s outlook into account, a speaker’s intention is not literally expressed if an utterance has been mitigated. While Searle’s hypotheses were based on speech acts and related to Speech Act Theory, we use this explanation to further assert that mitigation entails indirectness for when speakers use devices to minimize or downgrade, they are extracting lexical, syntactic, prosodic features, semantic, morphological features, among others, from their linguistic repertoire to cover the literal meaning of a message. In other words, a hint, a proverb, an utterance containing a parenthetical verb such as ‘I think that . . .’ represent ways in which indirectness is expressed. Terkourafi (2014) has also noted that scholars have now proposed expanded definitions of indirectness that go beyond the proposals set forth earlier by Grice (1975) and Searle (1975). Furthermore, and as Terkourafi (2014, p. 48) has noted, indirect speech may not always be a strategic option on behalf of speakers but instead be “natural and expected under certain circumstances”. In other words, indirectness is considered unmarked linguistic behavior. This perspective then points to how a wide range of linguistic features and expressions can be used to mitigate. Consider this example which was communicated to me years ago by a person to whom I mentioned that I did not land a job I wanted. I stated that I did not get the job in Rio de Janeiro and, instead, was offered one in Bucaramanga, Colombia. The response I received was expressed as a proverb: “No hay mal que por bien no venga.” “Every cloud has a silver lining.” [not literally translated] The response indicated that maybe it was better that I did not get the job in Brazil. The message also could have suggested, “I’m glad you didn’t get that job in Brazil; I didn’t want you to move there.” Nonetheless, we can consider the response mitigated since it was not sympathetic or caring towards me; it was hinting that something else may come or that the speaker was pleased I did not get the job, all referring to how the speaker attenuated the message. That said, there are other explanations for why mitigation and indirectness are so affiliated. Morgan (2010, p. 283) argues that indirectness is an identity-producing discourse strategy in which speakers “launch, detect, and critique multiple meanings in interactions”. In her work, which examines African American-related discourse, we find that indirectness is related to power. She explains that underrepresented groups yield to indirectness as a means of not having to pay the consequences of being direct, a concept somewhat analogous to what Placencia (1996)

Chapter 1 21 and others have coined el qué dirán (what will others think) and guardar las apariencias y compromiso social (guard appearances and social obligation). Indirectness also seems to coincide with accompanying stressors that go along with attenuated speech (Czerwionka, 2010). However, Terkourafi (2011, p. 2861) contends that in the presence of politeness and face, “Why would a rational communicator ever choose to be direct?” (her italics). We can surely name reasons why we may choose to be direct. We feel a need to be direct in instances that require quick or urgent responses, when using imperatives to get things done, to convince an interlocutor, to grab attention, to disagree or agree expeditiously, among other behaviors, all which do not necessarily convey hostility or impoliteness (naturally, depending on context). For instance, in arguments or political debates in social settings, we tend to want to get our point across immediately, and thus, we probably express opinions in a direct manner to prove our points. We also issue direct messages in meetings when we vote and argue in support of a measure or when we reject and do not support an action or a new policy, none of which intersects with politeness. In an educational context, for instance, it is our job to support concerns, practices, issues, and measures that are good for our students, department, and colleagues. But not all policies that arise in meetings do so. So if we do not support a measure, what do we tend to do? We tend to be direct and explain our point (e.g., I oppose this measure because . . .). Therefore, while being polite may be considered unmarked behavior, directness cannot be regarded as impolite. Speakers have options to be direct or indirect, although this may not be as strategically planned (Terkourafi, 2014). Moreover, we note that interactions are usually multifunctional and complex; they consist of multiple clauses, sentences, and exchanges. In particular, mitigated expressions or messages, therefore, can manifest entangled within several exchanges in which directness and indirectness alternate. There are many instances in which we have probably heard indirect statements issued by colleagues or friends. For example, when someone has asked for a change in a policy or a request for a change in meeting date, a respondent can say, ‘Let me get back to you on that.’ This statement is probably indirectly leaning towards a negative response. Another example is one generated from a social gathering in which two parties are saying goodbye, and one says ‘Let’s keep in touch’ (e.g., if phone numbers have not been exchanged). It implicitly conveys ‘It was nice meeting you, but I’ll probably never contact you again.’ In brief, we learn from these perspectives that speakers can be intentionally or unintentionally vague or indirect, and this then adds to the complexities regarding how mitigation is realized. Later in the book, we will discuss in more detail the use of, for example, the all-inclusive ‘we’

22  Linguistic Mitigation as opposed to the use of ‘you’ as in ‘We need to clean up this room a bit before guests arrive.’ In this context ‘We’ operates to mitigate what could be considered an order or directive such as ‘You need to clean your room’ (Flores-Ferrán, 2017; Sing, 2010). Furthermore, we can also find that indirectness manifests in irony, satire, and humor. To add to the complex matter of unpacking indirect speech and its intersection with mitigation, Delbene (2004) found that there is a fine line between deceptiveness and indirectness in the medical discourse. For instance, when informing patients of the gravity of their illness, Delbene found that doctors often mitigated the severity of their patients’ conditions. In sum, the points outlined by Drave (2002) represent only several reasons why there is a need to explore the intersection between vagueness and indirectness as behaviors associated with mitigation (Leech, 1983). We also need to examine further the political culture in which we live in and how it may condition mitigated speech following Morgan (2010), among others. That is, speakers belonging to a dominant culture or a dominant rank may use directness in communication whereas members of an underrepresented group may employ indirectness. Thus, power and asymmetrical relations do affect the expression of attenuation. Although Leech (1983, p. 1080) has posited that indirect illocutions tend to be more polite (and thus, perhaps mitigated), a question still remains: From whose perspective is it considered polite? We know that mitigation is a complex phenomenon that manifests in different ways and it relies on many linguistic devices and strategies. In general, we can say that when we attenuate our speech, we modify it to make our expressions more pleasing or acceptable to others (not necessarily polite), and we tend to be vague or indirect. Perhaps we do so to conform to societal norms or expectations, but again, it mostly depends on how speakers need to adapt and produce messages that are pragmatically felicitous in a given cultural environment and context.

Summary This chapter centered on defining mitigation as a socio-pragma-linguistic and affective expression. It also discussed how mitigation intersects with vagueness and indirectness. We also presented a brief explanation of how linguistic mitigation emerged during the 1970s and how linguists identified linguistic features as hedges or downgraders, among other terms. The chapter also stressed that mitigation is a complex phenomenon and:

Chapter 1 23   1. It represents a modification of the contents of an utterance.  2. It functions to increase solidarity, negotiate, and garner support.   3. It represents a weakening effect or a softening of the illocutionary force of a message.  4. Manifests depending on cognitive and social stressors (e.g., uncertainty and high imposition).   5. It can serve to mask our real intentions.  6. It can be represented by many linguistic and para-linguistic features.   7. May intersect with politeness but is not equal to politeness.   8. It cannot be determined by examining isolated linguistic items.  9. It can convey tentativeness, modify truth conditions, and involve epistemic modality. 10. Is mediated by context, social interactions, and speaker-hearer relationships.

Notes 1. I use the term ‘messages’ at times throughout the text to include written and oral expressions, including digital. At times, I alternate the use of term ‘messages’ with ‘expressions’, ‘speech’, ‘communication’. 2. For a comprehensive history on mitigation research, see Caffi (2007) whose work centers on mitigation in Italian and provides a comprehensive historical account. 3. I would like to preface that the observations I make here regarding vagueness, indirectness, and attenuation will later assist us when analyzing and interpreting data which I discuss in the upcoming chapters.

References Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Briz Gómez, A. (1995). La atenuación en la conversación coloquial: Una categoría pragmática. In L. Cortés Rodríguez (Ed.), El Español Coloquial. Actas del 1er Simposio sobre Análisis del Discurso Oral (pp. 101–122). Almería, España: Universidad de Almería. Briz Gómez, A. (2004). La Cortesía Verbal Codificada y Cortesía Verbal Interpretada en la Conversación. In A. Briz Gómez & D. Bravo (Eds.), Pragmática Socio­cultural: Estudios sobre el Discurso de la Cortesía en Español (pp. 67–92). Madrid, Spain: Ariel. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cabedo Nebot, A. (2016). La función de la atenuación y la configuración prosódica: un estudio a partir de un corpus de español coloquial. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 27, 55–73.

24  Linguistic Mitigation Caffi, C. (1999). On mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 31(7), 881–909. Caffi, C. (2007). Mitigation. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Channell, J. (1994). Vague language. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Czerwionka, L. A. (2010). Mitigation in Spanish discourse: Social and cognitive motivations, linguistic analyses, and effects on interaction and interlocutors (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com (AAI3428999). Czerwionka, L. A. (2012). Mitigation: The combined effects of imposition and certitude. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(10), 1163–1182. Delbene, R. (2004). The function of mitigation in the context of a socially stigmatized disease: A case study in a public hospital in Montevideo, Uruguay. Spanish in Context, 1(2), 241–266. Drave, N. (2002). Vaguely speaking: A corpus approach to vague language in intercultural conversations. In P. Peters, P. Collins, & A. Smith (Eds.), New frontiers of corpus research. Papers from the 21st international conference on English language research on computerized corpora in Sydney (pp. 25–40). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2017). I’m very good at . . . and that’s why I’m center stage: Pronominal deixis and Trump. English Linguistics Research SCIEDU Press, 6(1), 74–86. Fraser, B. (1980). Conversational mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 4(4), 341–350. Goffman, E. (1955). On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry, 18, 213–231. Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York, NY: Basic Books. Grice, H. P. (1975). Presupposition and conversational implicature. In P. Cole (Ed.), Radical pragmatics (pp. 183–198). New York, NY: Academic Press. Holmes, J. (1995). Women, men and politeness. New York, NY: Longman Group Limited. House, J., & Kasper, G. (1981). Interpersonal markers in English and German. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routines (pp. 157–185). The Hague: De Gruyter Mouton. Kallen, J. (2011). Silence and mitigation in Irish English discourse. In A. Barron & K. P. Schneider (Eds.), The pragmatics of Irish English (pp. 47–73). Berlin and New York, NY: De Gruyter Mouton. Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York, NY: Academic Press. Lakoff, G. (1972). Hedges: A study of meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. In P. Peranteau, J. Levi, & G. Phares (Eds.), Papers from the eighth regional meeting of Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 183–228). Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Lakoff, G. (1973). Hedges: A study of meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2(4), 458–508. Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London, UK: Longman. Martinovski, B., Mao, W., Gratch, J., & Marsella, S. (2005). Mitigation theory: An integrated approach. Twenty-seventh annual conference of cognitive science society. In B. Bara, L. Barsalou, & M. Bucciarelli (Eds.), Proceedings of

Chapter 1 25 the conference on cognitive science 27th annual conference (pp. 1407–1412). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Morgan, M. (2010). The presentation of indirectness and power in everyday life. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(2), 283–291. Placencia, M. E. (1996). Politeness in Ecuadorian Spanish. Multilingua, 15(1), 13–34. Piatti, G. (2000). Attenuation in conversations among Argentine students. Moderna Sprak, 95(2), 210–221. Sbisà, M. (2001). Illocutionary force and degrees of strength in language use. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(12), 1791–1814. Schneider, S. (2013). Grammatical and lexical mitigation. Oralia, 16, 335–356. Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 168–182). New York, NY: Academic Press. Sing, C. S. (2010). “Yes, we can”, framing political events in terms of change: A corpus-based analysis of the change frame in American presidential discourse. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 24, 139–163. Terkourafi, M. (2011). The puzzle of indirect speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(11), 2861–2865. Terkourafi, M. (2014). The importance of being indirect: A new nomenclature for indirect speech. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 28(1), 45–70. Ullman, S. (1962). Semantics: An introduction to the science of meaning. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Watts, R. J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wierzbicka, A. (1986). Precision in vagueness: The semantics of English ‘approximatives’. Journal of Pragmatics, 10(5), 597–613.

2 Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish

Introduction This chapter presents a brief explanation regarding the linguistic features and behaviors that have been documented in studies related to mitigation in English and Spanish. The chapter does not draw parallels or comparisons to Spanish, although in several instances it calls our attention to several linguistic behaviors that may or may not have similar features or devices in these two languages. After the discussion of mitigation in English, we delve into Spanish mitigation research. It is worth mentioning at this juncture that it is impossible to cover all the studies that investigate mitigation in English and Spanish. We should also note that a large extent of studies that have attended to mitigation have examined isolated lexical items and syntactic structures. Thus, the main goal of the chapter is to illustrate the diverse approaches that scholars have used to investigate this phenomenon, to inform researchers, and to provide a guide or a script for future endeavors. We know that mitigation is not a monolithic phenomenon and that it intersects with indirectness and vagueness, and, at times, with politeness. For example, hints, irony, and figurative language, depending on the context, can also reduce the impact of what could be a direct message. We also will learn from studies that mitigation does not manifest with a restricted list of linguistic features. Instead, it is about how speakers tap into their linguistic repertoires and configure messages which affect the illocutionary force of their expressions. We also need to recall that speakers do not always employ similar devices to attenuate. For example, novice learners of English or Spanish may exhibit a limited repertoire of attenuating devices and strategies, while native speakers may evince a wide range of mitigating strategies and devices. With this in mind, it is difficult to account for all the studies that have been conducted on mitigation. Upon writing this book, we uncovered that there is not a straightforward or consistent manner in which studies on mitigation have been conducted in English although, at first, attenuation was generally situated

Chapter 2 27 within the realm of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Theory and the goal of saving ‘face’. Said differently, researchers focused their attention on specific mitigating linguistic items, not the full range of devices and strategies that emerge in spontaneous speech interactions.

Past and Present Connection Before discussing the studies, we would like to first draw a connection between Fraser’s (1980) seminal work on conversational mitigation since this book mainly focuses on oral spontaneous speech, and his work represents a foundation to much of the research conducted for this text. Fraser suggested that there are two types of mitigation: self-serving and altruistic. Self-serving mitigation he defines as one in which the speaker is considering the effects of the utterance upon its hearer and thereby may soften the unwelcoming-ness of a message. To this position, Fraser (1975, 1980, p. 345) adds another category of mitigation, one in which a speaker may wish to ‘get off the hook’. This self-serving ‘getting off the hook’ category can be explained by the implication a proposition may have about the speaker. For instance, a divorce lawyer may avoid telling a spouse of a couple that she has to sell the house and give half of the proceeds to the husband. The lawyer informs his client by issuing a statement such as “Given your higher economic, financial status, I have to inform you that you have to shell out half of your savings and the house to your husband.” This utterance represents a preferred statement rather than telling the wife directly, “You have to sell your house and give your husband half of everything you own”, a statement that will negatively affect the wife and, it would position the lawyer as the bearer of bad news. Another category of mitigation is what Fraser has considered ‘altruistic’; when a speaker may modify a message to benefit the hearer as in the following hedge performative: “I’m afraid I have to disagree with you”. It is important to note here that even in instances in which we may consider a proposition altruistic, it may not be considered polite. In other words, the purposes of attenuating a message can be self-serving and altruistic without being polite, as Fraser’s (1974) example: “I must advise you to leave”, a proposition which is not necessarily considered polite. In an earlier paper, Fraser (1974) discussed a taxonomy to describe the illocutionary force of a speech act. He argued that the primary factor differentiating these acts was the intent of the speaker in performing the act and creating in the hearer an understanding of the speaker’s perspective about what is being conveyed. In discussing illocutionary force following Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), Fraser (1975, p. 1) explained hedged performatives reflected in his example: “I must advise you to leave.”

28  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish Fraser noted that the statement points to the speaker having an obligation to inform the hearer to leave, not that the speaker has an obligation to advise. He argued that these performative-type verbs could be categorized as strong performatives in that they are viewed as the act denoted by the verb itself. On the other hand, he categorized other performatives as weak ones since their performative use is what he named ‘quite dubious’ (1975, p. 1): “I can claim that Henry VI is still alive.” The verb ‘claim’ in this example, including ‘can’, denotes uncertainty. Thus, hedge performatives can be used to attenuate. For example, Leech (2014, p. 165) maintains that “hedge performatives tend to soften in varying degrees the force of a performative”. Therefore, we can consider them as mitigating devices, depending on how these verb forms are employed in their respective contexts. It is in this context that we probably begin to see how downgrading, softening, or buffing was originally depicted in English by scholars.

Modulation To expand more on attenuation, we also need to discuss modulation, the increase or decrease, the strength of the force which expressions contain. Holmes (1984, pp. 345–346) centered her work on the strength and power of messages and noted that mitigation represented a modification of the strength or force of speech acts (e.g., attenuating or weakening of the force). She pointed out, however, that mitigation does not refer to “any weakening of the force . . . but is restricted to speech acts whose effects are ‘unwelcome’ ” (her italics, 346). She provided the following examples, suggesting that the first example increases the force of criticism, whereas the second statement serves to attenuate its strength. “You are a fool.” “You are a bit of a fool you know.” [her italics] Holmes (1984) explained that there are two reasons why a speaker may modify the strength in which a particular utterance is being expressed. The first reason refers to modality, the meaning or a speaker’s attitude to the content of a proposition. In this example, the modality reflects the degree of certainty. The second reason is to express affective meaning or the speaker’s attitude to the interlocutor as in “You are a bit of a fool, you know.” Holmes discussed several linguistic devices for attenuating speech, all with emotive or affective meaning: high pitch, low volume, tag questions, downtoners, among others. For instance, a linguistic device such as a

Chapter 2 29 downtoner may be employed to attenuate a message which, in turn, may have an affective meaning, that of increasing solidarity as in, “I guess that’s all right, I suppose.” The speaker in this example is expressing doubt in two instances (i.e., ‘I guess’ and ‘suppose’) and can also be conveying disagreement depending on the context. Similar to the linguistic behavior documented by Labov and Fanshel (1977), Holmes (1984, pp. 255–362) identified several behaviors and devices that operate as attenuators: • Prosodic devices (e.g., rise-fall intonation pattern as in “You are sil\/ly.”) • Syntactic devices (e.g., tag questions, “You were there weren’t you?”) • Lexical devices (e.g., also referred to as hedges, disclaimers, “possibly”, epistemic modals “could”, “technically, you’re wrong.”) • Speaker-oriented downtoners (e.g., “It’s rather good, I suppose.”) • Hearer-oriented downtoners (e.g., “If it’s not too much trouble . . .”) • Discursive devices (e.g., “By the way . . .”, “While I think of it . . .”) While the English mitigation research described up to this point is general, we now move to a discussion of empirical research that has delved into the use of mitigating devices and strategies.

Empirical Research on Mitigation in English Parentheticals and Reduced Parenthetical Clauses We first begin by describing Urmson’s (1952) work which represents one of the earliest examinations of a category of verbs named ‘parenthetical’; verbs such as ‘suppose’, ‘believe’, ‘think’. These are a particular category of verbs that do not have a present continuous form and usually contain ‘I’ as their subject. He considered parentheticals as “a piece of information that is slipped into another context” (1952, p. 481). His descriptive account of these verbs was limited to verbs such as ‘regret’, ‘believe’, ‘know’, ‘expect’, ‘admit’, ‘predict’, ‘conclude’, ‘deduce’, among others. Urmson (1952, p. 481) provided these examples in which he noted that ‘suppose’ is being used in a parenthetical manner; the claim to the truth is not very strong and appears to be mitigated: “I suppose that your house is very old. Your house is, I suppose, very old. Your house is very old, I suppose.” One might also consider that these verbs convey an advisory for the hearer (Urmson, 1952, p. 495). What is interesting about these forms is that they tend to be used only in the first person, present tense, and

30  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish function as a signal to guide a hearer so that the hearer can a­ ppreciate a statement within its context. They also denote epistemic modality. For instance, Flores-Ferrán (2009) posited that these syntactic constructions in English and Spanish, such as ‘I think’ (creo), ‘I feel’ (siento), and ‘I believe’ (creo) in expressions such as ‘I think that you are wrong’, ‘I feel that you are not telling the truth’, and ‘I believe I said it already’ represent optional syntactic elements in expressions that weaken the strength of the statement, while at the same time they point to epistemic modality or knowledge, belief, or judgment about the statement. Schneider (2004) further reminds us that these verbs operate as insertions, have a free syntactic position, and have no syntactic connection to their host sentence. That is, they can appear in an initial-, mid-, or final syntactic position or can be removed all together. Implicit in this thought is that because they are inserted, they may entail more processing and planning, a concern that will be further illustrated with examples in Chapter 4 when we discuss how we detect mitigating strategies and devices. The use of Reduced Parenthetical Clauses (RPC) has been investigated by Schneider (2007, p. 1). These clauses and terms, which he considers not part of the main or subordinate clauses, are also free and do not exhibit a syntactic link to their host sentences, and are also considered optional. He provides the following examples in English and Spanish (Corpus COREC.BenT027B). The items underlined are optional: ‘We are a few hundred that are still, let’s say, natural speakers of the language.’ ‘It’s free now, I believe.’ ‘That was, I remember, in the years after the war.’ ‘Tendrán ustedes, supongo, periodistas corriendo por ahí ya, ¿no?’ [You will have, (I) suppose, journalists, running around here already, right?] The RPCs in the provided examples, Schneider (2004, 2007) explains, serve a pragmatic function: To reduce a speaker’s claim to the truth and burden of responsibility while making a statement. Again, this explanation points to epistemic modality, how a speaker communicates certainty, knowledge, judgment, or evaluation. Similarly, these verbs in Spanish also communicate an opinion, belief, and thought (e.g., me imagino ‘I ­imagine’, opino ‘my opinion is’, creo ‘I think’, considero ‘I consider’). That is, they serve a discursive function of mitigating (Caffi, 1991).

Earlier Research on Strategies and Devices There are studies that have examined linguistic features (e.g., lexical items, prosody, syntactic structures) concerning attenuated speech in English.

Chapter 2 31 In this section, we draw our attention to the micro-features and devices revealed in several studies (Aijmer, 1984; Haverkate, 1992, among others). Deictic Expressions Haverkate (1992) examined deictic expressions (i.e., person, place, time) as a frame of reference for determining how these are used to mitigate. He posited that the manner a speaker manipulates, for example, a nonspecific, implicit or inclusive reference (i.e., person), is characteristic of how we can mitigate our message. Haverkate’s (1992, p. 517) example, “One had better pay attention to such a serious warning” is illustrative of how a speaker defocalizes the identity of the hearer as opposed to “You had better . . .”, which emphasizes the identity of the hearer. The use of pseudo-inclusive reference strategies such as the use of ‘we’ as in “And now we are going to sleep quietly”, Haverkate (1992, p. 518) considered just one of the three ways we can attenuate a message. These expressions can serve multiple functions. First, they can be used to express modesty by a speaker. Second, they may be used to reflect ingroup solidarity. Third, they can be used to symbolize solidarity with the hearer in instances in which there are asymmetrical power interactions among the speakers. Haverkate (1992, p. 509) also maintained that speakers can also manipulate time deixis. For instance, a speaker can shift to the conditional verb form (e.g., “I would like to request you to translate this letter into English” vs. I request. . .). In other words, speakers who wish to attenuate may employ hypotheticals since they convey indirectness. Consider this example (Haverkate, 1992, p. 509): “If daddy were still alive, he would not be so angry with the neighbors as you, mom.” In this example, Haverkate explained that the speaker is hinting and not directly asking the mom to change her behavior. That said, Haverkate suggested that place deixis does not play a specific role in mitigation, something we challenge in the latter part of the book in more detail. For instance, if your friend shows you a house they are going to buy and you disagree with the location, you can say: ‘Are you looking to buy that house?’ This statement would constitute an attenuated opposition or a negative critique. For person deixis, in Flores-Ferrán (2009) we found that the use of deixis Spanish uno ‘one’ alternated with the use of the first person yo (I). The study revealed that speakers tended to use uno instead of yo as a mitigating device such as in: Uno no puede hacer las cosas como tú mandas. (Yo no puedo hacer las cosas como tú mandas.)

32  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish [One cannot do things as you demand.] [I cannot do things as you demand.] ‘Sort of’, ‘kind of’ We also find studies on mitigation that attend to specific lexical items such as ‘kind of’. For instance, in an exploratory examination of ‘kind of’ and ‘sort of’, which are considered hedges, Miskovic-Lukovic (2008, p. 609) descriptively details the roles these phrases play in conversation. While these phrases have been considered hedges and usually perceived as informal style speaking, she posits that they operate as mitigating devices which have been defined as ‘approximation markers’, ‘downtoners’, ‘fillers’, among others. Citing Quirk, Svartvik, and Leech (1972, pp. 454–455), she notes that these examples such as: “I kind of like him” (‘I might go as far as to say I like him’) and, “He sort of smiled at us” (‘You could almost say he smiled at us’) are illustrative of how these phrases mitigate the force of the verb’s constituent. Miskovic-Lukovic (2008, p. 603) notes that Brown and Levinson (1987), Lakoff (1975), and Wierzbicka (1986, 1991), among others, regarded ‘kind of’ and ‘sort of’ as softeners. We thus find that these forms relate a speaker’s impreciseness or vagueness of a matter. While these forms are usually clustered, Miskovic-Lukovic suggests, based on an analysis of corpora, they are not only pervasive in oral communication but also written texts. The author also maintains that these particles cannot be considered synonyms since ‘sort of’ seems to encode a weaker modification than ‘kind of’. Aijmer (1984) earlier suggested that ‘sort of’ operates as a mitigating device, although it too can operate as a filler and approximator since it conveys vagueness. Using the London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English, her study found that ‘sort of’ can modulate the force of a message, and it is a convenient device when speakers do not have a particular word, hesitate, or disclaim responsibility, among other functions. Aijmer (1984, pp. 122–123) also reports that ‘sort of’ tends to co-occur with nouns that have “little semantic content” such as person, way/manner, place, area, stuff, among other items, and it precedes words that are technical, rare, foreign, or vulgar. In another study, Gries and David (2009) analyzed the variation between the particles ‘sort of’ and ‘kind of’ in a contemporary British English (BE) corpus. They suggest that these forms fall under the category of other English hedges such as ‘technically’, ‘essentially’, ‘more or less’, ‘practically’, and so on. In particular, the study was concerned with the distribution of ‘sort of’ and ‘kind of’ in a corpus of spoken and written BE (i.e., the BNC World Edition). The study revealed that in the spoken domain ‘sort of’ was used with more frequency than ‘kind of’. However, in all written domains, the preference to use ‘kind of’ was found statistically significant. This finding is crucial since it differentiates the

Chapter 2 33 preferences in the domains of speaking and writing. They also examined the use of these hedges and the semantic categories they modify. Surprisingly, they found that color adjectives were preferred with ‘sort of’. Also, the study revealed that these forms modify different emotional states; ‘kind of’ was associated with states such as fun, cool, depressing, among other states. On the other hand, ‘sort of’ was found to usually pair with positive adjectives (e.g., happy, enthusiastic), although “both can take a lot of inherently ‘positive’ adjectives” (Gries & David, 2009, p. 11).

Mitigation in Institutional Discursive Settings Studies have also investigated mitigation in English in institutional discursive settings, a topic I probe much further in the book. For instance, Labov and Fanshel’s (1977, pp. 85–86) seminal case study of therapeutic discourse investigated the strategies and devices a client used to soften her expressions. They found their client attenuated or modified her expressions to avoid creating offense. The study also uncovered that references to needs and abilities were generally attenuated while references to rights and obligations tended to be intensified or escalated. Interestingly, their study examined prosody in mitigated speech, one of the first to do so. The client in the case study was found to attenuate her requests by employing “rapid, condensed speech with low falling intonation” (1977, p. 86), and they found varying intonational contours and high rising intonation patterns when attenuating speech. The study was significant for several reasons: First, it opened a conversation regarding mitigation in institutional-related discourse. Second, they posited a three-step mitigating scale in which we find direct assertions on the top (non-mitigating) and in mid-level tag questions, followed by interrogatives (Labov & Fanshel, 1977, p. 85): “You have enough time to dust the room. You have enough time to dust the room, don’t you? Do you have enough time to dust the room?” The last example represents the softened less-abrasive or less-demanding formulated request. Academic Lectures and Text; Internal and External Modifications While most of the research in English mitigation has examined mitigation or attenuation in speech acts (e.g., requests, directives, expressives), Flowerdew (1991) attends to internal modification (e.g., pronouns, modal ‘can’) and external modification (e.g., rhetorical questions, eliciting questions) in declaratives since they are less likely to be associated

34  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish with unwelcoming effects or loss of face-related concepts. The study examined mitigation in video-taped biology and chemistry lectures in which definitions were provided. The lectures were presented to nonnative English speakers which meant that the lectures provided definitions and reformulations. In particular, the study was concerned with the pragmatic strategies employed by lecturers to express definitions. Flowerdew (1991, p. 256) provides these examples which assist in elucidating how internal and external modifications manifest concerning the use of the all-inclusive ‘we’ (my italics): “When we talk about morphology we mean the parts of the body on the outside. This is morphology.” “If we have 2 or more elements together, we make up a molecule, and we call these compounds.” Flowerdew (1991) explains that the use of the all-inclusive ‘we’ has a solidarity effect whereas the use of ‘you’ in the lectures would have suggested a less-closer relationship, an increase in distance. Alternatively, by employing ‘we’ the lecturer is involving or engaging the hearer and, thus, mitigating. Regarding the use of modal ‘can’ and internal modification, Flowerdew (1991, pp. 256–258) maintains that the use of this modal can operate as a hedge on the performative verb. Flowerdew provides these next examples which we consider mitigated since they employ a syntactic device that obscures the agent of the message or avoids conveying responsibility: “X can be defined as . . .” (Uses the passive voice and ‘can’) “X is defined as . . .” (Uses the passive voice) The speaker could have opted to say “I define X as . . .” which we consider not attenuated. Flowerdew also posits that adverbials such as ‘basically’ and ‘simply’ contribute to conveying impreciseness and as such, attenuate: “Vitamins are basically organic compounds.” “When you say they are cold-blooded, it simply means they cannot maintain the temperature of their bodies.” In the case of the use of ‘basically’, we find that the definition is not complete; it represents a mitigated expression in the sense that it provides sufficient information from the lecturer to the audience. In using ‘simply’, the lecturer is indirectly suggesting that the concept is easy to follow or understand. Flowerdew maintains that by using ‘simply’, the lecturer is hinting that the definition is “quite straightforward”.

Chapter 2 35 Interestingly, the study also examines the use of non-factive predicators which suggest that the speaker does not commit to the conditions of the proposition of the subsequent clause as we see in Flowerdew (1991, p. 259): “A way of defining a metal is by saying it is an element that readily forms cation.” “The four units of physical quantity are considered to be the fundamental units . . .” In both examples, the speaker distances himself/herself from the definition. The syntactic additive, the use of the passive voice, also functions to attenuate in that agency is covert. While the study contributes to ways in which mitigation may be used in instruction-related academic discourse, it does raise questions regarding how mitigation in these lectures intersects with syntactic devices (e.g., use of the passive voice, tag questions) and how these structures contribute to attenuating an expression. More importantly, these observations also point to the fact that mitigation is not related to politeness. Rather, they represent ways in which solidarity is created between a speaker and audience, how utterances are used to engage hearer(s), and how the padding or cushioning effect can modulate the intensity of a message. There have been other studies that have investigated how mitigation manifests in academic-related discourses and texts (e.g., AlonsoAlmeida, 2015; Hyland, 1996; Martín-Martín, 2008; Stungiené, 2006; Mendiluce Cabrera & Hernández Bartolomé, 2005, among others). For instance, Alonso-Almeida (2015) investigated the functions of modality and evidentiality concerning mitigation in medical research papers, and Stungiené (2006) focused on attenuation in academic English registers, prose, and conference papers. In oral debates, Stungiené’s (2006, p. 161) study revealed, among other findings, the use of modal verbs such as ‘may’ and ‘would’ (e.g., for hedging, downtoning) in academic debates. Her example, “It may well be that . . .”, is worth pointing out since it is illustrative of how ‘may’ cooccurs with ‘be’ to express a greater degree of confidence whereas ‘would’ tends to be used for hypotheticals to mitigate. The study also revealed that ‘I think’—type clauses, which I have considered parenthetical following Urmson (1952), appeared in high frequencies in these debates. Regarding syntactic features, Stungiené (2006, p. 162) also uncovered that the passive voice was employed to mitigate, such as in the example: “An objectlanguage describing a homogeneous referential R will be referred to as a ‘formal object-language’ ”. The statement could have been issued such as “I consider an object-language describing a homogenous referential R . . .” or “We consider”, and, thus, not suppresses agency.

36  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish Several Comparative Studies of English and Spanish Mitigation Alonso-Almeida (2015) conducted a study in both English and Spanish and used contrastive analysis to detect preferences of mitigating devices in written scientific claims. This study contributes to our knowledge of how claims are attenuated by focusing its examination on evidentiality and epistemic modality (“I think that . . .”, “I saw that . . .”, “It seems that . . .”, and so on). The study analyzed direct (i.e., attested knowledge), indirectness (i.e., reported and inferred knowledge), and visual folklore (second/third-hand knowledge such as hearsay) in reasoning statements. The author maintains that mitigation represents a reduction of commitment and, thus, epistemic modals and evidentials perform a hedging function (2015, p. 39). In general, among the findings gathered from this study, we find that English outnumbered Spanish in the use of epistemic devices within the introduction, methodology, results, discussions, and conclusion sections of claims made in academic written documents. Another study investigated mitigation in scientific claims. For instance, Martín-Martín (2008) attended to claims in the field of Clinical and Health Psychology. In particular, he examined hedging devices in research articles in English and Spanish, another comparative study. The investigation uncovered similarities between the two languages concerning the linguistic devices employed in writing. Nonetheless, the distribution of hedges such as modality devices and approximators were found to be more pervasive in English texts than in Spanish, a finding that further substantiates Alonso-Almeida’s (2015) study. Both these studies, therefore, suggest that research articles in English engage in more protection to face-work (or more mitigated expressions) and that academic language in journals, lectures, or presentations seem to involve more vague language and uncertainty. Based on Hyland (1996) and the scholarship described to this point, we learn that hedging is pervasive in academic research articles and public debates, and that in these linguistic environments mitigation does not intersect with politeness. That is, it represents ways in which authors and academicians gain their audiences’ acceptance of claims and, at the same time, provides them with a way to express their attitude towards the truth of their propositions. Because they convey a degree of modesty mixed with precision, caution, and certainty, among other behaviors, mitigating hedges seem to be an appropriate strategy for these types of discourse. Thus, and to summarize, devices such as parenthetical verbs (e.g., evidential), the use of epistemic ‘would’, ‘should’, and epistemic verbs such as ‘I guess’, adjectival hedges (e.g., ‘possible’ involvement), among many more, can function to attenuate messages depending on the context in which they are employed.

Chapter 2 37 Silence and Discourse Markers Interestingly, silence with respect to mitigation has also been investigated in corpora of Irish English discourse. For instance, Kallen (2011) examined silence and the use of discourse markers among several other pragmatic concerns. The author argues that silence is not merely the absence of noise; it plays a role in understanding mitigation. In brief, Kallen explains that communicative silence involves the speaker’s orientation concerning the act of speaking towards the interlocutor. Following Jaworski (1997), Kallen (2011, p. 48) claims that communicative silence can be viewed as an alternative to speech. Kallen (2011, p. 58) also investigates mitigation by way of discourse markers and posits that these forms have the function of lessening the distance between the interlocutors. He states that they “lessen the bald, on-the-record illocutionary force of an utterance either by the use of modal verbs (e.g., I’d say versus I say) or, by foregrounding inter-subjectivity over self-clarification (e.g., You know versus I mean)”. Among the findings, the study attested to ‘I’d say’ as the most pervasive modal phrase in informal face-to-face and telephone conversations. Mitigation in Literature Research conducted on literary discourse and attenuation remains underinvestigated. However, there is a study that discusses mitigation in literature from a linguistic perspective. Johnston’s (1992) study examines the uses of mitigation by rural southern White men’s speech in a novel (Harry Crew’s 1990 novel, Body). This study is one of the first to analyze mitigation in English literature. The study attested to several linguistic devices that were used to mitigate. However, it examines mitigation in the context of only linguistic politeness. Specifically, the study documents internal and external modification such as address forms (e.g., old son, bud, Miss), the use of conditional indirectness (e.g., don’t mean to pry), evidentials such as ‘I believe’, ‘for all I know’, among others, and the author attributes these forms to an expression of politeness. While the study elucidates on a micro-aspect of mitigation generated by a sub-population (i.e., men and rural speech) in a novel, it raises questions regarding how attenuation is employed in literature and media. In particular, we know little about how speakers attenuate in the news, social media, and other media-discursive settings.

Other Interactions Parent-Child Interaction The expression of mitigation has also been examined in parent-child interactions.1 For example, Blum-Kulka (1990, p. 266) investigated

38  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish attenuated speech in parental discourse among Israeli immigrant and American family interactions during dinner time. The study examined parental directives operating under the assumption that parental control is “both highly direct and richly mitigated” (Blum-Kulka, 1990, p. 259). Since these contexts represent asymmetrical relationships, the study was able to focus on concerns related to power and informality. Interestingly, differences in socialization processes exist according to Blum-Kulka; Israeli parents focus on the use of correct language while American parents attend to rules of conversation. Blum-Kulka also notes that Israeli culture is considered straightforward in comparison to other cultures. In brief, the study categorized control acts as direct (e.g., ‘I want you to. . .’), indirect (e.g., ‘Would you . . .’), and non-conventional indirect modes (e.g., hints). The study coded for terms of endearment such as ‘sweetie’, external modifications such as prefacing a request with reasons, and internal modifications (e.g., ‘I believe it’s time for you to go to bed’) (Blum-Kulka, 1990, p. 266). One of the significant findings of this study points to shifts in the expression of mitigation during parent-child interactions from direct to indirect speech. Again, these findings engage us to think of how indirectness intersects with mitigation. Furthermore, the study unveiled different cultural models about how parents addressed children: Israeli parents were found to employ strategies such as nicknaming, while American parents adhered to calling children by first names and using indirect forms of speech. While the study did not fully address the mitigating devices employed by parents, the importance of the study is that the Israeli model seems to rely more on directness than the American model of parenting, and this finding may be suggestive of ways in which attenuation manifests in these types of interaction. Blum-Kulka concludes that there is a need to examine mitigation beyond speech acts. Sign Language Another underinvestigated aspect of attenuation is its relationship to sign languages. One may ask: How is mitigation expressed in American Sign Language (ASL) or signing in general? There are many complexities when we examine ASL or any sign language and mitigation. In brief, I can only point to Hoza’s (2001) work. The study investigates the relationship between face needs and politeness in ASL in speech acts of requests and rejections. It employed a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) and gathered data from several interpreter meetings to examine the realization mitigation. The study revealed that signers mitigate in instances of face-threatening acts and that imposition and social distance seem to influence signers to soften their messages. Hoza (2001, p. 381) also discussed how interpreters make decisions regarding politeness strategies in interpreted interactions.

Chapter 2 39 For instance, when interpreting this expression, ‘I wouldn’t mind hearing what your opinion is on . . .’, the interpreter inserted changes such as ‘I’m curious, what is your opinion . . .’. That is, Hoza contends that the interpretation was rendered in a manner that was less face-threatening or more mitigated. One of the salient aspects of this study is how it documented gestures: Politeness puckering, the use of tight lips, politeness grimaces and frowns, and body/head teetering and how these gestures may intersect with the expression of a mitigated message. For instance, among several findings, Hoza noted that lip-puckering was evidenced in high frequencies to attenuate or convey politeness and, in the DCTs, the use of discourse markers such as ‘well’ was attested. A significant contribution has been made by this study; it calls for a need to educate signers and interpreters regarding the importance of how to express mitigation, and it calls for further research related to sign languages and expressions of attenuation.

Empirical Research on Mitigation in Spanish Operationalizing Attenuation in Spanish Empirical Research on Spanish Mitigation: Un poquito (a little) Age of Acquisition Kinesic and non-verbal behavior Passive voice Power and distance Dialect variation The use of the polysemic bastante (enough, too much) Social or external factors: Gender, age, generational differences and mitigated linguistic behavior Institutional discourses and mitigation Imposition and certitude and mitigation

Operationalizing Attenuation in Spanish There has been considerable research conducted on mitigation or attenuation among speakers of several Spanish varieties and in cross-linguistic studies conducted on learners and native speakers of Spanish (e.g., Briz Gómez, 1995, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007; Czerwionka, 2010; Flores-Ferrán, 2012; Flores-Ferrán & Lovejoy, 2015; García, 1989; Hernández-Flores, 1999; Felix-Brasdefer, 2008, Placencia, 1996). Once again, we find it impossible to address all the studies but highlight several which have contributed to shaping research on this matter.

40  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish The narrative regarding research on attenuation in Spanish echoes in part that of English in that much of the earlier studies on attenuation were framed under Politeness Theory. Nonetheless, researchers who investigate this phenomenon in Spanish seem to agree that a perspective founded on politeness provides only a partial explanation concerning attenuation. In other words, politeness and mitigation have been theoretically confused (Briz Gómez, 2010). A significant contribution to research on attenuation in Spanish has been conducted by Briz Gómez (1995, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2010) in which he earlier stated that attenuation represents only one politeness strategy: La atenuación es una de las estrategias de la cortesía. . . . son una especie de reguladores de las máximas, sobre todo, del tacto, de la modestia y de la de unanimidad, cuya función podría concretarse todavía más en la minoración del beneficio del que habla, minoración de su contribución y del posible desacuerdo; y, consiguientemente, en la maximización en relación con el receptor. (Briz Gómez, 1995, p. 107) [Mitigation represents one of the strategies of politeness . . . they (strategies) are a type of regulator of the maxims, above all, of tact, modesty, and solidarity, whose function could be materialized to downgrade further the statement issued on behalf of the speaker, a downgrade of his/her contribution when there is possible disagreement; and, consequently, contributes to maximizing speaker-hearer relationship.] (My translation) Today, researchers have unlocked a conversation to capture the manifestation of mitigation in Spanish spontaneous oral speech, in written discourse, in institutional discursive settings, and among native speakers and learners of Spanish (Bardovi-Harlig, Félix-Brasdefer, & Omar, 2006; Félix-Brasdefer, 2015; Delbene, 2004; Flores-Ferrán, 2010, 2012, 2018; Flores-Ferrán & Lovejoy, 2015; Mihatsch & Albelda Marco, 2016, among many others). We first begin by highlighting the seminal work of Briz and Abelda (2013), Es.Por.Atenuación. It represents the most extensive corpus collected to date on mitigation in Spanish. The project aims to investigate attenuation in a corpus generated among speakers of several Spanish varieties: Spain (Valencia, Granada, Las Palmas, Valladolid, Alcalá de Heneras), Mexico (Monterrey), Argentina (Tucumán), Costa Rica (San José), Puerto Rico (San Juan), Cuba (Habana), Colombia (Barranquilla), and Venezuela (Mérida). It also includes speakers from two Portuguese varieties, Brazil and Portugal. Thus, the project enables cross-comparisons among speakers of these two languages.

Chapter 2 41 Briz et al. (2013) have aimed to provide a universalized theoretical and methodological pragmatic framework in the analyses of mitigation. They attempt to bridge a gap in the literature that addresses multiple aspects of mitigation research through the lens of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Currently (at the time of this writing), the study contains 22 factors that describe linguistic, structural, discursive, and situational aspects that identify mitigation strategies within different contexts. It merits mentioning that Albelda Marco and Cestero (2012) have also investigated attenuation in Spanish using another corpus, PRESEEA, and these data have also been incorporated in the Es.Por.Atenuación project.2 In an attempt to universalize a pragmatic theory by which researchers can investigate mitigation and to contribute to a consistent methodological analysis of this phenomenon, Albelda Marco, Briz Gómez, Cestero Mancera, Kotwica, and Villalba Ibañez (2014), Albelda Marco (2014) and Briz and Albelda (2013) have created a coding guide with the purpose of assisting researchers to uniformly identify and code features associated to attenuation. That is, they offer a unified theory and assert that there are key factors implicated in mitigation that need to be considered, factors that will be more thoroughly discussed in Chapter 6 where I address methodological concerns. Briz and Albelda (2013, p. 204) maintain that mitigation is a communicative strategy used by speakers whose goal is to modulate the illocutionary force of their messages. They suggest that the strategies employed by speakers can manifest bi-directionally. That is, its purpose is to protect and preserve the self-image of not only the interactant issuing the message, but also the addressee. In general, they suggest that speakers do not wish to jeopardize their image. Thus, it is reasonable to suggest that speakers attenuate to prevent violating their self-image and that of their interlocutors, an effect that can point to the preservation of image, not necessarily related to politeness. Interestingly, Briz and Albelda (2013) also maintain that speakers attenuate to repair damages already incurred, also related to saving interlocutors’ self-image, both speaker and hearer. In brief, Briz and Albelda argue that speakers attenuate speech to preserve the ‘I’ or self-image, in instances such as when there is a disparity of opinion, a controversy, or when an interlocutor directly or indirectly criticizes an addressee. We can say that since Spanish culture is known as a collective one, attenuated speech then manifests as part of an expression of solidarity, having an affective impact (Czerwionka, 2012; Félix-Brasdefer, 2004). What is interesting about studies conducted in Spanish discourse is that researchers over the past ten years have been sourcing data from Briz and Albelda (2013) corpus and using what we have called their coding manual. Several researchers have also used shared databases such as PRESEEA (Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y América/Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish in

42  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish Spain and America) or CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual) which, to some extent, contributes to creating consistency in coding data and allows researchers to draw comparisons. While the use of shared corpus may be suggestive of some degree of consistency, it is not indicative of the types of linguistic or mitigating categories that investigators may probe. For instance, several researchers have examined the use of various micro-linguistic aspects, not similar ones, while others have gathered their data from outside of these databases, both of which we now address. Un poquito (a little) Mariottini (2012) examined the use of un poco (a little) and its morphological variants un poquito (a little bit), un poquitín (a tiny little bit) in oral speech. The study investigated these forms using a semanticpragmatic perspective and the theoretical framework of Politeness. In particular, the forms were examined in speaker-hearer interactions gathered from CREA and El Corpus de Conversaciones Coloquiales Val.Es.Co, two large research-gathering databases. One of several findings revealed by the study points to un poco (a bit or a little) representing a mitigating device employed by speakers to save face and soften an expression. It also revealed that when un poco co-occurred with other lexical items such as bueno (well), it operated as an intensifier. The author suggests that un poco is not only a quantifier, but it contributes evaluative measures to a proposition. Namely, it conveys intensification or attenuation, and it is used in contexts in which speakers are familiar with each other or close, or where there is confianza (mutual closeness or trust). For instance, the following Chilean Spanish excerpts were extracted from Puga Larraín (1997) as cited in Mariottini (2012, p. 178): El chileno ha sido siempre un poquito infiel. (The Chilean has always been a bit disloyal.) In another context: (a) lamento haber llegado [un poco tarde] (b)     bueno un poco:: (a) [sorry for arriving a bit late] (b)    [well a bit late::] Mariottini suggests that un poquito and un poco were issued to minimize criticism. Besides, the use of un poquito which, co-occurs with bueno::, contributes to further cushion the expression of criticism.

Chapter 2 43 In another related study, Murillo Medrano (2002) reports on the use of the morphological diminutive -ito (a tiny bit) in Costa Rican Spanish. He also maintains that when speakers employ -ito, the proposition can be considered mitigating as it tends to reduce a threat and shifts the focus of an imperative utterance to the object being requested. We explained this in one of the first examples provided in the introduction of this book: Me puedes regular un poquito de agua . . . (Can you gift me a bit of water?). In several Spanish varieties, we also have lexical items such as un chin, un chincito, un poquitín (e.g., a bit, a little bit, a tiny bit) which can intersect with markers of quantity (e.g., un chin de café ‘a bit of coffee’) and can operate to reduce the effect of what is being conveyed as in Estoy un chin enojada contigo (I am a bit angry with you). Nonetheless, the use of this morphological ending and particle and its different manifestations as a mitigating device convey the degree of commitment that the speaker has to the truth conditions of a proposition (Mariottini, 2012). Thus, the interpretation of the message relies on the semantic-pragmatic axis. Age of Acquisition We may ask at what stage of language development do children become sensitive to mitigation, an aspect in the literature which I note has also been underinvestigated. Marcano (2007) set out to examine attenuated speech among Venezuelan children following Briz Gómez (2003) and Félix-Brasdefer (2004) who posit that mitigation softens the adverse effects of an utterance and minimizes risk among interlocutors. The study used a corpus of Caracas child speech to examine when children became sensitive to mitigation or aware of the strategies needed to attenuate their speech. In particular, the study centered on the use of un pocolito (a tiny bit), como (sort of, like), más o menos (more or less) in children ages, 6–8, 9–11. Specifically, the study investigated the preferred linguistic devices used by children to mitigate and whether socioeconomic status conditioned the use of attenuated speech. The findings revealed that como (sort of, like) was the preferred mitigating device often used by the age of seven among children of high socioeconomic status. Children below seven were not found sensitive to these devices. In brief, the study was able to determine that age and socioeconomic status were external factors that influenced the use of attenuating strategies among children. But we must add that further research is needed in this area since the study addressed the use of these forms and we need to probe whether children can issue external and internal mitigating strategies and which ones. Another aspect requires investigation: We should examine the input a child receives concerning attenuated speech because it goes hand-in-hand with the output. We should also widen our research to examine the strategies children may employ in different environments,

44  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish home and school, to delve further into developmental stages related to the acquisition of attenuating strategies and devices. For instance, at what age do children become sensitive to attenuating at home, at school, and what devices and strategies do they seem to acquire first? Kinesic and Non-Verbal Behavior Piatti (2000) investigated attenuation in conversations produced among Argentinean students. The study was informed by Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Theory and Bravo (1996, 1999, 2009) as it focused on the intersection of politeness and attenuation. Piatti revealed that mitigation strategies contribute to a distancing effect such as in the use of pero yo creo (but I believe) and no son los mejores (they aren’t the best). The study also examined other kinesic and verbal and non-verbal behaviors such as laughter or smiles following Arndt and Janney (1991) who suggest that these non-verbal strategies contribute to mitigating or softening the effects of an utterance. Piatti posits that all these behaviors can be attributed to politeness. For instance, Bravo (1996) stresses that smiles and laughter contribute to the affiliation and solidarity of a group. These non-verbal features may also manifest in attenuated propositions, but, to date, they remain unattended in the literature. To capture the relationship between these non-verbal behaviors in relation to attenuation, researchers may need to consider video and audio recording experiments and natural, spontaneous speech. Piatti suggests a traditional perspective which suggests that attenuation represents a politeness strategy, one that reduces the negative effect of a facethreatening act. Thus, since smiles and laughter are considered to close the distance among speakers and increase solidarity, we need to investigate further these and other non-verbal gestures and the accompanying verbal strategies which may contribute to attenuate expressions. Similar to the study on silence and mitigation (Kallen, 2011), we need to consider the importance of non-verbal gestures and how they contribute to attenuate propositions. Passive Voice Another study conducted by Díaz Blanca (2007) investigated the syntactic structure of the passive voice and how it manifests as a mitigation strategy. The study used a sampling of the Corpus Sociolingüístico de la Cuidad de Mérida (CSM) based on stories related to traditional and regional values, oral narratives. The author posits that attenuation refers to minimizing, reducing, and softening or diminishing the force of what is said. Following Briz Gómez (2002), Díaz Blanca asserts that attenuation is not always a reflection of politeness and, as such, syntactic structures with se as in se ejerce, se hace tomar en cuenta ([it] is enforced, [it]

Chapter 2 45 takes into account)3 are not related to politeness. Instead, these passive syntactic structures containing se represent strategies that speakers use to attenuate their speech, to give less importance or hide the emissary of the message, and the responsibility of the speaker. In other words, they function to hide agency. While Díaz Blanca’s study focuses on the use of se (a passive voice particle that does not have corresponding representation in English), the value of its findings points to ways in which speakers may obscure the responsibility and engagement of the agents involved in a proposition. More specifically, it also underscores that mitigation and politeness are not the same. For example, Díaz Blanca has noted that the particle se serves to disguise orders and avoid adverse reactions on behalf of the interlocutors. So even though the passive voice is characteristic of both English and Spanish, the use of the se particle does not have an equivalent in English, and this particle has to be taken into account when we examine passive voice in Spanish. For example, if we were to describe an accident involving a driver and car, we could issue this statement: Se dio contra el muro. [*[x] was smashed against the wall.] Namely, we are stating that the car hit itself against the wall, not that the driver slammed the car against the wall. In this case, the speaker may be issuing the statement in an interaction with the police officer who is documenting the report and the speaker wishes to avoid signaling that the driver was at fault, thereby obscuring agency and mitigating the statement. Power and Distance Mitigation is not only a linguistic phenomenon. Puga Larraín’s (1997, p. 21) research suggests that the foundations of mitigation are situated more than in the realm of linguistics and that it is anchored in human psychology, anthropology, and sociology. That is, linguistic attenuation derives from a human need to protect oneself when being confronted with anything considered a threat, following much of Goffman’s (1959, 1971) notion of preserving one’s self-image. For Chilean Spanish, for example, Puga Larraín (1997, p. 104) stresses that there is a distance/formality variable that conditions the use of attenuation, and she proposes a formula which suggests that when distance and formality vary, and are paired with a threat, attenuation waxes and wanes among speakers. However, we would like to add that contexts dictate or may constrain when and how speech is attenuated, even within a conversation held among two or three persons. To clarify this point, we expand by pointing to Puga Larraín and Gutiérrez (2015) who suggest that other social factors affect the manifestation of attenuation, including

46  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish socioeconomic and power (e.g., a supervisor, a maintenance worker, and an employee of the plant may exhibit different mitigating behaviors). With regard to dialect variation, Puga Larraín and Gutiérrez (2015) drew comparisons between Chilean and Mexican Spanish varieties and the expression of mitigation. The study attended to the relationship between mitigation and an external factor: Power (e.g., the status of speakers). One of the findings revealed from their study suggests that in instances in which asymmetrical power relations were present, women tended to mitigate their speech more than men. So this finding further underscores that mitigation is situated in human psychology, anthropology, and sociology, and, as discussed earlier, depends on the accompanying stressors, the cognitive or social challenges (Czerwionka, 2010). Dialect Variation In a comprehensive study of several Spanish varieties, Félix-Brasdefer4 (2009) investigated the realization of requests among Mexican, Costa Rican, and Dominican speakers. The project examined requested head acts, direct and indirect, and three types of downgraders: lexical, syntactic, and prosody in role-plays. While we note here that role-plays may not represent authentic, spontaneous speech, or the ideal manner to elicit data, they still assist in collecting data in a consistent manner, and, thus, allow us to draw comparisons. For instance, Félix-Brasdefer detected three types of syntactic downgraders such as negative prefacing of a request, for example, ¿No me podrías prestas tus apuntes? . . . (Won’t you lend me your notes?). The other two downgraders were related to the use of conditional and imperfect forms such as ¿Podrías prestarme tus apuntes? (Can you lend me your notes?) and aspect durative marker, for example, quiero saber si . . . (I was wondering if . . .). The study, in using a mixed-method approach, also examined the use of diminutives, politeness formulas, and downtoners which reduce the impact of a request such as posiblemente (possibly), among other linguistic features. In general, the study unveiled differences among the speakers of the varieties mentioned. The differences related to the preference for external and internal mitigation, one being the effect of power and distance. The study suggests that there were more similarities among the Costa Rican and Mexican groups, and that the Dominicans exhibit different linguistic behavior. Unlike their counterparts, the Dominican participants of the study tended to use a combination of imperatives, want-related statements for requests, and employed the inclusive ‘we’ when requesting. The importance of this study lies in the fact that it probed several linguistic features, syntactic (internal and external) and prosodic features, one of the first studies to examine prosodic features among speakers of several Spanish varieties.

Chapter 2 47 The Use of Polysemic bastante (Enough, Too Much) We also find research on the lexical item of bastante which, if translated, can mean ‘a lot’, as in bastante trabajo (a lot of work), or bastante dinero (enough or a lot of money). Flores Treviño (2016) investigated the cooccurrence of mitigation and intensification in the use of bastante (sufficient, enough, a lot of) in the Spanish variety of northeastern Mexico. Using a corpus of Mexican Spanish (i.e., El habla de Monterrey 1985– 1986; El habla de Monterrey-PRESEEA 2018–2010), the word bastantito, its diminutive form, was examined as in the example provided by Flores Treviño (2016, p. 139): Pu’s se gastó bastantito [dinero] y no/ no hubo . . . / y la sociedad de alumnus no tenía dinero. [Well, quite a bit of [money] was spent, and there wasn’t wasn’t . . . and the alumnae association didn’t have money.] (My translation) The author notes that in this example, bastantito operates as an intensifier and an attenuator since the intention of the speaker was to reduce the semantic effect of what was being expressed. In further examining this lexical item, the author also notes that its meaning is polysemic. Bastante can have a semantic content similar to ‘sufficient’, ‘enough’, ‘a lot’, ‘too much’, and, as such, can be used as an attenuator or intensifier depending on context. The following two examples illustrate the polysemic behavior of this item: El clima está bastante malo. [The weather is pretty bad.] (mitigated or escalated) El resultado de la prueba fue bastante buena. [The test results were pretty good.] (escalated or mitigated) While we may consider the polysemic properties of bastante, it is important to note that there is ambiguity in these examples, and that further features such as prosodic ones are needed to entirely interpret their meaning. Social or External Factors: Gender, Age, Generational Differences in Mitigated Linguistic Behavior Researchers who investigate attenuation in Spanish have noted that Spanish speakers of several varieties tend to exhibit differences in attenuated behavior (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2009). For example, Cestero Mancera (2017) conducted a study on the Madrid and Valencia Spanish varieties

48  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish using a corpus generated by PRESEEA. The study’s primary goal was to uncover the external/social factors (i.e., age and gender) that conditioned the use of mitigation in social interactions using a sociolinguisticpragmatic lens. The corpus contained speakers from ages 20 through 55 and men and women with varying levels of education. The findings revealed that age, gender, and education exerted an effect on attenuated speech. Namely, men mitigated more than women, adults more than the younger groups, and that speakers with higher education tended to mitigate more frequently than others. The contribution this study has made to the field was that of unveiling how social factors might influence the use of mitigation. The study also attended to comparing the various strategies employed by speakers to attenuate, such as the use of impersonal forms, discourse markers, lexical modifications, among others. Interestingly, the speakers of the Madrid variety (i.e., women) were found to attenuate their speech by employing strategies in the initial segment of their expressions while women from Valencia tended to integrate their mitigating features at the end of their propositions. Thus, not only gender and age differences were found to affect the expression of mitigation, but syntactic differences were also detected among the two Spanish varieties examined. Empirical work as this one explores how pragmatic variation manifests concerning the use of mitigating devices, and how we should consider a variety of factors when coding utterances produced by men and women and speakers of different Spanish varieties and age groups. There are other external or social factors we need to consider when we research the manifestation of mitigation or attenuated expressions, generational, and regional ones. In a study conducted among university students by Samper Hernández (2013) in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria using the PRESEEA corpus, we find a comprehensive examination of over 25 linguistic and social factors. The study examined factors affecting internal and external modification concerning attenuated speech (e.g., the use of morphology, lexical items, mood and aspect of verbs, adverbs relating doubt and probability). It also examined mitigation among three generations of speakers and men and women from Las Palmas, Madrid, and Valencia, three distinct regions of Spain. The study produced several essential findings that advance and contribute to how we investigate mitigated speech. First, statistically significant differences were found among Madrid men and women; men exhibited higher frequencies of attenuated speech than their counterparts. However, this finding was not consistent with men and women from Valencia and Las Palmas. Furthermore, with respect to age/generation, Samper Hernández reports that first-generation residents of Las Palmas and second generations of Madrid and Valencia exhibited a higher frequency of attenuated speech compared to other generations, again resulting in regional and generational differences.

Chapter 2 49 Interestingly, the study also uncovered that speakers employed multiple mitigating strategies, not just one. This finding reminds us of the complexities involved in accounting for mitigation and mitigating strategies and how we examine and code this phenomenon. That is, it is crucial that we code and account for regional dialects, age, gender, and generation factors in the analyses conducted in future studies. Cestero Mancera’s (2017) and Samper Hernández’s studies underscore the importance of these factors since their research attests to the fact that attenuation does not manifest in a similar manner among speakers of similar and different Spanish varieties. Expanding on how social or external factors affect how mitigation is expressed, we find Barros García’s (2017) study. This study also attended to factors such as age and Spanish variety; however, it probed how register and style affected the expression of attenuation in spontaneous speech among youth and adults (ages 17 to 35 years). The study sourced data generated by speakers of Southern Spain and the corpus COGILA (Español oral conversacional: Corpus y Guía Didáctica, Universidad de Granada, Granada, 2012). The study’s findings revealed pervasive uses of mitigation strategies in all conversations. In particular, attenuated speech was attested in non-colloquial interactions, principally when criticism was being issued or when differences of opinion and controversial issues were being discussed. The findings suggest that the use of mitigation was bidirectional; with the purpose of protecting self (e.g., speakers and hearers). Furthermore, the Barros García study uncovered that the functions of mitigation were widespread and issued in instances that entailed both politeness and impoliteness. This study then underscores a well-known fact: that mitigation is not to be considered equated to politeness. In other words, the expression of mitigation can vacillate between polite and impolite propositions. Institutional Discourses and Mitigation Several studies have addressed the use of mitigating devices and strategies in institutional discursive settings in Spanish (Czerwionka, 2012, 2014; Delbene, 2004; Flores-Ferrán, 2010, 2012, 2018; Flores-Ferrán & Lovejoy, 2015, among others). For instance, Delbene (2004) investigated how doctors mitigate their utterances to HIV patients when conveying bad news. Her work was informed by Caffi (1991) and Fraser (1980), and she examined over 34 doctor-patient interviews in a public hospital in Uruguay. Delbene argues that there is a fine line between mitigation and deception in this type of discursive interaction, challenging the association between mitigation and politeness. She views these entities as opposites, thus contending with Fraser’s notion of altruistic attenuation. In using Trosberg’s (1995, p. 209) definition of downgrades, “ways

50  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish of toning down the impact that an utterance is likely to have”, Delbene quantitatively examines downgrades and upgrades and reports that physicians exhibit the highest frequencies of downgrades compared to patients. Delbene (2004, p. 254) exemplifies an episode of an interview between a zero-positive patient and her physician, one which illustrates the inclusion of mitigating devices between the speakers under the pressure of a sensitive topic: the increase of the patient’s viral load. Patient:

A veces siento un poco de decaimiento, mareos (tono de voz bajo). ¿Es normal, eso? ¿Los mareos? ¿O puede ser otra cosa? ¿Y el cansancio y el agotamiento? Doctor: Puede ser por la misma evolución del virus, [puede ser] de extracción viral. No es normal pero podés que esté . . . [Patient: Sometimes I feel a bit of dejection, dizziness (very soft voice). Is that normal? The dizziness? Or could it be something else? And the tiredness and exhaustion?] [Doctor: It could be due to the very evolution of the virus, something of viral origin. It’s not normal, but perhaps for you, it could be that it [the virus] . . .] Delbene explains that in the previous example the doctor mitigated the utterance in producing “No es normal” and in “Es esperable porque la evolución del virus”. In other words, the doctor does not explicitly indicate that there has been an increase in the virus and the doctor implicitly points to other possibilities. Imposition and Certitude and Mitigation To add to the layers of complexity when we analyze mitigation, we note here that we need to take into account external factors such as the role of imposition and certitude. Czerwionka (2012) represents one of the first studies conducted in Spanish to investigate the social and cognitive motivations involved in mitigation.5 In particular, it examined mitigating devices in an institutional discursive setting among Mexican university students participating in role-plays. The findings suggest that high levels of imposition (the degree to which there are burdens present in an interaction) and uncertainty (a speaker’s degree of conviction and certitude regarding the content of a message) prompt us to mitigate. That is, both a high-degree of imposition and degrees of uncertainty exert an influence on the realization of mitigated speech. The study reveals that interpersonal markers such as tag questions, politeness markers, solidarity markers, consultative devices, among others, separately or together are pervasive in high-imposition contexts (e.g., borrowing a car). The other devices discussed such as discourse markers

Chapter 2 51 (e.g., ah, pues ‘ah’, ‘well’) and, epistemic markers (e.g., yo creo ‘I think’) were also attested in the corpus. Interestingly, epistemic markers were employed the least by speakers. This study points to the importance of revisiting our coding procedures to include concerns related to degrees of imposition and certitude, perhaps creating a scale which can be used to measure intensity, for the factors that were established by Lakoff (1973) or are suggested by Czerwionka (2012).

Suggested Universalized Taxonomy In an attempt to build a theory on mitigation, House and Kasper (1981) and other researchers developed a taxonomy; linguistic expressions that are used to signal politeness but may also intersect with attenuation depending on the context in which they are produced. It is worth noting that the following list only represents several expressions and we have included their equivalent in Spanish since we are suggesting here that perhaps the taxonomy can be universalized:   1. Consultative devices: Structures in which an addressee bids for the support of the hearer such as ‘Could you . . .’ (e.g., ¿Puedes . . . ? ¿Podrías . . . ?),   2. Hedges: Structures that circumvent preciseness (e.g., ‘and what have you’, ‘more or less’) (e.g., más o menos . . .),   3. Understaters: A structure with an adverbial modifier such as: ‘a bit’, ‘a moment’, ‘briefly’ (e.g., morphological diminutive -ito),   4. Downtoners: Lexical items which modulate the impact of a speaker’s expression (e.g., ‘perhaps’, ‘just’, ‘possibly’) (e.g., tal vez, posiblemente),   5. Committers: Items which lower the degree of a speaker’s commitment (‘I think’, ‘I guess’), also known as parenthetical verbs (Urmson, 1952, among others) (e.g., creo, supongo),   6. Forewarnings: A strategy with a meta-comment related to a facethreatening act such as ‘you may find this a bit boring . . .’ (e.g., aunque no lo creas . . ., quizás lo encuentres de poco interés . . .),   7. Hesitators: Pauses filled with non-lexical items, e.g., ‘uhh’, ‘um’ (e.g., este, esto, ah),   8. Agent avoiders: A structure that suppresses or impersonalizes agency such as ‘people don’t do that’, or the use of the passive voice as in ‘the medication wasn’t taken’ (by me) (e.g., La gente no hace eso. El medicamento no fue tomado),   9. Impersonal constructions: ‘One can save money if one wants to . . .’ (Uno puede ahorrar dinero si uno quiere), and 10. For Spanish, the omission of subjects is optional and can be considered mitigating as in ‘No tengo la culpa’ and ‘yo no tengo la culpa’ ([I] am not guilty).

52  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish The nomenclature differs somewhat among researchers. Nonetheless, these linguistic forms and structures, which have also been attributed to expressions related to politeness, can be employed to reduce the illocutionary force of a message and, thus, attenuate. For instance, if a doctor asks a patient about medication intake and the patient replies, ‘The medication wasn’t taken’, we then detect how a speaker is avoiding a direct response by suppressing agency since the response could have been issued as ‘I didn’t take the medication’ or ‘The medication wasn’t taken (by me)’. This statement is thus considered mitigated and unrelated to politeness. However, if a speaker asks her colleague of the same age and similar status, ‘Would you mind answering the phone?’ the speaker is being polite and is mitigating the directive at the same time instead of producing a statement such as: “Answer the phone”. Based on the scholarship described, we learn that mitigated utterances and expressions are pervasive and are mediated by a speaker’s dialect, age, socioeconomic status, education, among other external/social factors.

Summary In this chapter, we have explored how mitigation or attenuation has been investigated in English and Spanish. We have described studies in the chapter have shown that: 1. Social or external factors mediate mitigated speech (e.g., age, generation, dialect, gender, power relations). 2. Micro-linguistic features and internal and external strategies are employed to attenuate. 3. Non-verbal, prosodic features and even silence can be considered mitigating depending on the context. 4. Burden and imposition may prompt speakers to attenuate. Further, the chapter discussed how speakers tend to mitigate in the academic sphere, in lectures, debates, and publications. While the purpose of this chapter was not to draw a comparison between English and Spanish mitigation, we explained that researchers have drawn from slightly different perspectives and theoretical models to inform their research. The studies reported here attest to the wide variety of linguistic features that have been found to contribute to the production of attenuating expressions. In an attempt to build on a universalized taxonomy, the chapter expanded upon House and Kasper’s (1981) proposal, among others.

Chapter 2 53

Notes 1. Flores-Ferrán and Suh (2015) discusses code-switching during parent-child interactions which may point to ways in which alternating languages can be considered a mitigating strategy. 2. I discuss details of these factors in the theoretical and methodological Chapter 6. 3. The passive voice in Spanish as in Se toma en cuenta ([it] is taken into account) does not contain an expressed subject as in English. Spanish is a null subject language. The use of null subjects is licensed and considered grammatical in Spanish. The rationale for why these structures are considered mitigating, remains in the structure itself in which agency is not overtly expressed. I should note that speakers do have the option of expressing a subject and creating an utterance in the active voice. Therefore, propositions with ‘se’ and passive constructions need to be probed in relation to attenuation. Not all of these constructions may reflect a softening effect. 4. Félix-Brasdefer has numerous studies on requests and refusals among Spanish speakers, both natives and learners with regard to mitigation. For a more comprehensive discussion, the reader is advised to refer to Félix-Brasdefer (2003, 2007, 2013, 2017). 5. For an examination English mitigation in courts (institutional discourse), see Martinovski (2006) which also discusses imposition and certitude.

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Chapter 2 55 Czerwionka, L. A. (2010). Mitigation in Spanish discourse: Social and cognitive motivations, linguistic analyses, and effects on interaction and interlocutors (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com (AAI3428999). Czerwionka, L. A. (2012). Mitigation: The combined effects of imposition and certitude. Journal of Pragmatics, 44(10), 1163–1182. Czerwionka, L. A. (2014). Participant perspectives on mitigation: The impact of imposition and certainty. Journal of Pragmatics, 67(6), 112–130. Delbene, R. (2004). The function of mitigation in the context of a socially stigmatized disease: A case study in a public hospital in Montevideo, Uruguay. Spanish in Context, 1(2), 241–266. Díaz Blanca, L. (2007). Construcciones pasivas con ‘se’: ¿Estrategias de atenuación? Lingüística y Literatura, 28(52), 81–93. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2004). Interlanguage refusals: Linguistic politeness and length of residence in the target community. Language Learning, 54(4), 587–653. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2007). Natural speech vs. elicited data: A comparison of natural and role play requests in Mexican Spanish. Spanish in Context, 4(2), 159–185. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2008). Pedagogical intervention and the development of pragmatic competence in learning Spanish as a foreign language. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 16(1), 47–82. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2009). Pragmatic variation across Spanish(es): Requesting in Mexican, Costa Rican, and Dominican Spanish. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 473–515. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2013). Refusing in L2 Spanish: The effects of the context of learning during a short-term study abroad program. In O. Martí Andándiz & P. Salazar-Campillo (Eds.), Refusals in instructional contexts and beyond (pp. 147–173). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters: A pragmaticdiscursive approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2017). Service encounters. In B. Vine (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language in the workplace (pp. 162–174). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2009). Are you referring to me? The variable use of UNO and YO in oral discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(9), 1810–1824. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2010). An examination of mitigation strategies used in Spanish psychotherapeutic discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(7), 1964–1980. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2012). Pragmatic variation in therapeutic discourse: An examination of mitigating devices employed by Dominican female clients and a Cuban American therapist. In C. F. Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues. Impact Studies in Language and Society (pp. 81–112). Philadelphia: Benjamins. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2018). Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Mexican Spanish: Mitigation and indirectness in an institutional setting. In M. González Rivera (Ed.), Current research in Puerto Rican linguistics (pp. 157–184). London, UK: Routledge.

56  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish Flores-Ferrán, N., & Lovejoy, K. (2015). An examination of mitigating devices in the argument interactions of L2 Spanish learners. Journal of Pragmatics, 76, 67–86. Flores-Ferrán, N., & Suh, S. (2015). A case study of a Korean-American family’s code-switching during conflict-related interaction. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 3(2), 289–317. Flores Treviño, M. E. (2016). Copresencia de la atenuación e intensificación en el uso de bastante y su derivación en el habla del noreste de méxico. Revista Internacional De Lingüística Iberoamericana, 14(1), 137. Flowerdew, J. (1991). Pragmatic modifications on the ‘representative’ speech act of defining. Journal of Pragmatics, 15, 253–264. Fraser, B. (1974). An examination of the performative analysis. Papers in Linguistics, 7(1–2), 1–40. Fraser, B. (1975). Hedged performatives. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 3, pp. 197–210). New York, NY: Academic Press. Fraser, B. (1980). Conversational mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 4(4), 341–350. García, C. (1989). Disagreeing and requesting by Americans and Venezuelans. Linguistics and Education, 1, 299–322. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Oxford, UK: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York, NY: Basic Books. Gries, S., & David, C. (2007/2009). This is kind of/sort of interesting: Variation in hedging in English. Towards Multimedia in Corpus Studies, 1D17. Retrieved from www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/stgries/research/2007_STG-CVD_Kin dOfSortOf_MultMedCorpLing.pdf Haverkate, H. (1992). Deictic categories as mitigating devices. Pragmatics, 2(4), 505–522. Hernández-Flores, N. (1999). Politeness ideology in Spanish colloquial conversation: The case of advice. Pragmatics, 9(1), 1018–2101. Holmes, J. (1984). Modifying illocutionary force. Journal of Pragmatics, 8(3), 345–365. House, J., & Kasper, G. (1981). Interpersonal markers in English and German. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routines (pp. 157–185). The Hague: De Gruyter Mouton. Hoza, J. (2001). The mitigation of face-threatening acts in interpreted interaction: Requests and rejections in American sign language and English (Doctoral dissertation). Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) 85513105, 200205192. Hyland, K. (1996). Talking to the academy: Forms of hedging in science research articles. Written Communication, 13(2), 251–281. Jaworski, A. (1997). Introduction: An overview. In A. Jaworski (Ed.), Silence: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 3–14). Berlin: De Gruyter. Johnston, B. (1992). Violence and civility in discourse: Uses of mitigation by rural southern white men. SECOL Review, 16(1), 1–15. Kallen, J. (2011). Silence and mitigation in Irish English discourse. In A. Barron & K. P. Schneider (Eds.), The pragmatics of Irish English (pp. 47–73). Berlin and New York, NY: De Gruyter Mouton.

Chapter 2 57 Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York, NY: Academic Press. Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness, or minding your p’s and q’s. In C. Corum, T. Cedric Smith-Clark, & A. Weiser (Eds.), Papers from the ninth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (pp. 202–305). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. Lakoff, R. (1975). Linguistic theory and the real world. Language Learning, 25(2), 309–338. Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Marcano, Z. (2007). Y la niñita fue un poquita tonta: Adquisición de algunas estrategias de atenuación en un corpus de habla caraqueño. Núcleo, 24, 97–112. Mariottini, L. (2012). Modality and attenuation. Analysis of ‘un poco’ and its morphological alterations in colloquial conversations. Oralia, 15, 177–203. Martín-Martín, P. (2008). The mitigation of scientific claims in research papers: A comparative study. International Journal of English Studies, 8(2), 133–152. Martinovski, B. (2006). A framework for the analysis of mitigation in courts: Toward a theory of mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(12), 2065–2086. Mendiluce Cabrera, G., & Hernández Bartolomé, A. I. (2005). Hedges and boosters in biomedical research papers: A classification proposal for English/ Spanish contrastive studies. Iberica, 10, 63–90. Mihatsch, W., & Albelda Marco, M. (2016). Introducción. la atenuación y la intensificación desde una perspectiva semantico-pragmática. Revista Internacional De Lingüística Iberoamericana, 14(1), 7. Miskovic-Lukovic, M. (2008). Is there a chance that I might kinda sort of take you out to dinner? The role of the pragmatic particles of kind of and sort of in utterance interpretation. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(3), 602–625. Murillo Medrano, J. (2002). Verbal courtesy in Costa Rican Spanish. Kañina, 26(2), 109–118. Piatti, G. (2000). Attenuation in conversations among Argentine students. Moderna Sprak, 95(2), 210–221. Placencia, M. E. (1996). Politeness in Ecuadorian Spanish. Multilingua, 15(1), 13–34. Puga Larraín, J. (1997). La atenuación en el castellano de Chile: Un enfoque pragmalingüístico. Valencia, Spain: Tirant lo Blanch Libros, Universidad de Valencia. Puga Larraín, J., & Gutiérrez, L. (2015). La atenuación en interacciones asimétricas entre un hombre y una mujer. Un análisis cualitativo de conversaciones entre profesionales en Cuidad de México y en Santiago de Chile. Programa EDICE, 1(2), 25–52. Quirk, R., Svartvik, J., & Leech, G. (1972). A grammar of contemporary English. London, UK: Longman. Samper Hernández, M. (2013). La atenuación lingüística en el español de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. LEA Lingüística Española Actual, 35(2), 325–348. Schneider, S. (2004). Pragmatic functions of Spanish parenthetical verbs. In P. Garcés Conejos, R. Gómez Morón, L. Fernández Amaya, & M. Padilla Cruz (Eds.), Current trends in intercultural, cognitive and social pragmatics (pp. 37–52). Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla—Research Group of Intercultural Pragmatic Studies.

58  Empirical Research on Mitigation in English and Spanish Schneider, S. (2007). Reduced parenthetical clauses as mitigators: A corpus study of spoken French Italian and Spanish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Stungiené, A. (2006). Mitigation in academic debates and conference papers in linguistics. Kalb ir Kontekstai, 1, 159–190. Trosberg, A. (1995). Interlanguage pragmatics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Urmson, J. (1952). Parenthetical verbs. Mind, 61, 489–496. Wierzbicka, A. (1986). Precision in vagueness. The semantics of English ‘approximatives’. Journal of Pragmatics, 10, 597–614. Wierzbicka, A. (1991). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Corpus Cited in Chapter Corpus CREA: http://corpus.rae.es/creanet.html Corpus Sociolingüístico de la Cuidad de Mérida, Venezuela: www.human.ula.ve/ linguisticahispanica/documentos/criterios_recoleccion.pdf Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP). See: Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. El Corpus de Conversaciones Coloquiales Val.Es.Co: www.uv.es/corpusvalesco/ corpus.html El habla de Monterrey-PRESEEA: http://preseea.linguas.net/Equipos/Monterrey. aspx English: www.english-corpora.org/core/ Es.Por.Atenuación Español oral conversacional: Corpus y guía didáctica, Universidad de Granada, Granada: http://editorial.ugr.es/static/Emanagement/*/detalle_libro/ cogila-espanol-oral-conversacional-corpus-y-guia-didactica The London-Lund Corpus of Spoke English: www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/ corpora/LLC/ Briz, A., & Albelda, M. (Coords.). (diciembre de 2013). Onomázein, 28, 288– 319. doi:10.7764/onomazein.28.21. Onomázein. Revista semestral de lingüística, filología, y traducción. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Facultad de Letras. PRESEEA: Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y América: http://preseea.linguas.net/

3 Several Theoretical Perspectives

Introduction This chapter discusses several theoretical perspectives that have informed research on mitigation. In particular, it touches upon Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Theory, Austin’s (1962) and Searle’s (1969) Speech Act Theory, Psycho-social perspectives set forth by several scholars (e.g., Czerwionka, 2010; Martinovski, Mao, Gratch, & Marsella, 2005; Puga Larraín, 1997), Pragmatic Variation (e.g., Barron & Schneider, 2009; Félix-Brasdefer, 2008, 2009; Schneider, 2010), and Briz and Albelda’s (2013) theoretical perspectives. Given the vastness of its object of study, mitigation remains a challenge to theoretically couch since it crosses disciplines. We note that mitigation is situated in pragmatics, a field which has as its domain language in use and the context in which it is used. Theoretically, mitigation falls within this vast world of communication. To be more specific, pragmatic’s domain relies on speakers’ communicative intentions, the use of language that addresses the fulfillment of those intentions, including the strategies and devices that speakers employ to communicate the intentions effectively. It is within this wide range of communicative intentions that we can find the expression of attenuation. In first defining the term pragmatics, Morris (1971, p. 43) noted that pragmatics entailed the study of a psychological, biological, and sociological phenomenon that occurs in the function of ‘signs’, meaning ‘linguistic units’. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Puga Larraín (1997, p. 21) has also posited that the foundations of mitigation are situated in human psychology, anthropology, and sociology. So, if a theory of mitigation is to be formulated, we need to consider Watts’ (2003, p. 48) explanation: a theory of X aims at giving a dispassionate, ‘objective’ account of X, i.e., at giving at least an adequate description of X and, if possible, an explanation for X’s occurrence in the ‘real’, non-theoretical world.

60  Several Theoretical Perspectives Therefore, this chapter aims to portray how attenuation has been theorized and it attempts to do so by pointing to only several approaches that have been used to account for its expression. Going back to what has been stated earlier, mitigation has been generally described as a linguistic, communicative strategy. It represents a softening of a message, a reduction of the impact of an utterance (Fraser, 1980, 1990, among others). Mitigation also entails indirectness and vagueness and, depending on a context, it may entail politeness. However, more importantly, many linguistic features can contribute to padding and buffing a message, making it less direct. These features can be specific lexical items, syntactic alterations, discourse markers, morphological endings, phrases, pauses, prosodic, proverbs, among many others. And cultural notions also contribute to shaping the message. To review several linguistic units, here is a modified version of Czerwionka’s (2010, p. 2) examples which we use to illustrate just a few of the range of forms and functions that can be realized for one expression: I broke your new glass. The glass was broken. (passive voice, agency omitted) I think I broke it. (parenthetical verb, doubt/uncertainty, vagueness) Oh, sorry, it’s that the glass broke. (apology, a shift in agency) Uh, um, well it wasn’t on purpose. (discourse marker(s) hesitation, avoidance of referent, excuse/apology) Given the diverse features that may contribute to attenuating a proposition, any theoretical approach should be able to take into account the variety of ways that speakers can attenuate and the options that are inherent in a language.

Politeness Theory and Mitigation Recall that mitigation is related to or may entail politeness, but it is not the same as politeness (Fraser, 1980, p. 344). So we may ask ourselves how does mitigation intersect with politeness and why have scholars sourced Politeness Theory to shape their investigations? Over the past 30 to 40 years, research on mitigation has primarily been informed by Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), a theory which suggests that speakers’ goals in attenuating are aligned with saving ‘face’ (Goffman, 1955) and face-threatening acts. Thus, central to the model of Politeness Theory (PT) is the notion of ‘face’, which represents two types of desires. One desire Brown and Levinson refer to is the desire to be unimpeded in one’s actions (negative face). The other desire refers

Chapter 3 61 to positive face. This latter desire is based on the need to be approved by others. So, in general, PT is a face-saving based theory. In brief, we can say that scholars who have researched mitigation using this theory view mitigation as a face-saving communicative strategy. Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness has been widely recognized and discussed in the field; therefore, further explanations are not introduced here. Suffice it to say that the model takes into account mitigation in a broad sense. However, we need to keep in mind that attenuation does not always entail politeness and face-saving effects as we have evidenced in several excerpts and examples in previous chapters. To substantiate this perspective, Placencia (2008) argues that personal relationships take precedence over one’s desires. Thus, when speakers attenuate, they may not be aiming to save face; they are thinking or worrying about others, and their bonds and relationships weigh heavily in their thoughts and linguistic behaviors. Also, if we further dissect Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness, we know it is constructed on an ideal speaker, perhaps a fluent one of a language, and one who operates in a linguistic context that is mostly monocultural. In other words, the theory is not malleable enough and cannot take into account the dynamic interactions that exist among speakers. In focusing on a face-saving agenda, PT falls short of embracing the full range of linguistic, cultural, situational, and emotional aspects of a mitigated interaction. For instance, while a speaker may be fluent in American English, she still may not be pragmatically competent in attenuating in British English. Thus, psychological, socio-cultural, and linguistic aspects have to be taken into account, not only aspects of ‘face’. Caffi (2007) has also pointed to the shortcomings of PT concerning mitigation. She has noted that mitigation is understood in a narrow sense within the context of politeness. That is, she contends that in politeness research, mitigation has been examined under the lens of face-threatening acts. However, Caffi’s (2007, p. 48) account of attenuation reflects a broader perspective. She states that: I take mitigation in a broader sense, as the result of the weakening of interactional parameters such as cognitive commitment, emotive involvement, topical salience, etc. . . . My general claim is that, by studying the stylistic nuances of communicative choices, we can fathom different interactional dimensions, which are simultaneously at work and provide a given choice with its specific significance and import. These dimensions are intra-subjective, i.e., concerning the subject’s inner world and her/his different selves, and the intersubjective, i.e., concerning the negotial co-construction of the subject’s identity through a given exchange . . . interaction is affected by instrumental and relational needs that go beyond those assumed to motivate face-work.

62  Several Theoretical Perspectives With this explanation in mind, any theory of mitigation or a theoretical framework that is used to investigate this phenomenon should take into account the interactional dimensions and the cultural context. Leech’s (2014) perspective on PT has also informed several studies on mitigation. In discussing indirect and attenuated criticism, he espouses several characteristics of politeness that may also embrace mitigating linguistic behavior. Among them, he suggests that politeness is not obligatory and that there are varying gradations of politeness. Thus, we can also complement this statement by saying that speakers do not have an obligation to mitigate either. That is, speakers do not have to soften or pad their messages, but we know that probably the unmarked behavior in several cultures is to do so. Furthermore, and similar to polite linguistic gestures, we also know that there are varying degrees of illocutionary force when we mitigate and that these degrees depend on context, interlocutors, and other social dimensions. Leech (2014) also explains that people have a social sense of what is considered polite and that it depends on a situation, an observation based on a monolithic mono-cultural society. However, the same is not valid for mitigation. People may have a general sense of what is considered polite (e.g., ‘I’m sorry’ if you step on someone’s toe or express an apology for being late), but speakers do not necessarily have an overt or conscious psycho-socio-cultural and pragma-linguistic sense of how, why, or when to attenuate (e.g., in a court vs. in a social interaction with friends, as opposed to interacting with supervisors, on the internet). Generally speaking, we think that speakers understand how to express indirectness, providing it is their first language, and that speakers may prefer indirectness over directness. However, Blum-Kulka (1985, 1989) argues to the contrary regarding Israeli society, which she describes as direct. We probably have encountered many instances in our careers in which colleagues do not mitigate and express their opposition quite directly. Besides this observation, novice learners of a language do not have a sense of how to mitigate and most studies have pointed out that advanced learners tend to only approximate native speakers (e.g., Lovejoy, 2015). Leech (1983) also maintains that there is underlying reciprocity among speakers’ polite behavior, but reciprocity is not necessarily a characteristic of mitigation. We attenuate not because an addressee attenuates; we mitigate because a context may call for it or our goals are driving the reasons why we diminish the illocutionary force of a message. For example, at a conference presentation, we place a high value of our opinions even though the remarks made in a presentation may contradict another expert’s opinion. We, therefore, may not mitigate our speech to prove our points. In other words, when we receive questions about our research, we tend to respond in a direct manner reinforcing our perspectives or contradicting the addressee who may have challenged our work or perspective.

Chapter 3 63 That is, experts in academic contexts, generally, tend to escalate their explanations about their knowledge and opinions. In that same conference, if someone comes to us and states, “Your presentation was terrific!”, we may respond by issuing a polite utterance such as “Thank you!” which is a non-mitigated response. Alternatively, we can be modest and respond, “Well, I’m not sure it was my best!” which represents a mitigated response. It would be somewhat awkward to state, “Sure, it was my best!” even though the latter response is acceptable but not pragmatically appropriate. So, reciprocity between interlocutors is not characteristic of mitigated expressions. Furthermore, Leech considers politeness as underpinning mitigation and he seems to claim that politeness is about minimizing the expression of impoliteness when, indeed, mitigation is not. We see mitigation motivated by many factors, factors that are thoroughly illustrated in the subsequent chapters. Many linguistic and psycho-social-external factors conflate when we mitigate. Nonetheless, Leech (2014) noted that several lexical-grammatical devices could be used to mitigate criticisms or complaints. For example, these particular utterances may be considered mitigating strategies and devices depending on the context in which they are expressed: • • • • • •

the avoidance of first- and second-person reference, the use of impersonal mechanisms and shields (‘one’), vague utterances (‘that’s not so expensive’), expressions of possibility (‘you could do better’), the use of verb aspect (e.g., ‘I would like to change the subject . . .’), and the use of agentless passive voice (‘My car was hit’), among others.

Caffi (2007) stresses that mitigation in the past has been seen through a narrow lens, and we need to look at communication more holistically. She maintains that “by studying the stylistic nuances of communicative choices, we can fathom different interactional dimensions, which are simultaneously at work . . .” (2007, p. 48). Thus, we underscore here that when we are theorizing about mitigation, we need to acknowledge that interaction is affected by the relational needs that go beyond face-work. That said, during my earlier stages of research on attenuation, the scholarship that informed my studies pointed to the devices and strategies speakers used to attenuate expressions, and these studies were mainly informed by PT. However, when examining data (which is described in the next chapter), I was able to detect the varieties of ways speakers attenuate, and these ways manifested outside the frame of politeness. That is, mitigation is not a clear-cut phenomenon. For instance, it is not that we attenuate or escalate our expressions. It is more of a modulation which depends on many linguistic and psycho-social factors and the

64  Several Theoretical Perspectives communicative intent of the speakers. We can characterize this modulation analogous to what an electrocardiogram performs whereby the lines may move smoothly according to pulses. With this brief exploration in mind and knowing that there has been a long history of empirical research on linguistic politeness in many cultures, I only extracted concepts from PT to show how perspectives regarding the theory may intersect with mitigation but cannot fully account for it. In brief, we should note that mitigation similar to politeness: • • • • •

Has been known to lessen friction in personal interaction, Entails avoidance of conflict, Cushions messages to minimizes antagonism, Contributes to supportiveness, solidarity, and mutual comfort among speakers, and Can be used to express deference.

Schneider (2013) has also noted that attenuation plays a vital role in politeness. However, as mentioned earlier, we need to accentuate again that mitigation should not be equated to politeness, and the two should not be confused. In addition, and with respect to the emergence of mitigation in discourse, Briz and Albelda (2013, p. 292) also contend that mitigation is not straightforward and manifests in both dialogic and monologic circumstances which suggests that while the perlocutionary effects of politeness involve speaker-hearer, mitigation does not necessarily do so: La atenuación es actividad arumentativa (retórica) estratégica de minimización de la fuerza ilocutiva y del papel de los participantes en la enunciación para llegar con éxito a la meta prevista, y que es utilizada en contextos situacionales de menos inmediatez o que requieren o se desea presenten menos inmediatez comunicativa. Así, unas veces, habrá atenuación de hablante, y por tanto, la estrategia tendrá un carácter más monológico; otras, atenuación de hablante y oyente, y por tanto, tendrá un carácter más dialógico y a menudo cortés. [Attenuation is a discursive (rhetorical) strategic activity that minimizes the illocutionary force and the role of the participants in the proposition to successfully reach the intended goal, and which is used in situational contexts of less immediacy or that requires or aims to present less communicative immediacy. Thus, sometimes, a speaker will attenuate, and therefore, the strategy will have a more monological character; in others, attenuation emerges between speaker and hearer, and therefore, it will have a more dialogical and often polite character.] (My translation)

Chapter 3 65 However, at times, as one will see in the excerpts used throughout this book, mitigation is realized with multiple purposes, whereas politeness can be viewed as more straightforward. That is, attenuation is multifunctional, and a multiplicity of factors influences its expression. To illustrate the point where mitigation does not intersect with politeness, I provide the following example in which a therapist (T) is asking his client (C) to account for his medication intake and treatment, whether it has been consistent with the doctor’s recommendation. The interaction does not exhibit linguistic politeness; it points to mitigated speech on behalf of both interlocutors. The example is further illustrated and extracted from Flores-Ferrán (2012): T: Me imagino que continúas con el tratamiento, ¿Cierto? C: Bu:::eno, se me ha hecho un poco difícil. [T: I imagine you have continued with the treatment, right?] [C: We:::ll, it has been a little difficult.] In this example, there is mitigated speech on behalf of the therapist and the client; it is dialogic and reciprocated. The therapist used two mitigating devices: me imagino (I imagine), a parenthetical verb, which prefaces a direct question ‘Are you continuing the treatment?’ Then the therapist ends his utterance with Cierto (right?), a tag question that also represents a strategy that softens the illocutionary force of what would be a direct question. The question also serves to engage the interlocutor. That is, the therapist had an option to ask directly: ‘Have you continued treatment?’, however, the therapist did not formulate his statement directly. The client, on the other hand, employed two mitigating strategies and devices: A prosodic feature, an elongated bu:::eno (we:::ll), which suggests a negative response is forthcoming or reflects uncertainty. Moreover, he also employed un poco difícil (a little difficult), implying that he has not continued with the treatment. Naturally, if we would have evidenced a response from the client such as ‘no’, it would not be considered impolite, only direct. Thus, in this particular interaction, we do not find evidence of linguistic features indicative of politeness. However, if the client would have used linguistic features such as ‘Doctor, I’m sorry, . . .’ then we would have attested to a polite form of address that denotes formality (i.e., distance) and an apology. The fact that the client’s response was vague, indirect, and inconclusive points to how the client attenuated his response, not that he was issuing polite utterances or that he was mitigating because he was attempting to be polite. More importantly, he was probably attempting to comply with doctor’s orders. We should note that Caffi (2007) has pointed out that the concept of mitigation presupposes that what is being attenuated is something negative, and politeness does not necessarily presuppose something negative

66  Several Theoretical Perspectives (i.e., ‘please pass me the salt’, ‘thank you, for the gift’, ‘Miss, can I have the small donut?’). Czerwionka (2012, p. 83) cites Martinovski et al. (2005) and notes that “mitigation is considered to be a polite linguistic expression in certain contexts”, yet the discussion of mitigation within politeness theories does not contribute greatly to what is known about the mitigation process [my italics]. Interestingly, although the previous example between the client and therapist exhibits reciprocity, mitigation is not always considered reciprocal. The context in which this example was produced was professional or institutional. Second, there was a power dynamic; the therapist was interviewing the client. Therefore, in the opening of the interview, the therapist was likely to mitigate his direct question concerning medication intake. With this brief analysis in mind, as researchers, we may need a possible four- to a five-pronged theoretical approach to dissect these concepts similar to what Briz Gómez (2007) suggests: • A semantic and syntactic approach which deals with meaning encoded in mitigating devices, • A pragmatic approach which can examine the use of mitigation in speaker-hearer interactions, and • A psycho-socio-pragmatic and affective approach that considers cultural and social factors (e.g., power/distance, gender, age, concern for others) and the pressures speakers may face in light of mitigation. To each of these three, we should highlight the semantic constituent, one that can incorporate vague language and indirectness, and the psychosocio approach, one which deals with the social pressures and burdens or impositions if indeed they contribute to shaping an attenuated expression. In summary, scholars seem to agree that (im)politeness is complex. While Brown and Levinson (1987) associate politeness with a softening effect of face-threatening acts or a cut-and-dry option, Lakoff (1975) suggests that societies developed politeness to reduce friction thereby noting it is related to personal interaction. So, in summary, here is where mitigation and politeness may overlap: • • • •

The avoidance of a conflict situation (Leech, 1980), A negotiating tool (Briz & Albelda, 2013), Minimizing antagonism (Kasper, 1990), and Supportiveness in interpersonal contexts (Arndt & Janney, 1985).

Thus, to respond to our initial question about how mitigation intersects with politeness and why have scholars used PT to inform research on attenuation, the literature seems to point to the fact that they intersect but, as Briz Gómez (2010) has noted, mitigation and politeness have been confused.

Chapter 3 67

Speech Acts Theory and Mitigation Speech Act Theory (SAT) was first introduced in philosophy lectures by Austin (in 1955), a theory which was later published in his seminal book, How to do Things with Words (1962). The theory was further developed by Searle (1969) who posited that to understand language, one must assume a speaker’s intention. Since he considered language as an intentional behavior, he then recognized it as a form of action. Said differently, and according to Searle, statements are speech acts in that they consist of a basic unit of language that is used to express meaning. In general, the theory suggests that linguistic expressions can be explained through rules that govern the performance of an act itself (e.g., requesting, refusing). Austin had proposed the three-way taxonomy of speech acts based on illocutionary force: locution, illocution, and perlocution. Locutionary acts refer to the production of a sentence in the literal sense, something meaningful. As we know it, an illocutionary act applies to the force of a message (e.g., refusals, warnings, requesting) and perlocution alludes to what we wish to achieve with a message (i.e., convince, persuade). More specifically, Searle referred to English verbs denoting illocutionary acts such as ‘assert’, ‘order’, ‘promise’, and ‘approve’. Leech (2014) referred to utterances containing these types of verbs as ‘speech events’ since he considered speech acts single, isolated expressions. However, the study of refusals, apologies, or directives can range from one-word statements to more complex expressions (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). The narrative related to mitigation and SAT begins in the 1970s, although studies at the time may not have referred to the term ‘mitigation’ per se. Much of the research related to uncovering ways in which indirectness was expressed within specific acts. The field used terms such as ‘downgrading’, ‘de-intensifying’, ‘downtoning’, and ‘hedging’. To date, the body of mitigation research has drawn to a great extent on SAT although, more recently, we have found more research on mitigation in spontaneous speech and institutional, discursive settings (Cordella, 2007; Delbene, 2004; Flores-Ferrán & Lovejoy, 2015; Flores-Ferrán, 2009; Lovejoy, 2015, among others). Because speech acts were found to be related to commitment language (e.g., promise), and refer to responsibility in discourse such as the use of modals (e.g., must), downtoners and hedges were found to play an important role in how we viewed commitment-related language (Caffi, 2007, p. 44). Therefore, SAT over time has also been used to inform research related to attenuation since, in isolating a speech act such as a refusal, researchers have been able to identify mitigating linguistic behavior. However, SAT in relation to mitigation also has limitations. For instance, Gass (1996, p. 2) stresses that in several cultures, speech acts such as refusals may require hedging and toning down while in other cultures, a refusal may not necessitate mitigated speech. Therefore, while we

68  Several Theoretical Perspectives can employ this theory to inform our research on mitigation, the issue lies here: The realization of mitigation is culturally bound. Further, cultures differ in how they attenuate expressions and thus in investigating mitigation using SAT, we may not be able to able to account for mitigation in a comprehensive manner. In other words, mitigated utterances that fall outside the boundaries of, for example, a refusal, may be overlooked by SAT. Take, for example, García’s (1989) work which investigated native speakers of American English and Venezuelan Spanish native speakers concerning disagreeing and formulating requests in English. The study revealed that although all the speakers used some kind of stylistic devices in English role-play activities to refuse, different patterns emerged among the speakers’ first and second languages. She reported that the native English speakers preferred non-confrontational stylistic devices, which are considered mitigated. The second language learners of English used more confrontational or non-mitigated devices when disagreeing. In other words, different patterns and norms of interaction were evidenced. However, more importantly, we may ask: Do native English or Spanish speakers attenuate in the same manner? Do they employ the same devices and strategies? The response to these questions is negative. The limitations we find in using only SAT and SAT-generated protocols to inform our research on mitigation is that it draws on limited speech, individual, isolated acts such as refusals and complaints and may not provide for a comprehensive account of an interaction that consists of attenuated expressions as we will evidence throughout this book. For instance, if we examine arguments, we find speakers make claims, challenge them, criticize, back up statements with reasons, refute, provide support, and so forth, a behavior that entails a succession of interactions.1 It is within these interactions that we may find the manifestation of mitigated utterances. Further, speakers of different groups (e.g., dialects, regions) and learners of varying levels of proficiency may exhibit different behaviors when attenuating, and we need to capture these behaviors throughout multiple interactions. Although SAT studies may be considered narrow in scope in that they cannot capture how mitigation is fully realized in an interaction, the studies which have relied on SAT have contributed to shaping the path in which the expression of mitigation has been investigated. For instance, a seminal study that is widely cited by numerous scholars is one conducted by Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989). The investigation did not center on mitigation but pointed to cross-cultural differences of direct and indirect speech (associated with mitigation). They examined this behavior in a corpus generated by the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP), among a large sample of native and non-native speakers of English (Australian), French, Danish, German, Hebrew, and

Chapter 3 69 Spanish, all university students, from different countries. In brief, for requests, Blum-Kulka et al. (1989, p. 17) detected the following: • ‘alerters’ preceding requests such as ‘darling could you . . .’, • supportive moves which were represented by checks on availability (‘I missed class yesterday, could I . . .’), and • two types of head acts, a proper request and nine strategies of indirectness including strong and mild hints, hedged performatives, want statements, among others. Concerning apologies, the study revealed the use of several types of strategies employed by speakers to apologize. The study also outlines the Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFID) informed by Searle (1969). For instance, the investigation uncovered the use of, among others, taking responsibility, an explanation or account, an offer of repair, and downgrading (mitigating utterance). In a separate study, Blum-Kulka (1989) draws our attention to conventional indirectness. In it, she proposed a scale ranging from direct linguistic behavior to less straightforward. While, again, this particular study does not cite the term ‘mitigation’, it examined indirect requests also generated from the CCSARP project, cross-linguistic corpus. In the study, for instance, Australian English speakers were found to exhibit more instances in the use of conventional indirect strategies in formulating requests as opposed to direct strategies when compared to their counterparts. These were acts such as the example provided by Blum-Kulka (1989, pp. 40–42): “The kitchen seems to be in a mess.” Blum-Kulka stresses that these expressions represent “so-called conventional indirectness” and, thus, her perspective employs the term ‘pragmatic vagueness’ which she considers unmarked behavior. For instance, she outlines the subtypes of conventional indirect strategies in Australian English, ranging from the most frequently used structure (1) to the least frequently produced (6): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Could you please clean up that mess? Would you mind making some room? Would you please clean up the mess you’ve made? Would it be possible to get a lift home? Why don’t you do something to help? How about doing a bit of cleaning up around here?

Hints similar to proverbs (see Flores-Ferrán, 2012) have also been known to represent mitigating devices. Weizman (1989) explored the use

70  Several Theoretical Perspectives of requestive hints, which she considers inherently opaque. It is important to note that while, again, these earlier studies may not have identified these devices as mitigating ones, these and others should be considered, depending on context, as strategies used by speakers to attenuate their message. That is, not all hints or not all preemptive alerts can be considered mitigating unless we understand the context in which they have emerged. Weizman’s study also used the CCSARP data, which included Australian English (AE). For instance, one of Weizman’s examples (1989, p. 73), ‘It’s cold in here’, when the request was issued to close a window, is representative of a hint. Alternatively, ‘Do you have any money on you?’ represents a way in which a speaker is requesting to borrow money from the hearer. In other words, hints are used when speakers do not want to convey the literal meaning of their expressions and are, therefore, inherently opaque. This perspective brings into question whether a speaker is being polite or merely mitigating or both. The study, which compared AE speakers with French Canadian and Israeli Hebrew, uncovered that AE speakers exhibited the highest frequency of hint-related expressions based on an opacity scale of illocutionary force. Faerch and Kasper’s (1989, p. 226) study is worth mentioning since it examined mitigation and indirectness in requests in a large corpus, including English learners. Their research is one of the first to determine the preference of speakers to express mitigating devices internally and externally. In other words, they established the syntactic location preferences of modifications. Concerning internal modification, they examined, among others: • syntactic downgraders (e.g., mainly interrogatives and conditionals), • lexical and phrasal downgraders (e.g., perhaps . . .), and • the co-occurrence of these in expressions (e.g., “Excuse me, is it all right if I go home with you?”). The study also examined external modifications by way of supportive moves, the number of grounders, a combination such as: • a grounder and a preparatory (e.g., “I’d like to ask you something . . .”), • disarmers (e.g., “I know you don’t like lending me your notes, but . . .”). Among several findings, the study unveiled a preference for speakers to employ internal modification rather than external. They account for this preference by way of economy in language use. Namely, the choice of an internal adjustment falls in line with the Grice (1975) maxim ‘be brief’ while external modifications are more extended and more explicit (Faerch & Kasper, 1989, p. 244).

Chapter 3 71 Koike (1994) examined mitigation in speech acts of suggestions and requests which benefit the listener in native Mexican Spanish speakers through the use of an oral questionnaire that presented hypothetical contexts. She considers requests as potentially face-threatening acts that are usually attenuated (e.g., lexically, semantically, syntactically) unless the interlocutors are intimately familiar with one another. That is, in the case of closely related speakers, Koike maintains that mitigation is not required. For Spanish, Koike (1994, pp. 518–519) suggests that there are three types of formulaic expressions related to suggestions: declarative, interrogative, and imperative. In the next hypothetical examples, she provides a context in which a friend says he is having trouble working on electrical wiring in his house: ¿No has pensado leer este libro? [Have you thought of reading this book?] ¿No deberías leer este libro? [Shouldn’t you read this book?] ¿Qué tal si lees éste? [How about reading this one?] From these examples, Koike suggests that affirmative suggestions in English are considered attenuated. In Spanish, however, Koike notes that no affirmative counterpart exists. Therefore, we cannot consider one syntactic structure more polite than another. Koike concludes that negation in Spanish suggestions and requests is not considered mitigating, and she asserts that negated forms and syntactic structures conform to what is considered an interrogative suggestion in English. We should note that Koike argues that for Spanish, mitigation is achieved in speech acts through a series of strategies (e.g., the expression of the ambiguity of an intent, intonation). However, we consider all three examples in Spanish mitigated since they weaken the message to the interlocutor. Namely, he is not being told what to do (i.e., a directive). Instead, the utterances are syntactically produced as questions suggesting what he should do. We can also express the proposition as ‘Creo que debes leer. . .’ (I think you should read. . .), an affirmative utterance that is mitigated by the use of ‘creo que’ (I think). Blum-Kulka (1990) has noted that we need to examine mitigation beyond speech acts. However, even though we may find limitations in using SAT framework to inform our research on attenuation, the results of studies such as these have provided valuable data. They have served to determine the strategies and devices speakers tend to use to mitigate expressions in addition to attesting to the syntactic differences that may exist between languages concerning mitigation. We suggest that there is

72  Several Theoretical Perspectives value in using SAT to inform our initial research even though the studies do attend to a micro-linguistic aspect (e.g., refusals, requests). If properly designed, the studies can be later extended to examine conversational interactions. Further, after extending investigations to conversational interactions, these studies can later probe mitigation to non-speech-actrelated expressions (e.g., arguments, institutional discourses). Because of the micro-examination of speech acts, studies using SAT also tend to assist us in examining the developmental stages in the acquisition of L2 mitigation. Therefore, there is merit in using this framework.

Psychological-Social-Affective Theory and Mitigation So we may ask whether a theory of mitigation can provide an objective account of its manifestation in the real world in real speech. We have already noted that the frameworks of PT and SAT are limited in that they cannot capture the full breadth of mitigation (even though they have contributed to building a theory). To respond to the question raised earlier about finding a theory that can account for the majority or the many ways in which mitigation may manifest, we can now consider theoretical approaches proposed by other researchers (e.g., Czerwionka, 2010; Martinovski et al., 2005; Puga Larraín, 1997), among others. For this book, I refer to this theoretical framework as the Psycho-Social since it is plausible to include reactions to social pressures that motivate mitigated speech and in doing so, we can capture expressions beyond those examined under PT and SAT. These pressures may be culturally situated and, as Placencia (2008) and Bravo (2009) have noted, they may prompt attenuated speech (e.g., el qué dirán ‘what will others think’, guardar apariencias ‘guard one’s appearances’, quedar bien ‘to get along’, el compromiso ‘social obligation’, and no hacer sentir mal ‘avoiding hurting people’), behaviors that have been associated to Spanish culture. That is, Spanish speakers have been found to attenuate since they value how others perceive them, and they need to consider how they guard their appearances and maintain a social status or image. As a culture in which collective relationships are valued, these aspects have to be considered when we conduct research on linguistic mitigation in any language. One study that bridges the gap between social pressures and the motivations for mitigation in Spanish was conducted by Czerwionka (2010). Czerwionka posits that attenuation arises as a consequence of speakers’ “exposure to stressors and their accompanying coping mechanisms” (2010, p. 231). That is, mitigation is the modification of language in response to social and cognitive demands, a perspective that integrates psychological, cognitive, and discourse approaches to coping, or light coping (Martinovski & Marsella, 2005), or to reduce vulnerability (Martinovski, 2000).

Chapter 3 73 A metaphor that I have repeatedly used to characterize mitigation in this sense is that of an electrocardiogram in which a needle moves according to stressors. In other words, attenuated speech cannot be characterized in a flat or straight line or a cut-and-dry manner. Czerwionka (2010, p. 16) explicates that mitigation constitutes part of the modulation spectrum, a range of possible modifications speakers make that may begin with downgrades at the lowest end and upgraders at the highest end. These behaviors have been termed differently: ‘weakeners’ and ‘strengtheners’ (Brown & Levinson, 1987; House & Kaspers, 1981), ‘hedges’ and ‘boosters’ (Holmes, 1995). The main point is that the modulation or force is more of a change, variation, and toning up and down which is not considered static in conversations and are behaviors that PT and SAT are not able to explicate. Thus, this perspective on modulation provides for more explanatory power that supersedes that of PT and SAT when we account for the manifestation of mitigation. To recap, when we look at attenuated speech using SAT, we are probably not accounting for the full range of strategies and devices speakers may use to attenuate. Also, when we focus our attention on PT, although we may be accounting for instances of mitigated expressions, we still exclude cases in which mitigation is realized unrelated to linguistic gestures of politeness. Martinovski et al. (2005), in formulating a theory of mitigation explicate, similar to Puga Larraín (1997, p. 21) for Spanish, that mitigation is a cognitive, linguistic, and social phenomenon. They suggest that mitigation involves strategic, emotional, linguistic, and Theory of Mind processes on different conscious levels, and it is applied to describe both expressions of politeness and reactions to stressors. In fact, in a separate study, Martinovski (2006, p. 2069) proposed a framework for the analysis of mitigation using legal discourse. The framework, in particular, examines the discourse of courts since it is a context in which attenuation is used to protect not only face but also life. In this empirical account generated from inquisitional examinations of Swedish and Bulgarian trials, she examined the following: • discourse in defense processes (i.e., minimization and aggravation), • argumentation lines (e.g., shared knowledge, credibility, references to authority), and • discursive moves (e.g., concessions, counter attacks) and communication acts (e.g., rebuttals, excuses, denials). The study revealed changes in modality such as negative-positive polarity formulations. It also unveiled the use of modal expressions, tag questions (e.g., ‘right?’), in formulaic disclaimers, impersonal constructions, narratives, tone of voice, kinesic-related features, and pauses. For example, prolepsis (the anticipation and answering of possible objections)

74  Several Theoretical Perspectives tended to be expressed in a mitigated manner (e.g., evasive answers). Counter-attacks were realized by indirect denials, among other linguistic behavior. Furthermore, references to authority (e.g., forms of address) were mainly employed in final arguments. Finally, the study accounted for the patterns of linguistic devices used in admissions (e.g., implicit mitigated admission).

The Socio-Pragma-Rhetorical Cultural Aspect and Mitigation Briz and Albelda (2013) also discuss theoretical and conceptual problems implicated in attenuation. They propose a unified and comprehensive definition of this phenomenon that can capture the different perspectives that researchers have employed to investigate this phenomenon. They note that, without a doubt, that politeness constitutes an underlying explanation of mitigation, but it is not the only explanation (my italics). However, our perspective slightly differs from this explanation since they may view politeness as the header, and we argue that mitigation can intersect or converge with politeness but does not necessarily function as a politeness-related strategy. Figure 3.1 illustrates the suggested intersection between mitigation and politeness: The rationale for this perspective partially lies in what we previously discussed regarding mitigation and its intersection with vagueness and indirectness. First, we generally do not tend to be vague and indirect when expressing politeness, such as in giving thanks, in using a form of address such as ‘Doctor Smith’, or when we express an apology if we

Migaon

Politeness

Figure 3.1  The intersection between mitigation and politeness

Chapter 3 75 consider a definition of politeness reflective of usual formulaic expressions of politeness. On the other hand, people tend to mix polite behavior (e.g., being courteous, respectful) and polite expressions (e.g., excuse me, thank you). Second, in here lies the difference between politeness and mitigation: Leech (1983, p. 3) argues that “what it means to be polite . . . is to speak or behave in such a way as to (appear to) give benefit or value not to yourself but to the other person(s), especially person(s) you are conversing with”. Mitigation, however, can benefit speaker and/or hearer, and at times both, as we will exemplify and discuss in the next chapter. Third, politeness is often confused. Watts (2003) explains that we encounter problems in characterizing polite linguistic behavior. Some may describe it as formulaic, avoidance of directness, but also mix their assessment with behavior such as relating politeness with respect towards others such as being honest, and other personal assessments. Mitigated language is not that blurred. However, if we deem that mitigated linguistic behavior tends to be vague and indirect and use a broader brush to define politeness (beyond formulaic expressions), then it may well be that polite utterances can be modulated in such a way that they become representative of an attenuated expression. For instance, in refusing an invitation to have coffee with a peer, a speaker may use a direct or indirect response, polite or impolite (e.g., sorry, I can’t right now), depending on a myriad of factors as Briz and Albelda (2013) have proposed. Conversely, in refusing an invitation to have coffee with a supervisor, probably a mitigated indirect response such as ‘Well, I am running late’ may be issued by a subordinate. While a direct negative response such as ‘No, I can’t’ would be acceptable in the first invitation issued by a peer, the second interaction calls for a mitigated response since a direct ‘no’ would be considered unacceptable and impolite in certain societies. Briz and Albelda (2013) stress essential terms and concepts that can encompass linguistic mitigation: pragmatic category, discursive strategy, social interaction, politeness, downgrading, linguistic distancing, discursive weakening, impersonalization, among others. Of these, linguistic distancing, discursive weakening, and impersonalization may not be always be considered under the rubric of politeness. Politeness entails solidarity, closeness, and a strengthening of the bonds between interlocutors. They consider attenuation as a pragmatic category, a strategic, vital, and tactful one. Briz and Albelda (2013, p. 292) have also noted that attenuation is a discursive (rhetorical) strategic activity that minimizes the illocutionary force and the role of the participants in the proposition to successfully reach the intended goal. The key phrases are “minimizing of the illocutionary force” and “weakening effect”; phrases which again may not intersect necessarily with politeness. Providing we use these concepts as common denominators in our analyses of a theory on mitigation, we can then arrive at a homogenous characterization of this phenomenon.

76  Several Theoretical Perspectives Thus, we know that mitigation goes beyond the proposition itself (i.e., it is extra-propositional). Namely, it does not add any new information to an utterance but instead modulates what is said, and it is in that outersphere where the kernel of our research should rest. In sum, one of the positive outcomes of proposing a theory of mitigation following SAT, PT, or the Psycho-Social (PS) proposals in any language is that for the past 40 to 50 years or so the majority of studies have identified specific grammatical structures, lexical items, strategies, and devices which correlate to mitigated expressions. These valuable contributions have opened the doors and shaped how we examine mitigation today. In other words, while a psycho-socio-pragmatic and the rhetorical perspectives would call for a theoretical model that is discourse bound, the blueprint or foundation of the linguistic features set forth by SATand PT-informed studies and other theoretical models have rendered valuable data for researchers who investigate mitigation from a cognitive, linguistic, and social perspective. That said, to understand the manifestation of mitigated speech, we need to consider that interactions between communicators usually consist of multiple expressions, not just one, and these interactions are spontaneous, dynamic, and convey various meanings. We have to remind ourselves that in any given interaction, we are pragmatically processing, anticipating, accommodating, and strategically choosing linguistic features when we speak or communicate (e.g., face-to-face or email). Therefore, speakers’ interactions may be subject to and mediated by a multiplicity of psycho-socio pragmatic factors. With this in mind, we should characterize how mitigated speech is realized among interlocutors, and it is within this account that we need to examine the properties of mitigation at the discourse-rhetorical level. If we take into consideration the power dynamics between two interlocutors, power and distance may shape how expressions may be mitigated (e.g., the use of formal usted vs. informal personal subject pronoun tú, ‘you’ in Spanish). Also, the event itself in which the interlocutors participate (e.g., an informal social gathering, a formal business interaction) may affect how expressions may be attenuated. We also have the cognitive and emotional factors that weigh in on the communicative event between interlocutors (e.g., the levels of imposition, uncertainty) and the topic or matter being discussed (e.g., politics, religion, personal finance, family matters). Then, there is the need to access the linguistic inventory of the speakers (native speakers, native speakers’ dialects, or learners of a language) in relation to the production of attenuated expressions. For instance, a device such as the use of the generic all-inclusive pronoun ‘we’ as opposed to ‘you’ may differ in use between a native speaker and a learner. It may be that a learner has not acquired the sensitivity to distinguish these devices. Alternatively, in instances in which an interaction is generated among two native speakers of different dialects, attenuation

Chapter 3 77 may differ. Ultimately, the goals that the interlocutors wish to achieve (e.g., convincing one party of the other’s beliefs when discussing politics) are also factors to consider. For instance, when examining utterances, we may find that verbs’ semantic content may reflect an attenuated expression or may contribute to attenuating (e.g., cognitive, ‘I believe’, ‘I think’, verbs of desire, ‘I wish’, estimative verbs, ‘I guess’). With this in mind, we may then characterize how mitigated expressions are realized or as noted by Czerwionka (2010, p. 4), from a “dialogic perspective that considers speakers and listeners in sequentially organized, linguistic interactions”. If we are to create or contribute to theory, several functions of mitigation have to be considered. For instance, Caffi (2007, p. 3) maintains that speakers mitigate to express uncertainty, caution, or consideration. SAT or PT may overlook these functions. Other scholars who investigate this phenomenon in Spanish (e.g., Placencia, 2008) have pointed out that when we communicate we wish to quedar bien (to get along, to fit in) and seek harmony and, as such, we attenuate a message to comply with cultural norms that are related to external and interpersonal relations. Hernández-Flores (1999, p. 42) posits that mitigation can provide “a way of reaching a friendly and pleasant interaction”, and bringing the relationship between speakers into line “with the cultural rules for social contact in the particular group”. We thus can gather from these explanations that mitigation is affective, an aspect that may not be considered when using SAT or PT frameworks to examine mitigation. Fuentes Rodríguez (2008, p. 74) also adds the importance of attitude thereby also including the affective: Los hedges son generalmente partículas, o estructuras cuasigramaticalizadas, elementos que tienen una función macroestructural y que se mueven en dos planos: el del significado vago (fuzziness) y el de la intervención, actitud o compromiso del hablante. (her emphasis) [Hedges are generally features, or quasi-grammaticalized structures, elements that have a macro-functional structure that move on two planes: vague meaning (fuzziness) and, that of an intervention, attitude or commitment of the speaker.] (My translation) Thus, we again note here that a theory of mitigation must account for these aspects: The psycho-socio, the cognitive, pragmatic, and culturalaffective functions that it embraces.

Pragmatic Variation and Mitigation Pragmatics is a sub-field of linguistics which looks at language meaning dependent on and derived through context. Within pragmatics, Schneider

78  Several Theoretical Perspectives (2010) distinguishes two types of intra-lingual pragmatic variation. First, there is the macro-social which concerns itself with factors such as gender, age, social class, and dialects. The second aspect concerns itself with the micro-social aspects of variation. The micro is also referred to as socio-pragmatic variation (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2008) and is related to “speaker constellations” (Schneider, 2010, p. 249) such as power and distance. Both the macro- and micro-factors amalgamate in ways that speakers may vary their expressions from situation to situation (e.g., Barron & Schneider, 2009). As such, when investigating pragmatic variation concerning mitigation, I have used the European Continental Tradition which intersects with disciplines such as sociolinguistics (which includes variation), discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, and variational pragmatics, among other areas. That is, we do not examine linguistic features in isolation, nor do we focus analyses on out-of-context utterances and controlled, governed elicited protocols. In the next chapters, I use several examples provided by other scholars that may have employed these controlled protocols for illustration only. However, in general, the book embraces a functional perspective. Leech (1983) maintains that functionalists consider language as a societal phenomenon. Therefore, we are not presupposing nor setting an a priori list of linguistic features to see if they are expressed in utterances. Instead, we examine communication first within contexts to determine if, indeed, messages are attenuated. For example, Schiffrin (1994) has posited that the functionalist perspective suggests that there are functions external to the linguistic system which influence the internal organization of language. Thus, and in line with Schiffrin (1994) and Leech (1983), we posit that the socio-pragmatic-cognitive and the affective conflate in mitigation. As mentioned previously, pragmatic variation at times mirrors sociolinguistic variation in that we examine differences in speech patterns or discourses (conversations) and how they interface with social factors. At times, pragmatic variational studies have also relied on speech acts (e.g., apologies, refusals) to determine, for example, gender differences among the speakers of a given language. For instance, studies can also measure proficiency and developmental stages in learners concerning how they mitigate in refusal-related contexts. We can even approach an investigation of pragmatic variation using other discursive units such as opening and closing statements in an interaction or analyzing head acts that emerge before an attenuated clause, among other discourse-related aspects, providing these utterances are embedded in contexts. Barron and Schneider (2009, p. 425) posit that language use in interaction “is shaped by cultural values and that pragmatic similarities may occur across languages, while pragmatic differences may occur across varieties of the same language”. For example, research on the pragmatics in service encounter-interactions has been the focus of several studies (e.g., Callahan, 2010; Félix-Brasdefer, 2017).

Chapter 3 79 Félix-Brasdefer (2012) discusses how customers and vendors negotiate transactions in a Mexican market. More specifically, he examines three levels of analysis: The customer-initiated requests, the interactions of openings and closings and request sequences, and the stylistic choices speakers make concerning forms of address. Among the aspects examined, the study reports on the pre-sequence to a greeting, the greeting itself, the request strategies used by clients, whether they are direct or indirect, among other aspects. Also, the study examines the customers’ and vendors’ use of forms of address during these interactions, and the role that gender plays concerning social practices. In the study, therefore, we find hybridity of approaches from both the Anglo-American model (in part concerned with Speech Acts) and European model (a functional perspective) approaches to the study of variational pragmatics. For example, the research focuses on requests (speech act), forms of address (e.g., tú, usted, [you] señor, señora [Mr. Mrs.]), and pragmatic variation among speakers of Mexican Spanish. In a case study, Callahan (2010) investigated the category and quantity of mitigators in emails written by native English and Spanish supervisors to their subordinates in the workplace. Specifically, it examined imperatives and other direct strategies that manifested in the emails, and the receiver’s interpretation of the messages. For instance, Callahan (2010, p. 29) focused on mitigated requests such as “Come to my office at 9:00 a.m.”, a request with no facework, direct, and a bald imperative as opposed to “Please come to my office tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.”. The study revealed that a native Spanish-speaking supervisor mitigated less than an English-speaking one. Overall, Callahan also reported that requests in emails were found less mitigated in supervisory emails than in the subordinate’s emails. The subordinate’s emails contained more grounders and preparatory formulas when issuing requests and therefore were more mitigated than emails produced by supervisors. Márquez Reiter (2008) also conducted a pragmatic analysis of several aspects of intra-cultural behavior among Uruguayans in emergency call centers. The study examined apologies provided by service representatives concerning the company’s shortfalls. Márquez Reiter reported on the pragmatic variation in which apology-explanations were constructed based on the micro-cultures of each of the companies. The study revealed similarities in the manner in which calls were structured (ritualistic) but, detected differences in the amount and style of apologizing discourse produced by the call takers. For instance, in one call center, the author reported that justifications contained technical explanations in apologies while in the other center employees relied on excuses in which a third party took the blame for the company’s shortfall. In a different study of native Ecuadorian Spanish speakers, Placencia (1996) challenges Brown and Levinson’s Theory of Politeness and recommends that we look at participants’ use of specific strategies that are

80  Several Theoretical Perspectives unrelated to face work and the clear-cut notions of negative and positive politeness. The study also brings into question the motivations behind different lexical choices participants make in their expressions, which the author suggests cannot be accounted for under the PT. Placencia employed data obtained in telephone conversations, a specific linguistic environment. For instance, the study examined the use of the diminutive -ito, which may reflect affection. However, the use of this morphological ending would not be considered appropriate if attached to a form of address when speaking to an elder or in a business-related interaction. Among other strategies brought into question is the use of the formal ‘you’ (i.e., usted) which Placencia contends does not always imply distance. Instead, it depends on the interlocutors and the context and, to this, we add dialect.2 Therefore, the author suggests we examine context carefully and determine the reasons why, for example, a speaker made a call in the first place, before we measure directness. In another study, Placencia (2008) researched directives issued among family and friends when dealing with an unwillingness to comply. The study found pragmatic variation concerning how non-compliance was expressed. Placencia reported that the participants, middle-class Quiteños, avoided directly refusing invitations and thus mitigated their responses. For example, the study was able to detect instances in which an offer or an assurance to comply with the invitation was provided, yet not fulfilled. Placencia (2008, p. 338) characterized these behaviors as reactions to social pressures (el compromiso), to get along (quedar bien), and avoid hurting people (no hacer sentir mal), behaviors that have been associated to Spanish-speaking cultures. She also has noted that we should not expect all middle-class Quiteños to exhibit similar behavior, an important aspect we need to take into account when analyzing mitigated speech. The author discussed age and gender-related variation regarding how speakers respond to directives, and she recommends that we examine a full range of social networks to investigate different ethnic behaviors. Rapport management in Peruvian Spanish is a concern investigated by García (2009). The study merits mentioning although it did not attend to mitigation. Its findings, however, do underscore the collective-affiliate relationship in a Hispanic culture that needs to be taken into account by a theory of mitigation. In particular, the author notes that while there have been studies in several dialects that examine complimenting (e.g., Alba Juez, 2000) and expressions of gratitude (e.g., de Pablos Ortega, 2006), for example, the act of congratulating has not been thoroughly researched. Thus, in her study of open-ending role-plays and questionnaires, García reports that the participants, when confronted with surprise news, exhibited collective welfare and sympathy when congratulating. That is, they thought of the well-being of a group. One question we can ask, therefore, is whether the expressions of sympathy and congratulations can be attenuated when speakers are found

Chapter 3 81 in a context where unexpected news or surprises emerge or whether their responses will be more direct. For instance, the García study also documented apparent violations in the behavioral expectations such that speakers felt entitled to inquire about personal issues once they heard the unexpected news. Interestingly, male participants of the study quantitatively issued more pragmatic violations than their female counterparts (e.g., more inquiries, arguing, and ending interactions). What we learn from these and other studies related to pragmatic variation is that we cannot assume that mitigation will be realized similarly within a language (and a regional dialect) and across languages and cultures. To complicate matters, we should not even expect similar linguistic behaviors from speakers who come from similar regions or dialects. We need to keep in mind that inter- and intra-lingual variation is often mediated by the context, speakers, social/external factors, different beliefs and practices belonging to the micro- and macro-social circles that our speakers navigate in their daily lives, including the social pressures they face.

Summary In this chapter, we have discussed several theoretical perspectives that have informed research on attenuation: Politeness Theory, Speech Act Theory, the Psycho-Social, Socio-pragma-rhetorical cultural and affective, and Pragmatic Variation. If we part from the premise that the foundations of mitigation are situated in human psychology, anthropology, and sociology, then we are obligated to couch our theoretical perspectives with one that can approach and embrace the realization of mitigation in the broadest sense. After examining these theories, we have suggested that any theory applied to the study of mitigation must take into account the interactional dimensions, the cultural context, degrees of imposition and certitude, the psycho-social, and the affective. We also need to consider pragmatic variation in the realization of mitigated communication. Without these elements, our theoretical perspectives on mitigation cannot capture the multifaceted aspects of its manifestation. We have also noted that researchers emphasize the importance of interpersonal relationships as having precedence over face-saving goals; the latter which proponents of PT have suggested is related to attenuated speech. The chapter discussed that as a communicative strategy, mitigation manifests in a myriad of linguistic features, strategies, and devices that often go undetected. At times, mitigation is also confused with politeness in that several linguistic functions that may

82  Several Theoretical Perspectives point to politeness may also intersect with the functions of attenuation. However, we have argued here that politeness and mitigation should not be confused. Several approaches to examine mitigating devices and strategies were also discussed: A semantic and syntactic approach which deals with meaning encoded in mitigating devices, a pragmatic approach which can explore the use of mitigation in speakerhearer interactions, and a socio-pragmatic-affective and rhetoricalcultural approach. All these perspectives contribute to a thorough exploration of mitigation. To these thoughts we have underscored the importance of adopting a functional perspective to a theory of mitigation.

Notes 1. For a comprehensive analysis of mitigation in argument discourse, see Lovejoy (2015). For argument discourse, see Grimshaw (1990) and Perkäkylä, Antaki, Vehviläinen, and Leuder (2008). 2. In Bogota’s Colombian Spanish the unmarked form usted is used to address friends and family, a form considered formal in Puerto Rican Spanish.

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84  Several Theoretical Perspectives Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2012). Pragmatic variation by gender in market service encounters in Mexico. In J. C. Félix-Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues. Series: Impact (pp. 17–48). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2017). Service encounters. In B. Vine (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language in the workplace (pp. 162–174). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2009). Are you referring to me? The variable use of UNO and YO in oral discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(9), 1810–1824. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2012). Pragmatic variation in therapeutic discourse: An examination of mitigating devices employed by Dominican female clients and a Cuban American therapist. In C. Félix Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues. Impact Studies in Language and Society (pp. 81–112). Philadelphia: Benjamins. Flores-Ferrán, N., & Lovejoy, K. (2015). An examination of mitigating devices in the argument interactions of L2 Spanish learners. Journal of Pragmatics, 76, 67–86. Fraser, B. (1980). Conversational mitigation. Journal of Pragmatics, 4, 341–350. Fraser, B. (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Politeness, 14(2), 219–236. Fuentes Rodríguez, C. (2008). La aproximación enunciativa [Enunciative approximation]. Lingüística Española Actual, 30(2), 223–258. García, C. (1989). Disagreeing and requesting by Americans and Venezuelans. Linguistics and Education, 1, 299–322. García, C. (2009). ¿Qué::? ¿Cómo que te vas a casar? Congratulations and rapport management: A case study of Peruvian Spanish speakers. Pragmatics, 19(2), 197–222. Gass, S. (1996). Introduction. In S. M. Gass & J. Neu (Eds.), Speech acts across cultures: Challenges to communicate in a second language (pp. 1–14). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Goffman, E. (1955). On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry, 18, 213–231. Grice, H. P. (1975). Presupposition and conversational implicature. In P. Cole (Ed.), Radical pragmatics (pp. 183–198). New York, NY: Academic Press. Grimshaw, A. (1990). Conflict talk. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hernández-Flores, N. (1999). Politeness ideology in Spanish colloquial conversation: The case of advice. Pragmatics, 9(1), 1018–2101. Holmes, J. (1995). Women, men and politeness. New York, NY: Longman Group Limited. House, J., & Kasper, G. (1981). Interpersonal markers in English and German. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routines (pp. 157–185). The Hague: De Gruyter Mouton. Kasper, G. (1990). Linguistic politeness: Current research issues. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 193–218. Koike, D. (1994). Negation in Spanish and English suggestions and requests: Mitigating effects. Journal of Pragmatics, 21(5), 513–526. Lakoff, R. (1975). Linguistic theory and the real world. Language Learning, 25(2), 309–338. Leech, G. (1980). Explorations in semantics and pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Chapter 3 85 Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London, UK: Longman. Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Lovejoy, K. (2015). Learning to interact in Spanish as a second language: An examination of mitigation and participation in conversational arguments (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Rutgers University. Márquez Reiter, R. (2008). Intra-cultural variation: Explanations in service calls to two Montevidean service providers. Journal of Politeness Research, 4(1), 1–29. Martinovski, B. (2000). The role of repetition and reformulation in court proceedings: A comparison between Sweden and Bulgaria. Götheborg Monographs in Linguistics 18. Sweden: Göteborg University. Martinovski, B. (2006). Framework for analysis of mitigation in courts. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(12), 2065–2086. Martinovski, B., Mao, W., Gratch, J., & Marsella, S. (2005). Mitigation theory: An integrated approach. Twenty-seventh annual conference of cognitive science society. In B. Bara, L. Barsalou, & M. Bucciarelli (Eds.), Proceedings of the conference on cognitive science 27th annual conference (pp. 1407–1412). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Martinovski, B., & Marsella, S. (2005). Theory of mind and coping strategies. In Proceedings of artificial intelligence and social behavior 2005 (pp. 177–190). Hatfield, University of Hertfordshire: The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour. Morris, C. W. (1971). Writings on the general theory of signs (pp. 17–24). The Hague: De Gruyter Mouton. Perkäkylä, A., Antaki, C., Vehviläinen, S., & Leudar, I. (2008). Conversational analysis and psychotherapy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Placencia, M. E. (1996). Politeness in Ecuadorian Spanish. Multilingua, 15(1), 13–34. Placencia, M. E. (2008). Non-compliance with directives among family and friends: Responding to social pressure and individual wants. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5(3), 315–344. Puga Larraín, J. (1997). La atenuación en el castellano de Chile: Un enfoque pragmalingüístico. Valencia, Spain: Tirant lo Blanch Libros, Universidad de Valencia. Schiffrin, D. (1994). Approaches to discourse. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Schneider, S. (2010). Mitigation. In M. Locher & S. Graham (Eds.), Interpersonal pragmatics (pp. 253–269). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Schneider, S. (2013). Grammatical and lexical mitigation. Oralia, 16, 335–356. Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Watts, R. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Weizman, E. (1989). Requestive hints. In S. Blum-Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 71–95). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

4 Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies

Introduction This chapter explains the strategies and devices that speakers employ to attenuate their messages. In particular, we exemplify these devices and strategies in natural, spontaneous interactions, not experimental ones. The excerpts were extracted from multiple sources (e.g., Flores-Ferrán, 2009, 2012, 2017; Flores-Ferrán & Lovejoy, 2015) and public documents. For example, and concerning the material documented in FloresFerrán’s research, the data were gathered from excerpts primarily from an institutional discourse setting; therapy sessions or learning environments which are detailed further in this chapter. We also use excerpts generated from other scholars’ work to substantiate our perspective, one of which underscores that linguistic mitigation is not solely considered a politeness-related communicative strategy but one guided by sociopragmatic-affective concerns (e.g., Caffi, 2007; Márquez Reiter, 2000; Murillo Medrano, 2002, among others). Albelda Marco (2010, p. 1) has noted that while the definition of attenuation is clear among scholars who research this phenomenon, detecting attenuated devices and strategies in interactions at times produces confusion. The fundamental problem in detecting attenuating features, devices, and strategies derives from the fact that a linguistic form(s), albeit syntactic, morphological, semantic, may or may not be used to attenuate. Detecting and determining whether a form(s) represents a mitigated expression depends on the context in which it is produced. However, context is not the only determining factor: The intention of the speaker also has to be considered. Thus, when we detect and analyze mitigated expressions, we find that there are multiple layers of analyses to consider. First, we aim to identify discrete linguistic features that have been used to mitigate messages (i.e., internal and external strategies). A second layer to consider is the context. That is, we need to examine the contexts that prompted mitigated linguistic behavior to determine if indeed an utterance or a communique represents a softening, padding, buffing, or downgrading. By context, we

Chapter 4 87 need to take into account a speaker’s or writer’s intention. These motivations matter since at times lexical items or devices may be confused as attenuating when they are not. Then, after we have determined that a form is not related to attenuation, we need to remove those instances and not code or catalog them in our analysis. What follows are a set of examples that may shed light in determining when a strategy or device can be considered attenuated. During an informal social event, two friends (equal standing) discuss their political views about a leader; one friend is conservative and the other liberal: A: How do you see our president? B: When it comes to universal health care for Americans, he is not helping us. C: What do you think about our president? D: When it comes to universal health care for Americans, I think he is not helping us. In A, we find an interrogative that does not contain features related to mitigation. In B, we also find a direct non-mitigated response. However, in C, we find a similar question, and it contains the verb ‘think’. While in many instances we can claim that parenthetical verbs represent mitigated speech, in this instance, C is asking ‘What is your opinion about our president’, and thus we do not consider the expression of ‘think’ a mitigating device. D’s response was issued with ‘I think’, a parenthetical verb that can represent slight padding in the response. However, we cannot accurately determine whether this instance is representative of attenuation or whether it was generated by way of priming1 in that the C used ‘think’ and, thus, D’s response contains ‘think’. Therefore, in using a researcher’s lens, we would need to collect more instances of this expression to determine whether this form should be categorized as an attenuating device. However, let us take the example a step further. Do we produce sentences with ‘think’ in an obligatory manner? For instance: How’s the weather? A: I think it’s raining outside. B: It’s raining outside. In both A and B epistemic modality differs. Utterance A conveys uncertainty while B seems to suggest a degree of certitude. In A the presence of ‘think’ is not optional because the speaker is not sure. In A, could the speaker have issued ‘think’ just to inform the interlocutor that she or he should not go outside? For instance, the context for this interaction is generated by a mother and teenage son. The son wishes to play ball

88  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies outside. B’s response (issued by the mother) “It is raining outside” can be considered attenuated since it is meant to implicitly tell the son ‘You should not go outside’. So, in here lies a concern: Do all instances of ‘think’ or creo and creo que (an approximate equivalent) entail uncertainty and do they function to attenuate? The response to this question is negative. Now, let us examine how context allows us to detect mitigating devices or strategies. In an institutional discursive setting, a therapist is attempting to gather information about medication continuity or adherence to treatment. To capture whether the client is following the guidance provided, the therapist (T) asks the client (C) about how he is feeling concerning medication intake: T: ¿Qué tal el tratamiento, las medicinas? ¿Has mejorado un poco? C: Bue:::no, creo que un poquito. [T: How about the treatment, the medicines? Have you improved a bit?] [C: We:::ll, I think just a tiny bit.] In this context, we find that C’s response is mitigated if we take into account several features: The prosodic feature of the elongated bue:::no (we:::ll), creo que (I think), and un poquito (a bit). Specifically, the convergence of these three items is indicative of an attenuated response. The morphological ending -ito also contributes even further to pad the message since, first, T issued poco (a little) not poquito (a tiny bit). Therefore the use of poquito (a tiny or little bit) does not reflect an instance of priming. This morphological ending points to a negative value below un poco (a little). Second the co-occurrence of bue:::no (we:::ll) denotes uncertainty coupled with creo que (I think), a parenthetical verb. Thus, the role of context, the prompts, the motivations, and many more factors contribute to how we detect mitigation. We should note that it is quite common to find the co-occurrence of linguistic features that contribute to formulating an attenuated message, a message whose illocutionary force has been reduced. To continue the exploration of the challenges we face in disaggregating whether the use of a linguistic feature(s) can be considered attenuated or not, we point to the third layer of complexity. We need to carefully examine the following differences in: • The realization of attenuation among languages (e.g., Spanish and English), • Regional dialects (e.g., Cuban and Puerto Rican Spanish), • Discourses (e.g., institution and non-institutional), • Linguistic particles and items used to attenuate: (e.g., -ito, -ico),

Chapter 4 89 • Syntactic structures (e.g., variable expression of subjects, the use of passive voice), and • Prosodic features (e.g., different stress and tone features), among other linguistic alternatives. These variable features make it difficult for researchers to detect the many devices we may employ to attenuate. In fact, probably many devices and strategies go undetected.

Discourse and Mitigated Messages: Institutional and Non-Institutional Talk How we gather data for our analyses is critical to our research since discourses represent aspects of our speakers’ world. That is, different discourses represent different perspectives of the world our research participants inhabit, and we are concerned with language and other elements of social life in our approach to an examination of mitigated speech. Therefore, to approximate some degree of uniformity when I have researched attenuation, I have taken small steps and have analyzed one discursive setting or one type of discourse at a time. The rationale behind this approach is to heuristically unveil categories of mitigating devices and strategies, situate them in the appropriate discursive setting, and then, by way of a qualitative approach, uncover whether these categories represent patterns that can be substantiated by quantitative analysis and vice versa. We discuss the reasoning behind the use of two methodological approaches further in Chapter 6. For now, we will discuss mitigating devices and strategies that appear in a corpus of interactions between a therapist and clients produced during motivational interview sessions (Flores-Ferrán, 2009, 2010, 2012). The aim here is to provide one similar context so that the devices and strategies described are made more transparent. First, we begin by explaining the context in which these excerpts were extracted. The corpus used to exemplify attenuation relies on what is known as ‘Institutional Talk’. In the examples provided, a therapist and clients meet independently in what is known as ‘Motivational Interviews’ (MIs). These interviews consist of a discussion related to adherence to treatment and the status of a client’s well-being. Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford (2005, p. 13) defined institutional talk as “spontaneous, authentic language use by speakers who are speaking as themselves, in genuine situations, with socio-affective consequences”. Institutional talk can be represented in many other contexts. For example, we can examine talk among supervisors and subordinates, customer service agents and clients, parents and teachers, doctors and patients, colleagues of equal or different status, friends, family, and many more.

90  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies In Flores-Ferrán (2009, 2010, 2012) data was gathered from MIs which represent free-spontaneous oral interactions, not speech prompted by experimental tasks (e.g., discourse completion tasks that lead the speakers to respond in a specific manner). Agar (1985) maintains that institutional discourses are characterized as instances in which one person who represents an institution encounters another for its services; a particular interaction. Given the typical characteristics of institutional discourses (e.g., the clientele, diagnosis, directives, advising), I have found it appropriate for an examination of mitigation since the linguistic behavior of the speakers is framed within one theme or topic. By centering on one type of theme, one can find consistency in detecting attenuated speech rather than in a variety of discourses. The MIs are known as a change-inducing strategy, a modality which aims at enhancing client motivation towards change (Von Wormer, 2007). It is considered a systematic intervention approach for evoking change (Miller & Rollnick, 2002), a practice that was informed by motivational psychology to produce a rapid internal change in individuals. It employs a step-by-step approach and uses the client’s resources to enhance change. Namely, the discourse is mainly generated by the client and is unguided. I also find it appropriate to use these interactions since mitigation has its foundation, as noted earlier, in human psychology, anthropology, and sociology (e.g., Czerwionka, 2010; Martinovski, Mao, Gratch, & Marsella, 2005; Puga Larraín, 1997). There are other reasons why MI discourse was selected to investigate attenuated speech of all the data I have collected over the years (including oral narratives of personal experience). First, the interview protocol was systematic and consistent for all participants or clients in the study. Thus, we were able to identify linguistic features systematically. Second, the clients all had a similar medical condition: depression, a stigmatized illness (Interian, Martínez, Guarnaccia, Vega, & Escobar, 2007). Therefore, the MIs discussed similar concerns in general, how this stigmatized illness affected their lives and whether they were adhering to treatment. Third, because of the stigma attributed to this illness, I had hypothesized that the clients’ expressions would be aligned with discomfort, displeasure, or non-adherence to treatment and, hence, mitigated expressions would manifest on behalf of the therapist (while interviewing) and the client while responding. Finally, the corpus I had gathered was rich and robust in that the clients did most of the talking, another reason why this particular institutional discursive context was suitable for an investigation of linguistic mitigation. Thus, when determining the kind of discourse one wishes to use to investigate linguistic attenuation, we should concern ourselves with systematicity and consistency—not mixing interviews, narratives, and prompted protocols (unless we code them independently and want to compare the manifestation of mitigation in a variety of discourses).

Chapter 4 91 Naturally, this perspective will be discussed in the methodology section but for now, we need to consider that if we are to compare or gather data from a variety of discourses, then we need to account for linguistic behavior by coding for the different discourses, institutional, non-institutional, narrative, interview, and so on. However, not all research has to be gathered from an institutionalrelated discursive setting. I have also used oral narratives of personal experience that yield devices and strategies that point to attenuated speech. One caveat: Quantitatively speaking and, since oral narratives of personal experience (Labov, 1966, 2006) are not considered interactions between two speakers, the realization of mitigated devices and strategies may be attested in limited quantities. Nonetheless, oral narratives may contribute data for a qualitative analysis of attenuation, an issue also discussed in Chapter 6. In essence, when we attend to mitigation, we are also examining modality and attenuation. Halliday (1994) defines modality as the speaker’s judgment of the probability, or the obligations, involved in what is being said. That is, it refers to the many ways in which attitudes are expressed relating to degrees of doubt, vagueness, probability, and necessities (Verschueren, 1999), all which in some way or another can be attributed to attenuating expressions.

Several Categories of Linguistic Devices, Features, and Strategies Employed to Mitigate Mitigating devices and strategies are explained in this chapter. We address lexical, non-lexical, prosodic, impersonal mechanisms, morphological, and syntactic, among others. A note of caution: These categories are not representative of all the features used to attenuate our messages. The features selected are exemplified and explained by way of authentic speech excerpts. Recall that mitigation has been defined in the broad sense as what we do with language that results in decreasing the illocutionary force of an expression. It refers to the padding, buffing, downgrading, and softening effects which often manifest with indirect and vague speech. Briefly, and to recapitulate, we posit that the realization of mitigation is not always related to ‘face’ or politeness. Further, we must take into account that mitigating features do not have a one-to-one correspondence to a given behavior. Instead, it is how a form or a combination of forms and features are employed to minimize the illocutionary force and to decrease the impact of a message, as mentioned previously. Impersonal Constructions as Shields The first question that led my research of attenuation was whether the use of uno (one) in Spanish and English was pragmatically motivated as in

92  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies Uno tiene que ahorrar dinero (One has to save money). In Flores-Ferrán (2009), I uncovered that uno (one) is not merely an indefinite and generic pronoun. An exhaustive examination of the linguistic contexts in which the so-called indefinite uno (one) appeared showed that it alternates with the first person, yo (I), the second-person specific and non-specific informal tú (inf. you), and deferential usted (formal you). The study centered on identifying several of the linguistic and social factors that mediate the use of uno and first-person yo in two types of discourse: Oral narratives of personal experience and an institutional discourse (i.e., therapeutic motivational interviews between a therapist and client). I reported that speakers employed uno (one) in therapeutic interactions more than in oral narratives of personal experience. For example, sociolinguistic research that has investigated pronominals to date suggests that uno (one) moves into the realm of personalization since it is used to refer to a (+human) subject. In other words, several scholars have noted that uno (one) has human agency (Cameron, 1992; Lapidus & Otheguy, 2005). In the following example, we find an excerpt from a motivational interview (MI) in which a client (C) responds to her therapist’s (T) question: T: ¿Cómo te has sentido en estos días? Mejor? [How have [you] been feeling these days? Good?] C: Uno nunca se siente bien. [One never feels good.] We find that C’s response uses uno ‘one’ as a mitigating device; he avoided the use of yo (I), the first-person form that would have pointed to himself as the referent, a more salient alternative. Haverkate (1985, p. 13) maintains that uno (one) serves as a defocalizer and suggests that when uno is used, the speaker is extending their perspective to that of those who participate in that same state. Haverkate also posits that uno generalizes the propositional content of the speaker’s perspective: Se trata [el uso de uno], pues, de una estrategia que consiste en elevar un punto de vista personal al plano de una visión compartida por todo el mundo. (p. 13) [It is about, then, a strategy that consists of elevating a personal point of view to a platform of a vision shared by everyone.] (My translation) Thus, uno serves as a pragmatic strategy: to avoid signaling that the interlocutor is the agent. It circumvents the use of the first and second persons ‘I’ and ‘you’ or in Spanish, yo, usted or tú. In other words, in

Chapter 4 93 many instances, it operates as a covert first-person pronoun (Gómez Torrego, 1992, p. 215) and to this we add that it can also include the hearer, the second person. Concerning its English counterpart (one), Wales (1980, p. 95) proposed a three-way taxonomy for ‘one’. First, it is an impersonal or generic form. Second, it also is an egocentric form in that it includes the speaker. Moreover, third, it is an advanced egocentric form that refers to upperclass speakers. Wales also notes, similar to uno, that ‘one’ denotes human agency. To this I add that it also includes the hearer. The next example was provided by Wales (1980, p. 97): One should always be careful in talking about one’s finances. In characterizing the use of uno, Flores-Ferrán (2009) noted that this form of ‘self’ is complex because it appears to be conditioned by semanticpragmatic, syntactic, discursive, and sociolinguistic factors. In brief, there are several intersecting pieces of data that can characterize the use of mitigating uno. One of the findings of the study pointed to its tendency to be widespread among the motivational interviews (i.e., institutional discourse) and not as prevalent in oral narratives. The study also uncovered that dialect differences were found in the use of uno; speakers of the Dominican variety of Spanish exhibited the highest frequency of use of uno compared to their counterparts (i.e., Puerto Rican, Colombians, Uruguayans, Cubans, and Mexicans). Also, the study revealed that, when used, this form operated as a mitigating device. Here are two examples extracted from Flores-Ferrán (2009) in which the speaker generalizes the use of uno (one) to mitigate; in both instances, the speaker includes the hearer instead of using the first person yo (I) or second person tú (you) which would have been more direct:

Context: A client explains how important it is to be healthy when being a parent: C: Cuando uno es madre, se da cuenta lo importante que es. [When one is a mother, [one] does notice how important it is.] Context: A client describes the medication dosis by indicating that she feels there is no difference in the medication: C: Pero, pero uno no ve las diferencias entre ellas. [But, but one does not see the differences between them.]

94  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies Caffi (1999, 2007) suggests that shields or uses of uno (one), for example, represent instances in which one of the three deictic components of the expressions is negated by obscuring it or placing it in the background. In the next excerpt, gathered from the motivational interview data, a therapist (T) inquires about how the client (C) is feeling about medication intake:

T: El medicamento, ¿Cómo te has sentido con las pastillas? [The medicines. How have [you] felt with the pills?] C: No sé por que imagínese, uno tanto beber pastillas, también puede venir una úlcera. C: [I don’t know, because imagine, one taking so many pills, also an ulcer may arise.]

In this interaction, we find that uno (one) operates to obscure the use of the first person yo since the client is worried about taking too many pills. In other words, it operates as a shield; it deflects use of the first person yo (I) and points to a generalized entity. Here the client avoided telling the T that she was concerned about the side effects of the medication. Another concern regarding the use of this form is that in Spanish and English we can also use the form ellos (they) generically. So while the use of uno can be considered a shield or an impersonal mechanism such as ‘as we know’ (Haverkate, 1992), which extends the proposition’s meaning to a plural audience, the same explanation can be applied about the use of ellos (they). For example: Ellos cierran el banco a las tres. [They close the bank at three.], or Cierran el banco a las tres. [[they] close the bank at three.], or El banco cierra a las tres. [The bank closes at three.] While we understand that context plays a role in understanding why a speaker would choose an utterance with the overt subject and the other without (as in the first two examples), there are two points to consider. First, in Ellos cierran en banco, the subject is not pointing to a referent per se. It could be that the speaker is referencing the employees or

Chapter 4 95 that management closes the banks. Nonetheless, in “Cierran el banco a las . . .”, the speaker is omitting the subject entirely, and it conveys the same meaning as the statement with the expressed subject. To fully understand if this is a mitigated utterance, we need context:

Context: A speaker is driving very slow and talking to the passenger, a friend, who wishes to cash her check before the bank closes. The friend is in a hurry to get to the bank before it closes and issues this statement: Cierran el banco a las tres . . . [[They] close the bank at three.]

Two conditions are met that may point to a mitigated utterance: First, the fact that there is implicit urgency and, second, there is an apparent directive that has not been fully expressed (e.g., Hurry up; they are closing the bank at three). In this case, the omission of the subject may intersect with mitigation. In addition, the full expression of the utterance places the blame on the bank, not the driver, indirectly pressuring the driver to stop talking and drive faster. The same can be stated regarding the statement in English. Concerning English, researchers have also pointed to the use of nonimmediacy indicators that function as mitigating devices, e.g., the use of impersonal constructions, the non-expression of referents related to the speaker or hearer, and those that create a distancing effect. Fraser’s (1980, p. 347) example: “FAA regulations require that all passengers fasten their seat belts.” The announcement represents a directive that has an omitted subject/ agent (as opposed to ‘We ask that you fasten your seatbelts’). So, with this in mind, I now address concerns related to the omission of subjects in Spanish and how this syntactic option may operate to attenuate. The Omission of Referents Spanish, as most world languages, is a null-subject language. Namely, speakers have the option to express or omit the subject since the rich morphology of the verbs denotes person, that is, Tengo hambre ([I]2 am hungry), alternatively, Yo tengo hambre (I am hungry). English, however, is known as a language in which subjects have to be expressed although there are clauses in which subject referents can be omitted such as in

96  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies coordinate clauses as in ‘I am hungry and need to eat something.’ Concerning both languages, we need to move with caution when we determine that the omission of a referent operates as a mitigating strategy. What makes the variable use of subject expression interesting is that researchers have documented that Caribbean Spanish exhibits higher rates of subject pronoun expression than speakers from European and Latin American Spanish dialects. We, therefore, need to carefully consider dialect differences in analyzing, coding, and interpreting data because it may not always be the case that a null subject is indicative of a mitigating strategy. Consider the following example:

Context: An exhausted husband (C) speaks about his wife’s depression and how he understands that he is not at fault for her condition. The participant is a Caribbean Spanish speaker: A) Yo no tengo la culpa. [[I] am not to blame.] B) No tengo la culpa. [[I] am not to blame.]

Utterance A contains an expressed subject and we can suggest here that the husband may be inferring that someone else may be at blame, not him, maybe a child or that her condition is her fault. Thus, we may consider this instance as an indirect statement but not necessarily a mitigated one. Therefore, more material is needed to determine whether the statement is attenuated. However, in B, we find a null subject. We could consider this instance as mitigated in that he suppressed the use of the subject to diminish the attention he receives concerning his wife’s condition, to distance himself from his wife’s condition, or merely to not point to his lack of engagement and, therefore, not committing himself to the truth of the proposition. In another unrelated interaction that follows, null subjects were used.

Context: In this example, the therapist (T) is congratulating a client for her continued adherence to treatment. T, a Caribbean Spanish speaker, stated: T: Tenemos que darte crédito. [[We] have to give you credit.]

Chapter 4 97 In this example, we find that the plural null subject nosotros (we) was omitted with several pragmatic purposes: to defocalize the speaker’s (T) importance and attempt to diminish the distance between client and therapist. Also, the use of this pluralized pronoun generalizes T’s opinion to others in his practice. T could have stated: Yo te tengo que dar crédito (I have to give you credit), since he was a speaker of the Caribbean Spanish variety and, as such, we would have expected the expression of the subject pronoun yo (I). He also could have used the null subject since the verb’s morphology denotes the first person as in Tengo que darte crédito ([I] have to give you credit). However, these latter two examples would have placed the congratulatory effects only on his shoulders, placing him in a position of authority. In sum, a careful analysis of the use of null and overt subjects may uncover mitigating devices and strategies, but we cannot consider the expression of either syntactic structure categorically mitigating unless we have fully understood the context in which they emerge. To complicate matters, other subject pronouns in Spanish and English can be considered generic or refer to the interlocutor as in the case of specific and non-specific ‘you’ as in the next three examples: The following example addresses the interlocutor directly (not mitigated): ¿Me puedes prestar dinero? [Can [you] lend me money?] In this next example, the use Tú (you) is generic, and it also can be considered a discourse marker as ‘you know’ or it may refer to anyone: Necesito más dinero, tú sabes. [[I] need more money, you know.] The example which follows is obscured: Cierran el banco a las tres. [[They] close the banks at three.] In the latter two examples, the subject pronouns refer to a generic entity, not to the interlocutor or a specific subject (e.g., employees, government, management, addressee). Thus, while the data may point to the use of uno (one) as a shield used to mitigate, other subject pronouns (null or overt) may be considered mitigating devices providing we carefully analyze their use in their respective contexts. Passive Voice Construction Halonen (2008, p. 144), in discussing mitigating strategies, notes that the syntactic construction of passive voice in Finnish serves to refer to

98  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies a personal actor “so that in some contexts, the hearers can perceive themselves as the agent”. In the case of Spanish, the passive construction serves to defocalize the subject (Alarcos Llorach, 1994), a construction that can be considered attenuating. This syntactic feature is exemplified in the following context: Context: The therapist has inquired if the medication was taken and whether a client was adhering to treatment. The client responded by not making his persona salient as an actor in the proposition, and he avoided being the topic: El medicamento no fue tomado. [The medication was not taken.]

In the next excerpt, the client demonstrates agency: Yo no me tomé el medicamento. [I didn’t take the medication.] In the first example, we find that por mi (by me) has been omitted and the utterance can be considered attenuated since the speaker is conveying that he did not follow treatment. Thus, in using the passive voice, he is suppressing agency. In contrast to this example, if the client would have stated No me tomé la medicina ([I] didn’t take the medication) or Yo no me tomé la medicina (I didn’t take the medication), he would not have mitigated the utterance and instead, would have positioned agency, responsibility, and so on, saliently in the forefront of his message. To substantiate this perspective regarding the passive voice, Briz Gómez (1998) also has considered this structure as a syntactic device that can be used to attenuate. Díaz Blanca (2007, p. 82) has also noted that passive voice constructions are used as strategies to mitigate the presence of the speaker and hide the responsibility and involvement of agents. This portrayal of passive voice is also consistent with findings reported by Lachowicz (1981), who examines author responsibility and hedging in science and technology discourse. Lachowicz suggests that the use of passive constructions in science has a purpose: To reflect objectivity, reduce the author’s commitment to the truth of statements, what we can consider hedging. Interestingly, Mendiluce Cabrera and Hernández Bartolomé (2005) have also reported that attenuation strategies such as these are more prevalent in medical-related Spanish discourses.

Chapter 4 99 Epistemic and Non-Epistemic Disclaimers Fraser (1980, p. 347) discussed disclaimers and how they contribute to softening the impact of a message. His example in English, “If I’m not wrong . . .”, also has a corresponding expression in Spanish: Si no me ­equivoco. We also have in Spanish Si mal no recuerdo (If I recall). ­Epistemic disclaimers express a form of knowledge, opinion, attitude, or ­modality. Caffi (2007, p. 67) also points out that these mitigating devices represent preparatory formulas, such as Si no me equivoco . . . (If I’m not mistaken. . .). This category of mitigating devices may also include nonepistemic disclaimers, for example, Siento decirte esto pero (Sorry to tell you, but . . .). For instance, a disclaimer may precede or follow an advisory that appears in an adjacent clause such as Siento decirte esto pero, no puedo prestarte el dinero (I’m sorry to tell you but, I can’t lend you the money). In the following example, we find the use of epistemic disclaimers accompanied by other mitigating devices which I do not expand upon here immediately. Context: A client discloses information regarding when she began self-medicating: C: Em (..) Yo soy protagonista. (Risas) De una a mi—de una serie muy difícil. Bueno, en realidad (..) yo me dio depresión pospartum. Y de allí, allí fue cuando me di cuen—, que empecé a medicarme, pero en realidad yo siempre, eh, como que (.) me, como que mi ánimo se bajaba un poquito . . . C: [Em (..) I am a protagonist. (laughter) of a my—a very difficult series. Well, in reality (..) I got post-partum depression. And from there, there was when [I] real—, that [I] began selfmedicating, but in reality I always, ah, like (.), like my spirit used to go down a little bit.] The client employed the preparatory formula of en realidad (in reality) several times when explaining that she was suffering from post-partum depression. She diminished the impact of her message which suggested that she was self-medicating. The other features, the use of the morphological diminutive -ito (a tiny bit) and como que (like), also represent mitigating devices. Combined, these features point to how C attempted to decrease the importance of her self-medicating behavior. Parenthetical Verbs As mentioned in Chapter 1, parenthetical verbs are optional, and embedded verbs that are usually followed by or appear adjacent to the main

100  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies clause, and they serve a discursive function. Schneider (2004, 2007) points out that parenthetical verbs such as me imagino (I imagine) and supongo (I suppose) have no syntactic connection to their host sentence. These verbs tend to relate to opinions, beliefs, and thoughts and can be considered mitigating devices. They also convey epistemic modality. In this next example, multiple mitigating devices were issued by the therapist (T). For now, we only focus on the me imagino ([I] imagine) segment of T’s statement.

Context: It was the first session or first encounter held between T and C. It is important to note that this utterance appeared at the beginning of a session right after the salutations had been completed. T: Ok. Bueno, eh (..) ¿Qué le parece si empezamos por para que yo pueda conocerle un poquito mejor y acerca de las cosas que, de los problemas que estaba enfrentando? Me imagino que es la razón por la cuál, eh, estás aquí . . . T: [Okay, well, eh (..) What do you think if [we] start so for that I can get to know you a bit better and about the things, the problems that [you] have been confronting? [I] imagine that is the reason why, eh, you are here. . .]

T strategically positioned me imagino (I imagine) at the beginning of his utterance to avoid being direct, to soften his introductory statement, and to inquire about the purpose of the visit. We considered this parenthetical verb as a mitigating device since T did know why the client was in his office in the first place (appointments had to be made in order to meet with T to discuss adherence to treatment). In addition to the parenthetical verb, we also find the initial clause with Bueno, eh (..) ¿Qué le parece si . . . (Okay, well, eh (..) What do you think if (we) . . ., suggesting that the client has some say in the agenda of the session and how it was to begin. We should note that T was in a position of power and needed to obtain information about medication intake. Therefore, to approach his new client, T attenuated his request since he did not want to exert his control of the interaction. Morphological Diminutives Murillo Medrano (2002) examined the use of the diminutive morphological ending of -ito in Costa Rican (CR) Spanish. In this Spanish variety, the morpheme is also found in nominal subjects such as perro>perrito

Chapter 4 101 (dog) and adjectives cansado>cansadito (a little tired), but does not refer to a numeric approximator (i.e., size). That is, while ‘little dog’ or ‘tiny dog’ in English may refer to size, in Spanish, it can be used in everyday interactions such as in the sphere of child talk, familiar talk, or a term of endearment with the purpose of attenuating speech. Murillo Medrano (2002, p. 115) goes on to say that in CR Spanish they can use gerund forms of verbs with this morpheme as in barriendo>barriendito (sweeping a bit), escribiendo>escribiendito (writing a bit), adverbials, for example, lejos>lejitos (a bit far), cerca>cerquita/ito (a bit close), linguistic behavior that is not characteristic of all Spanish varieties. Murillo Medrano (2002, p. 115) suggests that the diminutive form reduces the threat of a request and diminishes or places the weight of the impact of the imperative verb to the object being requested as in ‘Traígame un poquito de agua’ (Bring me a bit of water). However, CR Spanish also has two forms that reflect a similar meaning: -ito and -ico. Agüero Chaves (1962), as cited in Murillo Medrano (2002, p. 114), reports about the pervasive use of -ico (a form also characteristic of Cuban Spanish). In Flores-Ferrán (2012), the use of the morphological endings -ito and -ico suggested that this linguistic feature, depending on the context, is not always considered a quantity approximator. Instead, it was considered an attenuating device that varied among speakers. For instance, one of the speakers of the study, a therapist, alternated the use of -ito and -ico depending on his interlocutors’ Spanish variety (e.g., Cuban, -ico vs. Puerto Rican -ito). That is, the therapist shifted from -ico to -ito according to his client’s linguistic and cultural identity as a gesture to close the power and distance between the two speakers (e.g., the therapist was Cuban-American and used -ico vs. Puerto Rican client -ito). Namely, the shift between the two forms exemplified how the therapist accommodated to his client’s dialect. Lipski (1994, p. 233) maintains that the Cuban Spanish dialect, similar to the dialects of Colombia and Costa Rica, favors the diminutive -ico following a /t/ or /d/ in the stem such as in ratico (short while) or momentico (just a moment). So when we move to categorize or code this morphological feature, we must consider dialect differences and the differences in the realization of this morphological feature as it relates to an attenuating device as opposed to its use as a quantifier. To illustrate the use of the morphological ending, the following examples were generated by a therapist (T) and client (C) interaction.

Context: The Cuban-American therapist (T), who customarily uses -ico, inquires about the status of his client’s depression (C), a speaker of the Puerto Rican Spanish variety. After numerous

102  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies exchanges, (C) provided an attenuated response by using -ito in two instances: T: ¿Cómo te has sentido en estos días? ¿Un poquito mejor? [How have [you] been feeling lately? A bit better?] C: Un poquito mal, el cuerpo un poquito caliente pero no como cuando tengo así fiebre alta. [A bit bad, the body a bit warm but not like when [I] have a high fever.]

Context: In another interaction, T asks another C (a speaker of the Cuban Spanish dialect) about their improvement. C describes her improved condition using -ico: T: ¿Pero has mejorado, no? Siempre un poquitico mejorada . . . [You] have improved, right? Always a bit better. . .] C: Sí (.) de verdad sí, pues, generalmente, sí yo ya me siento ahí un poquitico más tranquila, amm . . . no como con esa ansiedad. [Yes (.) Really, yes, well, generally, yes I now feel there a bit more at ease, umm, not like with that anxiety.]

In the examples, we find uses of -ico and -ito which point to ways in which T alternated the use of this morphological feature to accommodate to his clients’ dialects. Furthermore, C mitigated her assertion by issuing generalmente (generally), which suggests that her statement is partially true. This attenuated form coupled with the diminutive -ico (a tiny bit) and como (like) also add vagueness to the clause, both of which contributed to uncertainty and reduced the gravity of her condition. We need to recall that in both examples, the speakers had the option of using poco (a little), but did not. In sum, the use of the diminutive -ito and -ico as in poquito (a little bit) we consider a mitigating device, not an approximator of quantity when coding data (e.g., Briz Gómez (1995, among others). Márquez Reiter (2000, p. 94) has noted that this device is generally employed with nouns “with the purpose of conveying the idea of ‘little’ or ‘small’ . . . and is also used to express affection and inspire pity and sympathy”. However, this morphological ending does not have an equivalent in English. The form we can associate with -ito is ‘a little’ ‘a tiny bit’. In her

Chapter 4 103 study, Márquez Reiter (2000) found that in Uruguayan Spanish, this feature was employed in higher numbers than other mitigating devices such as downtoners, softening adverbials, cajolers, hedges, and other markers. Thus, we need to consider how we integrate this feature into our analyses. As an example, here is a context that illustrates the use of -ito as a quantifier:

Context: If I am your friend and guest and you ask me if I would like more coffee after having had a full mug, I may say: Sí, dame un poquito. (Yes, give me a little.)

This instance may refer to quantity; I may not be attenuating my response since I responded with an affirmative ‘yes’. However, regardless of the familiar relationship among two friends, it may well be that responding “Sí, dame” (Yes, give me) or the expression of poquito is mitigated, reflecting a wish to receive another full mug of coffee. Therefore, when we code and interpret data relating to this morphological ending, caution is required for it can function, according to Matte Bon (1995), as an attenuator and quantifier. To add more to the complexity of its interpretation, Mariottini (2012) also posits that un poco (a little) exhibits two distinct linguistic behaviors: One as an attenuator, which I have discussed, and the other as a politeness marker. Deictic Expressions Deictic expressions are known as linguistic forms that denote elements of the situational or discourse context, including the expressions of participants and the time and space of a speech event (e.g., Fillmore, 1982). Fillmore (1982, p. 219) maintains that “deixis is the name given to those formal properties of expressions which are determined by, and which are interpreted by knowing certain aspects of the communicative act in which the utterances in question have a role”. For example, person deixis refers to the ways in which a language encodes features related to referents, pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘you’. It is important to note that English pronouns have different relational values. For instance, Fairclough (2015) has documented that ‘we’ can refer to the speaker and the hearer or it can be interpreted as exclusive ‘we’, only the speaker, and still be used to attenuate a message as in the directive ‘We need to hurry up’, meaning, ‘You have to hurry up’. In Spanish, nosotros (we) can also refer to the speaker and hearer or it can also be interpreted as only the speaker. We may find that the plural

104  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies generic nosotros (we) may serve a persuasive function or may be used to exclude others which, in that case, can be considered as a mitigating device. In other words, the interpretation of the referent relies on context since it can convey various meanings, one which may be to attenuate a message. There are several challenges when we examine the relationship between deictic expressions as mitigating devices since Spanish, as mentioned earlier, is a null subject language. That is, speakers have the option of expressing or omitting a subject since the rich morphology of the verbs denotes the person and number of the referent. For instance, Lapidus and Otheguy (2005) posit that non-specific ellos (they) has varying degrees of specificity. One degree can be the non-referential similar to ‘they’ in English. A second degree can be the semi-referential which has a set of possible referents in the context, and the last can be considered ‘corporate’, such as the government or an institution such as a bank. Therefore, when speakers do not express a subject in Spanish, we need to consider whether a null subject represents a mitigating device and, if they express the subject, to what extent do we consider the message one to affect the illocutionary force of the message? To go back to the uses of deictic expressions, let us examine political discourse narratives, to illustrate the use and shifting of deictic expressions. In Flores-Ferrán (2017), deictic expressions and other devices were examined. In particular, we examined these forms employed by Donald Trump’s political discourse in campaign speeches. We found that he employed a distal ‘they’ in over 53% of his speeches. The self-referent ‘I’ was issued in almost 41% of his presentations. Besides, a shift in the use of first-person singular and plural ‘I’ and ‘we’ and the use of ‘you people’ was employed to distance himself or indirectly embrace his audience. We also find throughout these excerpts instances in which modulation increases and decreases. For instance, with regard to healthcare, he issued this statement: Look, we’ve got to be tough, we’ve got to be smart, we’ve got to have heart too. We’ve got to have heart; we’ve got to take care of people. We’ve got to fix our health care program. This Obamacare is a disaster. You people know . . . You people know. Obamacare is a total catastrophe. It’s going to be repealed and replaced. It will die in ’17 anyway. I don’t know if you heard what’s happening. But it’s so bad, all the people that they didn’t think were signing up are signing up. And the other people that are really paying for it are not signing up. And your rates are going up . . . percent. Your deductibles are so high that unless you get hit by a tractor, you’re never going to be able to use your deductible. You’re never going to be able to use it. So Obamacare is a disaster. We are going to repeal it; we are going to replace it . . . (The Kansas City Star, 12/30/16)

Chapter 4 105 There are multiple and redundant uses of ‘we’, a proximal form. In it, we find that Trump expressed ‘we’ to appeal to his audience or garner support when issuing a directive as in ‘we’ve got to be tough’, ‘we’ve got to be smart’ to evoke mutual sentiment to repeal Obamacare. That is, the use of ‘we’ to attenuate and not to directly tell his audience that ‘you’ have to do X. He also used ‘we’ to engage the audience’s emotions in, ‘we’ve got to have heart too’ as opposed to ‘you have to have heart’. Also noticeable are shifts in modality such as the redundant uses of other referents like ‘you people’ and ‘other people’, distal forms that emerged in expressions. These latter forms were used to express his negative attitude regarding Obamacare, a healthcare program issued by former President Obama. This proposition, a mitigated expression, also entails a softened accusation. In other words, the audience owns the catastrophe, not him. So this example illustrates only several ways in which he decreased the illocutionary force of his messages to win over his audience. As a result, shifts in person deixis waxed and waned accordingly. To further explain the adverse effects of Obamacare, Trump also switched from the first-person plural ‘we’ to ‘you’, ‘all the people’, ‘your rates’, and ‘your deductibles’ (again, not owning the relationship of rates or deductibles). He avoided using the possessive pronoun ‘our’ in this sequence, another linguistic behavior that distances himself from being a party and subject to the same conditions of the populace. So what can we consider is mitigated? The use of ‘you people’ as opposed to ‘we’ in placing blame escalates his message, not mitigates. Also, the general use of the possessive ‘you’ and ‘your’ to distance himself from the audience do not point to ways in which he mitigated. In using ‘our’ he would own the problem. In other words, the use of these deictic expressions reflect ways in which he suppressed the expression of his identity in forming part of a problem, and that linguistic behavior can be considered mitigating. At the same time, we found instances in which he escalated his messages. In other words, he used a variety of deictic expressions to increase or downplay his role. Fetzer and Bull (2008) maintain that politicians employ personal pronouns to accept, deny, or distance themselves from responsibility and to encourage solidarity. They go further to suggest that pronominal shifts occur when discussing political beliefs and personal roles. These shifts serve multiple functions: To downplay roles, personal criticism, to avoid awkward choices, among other reasons, a linguistic behavior that can be representative of attenuated speech. The work of De Fina (1995) and Zupnik (1994) also discusses the deictic nature of pronouns. They point to ways in which pronouns can reflect person participation and commitment to one’s words, solidarity building, or how a speaker may shift various roles of power according to (non)solidarity-driven deixis. In other words, these forms can be used as mitigating devices.

106  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies To exemplify this shift and to illustrate the complexity in determining whether a deictic expression represents a mitigating device, two excerpts are presented from President Trump’s public speeches made during his campaign (Flores-Ferrán, 2017). In it, he is criticizing one of his opponents. In the first, we do not find attenuated messages. In the second excerpt, we do find ways in which he mitigated: I look at this guy Jeb Bush. He spent $59 million on his campaign, and he is down in the grave. . . . I’m under budget; I’m ahead of schedule. Hey, look at the campaign. The guy’s at $59 million, and he’s down at the bottom. I’m nothing, and I’m at the top. (The Kansas City Star, 1/20/16) No. I just will tell you that, you know, Jeb made the statement. I’m not only referring to him. I—a lot of money was raised by a lot of different people that are standing up here. And the donors, the special interests, the lobbyists have very strong power over these people. (Mirror.grabien.com, 9/26/15) In the first excerpt, not one of the uses of these deictic expressions (e.g., this, he, the guy) represents a mitigating device. This excerpt is illustrative of how Trump positioned himself and issued self-reference by using first-person proximal ‘I’ and shifted to ‘he’ when speaking of another candidate, Jeb Bush, yet avoided using Bush’s name. He could have expressed the first name of his opponent or his last name. However, by using ‘he’, Trump diminished the identity of his opponent. Most noticeable in this excerpt is the redundant use of the first person to position himself in a positive light, somewhat escalating his persona (e.g., I’m at the top’). We can also observe how he referred to his rival, Jeb Bush: ‘he’, ‘the guy’, in clauses containing negative assertions (i.e., the guy’s at his grave’, he’s down at the bottom). Thus, I consider the use of these expressions unrelated to attenuated speech. They represent direct or escalated expressions. However, the second excerpt contains multiple linguistic behaviors that point to attenuated speech (e.g., shifts between proximal and distal person deixis such as ‘I’ and ‘you’, a nominal subject Jeb and, ‘these people’). First, Trump strategically situated himself in a position of power and authority in prefacing his speech with ‘I just want to tell you’. This clause entails the speech act of a command while simultaneously employing distal ‘you’ instead of using ‘I just want to say’ or ‘I would like to say’, which would convey a degree of padding or buffing. Second, to approach critiquing one of his opponents, he issued the lexical subject ‘Jeb’ and a pronoun, ‘him’. The strategy of shifting from employing the lexical subject suggests closeness but, in shifting to ‘him’, Trump created distance, a change in the force of the message. We also find the use of distal ‘these’

Chapter 4 107 in ‘these people’ to refer to other candidates, his rivals, also suggestive of how he deployed distal references. Finally, in issuing the statement “I—a lot of money was raised by a lot of different people that are standing up here”, we note a repair; how he switched from an overt to a null subject and used a passive voice construction in a quasi-accusatory manner: ‘a lot of money was raised’. He could have produced a direct expression such as ‘they raised a lot of money’. In this utterance, he attenuated the effect of an accusation related to his opponents’ suggested wrongdoing (e.g., accepting funds from interest groups). In sum, deictic expressions can be considered mitigating expressions providing we understand that they function to diminish the force of an expression.

Other Linguistic Forms That Serve to Mitigate Discourse Markers Schiffrin (2001, p. 54) has noted that discourse markers (DMs) such as ‘well’, ‘but’, ‘oh’, and ‘y’know’ are considered “a set of linguistic forms that have cognitive, expressive, social, and textual domains”. These expressions have been studied in depth by scholars in English (Fraser, 1999; Schiffrin, 1987, 2001, among others), and in Spanish (e.g., Aaron, 2004; Chodorowska, 1997; Fraser & Malamud-Makowski, 1996; García Vizcaíno & Martínez-Cabeza, 2005; Said-Mohand, 2008; Schwenter, 1996; Torres, 2002; Torres & Potowski, 2008; Travis, 2005, among many others). DMs such as ‘so’, pues (so), entonces (then), ‘you know’, sabes (you know), ¿entiendes? (get it?, understand?) have been defined by FloresFerrán (2014), Fraser (1999, p. 931), among others, as lexical expressions which have multiple functions. They have been considered pragmatic connectors, discourse operators, sentence connectives, and cue phrases. That is, they have procedural meaning (Fraser, 1999). Labov and Fanshel (1977, p. 156) also note that DMs refer back to some topic that is already shared knowledge among speakers in a given conversation. Further, Chodorowska (1997) posits that DMs operate on two levels. Structurally, they can serve a clausal or textual function and, on the pragmatic level, they may serve an interactive or an attitudinal purpose. In following Lovejoy (2015, p. 28), who investigated mitigation among natives and learner speakers of Spanish, we find that DMs, such as bueno (well) and o sea (that is or in other words), “mitigate a negative or conflict interaction by creating a delay or modifying the propositional content of an utterance”. DMs have multiple functions, but as mitigating devices, Lovejoy (2015, p. 90) reported that they contributed to “reformulating a position that could be perceived as negative” and, that they also contributed to cushioning and padding expressions.

108  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies Because DMs have multifunctional purposes (e.g., sequencing, signaling a beginning, orienting listeners, mark turning taking, shifting topics), it is important to distinguish their functions from non-mitigating ones. For instance, Chodorowska (1997), in following other researchers (e.g., Östman, 1981, p. 355), suggests that DMs serve an interactive or an attitudinal purpose. In her analyses of ¿Me entiendes? (You get it? alternatively, You understand?), Chodorowska maintains that this DM encodes interpersonal distance in a conversation and, thus, may serve as a manifestation of politeness. I suggest here that it is not a manifestation of politeness, but it operates indirectly as a seeker of agreement or approval. In other words, it serves to engage the hearer in a way so that the hearer sides with the speaker (without directly asking them to) since the expected and preferred response to this marker’s use is sí (yes), not ‘no’. It thus is used to attenuate a message. In the following example obtained from a bilingual speaker as she produced an oral narrative of personal experience gathered from another corpus (Flores-Ferrán, 2002), several DMs were documented as mitigating devices (Flores-Ferrán, 2014). Context: A tragic accident began to unfold as the narrator explained that lightning and thunder were about to arrive in Coney Island Beach in New York City. She was there chaperoning her younger cousin and boyfriend. Earlier, she described how dark the sky was getting and how she felt the need to avoid a tragedy. The narrator wanted to issue a directive to get her cousin and boyfriend to get out of the beach area, and she stated: Yo le digo a mi prima, bue:::no, you know, parece que va a llover . . . nosotros tenemos que irnos. So empezamos a recoger las cosas para irnos para el carro a esperar que la lluvia pasara. [I tell my cousin, we:::ll, you know it looks like it is going to rain . . . we have to leave. So we began to pick up our things to get to the car to wait for the rain to pass.] We find the DM bue:::no (well), elongated vowel, which can be considered a mitigating device. It reduced the impact of her directive or demand to hurry up and pick up things and go. ‘You know’ engaged the hearer in the proposition; it was a call for approval. Finally, ‘so’ served as a DM that signaled continuity with its preceding clause, a causative DM. It provided reasoning for the directive: that because it is going to rain, the speaker urged the others to pick up their things. This latter use of ‘so’ softened the demand and urgency of her directive. The urgency was not taken seriously, and lightning struck two of them, one died immediately.

Chapter 4 109 Throughout this statement, the speaker mitigated her expressions, her demand for the party to move swiftly before the tragedy occurred. The reasoning behind the softening of her directive was to not sound as a parent giving an order. Tense, Mood, and Aspect Time deixis plays a vital role with regard to mitigation in Spanish and English. In particular, and in Spanish, when speakers produce verbs in the subjunctive or conditional moods and the imperfect, they may be attenuating their message since these forms do not mark an end or completion of an action as the preterit form does (Haverkate, 1992, p. 509). That is, an action can be considered on-going or continual. Further, a verb’s mood is also indicative of how an action is intended. In Spanish, for example, there are the indicative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive moods. Grammarians (e.g., Alarcos Llorach, 1994) have reported that the indicative represents or states an apparent fact or asks a question. The imperative is considered for a command or request, and the conditional for hypothetical situations. The subjunctive is said to represent doubt or uncertainty, desire, or supposition. For example, Gili Gaya (1973) maintained that: El contexto y la situación del hablante desempeñan papel decisivo en la mediación de los tiempos relativos, y por sí solos pueden suplir a las conexiones estrictamente gramaticales . . . Los tiempos no son, por lo tanto, valores fijos, sino modificaciones relativas del concepto verbal. (p. 120) [The context and the situation of the speaker play a decisive role in mediating relative tenses, and alone they can strictly supply the grammatical connections . . . Tenses are not, therefore, fixed values, but modifications that are relative to a verbal concept.] (My translation) Studies that have investigated mood selection among learners and native speakers of Spanish have reported that the conditional and subjunctive moods are produced in lower frequencies than other verb tenses (Bull et al., 1947; Lantoff, 1978; Lavandera, 1983; Flores-Ferrán, 2007; Terrell & Hooper, 1974; Torres, 1989, among others). So if they are used infrequently, we need to consider how we analyze them and whether they function to mitigate. For example, Torres (1989, p. 70) explained that the conditional and subjunctive moods, as a syntactic-semantic verb class, are associated with several semantic factors such as volition, hope clauses, doubt clauses, and emotion clauses. These uses, therefore, may

110  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies intersect with mitigation since, as we know it, we mitigate in instances of uncertainty and doubt. In analyzing therapeutic discourse within the context of mitigation, and following several tenets of Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969), Amrhein (1992, p. 757) analyzed verbal commitments and pointed out that certain verbs convey speaker intentions. Verbs such as ‘promise’, ‘agree’, ‘hope’, and ‘guess’ are considered performative-committing verbs since they obligate the speaker to perform an act for the listener. Therefore, the semantic category of a verb is critical to an examination of speaker intentions. Interestingly, Levelt (1989, p. 65) maintained that the most direct means a speaker has to express the illocutionary force of an intention has to do with explicitly using verbs of a particular class. Consider, for example, the next excerpt. It exemplifies multiple uses of time deixis to convey non-adherence to medication. The difficulty in detecting whether a verb is being used as a mitigating device has to be closely aligned within the full context of the utterance.

Context: The therapist (T) and a client (C) are discussing continuing treatment. In it, they focus on the interruptions in C’s therapy sessions. Recall that checking for adherence to treatment was the goal of these sessions: Y con esto lleva . . . ¿Cuánto tiempo? Pues, es como le digo . . . yo venía y después dejé de venir. Mjm. Cuando empecé a trabajar y . . . eso dejé de venir, y ya volví y me la dio otra vez, pero él me la estaba dando ya anteriormente. T: OK. C: Llevo como más de un año, yo creo, tomándomela.

T: C: T: C:

[T: C: T: C:

And with this one . . . How long? Well, it’s like I say . . . I would come and then stopped coming. ahm. When [I] started to work and . . . I stopped coming, and then returned and (he) gave it to me again, but he had been giving it to me before. T: Okay. C: [I] have like more than one year, I believe, taking it.]

In the excerpt, we find a subtle softening effect with the first clause when C expresses the Spanish imperfect tense: yo venía y después dejé de venir (I would come and then stopped coming). The verb venía (would come) does not denote a completed act and infers continuity. Yet, dejé de venir (then I stopped coming) conveys completion. However, C could

Chapter 4 111 have issued the present ya no vengo (I don’t come anymore). We do not capture, with C’s response, how far back he stopped coming to therapy. Furthermore, several mitigating devices co-occur with imperfect tense expressed in yo venía (I used to come), como más (like more) and yo creo (I think). These items combined represent approximators since the exact interval or period in which the client had been adhering to treatment is not revealed. The parenthetical verb creo (I think) also contributes to ambivalence and padding the expression since the response is not exact. So is the client mitigating the response? Certainly. An important aspect regarding time deixis and mitigation is that we need to examine each verbal form in context. For instance, Silva-Corvalán (1984) suggested that each verbal form, if analyzed in isolation or decontextualized, does not have a specific meaning. She argued that each verbal form has a general referential meaning which determines its co-occurrence with other forms and its use within a given communicative event. Therefore, the context in which a verb is produced is an essential factor we need to consider when determining if a lexical item represents mitigated behavior. Coding verbs as mitigating devices or as attenuating strategies is challenging. A methodological consideration in Spanish and English is that equivalents in English do not exist for the Spanish subjunctive. Second, when coding time deixis, we need to consider whether the expression of a verb’s tense, mood, and aspect does contribute to form an expression whose illocutionary force has been lessened. For instance, in FloresFerrán (2009), the semantics of the verb, whether it is a verb of desire, motion, or a psychological verb, played a role in how mitigation manifested. Repetition also contributed to other aspects of the analysis. Take, for example, the verb forms used in this excerpt:

Context: During therapy, a client discusses his inability to hold a job: Eh . . . desde que yo he estado ahí y (yo) he tratado y tratado y tratado. (yo) he tenido como más de 60 trabajos ya. Y (yo) los pierdo todos por lo mismo. Y en todos (yo) quiero empezar, y guardar dinero y todo y (yo) vuelvo y (yo) recaigo. Y (yo) me deprimo más. Es una lucha constante y (yo) no puedo con ella. [Um . . . since I have been here and I have tried and tried and tried. [I] have had like 60 jobs already. And [I] lose them all for the same reason. And in all [I] want to start and save money and all, and [I] go back and [I] relapse. [I] get even more depressed. It is a constant struggle and [I] can’t deal with it.]

112  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies In the excerpt we find redundant uses of the present perfect tense verb form, as he estado ahí (I have been there) and he tratado y tratado y tratado ((I) have tried and tried and tried). In this context, the client could have expressed traté (tried), the preterit form. However, this form would have denoted completion of an action within a defined time. That is, the preterit form would have suggested that he is no longer trying (because he continues to lose jobs regardless of medication intake). By using the present perfect form such as he tratado ((I) have tried), the notion of completion is left ambiguous (Comrie, 1976, p. 3). Thus, these redundant verb forms are considered attenuating because the chains of semantically ambiguous forms do not imply that he has interrupted his medication intake or that he has given up. That is, the client does not wish to directly express that he wishes to give up but is hinting at giving up (a mitigated message). Instead of saying Me rindo (I give up), he uses more attenuating forms such as lucha constante (a constant struggle), and no puedo con ella (I can’t deal with her). However, beyond these observations, we would have to code or consider the semantics of the verb, redundancy, the fact that most of the verbs have an omitted subject, and what these features mean with respect to attenuating expressions. Tag Questions Tag questions represent internal modifications and are considered propositions (e.g., declaratives) that are turned into questions. Labov and Fanshel (1977, p. 85) maintain that tag questions serve to mitigate. Their analysis of tag questions suggests that they mitigate more than an assertion. In other words, they are formulated in such a way that an order or demand is attenuated by a question as in ¿Me puedes ayudar con esto, verdad? (You can help me with this, right?). An addressee’s unmarked response is expected to be ‘yes’ or ‘sure’.

Context: In the next excerpt, a client (C) observes the therapist (T) while he scans the medication’s bottle to determine the frequency of intake. It is essential to point out that T audited medication intake by scanning the cap of the bottle to determine how many pills had been consumed: T: ¿Qué tal los medicamentos, continúa? C: Desde que los (medicamentos) recogí no se me ha olvidado ninguna dosis, ¿Verdad que no? T: [How about the meds, (you) continue?] C: [Since [I] picked them (medications) up, [I] haven’t forgotten any doses, right?]

Chapter 4 113 The tag question issued by T expects C’s response to be positive. In turn, C’s tag question served to indirectly state that she was not sure whether she had followed the therapist’s instructions. To attenuate, she converted her assertion into a question asking him to check whether she missed or skipped taking the meds. In the next excerpt, we find a client questioning the interviewee (the therapist):

Context: Before starting their first session, a different client who was a newcomer to the treatment issued an attenuated statement using a tag question: Una pregunta . . . y usted es doctor, ¿Verdad? [A question . . . and you are a doctor, right?]

In the previous example, we find three strategies that operate as mitigators. First, she announced or inserted a preparatory formula: una pregunta (a question), a preemptive alert. Second, she employed the formal second-person pronoun usted (you) which created distance and operated as an indicator of the difference between her and the therapist. Last, she converted her assertion to a tag question ¿Verdad? (right?), expecting a positive confirmation. If she would have issued a statement such as ‘Are you a doctor?’ it would have been considered rather abrupt. Labov and Fanshel’s (1977, p. 85) examination of therapeutic conversations reported how breaches in social relations were mitigated successfully by the use of several linguistic devices such as syntactic alterations. They provided a three-step scale of mitigation such as: Mitigation “You have enough time to dust the room. You have enough time to do dust the room, don’t you? Do you have enough time to dust the room?” Most importantly, we find that these syntactic alternations function to convey doubt, vagueness, indirectness, and they tend to cushion what would be considered a demand or directive. Cajolers Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989) have considered cajolers as speech items whose semantic content is of little relevance to their discourse meaning. Their function is mainly to clarify or make points more transparent to the hearer and, in a sense, they indirectly invite the

114  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies addressee to join or accept the statement. We find that cajolers represent habitual set phrases, fixed phrases, or lexical items that are repeated by individual speakers such as ‘you know’, ‘let’s say’ (tú sabes, digo) that can be easily confused with discourse markers. What is interesting about these devices is that they do not necessarily expect a response or, if they do, they expect a positive response or engagement from the hearer. That is, they function to engage the hearer to accept the proposition being issued by the addressee. Context: In an oral narrative of personal experience, a bilingual speaker’s employs cajolers in English (you know) and Spanish (digo) when recounting how frequently he returns to visit the island: Ahora voy (a Puerto Rico) casi todos los años. Ahora, y este . . . como todos, you know, y digo, llegué a Nueva York joven y aprendí mucho. Empezé a trabajar en el supermercado a los 16 años . . . y no volví a la isla wooof, casi por 20 años. [Now I go to (Puerto Rico) almost every year. Now, and um . . . like everyone, you know, and I mean, I arrived to New York young and learned a lot. (I) started working in the supermarket when I was 16 . . . and [I] didn’t return to the island whoof, about 20 years.]

The cajolers of ‘you know’ and ‘digo’ (let’s say) function to seek agreement with the listener. In this case, I was the addressee and it was upon me to agree with the narrative that was being shared. Márquez Reiter (2000, p. 138) provides another example in which the speaker issued digo to clarify or engage the listener: No sé cómo haría, digo, ¿me lo puedes prestar? [[I] don’t know what [I] would do, [I] say, could [you] lend it [to me?]] It should be noted that Márquez Reiter attested to only a few cajolers in a Uruguayan Spanish corpus. She found that cajolers were more pervasive in UK English. Prosodic Features An underinvestigated aspect of mitigation is its intersection with prosodic features. Before we go on to discuss this matter, it is essential that we

Chapter 4 115 look at the metapragmatic aspects such as prosodic features in relation to (im)politeness and mitigation. Recently, scholars have begun to look into this matter (e.g., Cabedo Nebot, 2016; Devís Herraiz, 2014; Devís Herraiz & Cantero Serena, 2014; Hidalgo Navarro & Cabedo Nebot, 2014; Hübscher, Borrás-Comes, & Prieto, 2017). We are reminded of Culpeper’s (2011, p. 1) statement, “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it!” in which he argues that there is a lack of research on the importance of prosody in communication and cites one exception: Arndt and Janney’s (1991). While much of what Culpeper focuses on is related to politeness, we know relatively little about the intersection between mitigation and prosody. Following the aforementioned scholars, we define prosody as features of speech that include timing, loudness, duration, intensity, pauses, pitch, and voice quality. Prosody, Culpeper stresses (2011, p. 2), “is a composite of acoustic features”. However, we also have non-verbal cues to consider in relation to mitigated communicative events. For example, when a speaker utters un poquito (a tiny bit or a little), the speaker may gesture in several Spanish dialects by placing the index finger and thumb together so that the addressee can understand what is meant. This non-verbal or kinesic cue, which is often accompanied by an utterance such as ‘un chin’ (a tiny tiny bit) or un poquito as in un poquito mal (a bit bad), can also be considered mitigating depending on the context. Naturally, it can also convey quantity. Arndt and Janney (1987) discuss how words, structures, prosody, and kinesic features intersect and shape the meaning of what we are saying. They go on to describe that rising or falling pitch and combinations of both of these features can contribute to how we soften a message or decrease the illocutionary force of a message. Here is an observation I made recently at a store:

At a customer service desk at a large department store, a client said ‘thank you’. However, it was not an authentic ‘thank you’ for having answered an inquiry she had issued. It was produced with a falling pitch which conveyed a bit of sarcasm after a person behind the service desk did not want to respond to a customer’s complaint. It was produced with a falling pitch and elongated vowel: ‘thank you:::’.

We can argue that the utterance is considered mitigated because its message conveyed a negative assertion as “I don’t like the way you have addressed me.” Hidalgo Navarro and Cabedo Nebot (2014, p. 7) maintain that it is ubiquitous to find instances in which a speaker says something but uses a

116  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies prosodic modulation that conveys something else in the utterance. They posit that there is: no complete message without the presence of prosodic resources or, in other words, without the presence of intonation (which is “faked” in the written text by using punctuation), and that the direct association between intonation, linguistic structure, speaker’s attitude, pragmatic function, etc. is virtually impossible to discern if we do not consider the whole contextual interaction. (2014, p. 7) With this in mind and, following Devís Herraiz (2014) and Devís Herraiz and Cantero Serena (2014), if we are committed to an investigation of mitigation, we are then compelled to take into account segments of conversations including prosodic features in order to fully capture the manifestation of mitigated speech. To this recommendation, we also add that we must take into account the melodic features characteristic of each dialect as they may differ. For instance, a recent study by Cabedo Nebot (2016) discusses the relationship between various pragmatic functions of mitigation and prosodic configuration in utterances that are deemed mitigated. Among other issues, the study attended to frequency, stress, tone, prosodic modulation, length, and speed of produced syllables. In general, the study revealed a correlation between mitigated speech and several prosodic features. Cabedo Nebot (2016) posits that, with respect to the prosodic features under examination, there seems to be a decrease in saliency and perception when speech was attenuated which he then suggests may be related to a decrease in the illocutionary force of an utterance. From these findings, we gather that there are other linguistic indicators beyond the use of lexical items and syntactic structures that can, in effect, serve to soften or decrease the illocutionary force as in the next excerpt.

Context: We find a client (C) interacting with her therapist (T), insisting or pleading that T tell her what to do. However, T hesitates to advise since that was not the goal of his practice: C: T: C: T:

No, no dígame qué ha:::go. . . . bue:::no . . . Deme un consejo::: Okay, el consejo es que yo pienso que, honestamente, es una opción difícil, ee sería fácil para yo decir, bueno, debes de hacer e:::sto.

Chapter 4 117 [C: T: C: T:

No, no tell me what should [I] do:::. . . . we:::ll. . . Give me advi:::ce. Okay, the advice is that I think that, honestly, it’s a difficult option, ee [it] would be easy for me to say, well, you should do thi:::s.]

It is evident in this example that the therapist was not at ease or was refusing to provide advice regarding what the client should do based on the expression of the prosodic features employed such as bue:::no (well) and e:::sto (this). To mitigate his response, the discourse marker of bueno (well) and the elongated stress in esto (this) is illustrative of his mitigated refusal. On the other hand, C was seemingly exasperated, and her request contained expressions that were issued with elongated vowels as in hago (do) and consejo (advice), both of which contributed to mitigating her utterances. It is important to point out that phonotactic aspects and other behaviors (e.g., intonation, speed, pitch, hesitation markers, pauses) can correlate with mitigated speech, but this perspective needs to be substantiated by way of the dialects under examination. We also need more research in this area that will enable us to distinguish and dissect mitigated speech in formal vs. informal registers, different dialects of a language, and among many other sociolinguistic variables (e.g., age, social status). For instance, in Catalán prosody, the aspect of frequency was not found to correlate to mitigated speech (Hübscher et al., 2017). This observation means that, similar to what was suggested earlier regarding melodic features, we cannot generalize that frequency will correlate to attenuating expressions in every dialect. Hübscher et al. (2017) suggest that we consider various prosodic features other than frequency code as a measure to determine the relationship between prosodic features and mitigated speech. For instance, we may address whether pauses, pitch measures, speed, and duration are found statistically significant and correlate to attenuated expressions. Proverbs and Sayings as Mitigating Devices Proverbs are an exciting class of propositions concerning how they may be used to attenuate. They represent sayings that entail literal and figurative meaning. They raise several questions concerning their function as mitigating strategies. That is, they involve inferencing and indirect ways of communicating, and their presence does not always correspond to attenuating a message. They also seem to contradict the Cooperative

118  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies Principles set forth by Grice (1975, pp. 45–46). Grice espoused four maxims to which speakers have to adhere for successful communication: Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner. 1. Maxim of Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. 2. Maxim of Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 3. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant. 4. Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief. Be orderly. When we use proverbs, however, we are in essence violating maxim four; we are expressing indirectness and formulating expressions that obscure meaning. They represent expressions that can be used to decrease the force of a face-threatening or non-face-threatening act, a directive, an advisory, and a suggestion. However, Orwenjo (2009, p. 123) has posited that proverbs in isolation are semantically empty. In other words, their meaning is derived from the context and scenarios in which they are employed. We should note that proverbs are related to folklore or cultural behaviors and are considered repositories of a people’s social, political, and cultural wisdom (Orwenjo, 2009, p. 145). Seitel (1972, p. 137), in citing Firth (1926, p. 137), maintains that proverbs, “[b]y virtue of their being expressed in objective terms, they [proverbs] influence without forcing and their objectivity carries more weight than an emotional outburst”. Proverbs intersect with attenuation in that they have been considered as strategies used by speakers to avoid a breach in social relations. They are also ubiquitous in language and “they still offer one of the most accessible and efficient means of avoiding direct critique by alluding to the criticized matter in an indirect, less aggressive manner” (Orwenjo, 2009, p. 145). Zuluaga (1997) also suggests that proverbs serve a pragmatic function which conveys approximation and indirectness. He maintains that they are based on popular, general, and shared knowledge and they do not necessarily connect to a specific interlocutor. Zuluaga (1997, p. 99) provides several examples, which can function to reprimand and insult respectively:

“Con amigos así, para qué enemigos.” (With friends like these, who needs enemies.) “A un bagazo poco caso.” (similar to ‘Foolish talk, deaf ears’)

Chapter 4 119 However, there is a fine line between proverbs and metaphors which also seems to connote indirectness and serves to attenuate as in: “Al pan pan; al vino vino.” (Tell it like it is.) In sum, Zuluaga treats and explicates proverbs as mitigating devices within the boundaries of politeness. A second function noted by Zuluaga suggests that proverbs serve to distance the speaker as the speaker does not assume ownership of the utterance. In Puerto Rican Spanish, we can say, Aquí hay un gato encerrado (‘There’s a cat trapped here’ (lit.) meaning ‘Something fishy around here’), a common saying, an indirect way of indicating that something suspicious is going on or that the speaker does not like what is happening in a specific context. In another context, a waiting room with limited seats, if someone leaves their seat and another person takes it, the person grabbing their seat may address the person who returns with the following statement: El que va para Aguadilla, pierde su silla. Literally, the saying means ‘If you go to a town named Aguadilla, you lose your seat’, an indirect way of saying, ‘It’s your fault if you got up and abandoned the seat; I have it now.’ When two speakers of American English have different opinions about a matter, one speaker may say “Different strokes for different folks” which suggests that a speaker does not agree with the other. In Spanish, when speakers disagree on a matter, one may say “Para los gustos se hicieron los colores” (lit. ‘colors were made for different tastes’). Or, in a similar context and, especially if one interlocutor disagrees with the other, in English we may say “To each his own”. In both these instances, the speaker who issues the saying or proverb is mitigating the utterance that would otherwise be considered similar to “I’m entitled to my own opinion so let’s end the discussion now.” While proverbs, metaphorical sayings, and figurative language are ubiquitous, from a cultural perspective, they also may go undetected in our research. For instance, if we conduct a quantitative analysis to confirm the statistical significance between the presence of proverbs and mitigating devices used by speakers, a significant correlation may not be found. However, if we consider metaphors and proverbs under one category of mitigating devices and code them together, we may find a statistically significant correlation if we have sufficient tokens or items. For instance, Flores-Ferrán (2010) employed a qualitative approach in the analysis and revealed several proverbs that were used to attenuate messages. Context: A client (C) complains to the therapist (T) about how he feels going to work. He felt that he had to comply with

120  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies other people’s demands. Both T and C issue these proverbial sayings: T: OK. Y trabajando . . . C: Bueno, que trabajando como tengo la mente más distraída, pero si no me cae la depresión en mi casa, perdón, en el trabajo, ya cuando llego a mi casa ya estoy en otra . . . esto, ya ahí vuelvo y recaigo en la depresión otra vez. T: Mjm. Porque claro, en el trabajo, “Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente.” C: Mjm. Estoy en algo ahí distraído, pero que también es que, no sé, en el trabajo, como a veces uno se da con personas que, no sé, como que uno no le agrada o algo . . . No, todos son amables . . . “uno no es una monedita de oro para caerle bien a todo el mundo”. [T: Okay. And working . . . C: Well, when working since [I] have my mind more distracted, but if not hit with the depression at home, excuse me, at work, then when ([I] arrive to my house already [I] am in another . . . um, then there [I] go back and [I] relapse in depression again. T: Ahum. Why, of course, at work, “Eyes that cannot see, a heart that doesn’t feel.” C: Mjm. [I] am in something distracted there, but it is also that, [I] don’t know, at work like sometimes one encounters persons that, [I] don’t know, like that one doesn’t find pleasant or something . . . not all are kind . . . “one isn’t a gold tiny coin to be liked by everyone”.]

Context: We find that the client used a biblical saying to explain how she thinks others perceive her. The second saying produced by the therapist is illustrative of how he attenuated his utterance: C: Porque dice también un refrán, dice “Ayúdate que yo te ayudaré.”. Porque dice “Todo lo que pidáis en mi nombre, y cree que ya lo vas a recibir, lo tendrás”, todo eso lo dice. Y en combinación con la voluntad de, del médico también. T: Okay. Okay. T: Y el que busca siempre encuentra” . . . C: Y “el que busca siempre encuentra”.

Chapter 4 121 [C: Because a proverb says, “Help yourself, and I will help you.” Because [it] says “Everything you ask in my name, and [you] believe in eventually [you] will receive, [you] will receive”, all that is said. In combination with the will of the doctor also. T: Okay. Okay. T: and, “one who seeks always finds . . .” C: and, “one who seeks always finds”.] The client explained how difficult it was to get out of the depressive state she was in and used a biblical proverb, “Everything you ask in my name . . . in comtibination with the will of the doctor also”. Namely, this strategy is used to invoke assistance from two sources, from God, and the doctor. In response to that saying, the therapist produced another proverb that includes two mitigating devices. First, the therapist employed an impersonal mechanism or shield ‘one’ or ‘he’ who searches instead of expressing ‘you’ which would have focused attention directly on the client. Second, he also employed a proverb (‘seek and you shall find’) to tell the client that if she seeks help, she will always find help. In other words, try helping yourself or take the initiative. In turn, instead of agreeing with the therapist, the client then merely repeated the therapist’s saying after a long second pause. Thus, and as summarized by Arewa and Dundes (1964, p. 71), “one can say that proverbs sum up a situation, pass judgment, recommend a course of action, or serve as secular past precedents for a present action”. They can advise, direct, and support, and they are used to mask or substitute a statement that would otherwise be considered abrupt or abrasive. El qué dirán (What Others Will Say) and guardar las apariencias (Guarding Our Image or Appearances) We know that proverbial sayings are shaped by cultural beliefs and ideologies and they function to mitigate our expressions. However, we also find that there are other culturally bound aspects that shape why and how we attenuate our expression. Placencia (1996, p. 13) urges researchers who investigate politeness and socio-pragmatic behaviors among Spanish speakers to take into account the cultural aspects, the history, “and the development of what today constitute its key social institutions”. Placencia (2008, p. 315) underscores that social relationships can “take precedence over the individual’s desires”. Therefore, we need to look at ideologies, relationships, the pressures that arise from them, and how they are enacted concerning the realization of mitigated speech. For instance, another under-investigated concept which intersects with

122  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies mitigation in Hispanic cultures and linguistic expressions is that the role of social obligation. Since collective societies take into account affiliate associations, the societal pressures contribute to how we conform to the cultural norms of a given society. These interpersonal connections override concepts of ‘face’ which have been seen as a positive/negative dichotomy. There is more to ‘face’: We mitigate expressions because we need to conform to others, and we have a social obligation that is implicit in our daily interactions. For instance, Placencia (2008, p. 21) has noted that: It [public self-image] means that in carrying out your everyday life, it is important to consider what people will say or think of you . . . so that everyone holds ‘a good image’ of you. In other words, you are expected to conform to the group’s expectations and put the group’s wishes before your own (at least in appearance), which does not leave you with much room for individuality. Placencia’s (2008) research focused on Quiteños’ avoidance of direct refusals among family and friends. Similar to Czerwionka (2012), the study attended to instances in which attenuation was expressed in high tension contexts. The study examined invitations that the participants were not willing to accept (e.g., refusals of invitations), while at the same time attempting to ‘quedar bien’ (to get along, fit in). Interestingly, El compromiso social (a sense of social obligation) was evident when complying with directives issued in this study, and these linguistic behaviors manifested not as mitigating devices per se, but as explanatory reasons for refusing an invitation. For example, a respondent to an invitation issued “Fui por compromiso” (I went to fulfill an obligation), the speaker is conveying that he/she did not want to accept the invitation or avoided saying ‘no’. Placencia concludes that the widespread behaviors manifested in the study relate to a ‘discursive struggle’ (Watts, 2003, p. 11) over (im)politeness in refusing an invitation and what we expect is socially acceptable behavior. While the study does not allude to mitigation per se, we find that the indirect manner in which the participants of the study expressed their sense of obligation points to how they dealt with imposition and social burdens. Namely, they mitigated their refusals to accept the invitation. In Flores-Ferrán (2010) we found instances of mitigation related to Placencia’s (1996) cultural concept of guardar las apariencias (e.g., to look good among others, to guard our appearances, to fit in). The study discusses how these social constructs, when carefully examined, manifest as mitigating strategies. The study posits that lexical choices do not necessarily have face-saving or politeness-related motivations; it would be more precise to say that people want to save their public image and issue propositions that are shaped or influenced by their cultural community.

Chapter 4 123 Context: A client indirectly voiced her discomfort or refusal to continue treatment. She expressed the importance of what it meant to take medication and what others will think of her. The therapist, in reacting to or recasting what clients stated, also employed el qúe dirán related expressions in several instances in the corpus. The client expressed the following: Ahí está la cuestión, no no no, yo nunca tengo miedo, yo no tengo miedo de que la gente me vea ee, que yo no esté, cantando ni bailando, miedo tengo del efecto del medicamento. Yo lo que tengo miedo como de que la gente se dé cuenta de que, eee, o me estoy, bueno normalmente la persona que usa un medicamento antidepresivo . . . [C: There’s the point, no no no, I never am afraid, I don’t have a fear that people see me, um, that I am not singing or dancing, the fear [I] have is of the effect of the medication. I what frightens me is like that people realize that, um, [I] am, well, normally the person that uses anti-depressive medication.] We need to preface this excerpt with the fact that depression is a stigmatized disease. We find that the client produced a statement that avoids explaining that she has discontinued treatment. In other words, she downgrades the effects of how she feels about being discovered by others as a person using antidepressants. She first escalates her statement by stating that she is not afraid of people seeing her perform publicly. Later, the utterance is followed by an explanation of what frightens her: Having people realize that she is on medication. These mitigating or attenuating strategies are essential considerations in our research as they reflect issues related to a collective society and personal identity. That is, they are culturally embedded linguistic behaviors that tend to go undetected. And, more importantly, the attenuated expressions are not bound by a specific lexical, grammatical, or phonological item. Rather, they are expressions and utterances that are, much like proverbs, hidden within the context of a message. Context: A therapist (T) and the client (C) interact. T had inquired whether C was following the treatment recommended by her doctors. She responded by explaining how the treatment might affect how she is viewed by others, an implicit way to pad her message which related to discontinuing treatment. That is, she did

124  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies not explain that she had not followed medication and treatment. Instead, she mitigated her speech by describing her biggest fear and saying how uncomfortable she felt with her treatment. We attest here to the culturally situated concept of el qué dirán: T: ¿Cómo has seguido con el tratamiento? [How have you been with the treatment?] C: Eee lamentablemente vivimos en un mundo, desde que, e por ejemplo, alguien se da cuenta, o alguien sabe que tú estás tomando medicamentos anti antidepresivos o, o para la ansiedad, ee tú puedes dar con personas que dicen que no son antidepresivos o que se deprimen, sino que es para la gente que está loca, aa ‘esa usa medicina’.   [Um, unfortunately, [we] live in a world, since that, ee, for example, someone realizes, or someone knows that you are taking anti anti-depressive medication, or for anxiety, ee you can encounter people that say that [the medications] are not antidepressants or that they get depressed; instead they are for people that are crazy, aa ‘that one uses this medication’.] We find in the previous excerpt several mitigating strategies that point to societal pressures and norms and how personal desires are overridden by social pressures. For example, C employed the pluralized form of vivir (to live) and the generic second-person pronoun tú in the excerpt. In this context, by using the pluralized form of vivimos (we live) she includes herself within a group of unknown people instead of using yo (I). Therefore, the form is operating as a shield, but it is also illustrative of how the social norms or el qué dirán (what will others think of her) are prompting her to mitigate her speech. Also, she referred to the therapist with the generic second-person pronoun tú which refers to anyone or ‘one’ but indirectly points to herself, again, a shield. The manner in which C expressed her discomfort with the medication, therefore, was to place herself within the context of others, to find support in others’ behaviors. If we examine the utterance further, we also find what prompted her to mitigate: She had a problem with antidepressants and treatment, and she feared that people would think that she is insane. How C approached this discomfort was, first, by escalating and providing the big picture, ‘we live in a world’, and then downgrading the effect of the utterance by focusing on people’s views about others who take these medications. Alternatively, the client indirectly explained how stigmatized she felt. This statement also reflects, above all, that she was rejecting treatment.

Chapter 4 125 We have highlighted the cultural concepts from Placencia’s work as they represent an under-investigated topic concerning mitigation. Furthermore, these linguistic behaviors emerged in the institutional discursive setting. One of the questions that had been brought to my attention was that of adherence to medication; why the Spanish-speaking population of a clinic was not adhering to treatment, and whether we could detect from the motivational interviews the linguistic behaviors that pointed to non-adherence. From the therapeutic perspective, the researchers were unable to detect direct explanations regarding adherence to medication, yet, from the linguistic and cultural perspective, Flores-Ferrán (2009, 2012) was able to attest to mitigated expressions which contained features such as hedges, shields, epistemic disclaimers, proverbs, and much more. A note of caution perhaps is in order: If we are committed to examining mitigation concerning only ‘face’ or ‘face-saving’ propositions, we will not be able to capture the full manifestation of mitigated expressions in Spanish. The cultural values that are informed by what we consider el qúe dirán and guardar las apariencias, for example, are related to the ideology of a given group. For instance, Hernández-Flores (1999) suggests that members of a community need to follow the rules related to their ideologies and they must meet the standards of their speech community. She posits that linguistic politeness, to which we add attenuated linguistic behavior, can contribute to enhancing the relationship between speakers. Thus, as researchers, we need to take into account the societal beliefs if we are to engage in a thorough investigation of these matters. Up to this point, we presented a discussion on proverbs and sayings, and social concepts of guardar las apariencias and el qué dirán and how they were realized in an institutional discursive setting. Most of the examples have a common denominator which is substantiated by Briz and Albelda (2013): Mitigation is a pragmatic category which reflects a weakening effect of an utterance, first and foremost, and it arises as a consequence of the stressors and accompanying coping mechanisms of those stressors (Czerwionka, 2012). This discussion then points to the fact that Politeness Theory falls short of accounting for the behaviors presented in the excerpts. Bravo (1996) discusses the challenges that arise when using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) concept of a bifurcated negative and positive ‘face’. In brief, the author suggests that their perspective of ‘face’ is more related to imposition while interlocutors rely on interpersonal affiliations and the establishment of confidence. Similar to Hernández-Flores (1999) and Bravo (1996) among others, we affirm that the reason for mitigating is not limited to ‘face’ or face-threatening acts. Rather, and in the case of the data exemplified throughout this text. and in particular, this chapter, we find that attenuation is a strategic communicative event and is related to enhancing and tightening the interactants’ relationship in line with the ideology of a group and the discursive context in which they interact.

126  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies In other words, there is somewhat of a ‘group face’, if any, as noted by Nwyoe (1992). For English, Lakoff (1973) observed that interlocutors usually refrain from saying what they mean to achieve politeness. We suppose this thought can also apply to the reasoning behind mitigated expressions. That is, we do not say what we mean when we mitigate. For example, Lakoff proposed a system ‘Rules of Rapport’: Don’t impose (maintain distance), give options (deference), and be friendly (camaraderie), all of which refer to styles associated to polite notions. However, we have illustrated in this chapter that mitigated linguistic behavior is not always affiliated to politeness. There are more relevant reasons which we have characterized in analyzing the interactions between a therapist and clients. To exemplify this behavior, perhaps we can examine the next interaction. While it does not contain mitigated speech, it does show how two close English-speaking friends do not say what they mean. We may find the discourse to be a bit disrespectful, abrupt, almost an argument, and, in reviewing it today, I still feel it violates most of the Rules of Rapport proposed by Lakoff, yet still reflects a conversation between friends in English where individualism is key. The interaction was extracted from Tannen (2005, p. 29) in which she depicts uncooperativeness: What kind of salad dressing should I make? Oil and vinegar, what else? What do you mean, “What else?” W  ell, I always make oil and vinegar, but if you want, we could try something else. John: Does that mean you don’t like it when I make other dressings? Steve: No. I like it. Go ahead. Make something else. John: Not if you want oil and vinegar. Steve: I don’t. Make a yogurt dressing. [John prepares a yogurt dressing, tastes it, and makes a face.] Steve: Isn’t it good? John: I don’t know how to make yogurt dressing. Steve: Well if you don’t like it, throw it out. John: Never mind. Steve: What never mind? It’s just a little yogurt! John: You’re making a big deal about nothing! Steve: You are! John: Steve: John: Steve:

Tannen’s salad dressing excerpt exemplifies a toggle between how messages are and are not being mitigated, how oppositions are directly expressed, and how each speaker expresses their individual perspective. Tannen (2005) characterizes the interaction as difficult and uncooperative. In it, there is a struggle: One speaker is not imposing while the other

Chapter 4 127 speaker is attempting to defer. However, what is more surprising is that there seems to a mild display of camaraderie, although one may consider the utterances in it an argument. So while, in general, we may all aim to please, to quedar bien (to get along), languages and cultures do not exhibit this linguistic behavior in the same way.

Summary We have described several linguistic devices and strategies that contribute to attenuation, and we have exemplified them using authentic speech. The kernel of this chapter also explained how we could detect and analyze linguistic features that point to an attenuated communicated event or not. We discussed the following: 1. Discursive contexts of social informal, institutional, and noninstitutional settings, 2. Therapeutic discourse and mitigation strategies and devices, 3. How to determine if a linguistic feature may function to attenuate, 4. Several mitigating devices and strategies: impersonal constructions, omission of referents, syntactic constructions (e.g., passive voice), epistemic disclaimers, the use of parenthetical verbs, the morphological diminutive -ito, deictic expressions, cajolers, prosodic features, proverbial sayings, and metaphoric-related expressions, 6. The stressors that motivate mitigation, and 7. Dialect differences concerning the expression of mitigating devices and strategies. Finally, we have also provided data on the challenges associated with the perspective that mitigation is prompted by politeness. Attenuation can be associated with politeness, but it is more than that. The excerpts presented in this chapter point to other societal ideologies and group affiliations that fuel the need to attenuate and mediate these expressions.

Notes 1. See Cameron and Flores-Ferrán (2004). Regarding the perseveration of linguistic features in relation to priming. 2. Instances in which the subject of a clause has been omitted, the translation will appear with the subject pronoun in [brackets].

128  Detecting Mitigation Devices and Strategies

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5 Putting It All Together

Introduction This chapter will serve as a review and an exercise in which we analyze devices and strategies employed by speakers in long stretches of discourse (e.g., interactions, and narratives). These analyses are guided by multiple theoretical frameworks: Politeness Theory (PT), Speech Act Theory (SAT), Pragmatic Variation (PV), the framework of the Psycho-social and Affective (PS) aspects of mitigation. The chapter also briefly discusses intensification to illustrate how it operates in contrast to attenuated expressions.

Examining the Expression of Mitigated Utterances Moving forward, this chapter now presents fully developed excerpts that capture mitigating devices and strategies. We exemplify these devices in strategies in authentic speech. In this section, which we have named ‘Putting It All Together’, we find once again the multiplicity of ways in which mitigation is realized. Previous chapters presented short excerpts that were generated from interactions between a therapist and clients along with several narratives. In this chapter, we extend the examination to combine other strategies and devices since, in the excerpts, we will find that at times, they co-occur with other features. At the end of the chapter, we briefly introduce intensification and note how speakers may increase the illocutionary force of a message with specific phrases, terms, or strategies. However, the section represents only an introduction since the topic of intensification or escalation would require a separate text. In general, the analyses presented in this chapter explain how pressures and cultural expectations condition the linguistic behavior of a speaker and how a speaker may take the addressee into consideration. The situation, context, and the stylistic choices we have in our linguistic repertoire and the motivations that may prompt attenuated speech are also explained. Only underlined forms are discussed in these excerpts. For each excerpt, we first situate the context, identify the forms/features used, and then provide an interpretation.

Chapter 5 135 The excerpts presented in this chapter were once again extracted from the corpus generated by the Motivational Interviews (MI) discussed earlier. The purpose of revisiting these particular interactions is two-fold: (i) transparency and (ii) consistency. In selecting a similar institutional discursive setting as that of previous chapters, mitigating features, devices, and strategies are more readily detected. Second, there is consistency in every interaction; a therapist and a client discuss adherence to treatment. That is, the purpose of these interviews was of motivating clients to continue treatment (including medication) for depression. These interactions were solely between a therapist (T) and different clients (C). Later in the chapter, we also include oral narratives of personal experience to point to the ways speakers may escalate or intensify their expressions. As mentioned earlier, the analyses are limitless in that they can be conducted in similar or different discursive interactions between parent/child, teacher/student, workplace supervisor/ subordinate, customer service agent/client, doctor/patient, learner/ native speaker, lawyer/client, among family and friends, and in many other social environments. What we can consider significant and common to each of the following excerpts is that the clients are not explicitly indicating that they are not adhering to treatment or that the treatment is not working for them. The use of the devices at times functioned to circumvent and mask their underlying message, and this linguistic behavior can go undetected in professional interactions. Moreover, what we also find in the oral narratives are ways in which speakers indirectly persuade, convince, and decrease the illocutionary force of their expressions.

Excerpt 1 Context: In the following interaction, T introduces the session, what he aimed to discuss. Then he suggests that he needs to scan the medication bottle to see how frequently the medication had been taken by the client. Act: Introduction; providing instructions Subcategories: General indirectness; T speech accommodation to C; co-participation Forms/features:  Imprecise verb tense use, use of Puerto Rican Spanish diminutive form -ito, plural inclusive verb form; alternations with null subject (unexpressed subject pronoun),1 shields, alternating forms of address (verb morphology), PV.

136  Putting It All Together T: Ah, bueno hoy yo tenía en mente unas cuantas cosas de hacer. Yo tenía unas cuantas preguntitas aquí que [nosotros] podemos hacer eso horita, también [nosotros] podemos hablar generalmente de cómo [tú] has estado, y también [nosotros] le podemos hacer un scan al medicamento para ver lo que [nosotros] nos hemos tomado.   [Oh, well, today I had in mind a couple of things to do. I had a few tiny questions here that [we] can do a little later, also [we] can generally talk about how [you/formal] have been, and also [we] can do a scan on the medicine to see how much [we] have taken.]

In this interaction, we first find that T (a speaker of Cuban Spanish) accommodates to C’s dialect (a speaker of Puerto Rican Spanish) and uses the diminutive that is characteristic of his client’s Spanish -ito; Cuban Spanish dialect is characterized by -ico. This feature points to how pragmatic variation (PV) manifests in the discourse of one speaker. Second, T indirectly states what he has planned for the session using the imperfect verb tenía (I had), suggesting that the purpose of the session is flexible since the verb form semantically does not mark definiteness as in tengo (I have). Thus, this choice of verb form points to how T weakened the strength of his utterance by avoiding definiteness and implicitly suggesting that the client had a say in how the session was to be conducted. Third, T includes himself or co-participates with C in utterances: le podemos (we can) and nos hemos tomado (we have taken). In doing so, T engages or includes C in using these plural forms. In particular, T is indirectly suggesting that both become involved in scanning and checking medication intake, an act of solidarity. However, T only conducts the scan. Thus, we note here that the all-inclusive ‘we’ serves to downgrade the focal point of the interaction, the client. T also avoids using ‘the medication you have taken’ and co-participates in suggesting the medication ‘we’ both had taken when T did not have to take the medication. Finally, T also uses generalmente (generally) as an adverbial attenuator knowing the session was going to delve in detail and discuss medication intake.

Excerpt 2 Context: In this next interaction, T has mentioned that it is good that C (another client) has continuously attempted to approach his depression. C attenuates his surrender.

Chapter 5 137 Act: A threat; surrender Subcategory: Avoid directness; weakening effects Forms/features:  Indirect utterance of agreement ujm; verb forms; repetition tantas (so many); ya (already, enough); adverbial attenuator ultimamente (lately); a saying ¡Ya que sea lo que Dios quiera! (Whatever God’s will!). C: Mjm, Sí. A pesar de que [yo] empiezo y [yo] me caigo, [yo] trato de volver a empezar. Pero [yo] lo he hecho tantas y tantas veces que ya últimamente digo yo, ¿Para qué [yo] voy a seguir?¡Ya que sea lo que Dios quiera!   [Ujm. Yes. Even though [I] start and fall, [I] try to start again. However, [I] have done this many and many times that lately I say, why should [I] continue? Let it be God’s will already!] In this interaction, C begins with an agreement gesture of ujm (avoids using a definitive ‘yes’) and uses repetition in a lexical phrase, he hecho tantas y tantas veces, ya (done so many times, many times, already), to indirectly express that he has reached his limit. While he suggests that he is at his end, C indirectly expresses a willingness to continue by using the verb form he hecho (have done), as he circumvented the preterit forms traté (tried) or hice (did). The use of ultimamente (lately) is also operating as an adverbial attenuator, noting that it is only a temporary or recent sign of frustration. C also indirectly states he is surrendering by using the colloquial saying: ¡Ya que sea lo que Dios quiera! (Whatever God’s will!)

Excerpt 3 Context: In this next interaction, T notices that C is concerned about the possible side effects of the medication he has been recommended to take. C explains to T the damage that he has experienced with his medication. Act: Express conflict, worry, aggravation Subcategory: Taking responsibility, placing blame Forms/features: PV: shifting person- yo, omission of referent; verb’s mood, the conditional use for politeness quisiera (I would like to); impersonal construction uno (one), a shield.

138  Putting It All Together T: Eh, bueno se preocupa sobre el daño que posiblemente le esté haciendo las medicinas. C: Mjm. Y uno de los daños que me viene la depresión también es eso, como [yo] le dije, yo a veces estoy con una mujer y a veces [yo] ni la quisiera tener al lado mío, [ella] me molesta, [yo] digo “Sálte, véte, véte” [yo] digo. Y entonces eso me perjudica con ella porque ya a una mujer que uno le hace eso, [ella] no quiere estar con uno. T: [Um, well, (formal you) worry about the damage that the medication is possibly doing.] C: [Ujm. And one of the damages that comes with depression is that, as I say, I sometimes am with a woman and sometimes [I] don’t want to even have her by my side, [she] bothers me, [I] say, “[you] go, [you] leave, [you] leave”, [I] say. And then that is detrimental for me with her because already a woman that one does that to, [she] doesn’t want to be with one.] We can observe that T uses an attenuator, posiblemente (possibly), an attenuating adverb after C has already admitted that he is worried about the side effects (damage) of the medication. C also expresses the firstperson subject pronoun yo (I) in the utterances when recounting instances in which he is with a woman. Then C shifts to a string of null subjects when rejecting her. He immediately shifts again to use uno (one), a shield, instead of yo (I) and conmigo (with me) when he places responsibility on her for not wanting to be with him. This observation suggests that these forms, including the use of the null subject, operate as shields. More importantly, the excerpt points to the degree of frustration that C is experiencing, a concern that points to non-adherence to treatment.

Excerpt 4 Context: In the following excerpt, T has shifted to the topic of work to see if C’s condition has improved when he works. Act:  C receiving criticism, T reformulation, C expressing doubt Subcategory: El qué dirán; Reactions to perceptions Forms/features: String of null subjects; proverbials/metaphoric saying; PV: alternations between yo and uno; approximating hedges, como que; impersonal mechanism shield uno (one); guardar las apariencias (guard appearances), repetitions no sé as indirectness and expression of intensification.

Chapter 5 139 T: OK. Y trabajando . . . C: Bueno, que trabajando como [yo] tengo la mente más distraída, pero si no me cae la depresión en mi casa, perdón, en el trabajo, ya cuando [yo] llego a mi casa ya [yo] estoy en otra . . . esto, ya ahí [yo] vuelvo y [yo] recaigo en la depresión otra vez. T: Mjm. Porque claro, en el trabajo, “Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente.” C: Mjm. [Yo] Estoy en algo ahí distraído, pero que también es que, [yo] no sé, en el trabajo, como a veces uno se da con personas que, [yo] no sé, como que uno no le agrada o algo . . . No, todos son amables . . . uno no es una monedita de oro para caerle bien a todo el mundo. T: Exacto. C: Entonces hay veces que esas mismas cosas deprimen a uno. Aquí mismo donde yo trabajaba habían ciertas personas que hablaban o [ellos] hacían comentarios o algo que a uno lo molestaban. T: Mjm. T: Okay. And working . . . C: Well, when working since [I] have my mind more distracted, but if the depression does not hit me at home, excuse me, at work, then when [I] arrive at my house [I] am already in another . . . um, then there [I] go back and [I] relapse in depression again. T: Ahum. Why, of course, at work, “Eyes that cannot see, a heart that doesn’t feel.” C: Mjm. [I] am in something distracted there, but it is also that, [I] don’t know, at work like sometimes one encounters persons that, [I] don’t know, like that one doesn’t find pleasant or something . . . not all are kind . . . One isn’t a gold coin-dim to be liked by everyone. T: Exactly. C: Then there are times that those same things depress one. Right here where I used to work, there were certain persons that used to speak or make commentaries or something, that used to bother one. T: Mjm.

In the previous excerpt, and after a string of null subjects used by C, T uses the proverb Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente (‘Eyes that cannot see, a heart that doesn’t feel’) to explain how C felt at work and how he could mask his depression. This proverb is mediated by the

140  Putting It All Together cultural notion guardar las apariencias. C, after using null subjects in previous clauses, shifts to uno (‘one’, a shield) when stating that these concerns depress him. He also uses an attenuator, the hedge como que (as if or like), when he describes unpleasant people. C also produces the proverbial-like and metaphoric saying, Uno no es una monedita de oro para caerle bien a todo el mundo (‘One isn’t a tiny gold coin to be liked by everyone’), to express how others perceive him instead of the usual idiomatic phrase in Puerto Rican Spanish, yo no le caigo bien a . . . (I’m not liked by . . .). In the last underlined clause, C indirectly expresses that there are people who have spoken about him in using ciertas personas (certain people) or algo (something). Furthermore, he indirectly refers to himself by using uno ‘one’ instead of a mi ‘to me’ while explaining that he has encountered people at work who have spoken about him or made bothersome comments about him, again employing this form as a shield.

Excerpt 5 Context: T has asked C whether there have been other times in which C has felt better. Act: Expressing doubt Subcategory:  Comparison of himself against others, reaction to a perception Features/forms: Redundant uses of indirectness and ‘no sé’; disclaimer, en realidad, a hedge; variable use of overt yo and zero subject C: Bueno, [yo] no sé doctor, [yo] no sé, en realidad yo no sé ni explicarlo. Es que yo no sé  . . . es que son tantas cosas . . . (long pause). Sí porque yo veo que a veces hay gente que son felices, que me miran, gente que tienen todo, y yo no tengo nada. C: [Well, [I] don’t know doctor, [I] don’t know, in reality, I don’t know how to explain it. It is that I don’t know . . . there are so many things. Yes because I see that sometimes there are people that are happy, that [they] look at me, people who have everything, and I that don’t have anything.]

In this excerpt, C uses en realidad (in reality), a disclaimer that serves to mitigate the redundant utterances that follow no se´ ((I) don’t know). He attempts to soften his message while admitting that he cannot explain how he feels. He closes his statement by indirectly saying that he is different from all the happy people. First, he does this by drawing a comparison between himself and people who have everything. Second, he uses

Chapter 5 141 the clause yo que no tengo nada (I who don’t have anything), a clause that, with the que, produces an indirect quote as in que la gente dice yo no tengo nada (that people say I don’t have anything) . . . This ellipsis thus attenuates, as he would have otherwise used yo no tengo nada in speaking of himself. Furthermore, C states that people look at him, a stigma-related utterance that is mediated by a socio-cultural notion of how he must appear in the presence of others, that is, el qué dirán (what will people think of me). In sum, in these excerpts and longer stretches of discourse, we have uncovered a myriad of expressions that point to ways in which clients and T attenuated their expressions. One issue we need to be concerned with is that of the power relationship, the power dynamic that existed between the therapist and the clients. The interview itself was one in which equitable relations did not exist. That is, firstly, the therapist had the goal of revealing why the clients were not adhering to treatment. Second, the clients went to the therapist’s office; the therapist did not go to the client’s home. Namely, the interactions were consultative. Therefore, these points may explain why clients were not in a position of power and felt compelled to attenuate. Also, the therapist had the goal of motivating the clients to adhere to treatment, not the reverse. Therefore, we are reminded about the imbalance of power and who was expected to produce attenuated expressions or whether both speakers would mitigate their expressions. While we may suggest that the clients did most of the attenuating, the therapist also did his part in mitigating. He wanted to access information from the clients, ensure the clients were at ease in providing information about their feelings, and scan the medication cap of the bottle, also an event that may have prompted him to be indirect and attenuate his utterances.

Intensification vs. Mitigation We began this book by operationalizing linguistic mitigation, and we presented a collection of excerpts illustrating the reasoning behind why speakers attenuate beyond the notion of politeness. Although this book attends to mitigation, we find it necessary to briefly touch upon ways in which speakers may intensify the illocutionary force of their expressions since there are instances in the excerpts in which the pendulum swings in the opposite direction of attenuating. That is, we found instances in which speakers boosted, escalated, or intensified their expressions. However, we are cognizant that a comprehensive account of this phenomenon would require a separate text. Thus, the goal of this section is to merely introduce several concepts related to the strategies used to intensify expressions. In brief, Bolinger (1972, p. 17) defined an intensifier as “any device that scales a quality, whether up or down or somewhere between the

142  Putting It All Together two”. Degree expressions, as noted by Bolinger, consist of a word or phrase expressing a quality that can be scaled. For example, in English, Bolinger noted that ‘very’, ‘so’, ‘such’, ‘much’, and ‘too’ should be considered as grammaticalized devices that can contribute to intensifying. In turn, items such as ‘highly’, ‘big’, ‘hearty’, and ‘hopeless’ he considered relatively ungrammaticalized. In English, for instance, we may say that something is a ‘hot mess’ in which the word ‘hot’ is considered grammaticalized. In Spanish, we can also say un chorro de problemas (a deluge of problems) and un espacio generoso (a generous space) in which chorro and generoso have been grammaticalized and seem to border metaphoric expressions. But there are many linguistic devices and strategies speakers can use to intensify their expressions. For example, Briz Gómez (1995), in general, considers intensification through a pragmatic lens. He notes that within the context of the expressions (e.g., in dialogues and monologues), we can detect the strategies and devices speakers use to escalate expressions. Briz maintains that pragmatic intensification can be achieved by reinforcing what has been already stated or what is being stated. In Spanish, for example, we have muy (very), bastante grande (really or pretty as in ‘pretty big’) and, demasiado (too), as in demasiado poderoso (too powerful). But these expressions are also considered ungrammaticalized and represent adjectival or adverbial phrases. But most scholars agree that intensifying markers situate their meaning in terms of a scale or degree, ascending above what would be considered normal. Interestingly, Ghesquière and Davidse (2011) have concerned themselves with forms that contribute to intensifying such as ‘a complete mess’ and ‘a whole bunch of crazy stuff’, strategies that have fallen outside the scope of many who investigate intensification only by way of adjectival and adverbial phrases. Bolinger (1972, pp. 58–60) seemed to suggest that noun-intensifying features may fall only within a noun phrase’s function, something we challenge in the next few excerpts. He provides the following examples: 1. But this is pure speculation. 2. She feels a complete failure. Paradis (2008) has challenged the view that degree is a grammatical phenomenon only characterized by certain types of word class. Similar to Briz’s perspective, and similar to what has been documented in this text, Paradis argues that the notion of degree, as in the case of attenuation, is pervasive in language and is associated with most meanings. Moreover, degree modifiers operate contextually as we will discuss shortly. Thus, Paradis argues that degree cannot be construed as a grammatical notion through adverbs and quantifiers. For instance, Paradis argues that degree configuration is highly dependent on context and communication.

Chapter 5 143 For instance, ‘what a car’, ‘very British’, ‘a very key strategic question’, and ‘it is so not true’ are examples which fall beyond the scope of word classes, and in them we find a combination of syntactic structures. To substantiate Paradis’ work and our notion that escalating or intensification falls outside the parameters of NP, we find an examination of parliamentary proceedings by Márquez Guerrero (2015). Márquez Guerrero has noted that alternations between attenuating and intensifying expressions are quite frequent in political discourse or argument-related discursive settings. The study exemplifies the tension between the desire to mitigate or soften to protect our image as opposed to the use of intensification to argue with an adversary. In particular, the study reported how a politician should have used intensification to discuss his achievements and attenuation in defense statements related to accusations. The author discusses the difficulty in achieving a balance between these two phenomena. Kanwit, Elias, and Clay (2018) have also examined intensifiers such as muy (very) and bien (very) in Spanish. The scholars posit that there is variation among these two intensifiers across numerous dialects and report, based on recent studies, that speakers show a preference for bien (ok or good) in Latin American Spanish rather than in Spain. However, this study relies on adverbial intensifiers, not the strategies used to intensify beyond these two forms. What we gain from this particular study is that intensifiers, similar to mitigating devices and strategies, are not usually treated in second language instruction. Palacios Martínez and Núñez-Pertejo’s (2012) corpus-based study shows how adolescents intensify language, a study which contributes to a fuller understanding of how we can use the intensifier behaviors in language learning instruction. Similar to the forms documented in English, we also find forms in Spanish such as súper e.g., súper grande (really big), súper bueno (extremely good), mega as in mega estrella (mega star), among many others; however, these again point to adjectival items. In general, intensifiers and the expressions which fall outside the scope of word classes, such as those highlighted by Paradis, are not considered part of second or foreign language instruction. Thus, what is important here is that we value both attenuation and intensification in classroom instruction as both are pervasive in our communication and that we consider intensification in our research. In sum, and as Holmes (1984) has noted, emphasizing and boosting the illocutionary force of a message is complementary to that of softening or attenuating its force. Thus, and for the sake of touching base on this matter with brevity, we next examine several expressions, both strategies and devices, which may magnify the degree of intensification in utterances such as those proposed by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1972) and others.

144  Putting It All Together

Excerpt 6 Context: The therapist is asking the client about how she feels regarding the medication she is taking for her depression. Act: Persuading Subcategory: Rejection, insistence Features/forms: Redundant uses of terms related to a reaction: dizziness C: Sí también la medicina, por que [yo] me tomo la medicina y me marea, me marea. Me quita la ansiedad pero me marea. Ando mareada. C: [Yes, the medicine, because I take the medication and it makes me dizzy, it makes me dizzy. It removes anxiety but it makes me dizzy. I am dizzy.]

In this excerpt, we find repetition, a strategy that the client used as a persuasive technique, that of repeating the same term to indicate that she is not satisfied with her reaction to the medication. While we may suggest that she is indirectly communicating, she is rejecting the medication or not taking it any longer, she is simultaneous repeating the term to increase or escalate the importance of her reaction. The speaker had the option to indicate the term once. However, a question needs to be addressed: If she would have issued the word marea or mareada only once, would the therapist capture her discomfort? Thus, in analyzing her response we note that she intensified the illocutionary force of her message by way of repetition.

Excerpt 7 Context: A narrative of personal experience produced by a speaker. She narrates her travels through Southern Spain, an experience she had on her own. Act: Recount experience Subcategory: Persuading listener Features/forms: Multiple uses of negation Narrator: Y entonces [yo] me metí en cuanto sitio que había por allí por Semilla, después [yo] me tiré para Granada, [yo] me fui a la Alcazar, [yo] me fui a la, en Córdaba,

Chapter 5 145 [yo] entre a una mesquíta, y aquello si que es increíble. Increíble. Y [yo] fui a un pueblito donde nunca, en ningún momento vi a ninguna mujer. Hasta que [yo] me fui que había una señora barriendo la calle. Pero en ese pueblo no había ni una mujer afuera en la calle.   [And then [I] entered every place where [I] could go in Semilla, later [I] skipped to Granada, [I] went to Alcazar, [I] went to Cordoba, [I] entered a mosque, and that was incredible. Incredible. [I] went to a town where never, in any moment, [I] didn’t see any woman. Until I left, that [I] saw a woman sweeping a street. But in that town, there wasn’t one woman outside in the street.]

While in this excerpt we also find repetition (i.e., incredible), one can find negation being used a strategy to emphasize, augment, and intensify the point that was being made: The town did not allow women in the street, a notion the speaker considered of negative value. For example, the excerpt contains ‘never’ ‘in any moment’, ‘didn’t see’, ‘any woman’, and so forth. The use of these negative forms and structures contribute to conveying a surprise and dismay, and it also positions the speaker as a critical observer.

Excerpt 8 Context: A narrator is describing an incident when she got lost in a zoo in Germany and her parents could not find her. The segment of the narrative addresses her parents’ reactions when they found her and her friend in the zoo after an hour-long search with the police. Act: Subcategory: Features/forms:

Recounting a childhood experience Emphasis Grammaticalized ‘bien’

Narrator: A  mi me me dieron un beso, me abrazaron. A ella le dieron bien duro, tú sabe. Me acuerdo de eso porque pasé un susto bien feo.   [To me, me [they] gave me a kiss, [they] hugged me. To her, [they] beat her really hard, you know. [I] remember that because [I] experienced a really ugly scare.]

146  Putting It All Together In this excerpt we find grammaticalized forms; for example, Bien duro (real hard) and bien feo (real ugly) represent instances in which the narrator escalated the intensity of her expression. Interestingly, the construction of bien feo is not characteristic of an adjectival phrase that is coupled with susto (a scare). In other words, an ‘ugly scare’ is considered rare as opposed to a ‘real scare’. In addition, we find the use of bien grammaticalized as in bien fuerte (very strong), bien bueno (very good), bien malo (very bad), among many other expressions, as it no longer conveys the quality of ‘good’ as opposed to ‘bad’. It functions to intensify the form which follows.

Summary We have attested to the use of a wide range of mitigating devices and strategies, and the use of proverbs and sayings and cultural notions in the eight excerpts presented. The excerpts provide a sense of how linguistic features, devices, strategies (including sayings) operate together to soften, buff, or pad and hide the real intentions of the speakers. We evidenced how speakers modified their utterances to be more acceptable to their addressee, to be more accommodating, and how they conveyed uncertainty. We also detected how speakers avoided being direct and how they communicated without explicitly declaring that the treatment is not working. However, more importantly, in this institutional discursive setting, we found that clients mitigated quite frequently in these interactions and the therapist perhaps to a lesser degree due to the power and distance relationship among the speakers. We also discussed how the stressors, social pressures, and cultural norms contributed to attenuation. The chapter also presented a brief explanation regarding intensifiers to illustrate how the pendulum can move between the two phenomena of attenuation to escalation.

Note 1. Instances in which the speaker did not express the subject pronoun, the corresponding pronoun appears in brackets with the purpose of aiding the reader’s interpretation of the text.

References Bolinger, D. (1972). Degree words. The Hague and Paris: De Gruyter Mouton. Briz Gómez, A. (1995). La atenuación en la conversación coloquial: Una categoría pragmática. In L. Cortés Rodríguez (Ed.), El Español Coloquial. Actas

Chapter 5 147 del 1er Simposio sobre Análisis del Discurso Oral (pp. 101–122). Almería, España: Universidad de Almería. Ghesquière, L., & Davidse, K. (2011). The development of intensification scales in noun-intensifying uses of adjectives: Sources, paths, and mechanisms of change. English Language and Linguistics, 15(2), 251–277. Holmes, J. (1984). Modifying illocutionary force. Journal of Pragmatics, 8(3), 345–365. Kanwit, M., Elias, V., & Clay, R. (2018). Acquiring intensifier variation abroad: Exploring muy and bien in Spain and Mexico. American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages ACTFL. Foreign Language Annals, 51, 455–471. Márquez Guerrero, M. (2015). La alternancia atenuación-intensificación: Estrategia de refuerzo argumentativo. Oralia, 18, 185–211. Palacios Martínez, I., & Núñez-Pertejo, P. (2012). He’s absolutely massive. It’s a super day. Madonna, she is a wicked singer. Youth language and intensification: A corpus-based study. Text and Talk, 32(6), 773–796. Paradis, C. (2008). Configurations, construals and change: Expressions of degree. English Language and Linguistics, 12(2), 317–343. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1972). A grammar of contemporary English. London, UK: Longman.

6 Methodological Considerations

Introduction The primary goal of this chapter is to gather some thoughts regarding how we can capture mitigation in oral or written communication. We know that we need to maximize our efforts to collect data in which the phenomenon naturally occurs since random or artificially created propositions cannot fully account for the many linguistic behaviors we have discussed so far. Furthermore, if we intend to contribute to the field, we need to generate robust findings. After all, our primary goal is to reach the greater research audience and we also want to open a conversation with the language teaching community. There are benefits in using several approaches to investigate mitigation. More importantly, by combining methods, we can offer more depth, perspective, and add validation to our research. Schegloff (1993, p. 107) once asked: “What counts as an occurrence of whatever it is we think we are counting?” Moreover, to this I add: In what types of linguistic environments do we find these instances? While I certainly agree with Schegloff (1993, p. 101): “one is also a number”, and, thus, a single case of mitigation represents essential evidence of linguistic behavior, I also feel that qualitative and quantitative approaches together can assist in triangulating data and providing a more robust depiction of this phenomenon. In this chapter, we discuss how both qualitative and quantitative approaches can methodologically contribute to an account of attenuation. After this discussion, we examine how narratives and conflict talk can be gathered to analyze attenuation. We also provide some background information on methodology by way of Briz and Albelda (2013), among others, as these scholars’ work can contribute to our examination of mitigation in English, Spanish, and other languages. This chapter does not delve into a discussion on the benefits of using one approach over the other or providing an in-depth explanation of either approach. Instead, we recommend that both approaches should be partnered or complement each other to enable a comprehensive depiction of linguistic attenuation.

Chapter 6 149 As linguists and researchers, our gut reaction and our inquisitive mind tell us what to do when we first encounter and become curious about a linguistic feature. For example, we may become interested in how it is being used by a native speaker or a learner of a language. First, we may tend to acknowledge its presence or occurrence by hearing it or reading about it, and then find its relevance within the context in which it was employed. That process, at face value, represents a heuristic approach. If and when we become more informed about a feature and uncover that it has been investigated and appears to be relevant to our work, then we move forward to determine how we wish to examine it further and how its examination will enhance the field. For instance, if we know that a feature such as the ‘sort of’ has been investigated in English among native speakers, we may turn our attention to investigating its use among novice, intermediate, and advanced learners of English or any language. However, if we have encountered an occurrence of a linguistic phenomenon that has been under-investigated, then our goal shifts to that of revealing more about it, establishing its relevance using perhaps a qualitative approach first, looking for patterns, and opting to determine if we can make predictions. As Schegloff (1993) has noted, even if no quantitative evidence can be mustered, that one instance of the manifestation of X remains. Said differently, we can select an approach that matches our general epistemological needs. The importance of using naturally occurring speech, spontaneous speech, as a body from which we choose our approaches, cannot be ignored. Gumperz (2011, p. 216), followed Hymes’ (1961) earlier work and noted that looking at talk as it occurs in natural settings is to look at communicative practices, and those practices reflect an analytically distinct level of organization. Since mitigation is known to be a communicative strategy, it is fitting that we begin our examination of it in spontaneous oral speech or naturally occurring discourse. The practices we uncover then can be generalized to similar cases, circumstances, or environments. In other words, if we investigate mitigation in speech or written discourse or digital online communication, we can look at instances of communicative interaction representative of behavior related to speakers or writers and similar discourses.

The Benefits of Using Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches Let us start by pointing out that any research, whether quantitative or qualitative, or one involving mixed methods, should seek to contribute to and advance our overall knowledge of the field. Each method approaches knowledge differently and aims to achieve a symbiotic interaction between theory, research, and practice; one should not be considered better than the other. However, that said, a mixed-method approach lends

150  Methodological Considerations more support or increases credibility (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Creswell (2007, p. 40) maintains that qualitative research “keeps good company with the most rigorous quantitative research”. On several occasions, when initiating and conducting research, I have first approached data using a qualitative approach. At times, I have also begun with a quantitative approach and then had to dissect data from a corpus using a qualitative approach. However, Greene, Caracelli, and Graham (1989, p. 255) note that there are five main reasons to use mixed methods: Corroboration, complementarity, development, initiation, and expansion, all of which have informed my research. This section will recount the trajectory of an investigation (FloresFerrán, 2009). While it began unrelated to mitigation, it contributed to expanding research on mitigation a year later. I first noticed the use of ‘one’ in English and its Spanish equivalent, uno, in a corpus. I noticed that this form seemed to alternate with the first person ‘I’ (yo). I first examined the many instances in which speakers chose to use one form over the other, and then I began to ask why these forms alternated in both languages. This initial study contributed to later discovering that uno (one) was being used as a mitigating device in Spanish, a form that was identified as a shield. Here are several examples generated from narratives and motivational interviews between a therapist and clients: Uno no puede hacer las cosas como tú mandas. [One cannot do things as you demand.] Yo también tomo las medicinas dos veces al día. Uno como que se va a morir si no se las toma, ¿Verdad? [I also take the medicines two times a day. It’s like one is going to die if (one) does not take them, right?] ¡No toques ese libro! Uno no debe tocar lo que no le pertenece. [Don’t touch that book! One should not touch what doesn’t belong to you.] Hay oportunidades en los EEUU. Y allá uno no cuenta con tantos recursos económicos como aquí. [Here there are opportunities in the U.S. And over there one doesn’t have that many economic resources like here.] Uno no puede cargar con tantos problemas. [One cannot handle so many problems.] I mentioned in a previous chapter that Haverkate (1985, p. 13) suggests uno (one) serves as a defocalizer and, when expressed, the speaker is extending their perspective to those who participate in the same state. In

Chapter 6 151 other words, it generalizes the propositional content to others (usually the interlocutor(s) in a conversation). One question that the study had to address initially is why is it that speakers tend to avoid or not use the subject personal pronoun yo (I) or tú (informal second person) or usted (formal) since as we see in the previous examples, these pronouns could have been produced instead of uno (one). Moreover, another question I asked was whether uno (one) represented yo (I) in the tradition of sociolinguistic research. Namely, at face value, can these forms represent two ways of saying the same thing following Labovian lines of inquiry, or are they semantically different? In using a qualitative approach, I gathered authentic, spontaneous speech from oral narratives of personal experience. I also examined the presence of these forms in a corpus generated by institutional discursive settings (i.e., therapy sessions). The findings of the exhaustive qualitative analysis yielded the following: That uno (one) was employed to share perceptions among other people or hearers, to advise, and to issue directives. By way of a quantitative approach, the analysis revealed that the form uno was conditioned or influenced by internal and external linguistic variables. For instance, its use was found conditioned by participants’ dialects represented in the study. Furthermore, among other findings, the expression of uno (one) use was influenced by the semantic clause (negative or positive inference in a proposition), the type clause (main or subordinate), the semantic verb type (mental or dynamic), the speakers’ age, and discourse type (oral narrative vs. therapy interview). For instance, older speakers (50+) tended to use this form more than those below 49. Speakers in their 20s showed a preference to use the egocentric yo (I). Surprisingly, today, it is plausible to suggest that the millennials in the study tended to speak of ‘self’, a more self-centered perspective. Furthermore, the use of uno was found quantitatively more pervasive in therapy sessions as opposed to oral narratives of personal experience, and its expression appeared in propositions that conveyed negative feelings (e.g., complaints about treatment). Therefore, complementarity assisted in revealing comprehensive findings. The qualitative analysis provided a fine-grain micro-approach and the quantitative uncovered patterns. Creswell (2007, p. 39) has noted that “we conducted qualitative research because a problem or issue needs to be explored”. The quantitative approach provided the support I needed to understand patterns and tendencies, another set of research questions that were borne from the qualitative analysis. Integration of both approaches, therefore, was critical to advance the field since it contributed knowledge and assisted in providing a comprehensive depiction the expression of uno (one). Currently, the research I have conducted and explained in the previous chapters points to how this form is considered as a mitigating device, a shield.1 These findings also suggest that the

152  Methodological Considerations alternation between uno ‘one’ is complex and that uno and yo (one and I) do not represent two ways of saying the same thing. Further, it opened another avenue of exploration: How should we address the use of these forms in language teaching? To sum up, in following a mixed-method design, here are the criteria I followed based on Creswell (2003): Implementation: What sequence of the approaches would I wish to use for the overall research design? In the case of the previous study, I first began with qualitative, an emerging qualitative approach to inquire, then I moved to a quantitative approach. Priority: Which methods are most important for data analysis? In the study of uno, the rationale used to start with a qualitative approach was that of discovery, a more heuristic-bound approach. Integration: At what point of the research did I decide to put together data in relation to the approaches? After completing the qualitative analysis which yielded instances of the use of uno (one) within its pragmatic function, then I needed to code external and internal linguistic factors to uncover if the linguistic behavior identified was pervasive or unique. This examination revealed that there were instances in which uno functioned as a shield. Theoretical perspective: Did theory inform the analysis from the beginning? I used a discourse analytical approach (pragmatic variation) at first to tease out the pragmatic functions of the use of this form; then, I proceeded to inform the study with a socio-pragmatic framework looking at the data with a quantitative sociolinguistic theoretical lens. The second half of the investigation enabled me to provide a macro-account, one that explained differences in the patterns that had been revealed. For instance, I found dialect differences among the Spanish varieties represented in the study. To provide an example of how both approaches can inform a study, we discuss briefly another study. Flores-Ferrán (2010) documented the uses of mitigating strategies and devices employed by a client and therapist during interviews. Two of several of the research questions the study aimed to address were: What are the mitigating devices in Spanish that characterize this particular discursive context? • Are there differences in the mitigating devices between the therapist administering the interviews and his client interlocutor? •

This particular study called for an initial qualitative approach in that it required that I first account for the categories of strategies and devices used in one motivational interview (between a client and a therapist). The 45-minute interviews (two) yielded the use of hedges, shields, time deixis, bushes, and tag questions, among other devices. Then, a quantitative

Chapter 6 153 analysis had to be conducted in order to respond to the second research question which addressed the tendencies or patterns that were characteristic of each of the participants. The first step of the analysis required that I determine the categories of strategies and devices that were evidenced in the transcripts. An example of the mitigating behaviors that were issued in the first motivational interview yielded the following from the transcripts gathered from the therapist (T) and client (C):

Chart 6.1  Partial representation of the mitigating devices attested in a transcript Transcript Line #

T/C

Mitigating device

Utterance

Context

13

T

Hedge

Suggestion (Consistently take medication.)

19

T

Shield: Impersonalizing

32–33

T

Time deixis: imperfect; quantity hedge; bush

38

T

Bush

Quizás poder tomar medicamento ‘Maybe to take medication’ Nosotros determinamos si estamos ayudando o no . . . ‘We determine if (we)’re helping or not . . .’ Yo tenía unas cuantas preguntitas ‘I had a few tiny questions’ Conocer a usted un poquito más ‘to get to know you a bit better’

49

T

Hedge: conditional; tag question

No soy de Puerto Rico pero diríamos que los dos somos del Caribe ¿No? ‘I’m not from Puerto Rico but we can say that we’re from the Caribbean, right?’

Solidarity (Explaining procedure.)

Setting stage (For interview questions.) Requesting personal info (T requesting to get to know C.) Solidarity (T attempting to become member of C’s group.)

(Continued)

Chart 6.1 (Continued) Transcript Line #

T/C

Mitigating device

Utterance

Context

83

T

Shield: Impersonalizing

Reinforcement (T extends C’s observation to others.)

99

C

Time deixis: subjunctive

118

T

Parenthetical verb, bush

132

C

Redundant: bush; time deixis: imperfect

160–161

T/C

Negation; redundant bush

Eso es lo que pasa cuando uno se va de un lugar a otro, sea uno. . . ‘That’s what happens when one moves from one place, even if one is. . .’ Se me quita el ánimo de estar con ellas, ni quisiera estar con ellas. ‘I lose my will to be with them.’ Me parece que como hasta cierto grado.  . . ‘I believe that like to a certain level. . .’ Eh, desde que yo he estado ahí y eh, poquito, poquito, poquito he tratado, tratado, tratado. ‘Um, since I have been here, um, a little, a little, a little (I) have tried, tried, and tried.’ T: No hay problema. Tengo una bolsita aquí. ‘No problem. (I) have a bag+dim here.’ C: Yo tengo una toallita. ‘I have a towel+dim here.’

Wish (C explains his loss of will/ mood to be with women.) Reformulation (T reaffirms and reformulates that C has decided to improve.) Admitting negative practice (C explains how he’s tried very little to take medication.)

Solidarity, empathy (T offers tissues to C while C cries. C notes that he carries a small towel.)

Chapter 6 155 After this analysis was conducted, then a quantitative analysis was conducted. The next two tables exemplify the results which contributed to responding to the two research questions. For example, Table 6.1 shows the general distribution of the devices that were attested in the study. Table 6.1 The distribution of frequencies of mitigating devices used in MIs (n=272) Mitigating Device

Frequency

Time deixis Parenthetical verbs Shields Redundant forms Bushes Hedges Tag questions Epistemic disclaimers Total

Percent

80 67 59 23 21 19 2 1

29.4 24.6 21.7 8.5 7.7 7.0 .7 .4

272

100.0

At a glance, the table shows that time deixis and parenthetical verbs, for example, were produced in the corpus of the study in higher frequencies than other devices although shields (plural first person nosotros (we), uno (one)) were also evidenced in the data. However, these tendencies only represent raw frequencies and we needed to disaggregate the data further. Thus, the next table responded to the second research question, how were the attenuated behaviors distributed among the two speakers: The distribution of mitigating devices used according to speakers Table 6.2  (n=272) Mitigating Device

Shields Bushes Time deixis Parenthetical verbs Tag questions Hedges Epistemic disclaimers Redundant forms Total Note: (p=.000)

Speaker

% in Device % in Device % in Device % in Device % in Device % in Device % in Device % in Device

Total

Therapist

Client

74.6% 33.3% 51.3% 52.2% 100.0% 78.9% 100.0% 17.4%

25.4% 66.7% 48.8% 47.8% .0% 21.1% .0% 82.6%

100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

54.8%

45.2%

100.0%

156  Methodological Considerations Contrary to my expectations, the participant who produced most of the attenuating strategies and devices was the therapist, not the client. Therefore, a statistical analysis contributed to a better understanding of the linguistic behaviors of the two participants. For instance, Table 6.2 shows that the therapist (T) produced 54.8% of the mitigating devices in the corpus while the client (C) only 45.2%. Concerning parenthetical verbs and time deixis, T and C exhibited subtle differences. However, significant differences were found concerning shields, bushes, hedges, and redundant forms. For instance, while T produced 74.6% of the shields in his utterances, C only 25.5%. A similar tendency appeared with respect to hedges. While T produced 78.9% of the hedges, C produced only 21.1% of these forms. Conversely, C produced a higher frequency of bushes (66.7%) and redundant forms (82.6%) than his interlocutor. In sum, distinct patterns emerged from each speaker concerning most of the mitigating devices used. In sum, and based strictly on the chart and tables2 we were able to uncover the types of devices employed by the two interlocutors and, we were also able to account for differences in the use of the devices according to the role of the therapist and his client. The study, in using a qualitative approach also uncovered the use of the cultural notions of el qué dirán (what others will say), guardar las apariencias (guard appearances), and proverbial-like sayings, linguistic behaviors that the quantitative analysis did not find statistically significant. In the end, the study then contributed to further develop another study, one that examined mitigating strategies and devices among more clients, speakers of several Spanish dialects, a study which addressed different research questions.

Identifying a Corpus and Data Collection In general, researchers have used a myriad of protocols to investigate how speakers attenuate, controlled-experimental and non-controlled. Several have used prompted production tasks while others have employed naturalistic and spontaneous speech. Ideally, we want to investigate the realization of mitigation (i.e., strategies and devices) in natural conditions. However, that said, our choice of protocols depends on our research goals and how we wish to collect data (e.g., in learning environments, other institutional settings, or social setting among friends). Therefore, several factors have to be considered such as the research design and approach(es) (qualitative and quantitative), the recruitment of participants and timeline, in addition to other concerns that mediate how we approach our decisions regarding data collection. A caveat: It is impossible to describe the many protocols employed by researchers who have investigated linguistic mitigation. Here are only several reasons why: First, many studies have focused on linguistic politeness or speech acts and have not solely focused on mitigation. In other words, studies may have attended to speech acts as a primary goal (e.g., refusals)

Chapter 6 157 and incidentally reported on mitigation, or they attended to politeness and then touched upon issues related to mitigation. The reverse is not pervasive in the literature. Second, studies whose goals were to investigate mitigated linguistic behavior may have used learners or native speakers but have not employed similar protocols. Third, some studies have solely attended to linguistic attenuation and have relied on institutional discourse but gathered data from different discursive, institutional settings (e.g., medical, court, customer service) and in different languages. Fourth, there are studies which have investigated the use of one linguistic feature related to mitigation (e.g., the use of the diminutive -ito (a tiny, a bit)) or other forms (e.g., ‘sort of’, ‘kind of’) and may not have used a formal protocol. Instead, they have provided descriptive accounts. Alternatively, other studies have gathered data from the pre-published corpus, public transcripts, and prompted interviews, various corpora. In the case of a public corpus or dataset, these data may not have been generated with the sole purpose of investigating mitigation. That is, they represent a generic shared corpus for researchers to use for their studies. Also, fifth, researchers who have investigated mitigation in native speakers have done so by using different Spanish and English varieties and different protocols, thereby making it difficult to draw comparisons. Elicitation Methods In language-learning-related studies (i.e., second language studies, second language acquisition, second language pragmatics), a variety of protocols have been employed to capture learners’ use of attenuation of which we are incapable of describing in this text.3 The studies mostly investigate the acquisition and pragmatic development among learners. However, not all studies here have centered on mitigation. Instead, they have examined speech acts (e.g., refusals), and within that context, they have attested to mitigation using protocols such as (DCTs) and role-plays, among learners of Spanish and English (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2007, 2010; EconomidouKogetsidis, 2008; Hernández & Boero, 2018; Martínez-Flor & UsoJuan, 2010; Placencia, 1996; Salazar-Campillo, 2008),4 to name a few. However, these studies which have also centered on speech acts have generated their analyses from different sets of data, and the realization of mitigation has not been the locus of the studies. Other researchers have used another controlled protocol: Elicited Production Tasks (EPTs) in which participants are given a cue, and they are asked to produce a response (e.g., Lovejoy, 2015). Open-ended role-plays have also been employed (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2007, 2008b; García, 1989; Márquez Reiter, 2000). In addition to the aforementioned, we need to investigate intuitions and awareness. Ishihara (2010), for instance, has suggested that to measure pragmatic attainment, we make use of intuition and retrospection

158  Methodological Considerations protocols, DCTs, role-plays, recordings of natural conversations, and observations of natural conversations in language-learning contexts in order to measure pragmatic competence, all which can be applied to the assess the acquisition of linguistic attenuation. An interesting protocol used by Lovejoy (2015) is that of a film narration recall. In it, learners and natives argued (and therefore mitigate their speech) as they recounted parts of a film they had previously seen. Also, in the context of arguments, a ranking conversation in which paired participants discussed a topic of importance and argued to rank their preferred solutions to the problems. Several researchers have also employed an oral questionnaire (e.g., Abdolrezapour & Dastjerdi, 2012; Barros García &Terkourafi, 2014; Koike, 1994). Others have analyzed passages in which a mitigating device or strategy was employed and the pragmatic contexts in which they emerged (e.g., Cordella, 1996; Kotthoff, 1993). Finally, there are studies that have examined mitigation in peer review critiques of writing (e.g., O’Donnell Christoffersen, 2015). We cannot suggest that there is a plethora of English and Spanish research concerning studies that have only investigated the manifestation of linguistic mitigation in an institutional discursive setting. However, we do find several commonalities related to how data have been collected in these studies: They have used natural, spontaneous speech, recorded samples of speakers who represent an institution (e.g., Delbene, 2004; Flores-Ferrán, 2009, 2012; De Rycker, 2014; Stungiené, 2006; Martinovski, 2006). These studies have analyzed mitigation in English or Spanish in the following institutional contexts: courts, hospitals, customer service, medical, therapy, business, academic debates, conference papers, to name a few. It merits mentioning that we can also find studies on mitigation in many other languages both among native speakers and second language learners in which a variety of protocols have been employed (e.g., Caffi, 2007). Nguyen (2019) researched data collection methods in L2 pragmatics. While the study did not attend to mitigation per se, it discussed protocols employed in L2 pragmatic production, comprehension and perception, and pragmatic decision-making processes in approximately 246 studies. Similar protocols can also be employed to investigate attenuation in native speakers and language learners. The study merits mentioning since it attends to the methods and protocols commonly used by many studies. In discussing this matter, Nguyen also suggests that one method is not better than another. In particular, Nguyen discusses empirical work conducted on pragmatic production, naturally occurring data, conversation tasks, role-plays, DCTs, pragmatic comprehension measures, and protocols related to pragmatic perception, among other concerns.

Chapter 6 159 There are several considerations we need to address when designing elicitation instruments or conducting observations. These questions and many more can be applied to contexts in which we aim to obtain data on attenuation: • Do the protocols/instruments we select tend to generate attenuated strategies and devices (including key elements such as sensitivity to social status, social distance, and the level of imposition)? • If conducting observations, are we able to control for external (e.g., age, gender, social status) and internal features (e.g., prosodic, nonverbal gestures, grammatical)? • Do the protocols generate enough material (i.e., sufficient tokens, examples, instances) that can account for the sensitivity to differences among interlocutors (e.g., age, gender)? • Is the protocol(s) suited to capture how speakers initiate or respond to interactions related to attenuated speech? • Does the protocol(s) generate enough material (e.g., oral, written, online) that can substantiate tendencies, behaviors? • Does the protocol(s) have the capacity to serve its goals: Capture mitigation and the metalinguistic perspectives (e.g., awareness) of the participants? • If technology-based, can the protocol(s) simulate mitigated behavior (interactions), and can these data be used to triangulate with natural, spontaneous speech? Oral Narratives To elicit an oral narrative of personal experience, the guide used in FloresFerrán (2002) was informed by Labov (1972, 1984). Namely, in the pyramid that follows, we find a structured reformulation of a question which enables the addressee or the participant of the study to remain speaking, producing narratives, one story after another. The structure also enables the researcher to use the same cues in order to avoid moving towards an interview protocol or a conversation. It also contributes to gathering a similar and consistent corpus from different speakers. The protocol I have used over the past 17 years stems from what was known as a sociolinguistic interview (Labov, 1972). However, we are not suggesting that the protocol be implemented as a Q&A interaction since the questions may influence responses, something we need to avoid. In following the pyramid, the researcher produces the prompt, only the first one. Then, the study participant produces the narrative. It is critical that the interviewer or researcher does not interrupt the participant so

160  Methodological Considerations that the participant does not become influenced by the language of the interviewer or researcher:

Figure 6.1  Eliciting an oral narrative of personal experience

The pyramid represents a guide used to elicit oral narratives of personal experience. It is not meant to be used entirely. Instead, it is administered sequentially if an addressee hesitates in producing a narrative or produces one that is too short. For instance, the first question is primarily devoted to asking the participant(s) to narrate a story freely, an important event. While several participants may delay or not have an idea of what to narrate, they do, if given a long pause, produce a story. Not all questions have to be asked since, at times, speakers produce a long narrative immediately. However, if a speaker or participant stumbles, has no idea of what to narrate, or recounts an abridged story, then we move to the second question, a prompt that merely represents a reformulation of the first question. If there is hesitation, then we move to the third question, which provides a lead or guide. In using this technique, we can generate long narratives that may contain instances of mitigated expressions since at times speakers begin to inhabit the characters which are in their stories, and often act out what the characters of their story say. Furthermore, this technique allows us to capture instances that are not being elicited by a controlled prompt. While this technique may contain instances of attenuated speech, we recommend that this oral narrative is paired with other protocols to triangulate data. Alone, an oral narrative

Chapter 6 161 of personal experience may not yield a comprehensive analysis of mitigating devices and strategies. The narratives do not have a set boundary for how long they should be. Naturally, the longer the narrative is, the higher the likelihood that we will attest to attenuated devices. However, participants speak at different rates of speed, and a rule of thumb may be to have longer narratives of more than 30 minutes, if possible. Moreover, there are other benefits for gathering oral narratives; they can be used to compare speakers’ linguistic features in longer stretches of discourse and longer utterances. More­ over, they can be used again to explore other linguistic aspects. Perhaps the only disadvantage of using oral narratives of personal experience to investigate attenuation is that the narratives have to be transcribed and this activity is time-consuming. However, the richness of the data extracted from the narratives can practically annul the disadvantage. In some instances, we may find multiple expressions of attenuation while in other transcripts we may uncover only a few. However, excerpts extracted from authentic speech turn out to be extremely rewarding. In many oral narratives of personal experience, if using the guide previously mentioned, we will generate conflict-related material. Conflict Talk Eliciting conflict talk can also contribute to an examination of attenuation. With regard to conflict talk, we can apply Grimshaw’s (1990) principles of conflict. He posits that argumentativeness and contentiousness are characteristic of this type of discourse. While contentiousness may be avoided in certain interactions, in instances where a speaker is recounting an adversarial incident, problems and oppositions are discussed and, to avoid conflict, the speakers may soften their utterances and unintentionally use mitigating strategies that decrease tension or the graveness of a situation. For instance, Grimshaw (1990, p. 11) posited that in conflict narratives, we may even find that “culture/speech community members also recognize (that) other varieties of conflict and conflict-related talk such as apologies, gossip, insults . . . can be embedded in various sorts of conflictful interaction . . .” Further, Labov and Fanshel (1977, pp. 58–59) maintain that crucial actions in establishing coherence of sequencing in conversation are not such speech acts as requests or assertions, but rather challenges, defenses, and retreats, which have to do with the status of the participants, their rights and obligations, and their changing relationships in terms of social organization. Thus, we propose that a challenge-related interaction is useful to examine mitigation since these characteristics are present: conflict, contentiousness, problems, and so on.

162  Methodological Considerations Lovejoy (2015) is perhaps one of the first studies to employ several protocols to elicit conflict talk. As mentioned in a previous chapter, her study was guided by instruments or protocols that would be representative of conflict talk, disagreements, disputes, and oppositions, protocols that were administered to native speakers and learners of Spanish in order to capture mitigating devices and participation behavior. The study operated under the premise that arguments are known to be dispreferred actions (Pomerantz, 1984) and thus pose a challenge or threat, thereby mediating the presence of mitigating expressions. Earlier I mentioned that prosody concerning mitigation has been underinvestigated. Concerning prosody-related studies, scholars have employed the Oral Corpus of Spontaneous Speech by Cantero Serena, De Araújo, Liu, Wu, and Zanatta (2002) and, Devís Herraiz and Cantero Serena (2014) which attend to Catalán and Spanish, respectively, and serve a basis from which we can model our research. Cabedo Nebot’s (2016) seminal work specifically examined prosody concerning mitigation and used recordings generated from Val.Es.Co.2.0, another large Spanish corpus. These valuable studies can be used as models for an investigation of English prosody and mitigation. However, in recording naturally occurring speech, we need to ensure that sound quality is good and that our software is able to capture the nuances related to mitigation and prosody.

Identifying Appropriate Data and Data Collection When I note that naturally occurring spontaneous speech is the ideal corpus from which we can investigate mitigation, I need to mention that other studies that have investigated mitigation in digital interactions (e.g., Hong, 2015), computer-mediated data (e.g., Sampietro, 2016) which can be considered representative of natural, spontaneous communication depending on the type of interaction (e.g., emails, chats, blogs). In mentioning the ‘ideal’ corpus from which to investigate how mitigation manifests, we must consider that role-plays, and naturally occurring speech may be suitable for different studies. For instance, Félix-Brasdefer (2007) investigated differences in reliability and validity in the use of data collected in role-plays, which he suggests approximate naturally occurring speech. The study concluded that naturally occurring data represent the most valid method of measuring different aspects of speech acts in social interactions. Although this study did not examine the realization of mitigation per se, it suggests that open role-plays offer advantages over naturally occurring spontaneous speech. Félix-Brasdefer (2007) maintains that role-plays allow us to control for sociolinguistic variables such as age, gender, language proficiency, and others. To add to this discussion, I note here that the work conducted by Briz and Albelda (2013) ES.POR.ATENUACION, which has been mentioned throughout this book, represents the most extensive corpus to date in which researchers investigate mitigation in Spanish. Our research and

Chapter 6 163 teaching can benefit from this source. This particular corpus provides for a more homogenous depiction of mitigation in Spanish (currently includes Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela), and for Portuguese (it includes Portugal and Brazil). We can advance our research or draw from this body since Briz has researched this matter through a very long trajectory from 1995 through 2012. Moreover, we can also apply aspects of their study design when we investigate mitigation in English and Spanish. However, for English, we also have a large corpus with a long trajectory of research conducted by Blum-Kulka and Olshtain’s (1984): CrossCultural Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP). It represents a body of work that, in theory, addresses mitigation but focuses on only two speech acts: requests and apologies. If we do not use pre-existing corpora and wish to delve into designing our protocols, we can use several different instruments to elicit data and, thus, triangulate. We will weave several thoughts about how these instruments can also be employed to gather data about pragmatics and attenuation. For instance, Félix-Brasdefer and Hasler-Barker (2017) examine the techniques employed in experimental pragmatics to elicit production, to discuss the perceptions, and comprehension matters related to pragmatics. Based on tasks and issues related to reliability and validity, they discuss the benefits of employing natural data, spontaneous speech following Labovian (1972) methodology, a structured interview. The interview consists of a series of questions (hierarchically designed) that generate a narrative of personal experience or a conversation (see the pyramid presented earlier in this chapter). Both types of methods can be used to investigate the manifestation of mitigated speech. However, it is plausible to suggest that in instances in which a researcher is not present and guiding the development of a narrative, we may not be able to collect as many tokens that represent mitigated speech unless the researcher convenes a group of speakers that may discuss a highly controversial matter. For instance, argument-style conversations generate material that is appropriate to examine attenuated speech since the interaction requires speakers to expose their positions and oppositions, and these perspectives are usually expressed in an attenuated manner. The main idea is that conflict should be present if there is an interaction rather than a monologue narrative. For instance, Labov and Fanshel (1977, p. 346) maintain that mitigating strategies are also employed to mediate the conflict. Thus, the prompts should be carefully designed to generate conflict-related talk. Félix-Brasdefer and Hasler-Barker (2017) also discuss two other instruments or protocols that elicit production data but from controlled conditions: DCTs which I have discussed earlier and Written Discourse Completion Tasks (WDCT). DCT measures are not interactive. They rely on the responses provided by learners or participants in a study and provide simulated situations to elicit a response. If well crafted, these two protocols can be used to generate utterances that contain attenuated

164  Methodological Considerations linguistic behaviors. Both can be administered in paper and pencil or computer format. Later, we can triangulate the data. Role-plays, as mentioned before, also serve as simulations and can approximate face-to-face interactions. However, it is important that they are recorded, in some cases video recorded, to capture gestures, kinesicrelated communication. If the design and prompts are appropriate, they can be used to examine the realization of mitigated speech. We can use this type of protocol to examine linguistic features such as discourse markers, pauses, the features related to power and distance, conversational routines, parenthetical verbs, among other features. We can opt to use open role-plays in which we designate one actor’s role, or we can supply a situation in which learners or native speakers can create their scenario, and from that interaction, we can observe issues related to the mitigating strategies and devices that the interlocutors employ. Finally, although multiple-choice instruments are not representative of naturally occurring speech, they may have value. We suggest here that if we wish to address novice language learners or capture metalinguistic awareness at early stages of acquisition, then we may have to subscribe to this type of protocol since novice learners are likely to produce mitigated expressions or exhibit limited ranges of expressions. They may even repeat similar strategies and devices. By providing them with choices, we can detect their sensitivity to other options. Therefore, and in following Jianda (2007), we can use a multiple-choice protocol when needed. To employ this type of instrument, we provide a scenario and then offer the participant three responses, so novices choose the most appropriate one. The context of the scenarios can contain matters related to social distance, gender, age, and other factors to enable the assessment to capture whether the novice language learner is sensitive to attenuation. Nguyen’s (2019) survey revealed that over time, researchers have moved away from DCTs and have leaned towards the use of naturalistic data. To this, I add that there is a need to increase and connect research and teaching practices in order to fine-tune how we triangulate data. Further, we need to find ways to incorporate online protocols that can be used to investigate mitigation among L2 and native speakers, mainly if we are interested in obtaining the inner thinking of speakers and why they mitigate.

Metalinguistic Awareness Metalinguistic awareness is crucial for us to assess when we wish to obtain speakers’ or learners’ perceptions, reactions, or inner workings and why they choose a linguistic feature to mitigate. Researchers (e.g., Culpeper, Marti, Mei, Nevala, & Schauer, 2010) who have employed these protocols with learners or other participants report that they generate lengthy responses as speakers discuss why they responded the

Chapter 6 165 way they did in a specific interaction, especially if we allow responses in the native language of the participants. For instance, learners can view their role-play and after the viewing, we can probe metalinguistic awareness. Alternatively, participants can view a silent film (with an incomplete ending) and argue with a partner about the ending of the film, and then we can probe their perceptions regarding their responses and perspectives. Other ways to elicit data are proposed by Félix-Brasdefer and HaslerBarker (2017). The authors discuss rating scales, verbal reports, written multiple-choice completion tasks (which are appropriate for novice learners through advanced acquisition stages), judgment tasks that measure whether a statement is pragmatically appropriate, among other protocols. In sum, there is a myriad of instruments that can be used to elicit data on the use of attenuating devices and strategies. While we underscore the importance of naturally occurring speech, the data obtained from these and other protocols should contribute to triangulating data and generating a more comprehensive depiction of linguistic attenuation.

Coding Data Briz and Albelda (2013) posit that mitigation represents a pragmatic category, a strategy, a rhetorical activity, a social activity, and they propose a model which examines the multiple functions that attenuation serves, linguistic and non-linguistic strategies employed to attenuate such as the following (to which I have added): • • • • •

The lexicon (including clauses, phrases) employed to attenuate, Syntactic or structural positioning of the attenuating devices, Factors related to interlocutors such as image and cultural notions, Aspects related to the illocutionary force, Situational-discursive factors such as the topic and purpose of the interaction, • The hierarchical, affiliate relationship between interlocutors, • Speakers’ age, gender, educational attainment, register and style, and • Discursive category (e.g., institutional, non-institution, social, formal). The constellations of factors that they examine concerning mitigation also include supra-segmental concerns of tone and stress and whether the interaction is based on a formal as opposed to an informal interaction. Their proposed theoretical framework also takes into account coding for dialectal differences all within the context of a discursive corpus.5 In the coding of variables, and in an attempt to universalize a theory of mitigation, Albelda Marco (2012), Cestero Mancera and Albelda Marco

166  Methodological Considerations (2012), and Briz Gómez (2011) maintain that these three primary functions have been found to condition attenuation universally: • protection of self, • prevention, and • repair. Besides, they note that the subfactor of self-protection, excluding the speaker’s image, can be provisionally coded as a sub-variable since it is not clear whether mitigation can manifest in situations where ‘image’ is not compromised. For instance, Albelda Marco, Briz Gómez, Cestero Mancera, Kotwica, and Villalba Ibañez (2014) have pointed to the following subfactors as functions related to mitigation, factors we need to code and analyze: • self-image (protection of self), • avoidance of responsibility if it affects the self-image, • avoidance of responsibility (or commitment) that can damage or pose a threat to self, self-protection, • worry for what others will say or to guard appearances, • political correctness when speaking about a specific subject matter, and • minimize self-praising. After a thorough analysis of mitigation presented in previous chapters, we know there are more factors, such as creating solidarity, increasing closeness-friendliness, rejecting treatment, and espousing political views, all very important which we need to take into account. Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) also provide a coding guide that may be applied to examine instances of mitigation (albeit devices or strategies). The project attends to native and learners of English, and it focuses on the realization of requests and apologies. While they only focus on these two speech acts, it merits noting that this project investigates variability: • cross-culturally, • situationally, and • individually (primarily among learners but can be applied to native speakers of same and different dialects). These are three critical aspects we need to consider when investigating attenuation. The study uses a DCT protocol to conduct a fine-grain analysis: They define a unit of analysis whether it is the head act of a proposition, and adjuncts to a head act. All these segments are examined concerning directness, among many other aspects, and can contribute

Chapter 6 167 to an examination of mitigated speech and writing, a consideration that should also be useful to the study of Spanish mitigation.

Summary We have discussed the importance of the types of methods we employ to elicit material for our research. In this brief chapter, we have recommended the use of a mixed-method approach to investigate attenuation (qualitative and quantitative). Following Creswell’s (2003) work, we have presented guiding questions we need to formulate to situate a comprehensive study design. The chapter also presented segments of Briz and Albelda (2013) and Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), coding guides which represent ways we can attend to the organization and collection of data of linguistic and non-linguistic variables that may affect the realization of attenuated speech or writing. If we employ the constellation of factors they recommend, we would be contributing to advancing research and improving instructional practices. We have also discussed two studies and how they were designed. The chapter also explained how to elicit data, the choices of protocols researchers have employed to generate attenuated linguistic behavior, and the chapter implicitly calls for more consistency in our research in order to draw comparisons and advance the field, as these are crucial elements when we reach the applied aspects of teaching mitigation.

Notes 1. The reader is advised to refer to the article Flores-Ferrán (2009). Are you referring to me? The variable use of YO and UNO in oral discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 41. 1810–1824. 2. For a full description of the study, the reader is advised to see Flores-Ferrán (2010). An examination of mitigation strategies used in Spanish psychotherapeutic discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 42. 1964–1981. 3. See Culpeper, Mackey, and Taguchi (2018); Taguchi (2015); and Ishihara and Cohen (2010) for a detailed depiction of data elicitation methods in the field of pragmatics. 4. It should be noted that several researchers have employed a combination of two or more protocols such as a DCT and role-play. 5. The reader is advised to consult Briz and Albelda (2013) for an in-depth description of the coding guide we can use to code variables associated to mitigation: Una propuesta teórica y metodológica para el analysis de la atenuación lingüística en español y portugués. La base de un proyecto en común. Onomázein, 28. Diciembre 2013. (DOI:10.7764/onomazein.28.21).

168  Methodological Considerations

References Abdolrezapour, P., & Dastjerdi, H. V. (2012). Examining mitigation in refusals: A cross-cultural study of Iranian and American speech communities. Sociolinguistic Studies, 6(3), 519–541. Albelda Marco, M. (2012). La atenuación lingüística como fenómeno variable. Oralia, 15, 77–124. Albelda Marco, M., Briz Gómez, A., Cestero Mancera, A. M., Kotwica, D., & Villalba Ibañez, C. (2014). Ficha metodológica para el análisis pragmático de la atenuación en corpus discursivos del español (Es.Por.Atenuación). Oralia, 17, 7–62. Barros García, M. J., & Terkourafi, M. (2014). First-order politeness in rapprochement and distancing cultures: Understandings and uses of politeness by Spanish native speakers from Spain and Spanish nonnative speakers from the U.S. Pragmatics, 24(1), 1–34. Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1984). Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 196–214. Briz Gómez, A. (2011). Cortesía, atenuación y partículas discursivas. In C. Fuentes, E. Alcaide, & E. Brenes (Eds.), Aproximaciones a la (des)cortesía verbal en español (pp. 13–26). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Briz Gómez, A., & Albelda Marco, M. (2013). Una propuesta teórica y metodológica para el análisis de la atenuación lingüística en español y portugués. La base de un proyecto en común (ES.POR.ATENUACIÓN). Onomázein, 28, 290–319. Cabedo Nebot, A. (2016). La función de la atenuación y la configuración prosódica: un estudio a partir de un corpus de español coloquial. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 27, 55–73. Caffi, C. (2007). Mitigation. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Cantero Serena, F., De Araújo, M. A., Liu, Y., Wu, Y., & Zanatta, A. (2002). Patrones melódicos de la entonación interrogativa del español en habla espontánea. In M. Barrios (Ed.), Actas del II Congreso de Fonética Experimental (pp. 118–123). Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla. Cestero Mancera, A. M., & Albelda Marco, M. (2012). La atenuación como fenómeno variable. Oralia, 12, 77–124. Cordella, M. (1996). Confrontational style in Spanish arguments: Pragmatics and teaching outlook. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 9(2), 148–162. Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2011). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Culpeper, J., Mackey, A., & Taguchi, N. (2018). Second language pragmatics: From theory to research. New York, NY: Routledge. Culpeper, J., Marti, L., Mei, M., Nevala, M., & Schauer, G. (2010). Cross-cultural variation in the perception of impoliteness: A study of impoliteness events reported by students in England, China, Finland, Germany and Turkey. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(4), 597–624.

Chapter 6 169 De Rycker, A. G. H. (2014). Mitigation in turning down business proposals across cultures: The case for pragmatic competence instruction. The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 20(1), 87–100. Delbene, R. (2004). The function of mitigation in the context of a socially stigmatized disease: A case study in a public hospital in Montevideo, Uruguay. Spanish in Context, 1(2), 241–266. Devís Herraiz, E., & Cantero Serena, F. J. (2014). The intonation of mitigating politeness in Catalán. Journal of Politeness Research, 10(1), 127–149. Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2008). Internal and external mitigation in interlanguage request production: The case of Greek learners of English. Journal of Politeness Research, 4(1), 111–137. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2007). Natural speech vs. elicited data: A comparison of natural and role play requests in Mexican Spanish. Spanish in Context, 4(2), 159–185. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2008a). Sociopragmatic variation: Dispreferred responses in Mexican and Dominican Spanish. Journal of Politeness Research, 4(1), 81–110. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2008b). Teaching pragmatics in the classroom: Instruction of mitigation in Spanish as a foreign language. Hispania, 91(2), 479–494. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2010). Intra-lingual pragmatic variation in Mexico City and San José, Costa Rica: A focus on regional differences in female requests. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(11), 2992–3011. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., & Hasler-Barker, M. (2017). Elicited data. In A. Barron (Ed.), Pragmatics handbook (pp. 27–40). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2002). A sociolinguistic perspective on the use of subject personal pronouns in Spanish narratives of Puerto Ricans in New York City. Munich, Germany: Lincom-Europa. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2009). Are you referring to me? The variable use of UNO and YO in oral discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(9), 1810–1824. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2010). An examination of mitigation strategies used in Spanish psychotherapeutic discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 1964–1980. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2012). Pragmatic variation in therapeutic discourse: An examination of mitigating devices employed by Dominican female clients and a Cuban American therapist. In C. F. Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues. Impact Studies in Language and Society (pp. 81–112). Philadelphia: Benjamins. García, C. (1989). Disagreeing and requesting by Americans and Venezuelans. Linguistics and Education, 1, 299–322. Greene, J. C., Caracelli, V., & Graham, W. (1989). Toward a conceptual framework for mixed-method evaluation designs. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 11(3), 255–274. Grimshaw, A. (1990). Conflict talk. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, J. J. (2011). Interactional sociolinguistics: A personal perspective. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 215–228). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Haverkate, H. (1985). Referential de-focusing in modern Spanish. Hispanic Linguistics, 2(1), 1–21. Hernández, T. A., & Boero, P. (2018). Explicit intervention for Spanish pragmatic development during short-term study abroad: An examination of learner request production and cognition. Foreign Language Annals, 51(2), 389–410.

170  Methodological Considerations Hong, C. (2015). Making complaints-proficiency effects on instructor- and peerdirected email correspondence. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 6(1), 53–60. Hymes, D. H. (1961). The ethnography of speaking. In T. Gladwin & W. C. Sturtevant (Eds.), Anthropology and human behavior. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington [Reprinted in Fishman, J. A. (Ed.). (1968). Reading in the sociology of language (pp. 99–119). The Hague: De Gruyter Mouton.] Ishihara, N. (2010). Assessment of pragmatics in the classroom. In N. Ishihara & A. D. Cohen (Eds.), Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet (pp. 286–317). London and New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. London and New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Jianda, L. (2007). Developing a pragmatics test for Chinese EFL learners. Language Testing, 24(3), 391–415. Koike, D. (1994). Negation in Spanish and English suggestions and requests: Mitigating effects. Journal of Pragmatics, 21(5), 513–526. Kotthoff, H. (1993). Disagreement and concession in disputes: On the context sensitivity of preference structures. Language in Society, 22, 193–216. Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, W. (1984). Field methods of the project on linguistic change. In J. Baugh & J. Sherzer (Eds.), Language in use: Readings in sociolinguistics (pp. 43–70). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York, NY: Academic Press. Lovejoy, K. (2015). Learning to interact in Spanish as a second language: An examination of mitigation and participation in conversational arguments (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Rutgers University. Márquez Reiter, R. (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A contrastive study of requests and apologies. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Martinez-Flor, A., & Uso-Juan, E. (Eds.). (2010). Speech act performance: Theoretical, empirical and methodological issues (pp. xiv–277). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Martinovski, B. (2006). Framework for analysis of mitigation in courts. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(12), 2065–2086. Nguyen, T. T. M. (2019). Data collection methods in L2 pragmatics research: An overview. In N. Taguchi (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and pragmatics (pp. 195–211). New York, NY: Routledge. O’Donnell Christoffersen, K. (2015). Mitigation of disagreement in peer review among L2 learners and native speakers in a college writing class. GiST, 11, 45–62. Placencia, M. E. (1996). Politeness in Ecuadorian Spanish. Multilingua, 15(1), 13–34. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (Eds.),

Chapter 6 171 Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 57–101. Salazar-Campillo, P. (2008). Task analysis on mitigation in the speech act of requesting: Discourse completion task and role-play. Linguistic Insights-Studies in Language and Communication, 68, 143–161. Sampietro, A. (2016). Exploring the punctuating effect of emoji in Spanish Whats­App chats. Lenguas Modernas, 47, 91–113. Schegloff, E. (1993). Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation. Research on Language in Social Interaction, 26(1), 99–128. Stungiené, A. (2006). Mitigation in academic debates and conference papers in linguistics. Kalb ir Kontekstai, 1, 159–190. Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48, 1–50.

7 Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate

Introduction This chapter has its goal situated in the teaching and learning of linguistic mitigation. In particular, it addresses the importance of teaching language learners (learners) about attenuation and increasing their awareness about this communicative strategy. The contents of this chapter can be applied to language-learning contexts, albeit in English, Spanish, French, and any language. First, we discuss issues related to pragmatics and explicit instruction. The section also provides suggestions on how to initially craft a language lesson associated with only one mitigation device, parenthetical verbs, and it provides a broad instructional guide. After these sections, we go on to briefly address general aspects related to instruction on mitigation in English and Spanish. Félix-Brasdefer (2004, 2019), Ishihara and Cohen (2010), and Taguchi (2019) thoroughly discuss the teaching of pragmatics in Spanish and English; therefore we focus our attention on the aspects related to the teaching of mitigation. In this chapter, we modify and apply their recommendations. The value of pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic concerns in language instruction can never be overstated. Leech (1983) and Thomas (1983) have suggested that pragma-linguistic knowledge consists of two components. First, pragma-linguistic competence refers to our understanding and performance of the conventions of language use. It consists of learning the linguistic resources available in a given language, the learning of how to communicate expressions, and how they are used in contextually appropriate situations. The second component of pragmatic knowledge refers to socio-pragmatic competence. It relates to the knowledge and performance consistent with the social norms in specific situations in a given society. To this, we can add a third component of language instruction, one mentioned earlier in the text: Pragmatic knowledge also consists of the available linguistic repertoire a learner may bring to the table, their L1 or first language. We do not consider language learners as empty vessels; they come to us with a language and culture and exhibit linguistic behaviors particular to their L1 linguistic

Chapter 7 173 and cultural behavior. Therefore, a third component we need to consider is the socio-pragmatic norms and the conventions they rely on as they begin to acquire or increase their proficiency in a target language. Said differently, their pragmatic knowledge is initially informed by their first language and culture and the L1 practices may not resemble the target language. We cannot consider language learning as unidirectional. The third component should thus consider the similarities and contrasts of the socio-pragmatic performance between L1 and L2. In particular, mitigation, much like many other aspects of pragmatics, is rarely explicitly taught to language learners. It is essential that learners receive exposure to this phenomenon in a variety of contexts. Unlike writing, which is planned and can be edited by the author, oral communication is instantaneous and learners face many challenges when crafting expressions that may require some padding, softening, or cushioning. Furthermore, their L1 may not have similar linguistic strategies to their target language, and thus a learner, for example, may inappropriately transfer the L1 linguistic behaviors to their target language and culture. The kernel of learners’ challenges is here: At the time learners are acquiring language and shaping their thoughts when speaking, they are simultaneously constructing utterances that they deem grammatical and can best express their messages. They also are faced with the challenge of determining whether their statements need to be mitigated or how they reduce the illocutionary force of a message. Further, they need to balance these thoughts with how the expressions fulfill the appropriate social context given the type of interlocutor(s) and the specific context. All these considerations represent an increase in learners’ cognitive load. We also need to consider that attenuation represents a psycho-socialaffective linguistic-pragmatic process. It represents a considerable endeavor and load for learners, albeit novice to more advanced. Therefore, they must be explicitly taught how to use mitigating strategies and devices in their target language. This perspective assumes that all learners of any language prefer to produce utterances that are felicitous, contextappropriate, and pragmatically and grammatically as close as a nearnative speaker as they can. We also have to keep in mind that there is no one formula, rule, lexical item, or syntactic structure that categorically represents attenuated linguistic behavior. Instead, knowledge of how to mitigate requires that utterances be constructed in such a way that creates a positive effect on its hearer. So the learner needs to take into account their knowledge of the target language and their addressee’s knowledge of the target language. For instance, when native speakers mitigate an expression, they tap into their linguistic repertoire to downgrade their message, to convey indirectness, to avoid being abrupt, among many other functions. They

174  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate too take into account their listener, but they are not as concerned with grammaticality or constructing the message in a felicitous manner, or thinking about which lexical or linguistic feature they need to employ in every utterance. Presumably, learners may not be cognizant of the socio-pragmatic, affective, and cultural aspects of their target language they need to tap into unless they have: 1. received explicitly been instructed, 2. socio-pragmatic similarities between L1 and target language, 3. received sufficient input in their social network and feedback that reinforces and increases their sensitivity to attenuate their messages, and 4. a built-in awareness. Most research conducted on learners has relied on data generated by probing the expression of speech acts (e.g., refusals, apologies, requests). In particular, researchers have examined the acquisition of politenessrelated features within speech acts; studies that may not have thoroughly investigated mitigation. There are benefits and limitations when we use discourses only associated with speech acts to teach about mitigated expressions, as I mentioned in previous chapters. In general, the benefit of teaching mitigation based on the speech act of a refusal, for example, allows instructors and learners to focus on one context such as ‘how to refuse an invitation’ and the mitigating devices and strategies which are purposefully related to that particular speech act. Also, instruction can attend to different levels of proficiency when focusing on one type of speech act. However, the limitation in using discourse related to a speech act such as a refusal or complaint is that it cannot capture a comprehensive manifestation of mitigating devices and strategies. That is, many expressions do not become part of the instructional material presented to a learner. However, if we intend to capture patterns and changes in the oral performance (i.e., acquisition) among distinct learners’ proficiencies within a narrow scope, then parsing the teaching of mitigation according to different speech acts may be pedagogically more convenient. That is, if we teach or investigate how refusals are produced among learners at different levels of proficiency, we are then able to depict and predict developmental patterns. Similarly, if we can examine mitigation through the use of various instructional tasks (e.g., role-plays, skits, DCTs, metalinguistic awareness interviews), we then are also able to measure acquisition which, in turn, informs our research and instructional practices. However, we have reiterated this point: If we only provide instruction or experiment how mitigation manifests in specific speech acts, we may be focusing on a limited range of strategies and devices used for only

Chapter 7 175 these contexts, not the full extent that a learner needs to acquire and use freely in communication as we attested in previous excerpts. A limited range of attenuated expressions may suffice for novice learners; however, for higher-level proficiency (including adults), we need to provide a wide range of attenuating structures, lexicon, and features.

On Teaching Pragmatics In the advent of the development of communicative competence in the field of language instruction, we found a turn of events in how language instruction had to address communicative strategies. That is, we moved from the early 1970s where language instruction was based more on rote memorization, repetition, and grammar rule-based instruction to a focus on communication in the 1980s. Besides, with the onset of Bilingual Education in the 1970s in the United States, we began nurturing the notion that we should be shaping language learners to be bilingual rather than monolingual, but this notion chiefly applied to learners of English in the U.S. However, the culture of language instruction took a new turn. English Language Learners (ELLs) residing in the U.S. were expected to be proficient in English while gradually abandoning their first language. Nonetheless, the same expectations were not applied to foreign language instruction in the U.S. At the time, foreign languages were considered a subject, not a vehicle in which we attended to communicative competence. Only in the very late part of the 20th century has the teaching of World Languages focused on communicative competence. With this in mind, then, classroom-based instruction and study abroad programs, for example, have re-shaped their perspectives on language instruction, making it abundantly clear that the goal of learning a foreign or world language was to enable its learners to achieve a near-native fluency and allow them to interact with native speakers. This latter statement has become even more accentuated with globalization. Currently, classroom instruction has thus turned to a more production-based, communicative focus. Therefore, as we attend to increasing communicative fluency in learners, we cannot leave behind language instruction on pragmatics and pragmatic awareness. Cross-cultural awareness and pragmatics, for instance, entail an understanding of how to perform specific communicative functions in a particular context. There are two concerns we need to consider: To what extent and how early does explicit instruction on mitigation become essential for language learners? • How can language instruction attend to the interface between the socio-pragmatic-affective and cultural aspects of attenuation and communication? •

176  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate

Explicit Instruction The study of language learning from a social perspective views language as socially oriented and, thus, crucial for language learners. Salaberry and Cohen (2006, p. 159) have stated that “the relevance of teaching . . . pragmatic knowledge cannot be overemphasized, given the importance of pragmatic abilities for communicating successfully in the second language and the daunting challenges facing learners in attempting to be pragmatically appropriate”. Recent research (e.g., Ishihara & Cohen, 2010; Taguchi, 2019) has pointed to the need to provide explicit instruction in the teaching of pragmatics. However, studies have primarily addressed the acquisition of pragmatics within the realm of speech acts such as refusals, requests, and complaints and have suggested that within the treatment of such speech acts, mitigation may manifest. However, the phenomenon of attenuation is not restricted to a speech act per se; it is pervasive in our communication as we have explained in the previous chapters. If we go back to the excerpts provided in the previous chapters, we are made aware that the interactions do not rely solely on speech acts and that there are diverse motivating elements that emerge as mitigating signals. A great deal of effort has gone into empirical work on the instruction, learning, and assessments related to pragmatics among learners. We should integrate the knowledge obtained from these studies (e.g., Culpeper, Mackey, & Taguchi, 2018; Taguchi, 2019) as they serve as foundations for our language research and instruction. Furthermore, empirical studies should not stand alone; we must use them as building blocks and they can serve as guides for language learning and research. While I assert that our work should not only center on speech acts, I want to point out that the intersection between pragmatics and mitigation using speech acts can and should be expanded to look at mitigation from other angles. For instance, Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984, p. 196) have suggested that: for applied linguists, especially those concerned with communicative language learning and teaching, cross-cultural research in pragmatics is essential in coping with the applied aspect of the issue of universality: To what extent is it possible to specify the particular pragmatic rules of use of a given language, rules which second language learners will have to acquire in order to attain successful communication in the target language? This question should also be at the heart of teaching about mitigation since it does represent a communicative strategy. Language instructors, therefore, cannot have one curriculum, a static one, that is universal for all learners. The reasons for this thought are several. First, our learners

Chapter 7 177 come from different first languages and cultures and have pragmatic practices that are faithful to their L1 linguistic environments. Second, the proficiency of our learners is not all that clear: What we call an intermediate learner of English or Spanish in the U.S. in a given instructional program may be an advanced learner in their respective country or another state. Therefore, perspectives and concepts related to proficiency are not universal, and this makes it challenging to identify which aspects of linguistic mitigation need to be taught first. Third, because of the various developmental stages of acquisition in a classroom context, we may need to reconsider our expectations for different proficiencies concerning how instruction can address attenuation. Furthermore, to my knowledge, language assessments (e.g., placement exams) do not assess pragmatic knowledge and knowledge related to how learners may pad, soften, or cushion their communication. So here are a few questions to think about: 1. What role does L1 play in the learning of L2 pragmatic behavior related to mitigation? 2. What model do learners seem to follow? 3. What learning context is more suitable for the instruction of mitigation. In what kinds of lessons can we distribute the learning of lexical and syntactic mitigation, for example? 4. Can we contextualize, organize, and prioritize the teaching of mitigating devices and strategies according to stages from novice learners to more advanced learners? 5. How can we incorporate authentic speech? Can we use videos, films, visuals, plays, social interactions, among others, to dissect, critique, exhibit and increase learner awareness of the use of appropriate devices and strategies, to show and reinforce learning? 6. Since language learners are usually placed in cohorts of similar or mixed levels of proficiency (e.g., at the intermediate level we may find mixes of high beginners and low advanced speakers), can we explore ways in which we can engage and expose every learner to aspects of mitigation? 7. How can we best measure the acquisition of mitigation? Can we develop pre- and post-measures after an intervention? Should we disaggregate the teaching of grammar and complex sentences while we focus on teaching lexical devices or should all internal and external structures as well as lexical items be taught simultaneously? Márquez Reiter (2000, p. 81) reminds us that pragmatic competence in language classrooms has been addressed since the 1970s (Lakoff, 1973). However, we maintain that it has been underspecified and not structurally or explicitly incorporated in language teaching and language instructional texts. Although we all wish to sensitize learners to the linguistic and cultural differences, she notes that “it is important to bear in mind

178  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate that mere exposure to appropriate pragmatic input in a second language will not necessarily lead to acquisition”. Therefore, we suggest the following when we begin teaching about mitigating devices and strategies, much like other aspects of the language we teach explicitly: Model and provide input→instruct→provide input→expand and provide input by reinforcement→measure acquisition→return to new input→evaluate.

Presentaon and modeling

More input

Measure

Input

Reinforce

Figure 7.1 Model for explicitly teaching how to employ mitigating devices and strategies

It is important to note that a learner of Spanish or English might fail to detect the amount of support needed to soften a high-imposition statement, for example. This undetected cognitive support may then cause a learner to produce an unmodified (i.e., syntactic internal and external) or non-mitigated utterance. Therefore, the cycle has to be repositioned, restated, and re-initiated to ensure that the strategies or devices are acquired. For example, learners can be shown the mitigating device or

Chapter 7 179 strategy, the function, the stressor that may motivate its use, whether an utterance requires it or is flexible and can be expressed with an internal or external modification. Further, they should be shown a model example so that they create their own. Perhaps it may be challenging for learners to acquire internal modifications, but this thought reflects only an observation. This challenge, if any, remains under-investigated. The examples presented in the next chart also should address power and distance in the situation that is being simulated, discussed, or presented. The chart provides examples and briefly explains stressors and the type of modification required. The learners need sufficient input regarding the motivation for mitigating and the kind of modification, lexical or syntactic, which they have an option to employ. Although the chart may be visually considered too formulaic, it represents only a general guide since we know that mitigating devices and strategies cannot be taught using formulaic expressions. We may consider teaching bundles, however, and explicitly assist learners in noting whether an attenuating feature can be expressed internally and externally. We can approach the devices and strategies in different ways depending on the difficulty of a syntactic structure as opposed to the difficulty of presenting a lexical item. The examples of utterances in the chart are not for young learners and, as such, should be adapted to learners’ proficiency and age. For now, they represent mere examples that should be substituted with ones more age-appropriate, if necessary. Also, they should be presented from the most simple to more complicated. We have already stated that they need to be explicitly taught with context, utterance, and interpretations according to the learners’ cultural environment and proficiency. That is, a language learner who is 40 years old has different needs (e.g., visiting a doctor’s office, at the office) then a secondary school learner (e.g., borrowing a classmate’s book). Therefore, we need to contextualize the examples to make them relevant to learners. Chart 7.1 Examples of devices and strategies, functions, stressors, and modifications that serve to attenuate Types of mitigating devices and strategies

Example(s) of Functions

Impersonal Generalize, constructions/ include hearer, shields avoid using the first person. Omission of referents

Hide agency; reduce focus of referent.

Example(s) of Modification Example of an Stressors utterance

When Internal attempting to convince or persuade someone. When speaker Internal does not wish to be center.

One has to save money. vs. You have to. . . (Uno tiene . . .) Don’t have anything to say. (ø no pude tomar las medicinas.)

(Continued)

Chart 7.1 (Continued) Types of mitigating devices and strategies

Example(s) of Functions

Example(s) of Modification Example of an Stressors utterance

Passive voice constructions

Obscure blame; avoid salient referent.

When speaker Internal does not want to be target/ salient.

Epistemic disclaimers

Avoid directive; what is forthcoming negative.

When warning, providing strong advice. Convey doubt; When not being providing straightforward. opinion.

External

Diminutive (morph)

Diminish value

Internal

Deictic expressions, Forms of address

Reflect +/distance

Discourse markers

Convey uncertainty, situate dispreferred response

Verbs TMA (e.g., conditional, subjunctive) Tag Questions

Denote (in) definiteness, project hypotheticals Engage hearer in your opinion, share doubt.

Cajolers

Seek reinforcement, include hearer; seek agreement

Prosodic features

(De)emphasize aggravation

Parenthetical Verbs

When attempting to soften imposition. When signaling a negative position/ stance. When being in doubt; when issuing negative statement. When guessing, when imagining. When wanting to persuade addressee or seek support.

Internal External

Internal

The meds were not taken (by me) vs. I didn’t take . . . (No se tomaron las . . .) Hate to tell you but . . . (Siento decirte . . .) The meds help, I think. (Las medicinas ayudan, creo.) Give me a little . . . (Dame un poquito de . . .) That guy . . . (Ese tipo . . .)

Internal External

Well, no. (Bueno, no.)

Internal

If I could . . . (Si pudiera . . .)

External

The meds can have side effects, right? (Las medicinas tienen efectos secundarios, ¿no?) I mean . . . That is. . . (ø digo . . . o sea . . .)

When wishing Internal to hide an opinion, convince, clarify. When there Internal is a need External to delay negative response.

May:::be (Quiza:::)

Chapter 7 181 Types of mitigating devices and strategies

Example(s) of Functions

Proverbs/Sayings Avoid direct statement

El qué dirán/ guardar apariencas (public appearance)

Worry about image; try to fit in

Example(s) of Modification Example of an Stressors utterance

When External providing advice, telling someone what to do. When expressing concern over potential criticism; worry about other’s opinions of yourself.

External

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. (Más vale pájaro en mano que cien volando.) I don’t think others will agree with me. (No creo que otros estarán de acuerdo conmigo.)

The next section is informed by Wannaruk (2008) and Yoshimi (2001). Although their proposal may refer to the teaching of refusals, we modify their suggestions and attempt to use them when we teach about mitigation. Concerning research about the acquisition of mitigation, one way we can dissect our goals is to focus on the expression of one or several devices and strategies, provide interventions, and then determine the thresholds of difficulty that learners confront. Namely, we parse the devices and strategies that are readily acquired (beginner levels) and move forward by determining the aspects that present more difficulty (advanced levels).

Sample Presentation Learning Target: Parenthetical verbs (PV): I think, creo, yo creo

1. Introduce PVs functions a. Learners listen to an authentic dialogue in which PVs have been issued by two speakers. These instances should include at least one in which the PV does function to attenuate. For example: Your idea is not so good, I think. (Tu idea no es tan buena, creo.) In the example, the PV ‘think’ is serving the function of downgrading, minimizing the effect of what would be a stand-alone direct criticism. It suggests that ‘your idea is not good’. Notice the syntactic position, the

182  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate utterance could be initiated with ‘I think’. This observation has to be explicitly illustrated so that learners can grasp the syntactic flexibility this PV exhibits. The use of tan ‘so’ also has to be discussed. It does not operate as a discourse marker; it denotes quantity and can escalate the expression (depending on prosodic features and context) such as in ‘your idea is not that good’. b. The instructor should explain the differences between mitigating and non-mitigating PVs. Learners receive an explanation and additional examples in the target language. Examples of other PVs should be incorporated so that learners can distinguish between the functions of PVs as mitigating devices such as ‘I believe’ (creo) and ‘I know’ ([yo] sé). Modeling should be incorporated here again. Learners should be allowed to issue new utterances with PVs in different syntactic positions.

2. Review a. The instructor reviews a transcript containing naturally occurring speech so that learners can listen or read and identify PVs in contexts similar to the ones introduced in the initial presentation and modeling phase. Later, the instructor introduces another set of PVs. b. The instructor explains the syntactic positions in which the PVs can appear: Initial-, mid-, and final position. Learners should be made aware of PVs in their respective positions. c. Prosodic features are added to enhance awareness (We:::ll, bue:::no; soooo, ta:::n).

3. Create a. Learner pairs create a dialogue in which at least three PVs are used as mitigating devices and three as non-mitigating. b. Other learners listen to conversations created by each pair and critique the use of PVs.

4. Craft authentic speech and meta-awareness building a. Learners listen to unrehearsed conversations, short dialogues, and interactions through media at least two times. (Novice learners can be shown a transcript, so they underline the PVs that function as linguistic mitigators.) b. Learners identify the PVs’ use in context and explain why they believe the PV is used to mitigate.

Chapter 7 183

4. Communicate and practice a. Learners create an original short skit on their own and employ at least 3 PVs that function to attenuate. (Instructor can provide a theme.) b. Learners and instructor listen to skits.

5. Provide feedback a. Corrective feedback is provided by the instructor and other learners in the target language (if possible) as they attend to the use of PVs. b. The instructor provides additional modeling and introduces new items or repeats previous PVs. Another plan for a lesson on mitigation is to provide instruction regarding cajolers, for example entiendes (get it), digamos (let’s say), and follow similar steps previously explained. In this case, we may use a context in which cajolers function to convince or engage the hearer since the goal of these linguistic devices is to gain support from the hearer or convince. A model skit containing a discussion in which speakers are convincing each other and use several cajolers is presented first. For advanced speakers, have them practice a skit in which five to eight cajolers (in natural, spontaneous speech context) are introduced and repeated. The selected cajolers should be incorporated in utterances in which the learners are first interacting with a friend on a familiar topic to avoid distracting them from the lesson at hand. In other words, a challenging topic such as climate change may pose a dilemma if the learner is not familiar with the technical language. Therefore, the more familiar the subject, the more focused they are on using the linguistic devices. In doing so, we are thus attempting to decrease the learners’ cognitive load. For intermediate speakers, only present three to five cajolers in context and for beginners, only one or two. Explain the function they serve, emphasize, model, and provide examples of the ones which have high priority, and identify the forms they need to acquire (and use), and then have them act the skit out. Later, to check on meta-awareness, have the same skit changed to another topic, a more demanding theme. Have learners attempt performing the skit again. This time, do not allow reading; have learners speak or interact without the written cues. To assess the acquisition of several cajolers among various proficiency levels, have learners prepare original skits with a partner, and observe appropriateness or point out pragmatic functions that need to be revised. It is advisable to offer learners options of several topics to choose from to reduce time spent having pairs discuss and select topics.

184  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate

On Teaching Learners of Spanish and English How to Mitigate We already know that at this juncture of the 21st-century language-learning textbooks do not contain lessons or address mitigation, and pragmatics is not adequately addressed in them either. To our knowledge, FélixBrasdefer (2019) attends to teaching aspects of Spanish pragmatics while, for example, Ishihara and Cohen (2010) and Taguchi (2019) discuss the theme of interlanguage pragmatics and approaches to second language acquisition and pragmatics pedagogical approaches, respectively. One observation can be made to date: Most language-learning texts assume that pragmatics (including mitigation) is something implicitly acquired. A finding generated from Lovejoy (2015) pointed to the fact that novice language learners will lean on the repetition of the same phrases to mitigate and they do not exhibit a wide variety of lexicon and strategies compared to other advanced learners and natives. That is, novice learners tend to use a single device redundantly. The finding of the particular study underscores the need to incorporate explicit instruction in early acquisitional stages. Namely, we need to point out to learners the various lexical items, the options they have, and structures they can use in their daily communication. In summary, and as mentioned earlier, to date, it may be impossible to evidence lessons regarding mitigation in language-learning texts. Therefore, it is up to language instructors to incorporate the acquisition of pragmatic competence as a goal in language instruction. This goal should include the teaching of how to attenuate speech. Taguchi (2015, p. 1) posits that pragmatic competence “means an ability to deal with a complex interplay of language, language users, and context of interaction”. Thus, teaching how to attenuate in a manner that conforms to the norms and conventions of the target language is a critical aspect of language learning that cannot be left unattended.

Assessing the Acquisition of Mitigation: Instructional Interventions Recently, many studies have been conducted on the teaching and assessment of pragmatics among language learners (Abrams, 2013; Alcón Soler, 2008; Bardovi-Harlig, 2013; Barron, 2012; Bataller, 2010; Cohen, 2008; Farahian, Rezaee, & Gholami, 2012; Félix-Brasdefer & Cohen, 2012; Huth & Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006; Lovejoy, 2015; Padilla Cruz, 2013; Usó-Juan & Martínez Flor, 2008; Taguchi, 2015), to name a few. While only several of these studies center on mitigation, it is essential to note that we can gather fuel from these studies to inform our research and teaching practices, primarily if we are focusing on action research. A comprehensive study conducted by Taguchi (2015) presents both methods for effective instructional practices and instructional

Chapter 7 185 interventions for English and Spanish, among other languages. Further, it draws comparisons on instructional methods, assessment protocols, treatment methods, among many other aspects. The survey does not focus on mitigation; it does attend to pragmatic attainment, which is one of the many goals we wish to achieve when teaching a language. In it, Taguchi (2015, pp. 35–36) reviews the terrain of L2 pragmatics and makes the following generalizations based on a thorough analysis of the work treated. These points should also be applied to the teaching of attenuation: • Explicit instruction is more effective than implicit instruction, • Implicit teaching can be as effective if and only if it works on these two levels: noticing and processing, • Effective treatments must inform the learners of the target features and the meta-pragmatic aspects, and • Accuracy and fluency go hand in hand; learners need to practice their processing of pragmatic rules consistently. While we cannot apply rules and formulas in the traditional sense when teaching about mitigation since it is pervasive in our speech, we can prepare a taxonomy on ‘How to attenuate with X’ (where X can be related to a feature, device, phrase, cultural notion, and so on). FélixBrasdefer (2019), Félix-Brasdefer and Cohen (2012), and Taguchi (2015) discuss a pedagogical model for teaching pragmatics in the world language classroom which can also inform teaching English as a second or foreign language contexts.1 Taguchi, in particular, presents an overview of instruction and assessments of pragmatic development. Lovejoy’s (2015) work also points to several ways we can address mitigation to avoid learners leaning too heavily on formulaic expressions and begin to approximate or reach native-like performance. If our goal is that learners approximate native speech in their ability to attenuate their messages, then we need to create learning environments and activities that are conducive to acquiring mitigating linguistic features for multiple contexts. The list that follows represents suggested activities that can be used to model, practice, and teach mitigating strategies and devices, several of which have been extracted from a review of literature related to this matter:  1. Create awareness-raising exercises (e.g., think alouds, mitigation recognition tasks),   2. Model with skits (e.g., simple to more advanced skits for practice that include mitigating strategies and devices),   3. Prepare role-plays that gradually incorporate and increase mitigating devices/strategies according to proficiency,   4. Provide film clips (silent and voiced) to detect, create, and contextualize mitigated utterances,

186  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate  5. Develop technology-based authentic tasks (e.g., blogs, YouTube, emails, avatars, online discussions) in which mitigation has been employed,  6. Create mock interviews that incorporate mitigating devices and strategies to increase sensitivity,   7. Develop Oral Discourse Completion Tasks that are close to authentic speech (i.e., written and oral) and contain authentic scenarios which can generate the use of mitigating devices,  8. Create mock conversations incorporating different and similar power relations to enable learners to perceive mitigated speech,  9. Develop short readings, so learners find and detect mitigating propositions, 10. Provide recordings and have learners identify and interpret mitigating devices and strategies and the purpose for which they have been used, 11. Propose authentic topics with authentic environments in which learners work in pairs and argue and make choices which require them to mitigate when negotiating, 12. Create or use mock or real telephone conversation recordings in which learners detect mitigation and discuss recordings, 13. Use TV commercials, so learners identify and critique mitigated and escalated speech, 14. Develop task-based projects in which learners are required to attenuate while solving a problem, 15. Design collaborative circles or dialoguing among and between learners and native speakers, so learners share the use of different mitigating strategies and devices and can receive authentic nativespeaker input, 16. Use scenarios gathered from social interactions in which mitigation features have been embedded, 17. Increase meta-awareness by creating dialogues which exhibit pragmatic failure and have learners critique what went wrong, 18. Use dialogues in which direct and indirectness, softened and nonsoftened contrasts are expressed and have learners discuss their perceptions, 19. Show varying syntactic structures in which mitigating strategies can be employed, and learners identify the syntactic position (e.g., tag questions), 20. Create matching columns between mitigating devices with function, 21. Develop a checklist for mitigating devices so that learners can determine whether they are formal/informal, appropriate/inappropriate, 22. Provide contrasting utterances in which learners make distinctions between mitigation and non-mitigated speech with forms that are similar in oral and written communication, 23. Create scenarios, skits, and role-plays which entail power and distance and formal and informal speech that include mitigation,

Chapter 7 187 24. Use pre- and post-assessments that simulate authentic speech to measure acquisition and developmental stages of attenuation in speech and writing, 25. Tap into cultures of learners and draw contrasts so that learners can increase their socio-cultural-affective perspectives when mitigating. The use of visuals and technology is essential to the teaching of mitigation. For instance, Martínez Flor (2007) and Usó-Juan and Martínez Flor (2008) employed video clips and implicit and explicit instruction to measure meta-pragmatic awareness, a resource we can also use to measure the acquisition of mitigating strategies. They found that the treatment of exposing learners to native-like forms in comparison to learner-like forms was perceived as an effective instructional strategy. Since Taguchi (2015), among others, reports that explicit instruction is more effective than implicit instruction, it is critical that we note that explicit instruction and production practice go hand in hand. That is, we cannot expect learners to acquire mitigating forms and features or employ them if they have not had an opportunity to incorporate them in their speech or discourses (i.e., written). At times, the classroom represents the only space they may have to do so, and sufficient and proper input and output activities are required. So if we do not address mitigation in a formal manner and with explicit instruction, what can occur? Pragmatic failure. If a learner does not mitigate his/her speech appropriately, it may result in a breakdown in communication, cultural misunderstandings, inappropriate labeling, and creating stereotypes, among many other adverse outcomes. On the other hand, if a learner uses their first language to transfer the effects of mitigation on to the target language, and if the two languages map on to each other, then there may be a consonance and no pragmatic failure. However, we need to ensure that misunderstandings and pragmatic failures do not occur, such as: Context: At a party, an adult learner of English whose L1 was Spanish asked another person he had just met about his salary: ‘What “kind of” money do you make?’ ¿Puedes decirme más o menos cuánto dinero te ganas? While this example contains a mitigating device, ‘kind of’, and is formulated as a question, it is still considered taboo to discuss such a personal topic in many English-speaking cultures. It may, however, be acceptable in other cultures. So while the question is grammatically felicitous, it remains pragmatically inappropriate.

188  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate Context: A New York City taxi driver once asked this question after I told him my address and how to drive to the building: ‘Are you married?’ ¿Estás casada? While, again, the utterance is grammatically appropriate, I found it intrusive, but in looking at his L1, a South Asian language, it was pragmatically appropriate to ask. He did not use disarmers, nor did he approach the question by using any attenuating strategy whatsoever. Perhaps he should have mitigated his question and added, ‘May I ask you this question, miss . . .’ or ‘Sorry to ask you but . . .’ or ‘I’m sorry if my question is. . .’. To sum up, learners of any language need to acquire mitigation devices, strategies, and conventions of the target language. It is not enough to consider that they will learn these behaviors implicitly or through contact in their speech community since, at times, their speech community is not representative of the target language. While, for example, study abroad programs for learners of Spanish or English can contribute to increased exposure to mitigation, there has to be a conscious effort on the part of instructors to revise curriculum and syllabi to reflect the strategies and devices that are used to attenuate to increase learners’ awareness. This instruction also has to consider dialect differences such that if a learner is faced with Ecuadorian Spanish-speaking natives or native speakers of other varieties (British English vs. ­American English), they are able to use these pragmatic devices to attenuate appropriately. For learners of any language, we need to expose them to native speaker interactions and dialect differences. DCTs and role-plays have been at the heart of most research dealing with pragmatic instruction (e.g., acquisition of speech acts). We know it is vital to employ several measures to triangulate findings and to ensure that learners acquire the devices and strategies. So here we describe several mitigation-related studies to provide a general depiction of how these studies have contributed to language instruction. Al-Ali and Alawneh (2010) investigated linguistic mitigation devices in Jordanian undergraduate learners of English (L2) and compared their behavior with American English Native Speakers (NS). The study used a DCT and, in particular, examined speech acts of requests. The study focused on the variables of power and distance and how these influenced the expression of mitigation. The results of the study revealed that the Jordanian L2 requests were considered wordier. Namely, they contained

Chapter 7 189 complex head acts and were followed by pre- and post-supportive moves characteristic of Jordanian speech (Arabic L1). The study also detected internal and external modifications in the L2 English group but at much lower frequencies than those produced by NS. For example, the NS expressed diminutives, minimizers, downtoners, consultative devices, and other devices, while the L2 group employed fewer of these, if any. The study also revealed that language proficiency, L1 pragmatic knowledge, and L1 cultural practices seem to mediate learners’ mitigating expressions. In another study that employed a role-play protocol, Wigglesworth, Yates, Flowerdew, and Levis (2007) examined mitigation in challenging requests in the workplace. In general, the study detected a difference in stance and tone between native English speakers (NES) and nonnative English speakers (NNES) when they interacted with persons of higher status. For instance, differences were found in the use of forms of address when speaking to their bosses; the NES employed more first names than the NNES. Different from the NNES, the NES also prefaced their requests with a pre-emptive move to increase solidarity between themselves and their boss. The NES also employed disarmers in high frequencies (e.g., “I realize . . .”, “I recognize . . .”) to signal solidarity and empathy. The NNES were found to use these latter devices in fewer instances. Further, the study also examined the use of lexical and syntactic mitigation. The authors report that, unlike NES, the NNES did not use ‘just’, and used fewer understaters and hedges to soften their requests. Interestingly, the NNES were also found to avoid negotiating, establish rapport, and provide greetings to support their requests in a manner comparable to the NES and, thus, were found less effective in mitigating their utterances. The authors call for language instructors to help learners adopt a new communicative style appropriate to English, the target culture, by awareness-raising activities, among others. Following Bardovi-Harlig (2001), they recommend teaching chunks (e.g., for teaching hedges) rather than using rules, even for complex strategies such as embedding clauses. We would also add that learners of any language need to examine and analyze NS interactions (albeit digitally, through videos or YouTube) to enable them to detect and grasp the diversity of strategies related to mitigating speech. In other words, live interactive protocols may afford learners a more natural environment rather than fill-in-blanks or written completion tasks. Several studies compare the effects of using different protocols and interventions. Therefore, I would like to re-visit Salazar-Campillo’s (2008) study in which she compares DCTs and role-plays. Role-plays and simulations have been noted as valuable instructional tools for learners (Kasper, 1997). By using these measures, we can detect how learners

190  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate experience nuances related to the degree of imposition in a request, for example, or the social factors, distance, among other considerations, and how they can or should mitigate a request. Therefore, concerning pedagogical implications, external factors (e.g., age, social standing) can be incorporated into language instruction and role-play activities, such as how to distinguish the use of a mitigating device when differences exist related to: Power relations differ (e.g., boss or co-worker), The degree of imposition (borrowing a book as opposed to borrowing a car), • Category of interaction (e.g., an institutional or a familiar one), • Kinds of speakers (e.g., friends, acquaintances, relatives, superiors, bosses), among others. • •

Also, Salazar Campillo maintains that preparators (‘May I ask you a favor . . .?’), grounders (‘It seems it is quite hot in here . . .’), disarmers (‘I hate bothering you . . .’) and many other external modifiers can be explicitly taught. Exercises that incorporate and consider the importance of these socio-external factors have been found interesting, pleasing, and exciting to learners (Félix-Brasdefer, 2019). The findings of Salazar Campillo’s study speak directly to teaching: How we address and measure the acquisition of mitigating devices and strategies. Recall that the DCT is a written task while the role-play is oral and interactive. Thus, this study shows that planning time (in a DCT) may impact learners’ production of mitigating strategies and devices. That is, in a DCT, learners can plan, write, and edit, whereas with oral communication, they have less planning time. That said, for the internal modifications, the study did not find quantitative differences among the two tasks. Interestingly, the investigation revealed that there was an overuse of the mitigator ‘please’ among the learners. Salazar-Campillo then goes on to argue for additional measures, such as metalinguistic retrospective and think-aloud protocols, among others, to measure pragmatic knowledge and the use of internal and external modifications. Since these studies and others point to the fact that learners exhibit limited uses of mitigation devices and strategies, it is important for learners to receive explicit instruction. It may well be that learners’ first language pragma-linguistic behavior may override their target language performance and, thus, they may exhibit direct and abrupt behavior or not employ any device or strategy at all when a situation may call for a softening, padding, or decreasing the illocutionary force of a message in general. For instance, Terkourafi (2011, p. 863) maintains that it is well known that hints are not universally perceived as polite (or mitigating). Said differently, a hint in a learner’s L1 may not be conceived as indirect in L2 or target language.

Chapter 7 191 O’Donnell Christofferson (2015) examined English learners’ (L2) and English native speakers’ (NS) use of mitigation in peer-review writing activities. While the study did not investigate mitigation in oral communication, the study generated similar findings as those explained earlier; lower proficient learners used simplified devices and strategies. For instance, the study examined the use of mitigation devices (e.g., hedging, token agreements, requests for clarification) in peer-reviewed writing and communication as they discussed a short research-based article produced by learners and natives. The study employed Maíz Arévalo’s (2014) typology to code disagreements. That is, it coded ‘strong disagreement’ (e.g., ‘no’, ‘no way’) and ‘mitigated disagreement’ (e.g. ‘yeah . . . but’). The findings revealed an absence of strong disagreements among learners and thus attended to analyzing the data with a qualitative lens. The qualitative analysis revealed that the L2s and NS used a wide range of mitigation strategies which the author refers to as ‘disagreement strategies’, including token agreements, hedges, modals, questions for clarification, among other devices, and strategies. However, the native speakers were found to issue lengthier and more specific-prefacing positive remarks than the learners. The finding confirms that while we can presuppose positive L1 pragmatic transfer to a certain extent, it is plausible that not all learners can tap into their L1 socio-pragma-affective-linguistic behavior since they tend to simplify their responses perhaps to stay in a safe zone. Since longer prefaced explanations require the risk of grammatical failure or more lexical and syntactic knowledge, perhaps learners prefer shorter remarks or utterances which may contribute to lightening their cognitive load. We also need to take into account that lower proficient learners use circumlocution, simplify, or circumvent the use of complex grammatical features and thereby may tend to rely on the use of fewer devices. Therefore, we first can incorporate interactions among peers as an initial instructional technique. Later, we can expose learners to mitigate in a more complex social setting using various interlocutors (low and high proficiency learners or native speakers). Before leaving this section on research conducted in learning environments, I would like to mention the study undertaken by Alcón Soler (2013), another study that did not rely on oral communication per se. The study represents an innovative project that centers on digital communication and mitigation following the work of Félix-Brasdefer (2012), among others. It explored the degree of indirectness and mitigation in academic virtual communication related to email requests issued among British English Speakers (BES) and International English Speakers (IES). Relying on data generated by other studies (using email data) which suggested that learners exhibited a reliance on external rather than internal syntactic modifiers, Alcón Soler set out to uncover how teenagers mitigated requests in their emails. The study examined direct, conventionally

192  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate indirect, and non-conventionally indirect request strategies. In particular, she examined the use of lexical and syntactic modifications (internal and external). The results generated from this study attested to both groups showing a preference for direct questions in emails. Subtle differences were found concerning how the two groups mitigated using internal modifications (i.e., lexical and syntactic) as opposed to external modifications in head acts. In sum, lexical modifications were found to contribute to the mitigated emails issued by IELs. However, lexical modifiers were preferred by the BES group. This study contributes to our understanding of how to consider academic and non-academic emails in Spanish as well. To conclude, the study stressed that although IES lacked pragmalinguistic knowledge concerning mitigators, judgments about levels of obligation, and rights, imposition, among others, may have influenced learners’ performance on emails. The contribution made by this study opens the doors to another question: Are email communications representative of how teens would use mitigating devices and strategies in oral communication, a problem which would require further research.

Awareness Building Metalinguistic awareness plays an essential role in determining how learners share their knowledge and perceptions about mitigated speech. Classroom instruction rarely discusses socio-pragmatic concerns such as mitigating devices and politeness. Politeness seems to be implicitly addressed in instructional and texts. Therefore, we should ask ourselves these questions: 1. How do learners become aware and share that awareness of mitigation? 2. What kind of input can they receive to increase their awareness? Beltrán (2013) stresses that language proficiency affects awareness and, hence, the production of appropriate mitigating strategies and devices. The study found that advanced speakers of English outperformed lower level learners when assessing pragmatic and grammatical mistakes, again pointing to developmental patterns. The study argues for a need to increase instruction and practice concerning how different levels of illocutionary force are distinguished by learners, and it encourages instruction to include a wide variety of mitigating devices and strategies rather than the repeated conventional types in texts (if any). While the study only elicited data on the speech acts of requests, it urges us to promote ways to incorporate modifiers (internal and external) within the context of instruction. It stresses the need to incorporate the socio-pragmatics of mitigation beyond the discourse related to speech acts and requests.

Chapter 7 193 A concern regarding instructional interventions is their lasting effects and how we can attest to changes in learners’ linguistic behavior. Retention and use of syntactic and lexical mitigation devices after instruction seem to yield positive results. For instance, Félix-Brasdefer’s (2008) study was able to detect that learners who at first only used lexical mitigation moved from lexical to syntactic mitigators post-intervention. The study found that retention of most mitigation provided during instruction was evidenced one week post-instruction. However, a controlled group who did not participate in the intervention showed little evidence beyond lexical mitigation. So the question we need to ask is, what are the lasting effects of any interventions we craft for learners of any language? Moreover, can we probe awareness more than a week after an intervention has been completed to determine acquisition? Félix-Brasdefer (2008) reminds us to focus on pragmatic development in language learners. He suggests that explicit instruction in pragmatics (e.g., with attention to mitigating devices and strategies) can facilitate language learning. That said, Félix-Brasdefer, in following Salsbury and BardoviHarlig (2000), has also noted that studies that focus on mitigation among learners of English have shown that the development of lexical and syntactic mitigation varies among learners. Therefore, at this juncture, we can only suggest the following consideration: Learning how to mitigate in a second language depends on whether learners can map the pragmatic practices on to the target language. Namely, the closer the two languages are in culture, structure, lexicon, and pragmatic practices and so forth, the easier it may be for them to acquire mitigating strategies. However, the more distant the two languages are, the more explicit instruction is required. So, a secondary stage of acquisition should attend to learners whose L1 and target language have contrasting mitigating behaviors. We should note that some pragmatic differences may prove too subtle or go undetected by learners. Therefore, explicit instruction has to address mitigation in the early stages of language learning, regardless of similarities between the languages.

Variability in Learner Behavior Learners of any language throughout their developmental stages of acquisition need to be exposed to aspects related to mitigation to communicate effectively. So while we consider teaching mitigating devices and strategies and the syntactic location of the devices, we also need to consider socio-pragmatic variability. For instance, not all speakers of Chinese mitigate in the same manner. Ren (2018) uncovered regional differences in the manner in which refusals were issued by Taiwan Chinese compared to Mainland Chinese speakers. In particular, Mainland Chinese speakers employed a significantly high amount of adjuncts than their counterparts.

194  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate In another study of an advanced Chinese learner of English, Su (2018) determined that while an advanced learner had particular pragmatic awareness and employed strategies in her requests, the expression of these strategies was limited, and she exhibited little variety and employed fewer forms. This study did not solely attend to mitigation. Nonetheless, Su was able to detect that the learner did not express syntactic downgraders but had adopted hedges to mitigate in instances related to high imposition. From this and other studies, we find that proficiency is only one factor that may condition the acquisition of mitigating strategies and devices among L2 learners. Namely, dialect differences need to be considered. Another seminal study conducted by Félix-Brasdefer (2012) also points to pragmatic variation among Mexican Spanish speakers. However, this study centered on uncovering gender differences in the context of requests in native Spanish speakers in Mexico. Specifically, the research focused on interactions in public market service encounters instantiated during requests (e.g., the use of the imperative, direct and indirect questions, conventional indirectness). The study attested to differences among the participants. Namely, the customer-initiated request was not only influenced by a customer’s gender but by the gender of the vendor. Differences were also evidenced in the use of forms of address (i.e., informal tú ‘you’ and formal usted ‘you’). The customers and vendors also used a wide variety of address forms from señor (mister), señora (misses), Mamacita (mom), Papacito (pop) + diminutive forms, and so on. The findings gathered from this study are substantiated by Márquez Reiter and Placencia (2004) and Placencia (2005), among others, studies that have detected variation among speakers of Spanish in utterances related to indirectness (e.g., requests).2 To recapitulate, and to add to the complexity of teaching and learning how to mitigate, is the fact that pragmatic variation manifests among learners too. We need to remember that learners receive input from different sources (e.g., their community, study abroad experiences, classroom instruction, social networks). For instance, Lovejoy (2015, p. 227) investigated how learners of Spanish mitigated during arguments. The study revealed that there are stages in the development of pragmatic ability and that “grammatical proficiency often outpaces pragmatic ability”. The study attested to differences in the frequency of the use of mitigating devices among the Spanish learners, and it also attested to the fact that the frequencies increased in tandem with proficiency. In brief, the intermediate proficient participants relied mostly on formulaic expressions and exhibited a co-dependent L1 behavior (i.e., L1 transfer from English). The importance of prosody concerning teaching mitigation cannot be overlooked. Hidalgo Navarro and Cabedo Nebot (2014) recommend the creation of educational tools which are useful in learners’ ability to detect and express politeness, and to this I add, to express mitigated speech.

Chapter 7 195 Supra-segmental features such as silence, pauses, soft voice, and even turn-taking and overlapping have to be incorporated in language instruction (Lovejoy, 2015). Lovejoy’s study revealed participation behavior among learners of Spanish varied. She reported that interruptions, overlapping, latching, among other behaviors, exhibited significant differences between native speakers and learners of Spanish. For instance, while natives exhibited a high degree of participation regardless of the social status of their interlocutors, the learners were inconsistent; they were not proficient at mitigating or participating in a manner congruent with the natives. This study points to the importance of teaching our learners to understand participation interaction as they represent an essential aspect of mitigation and communicative interaction, in general. While we cannot expect learners, regardless of input and interventions, to be native like when attenuating their utterances, we can still aim for near-native behavior. Incorporating mitigation in language instruction is also a challenge for language instructors. We may suggest several recommendations which can be presented at the early stages of instruction: First, teenage learners of a language when communicating in cyberspace need to become sensitive to attenuation. Attenuation differs in cyberspace, and the instruction needs to convey that this behavior is not representative of the way we speak. Second, differences in discursive styles need to be explicitly expressed in language instruction. We can use different tasks so learners can distinguish ‘appropriate’ and ‘not appropriate’ behavior (e.g., metalinguistic awareness and think-aloud exercises). In other words, we need to capture perceptions of learners and instruct them based on these perceptions. Third, we can also use several protocols that can assist in delving into the meta-awareness of the learners, and we would need to do so if, for example, we are teaching learners of varied first languages and cultures in one class. Fourth, we need also to convey that differences in linguistic features employed to mitigate can have different consequences. In particular, the interlocutors’ familiarity with one another has to be explained as well as how mitigation should be realized among different interlocutors (e.g., the importance of power and distance, solidarity). Adult learners, on the other hand, need to be exposed to linguistic mitigation appropriate to their work context, their speech community, and their community of practice. They are also exposed to technology, email communication, and digital interactions, and, thus, instruction related to mitigation has to consider multiple learning styles and techniques to reinforce the acquisition of attenuation. If ignored,

196  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate pragmatic failure can have grave consequences for adult learners of a language. To summarize, there is a myriad of considerations we need to take into account when we teach about attenuation. We need to recall that there is not one form, formula, or structure that is categorically representative of this phenomenon. Instead, it is how linguistic features are used to calibrate the cushioning and padding effect for the hearer. Organizationally, and consistent with curricular guidelines established by the learning environment, this phenomenon should be taught as early as beginner levels so a novice learner can be mindful of the importance of mitigation, the strategies, and devices. We can create a taxonomy or scalar grid that can be incorporated for early learners and then increase its variety and depth to other more complex strategies for more advanced learners. For example, we may wish to expose beginners to more tangible or overt devices such as the use of the diminutive (Spanish -ito or English ‘a bit’, ‘a tiny bit’), parenthetical verbs creo (‘I think’), and designate teaching proverbs and other cultural notions to more advanced or proficient learners. We can also organize lessons according to internal and external devices. Syntactic devices such as the passive voice cannot just be taught as a syntactic structure. Its use, pragmatically speaking, can function to attenuate a message, one that may suppress agency, convey indirectness, or hide emissaries of messages, and the flexibility this structure imparts is key to the expression of mitigation. Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989, p. 27) have also dealt with implications for teaching foreign language using the CCSARP project data I mentioned in an earlier chapter. They recommend that language instructors: • • • • •

Facilitate the writing of more accurately targeted culturally oriented materials and material designers, Address cross-cultural pragmatic analysis as part of the content of foreign/second language courses from early stages but particularly at more advanced levels of instructions, Attend to classroom-scale replications in different languages, dialects, varieties, cultures, and social groupings, Focus on the cognitive: Raise awareness to contribute to language learning and increase perceptions, and Explore how instruction can address pragmatics (and mitigation) in instructional materials and professional development activities.

Bataller (2013) points out that the use of role-plays and naturally occurring interactions contribute to learning. This particular study did not center on mitigation; it centered on requests in a cafeteria in which providers were not familiar with the requestors, an authentic interaction

Chapter 7 197 that learners frequently encounter in the workplace, schools, and in service-encounters. These typical and frequent kinds of interactions assist in contextualizing language use when we provide instruction regarding linguistic mitigation.

Summary We began this chapter by discussing the importance of explicitly teaching language learners about pragmatics and mitigation. We presented a brief inventory of ways to introduce mitigating devices, and we provided an example of how to approach instruction. We also have discussed studies that have investigated the effects of instructional interventions. One of the most important aspects this chapter emphasizes is that of awareness building and the need for explicit instruction. Since pragmatics and mitigation are not explicitly treated in texts and classroom instruction in the formal sense, we discussed the importance of creating metalinguistic awareness activities for learners and using them to probe learners’ intuitions and internal knowledge when mitigating. We have also delved into ways we can explicitly organize, plan, and provide instruction on attenuation and how it should be embedded systematically in language-learning contexts.

Notes . Go to on line activities www.indiana.edu/~discprag/spch_refusals.html 1 2. The reader is advise to refer to studies related to inter-cultural pragmatic variation conducted in Spanish: For Perú (García, 1989, 2009); Mexico (Curcó, 1998; Félix-Brasdefer, 2005); Uruguay (Márquez Reiter, 1997), Ecuador (Placencia, 1996, 2005), Spain (Hernández-Flores, 1999), among others.

References Abrams, Z. (2013). Say what?! L2 sociopragmatic competence in CMC: Skill transfer and development. CALICO Journal, 30(3), 423–445. Alcón Soler, E. (2008). Investigating pragmatic language learning in foreign language classrooms. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 46(3), 173–195. Alcón Soler, E. (2013). Mitigating e-mail requests in teenagers’ first and second language academic cyber-consultation. Multilingua, 32(6), 779–799. Al-Ali, M., & Alawneh, R. (2010). Linguistic mitigating devices in American and Jordanian students’ requests. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(2), 311–339. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2001). Evaluating the empirical evidence: Grounds for instruction in pragmatics. In G. Kasper & K. Rose (Eds.), Pragmatics and language teaching (pp. 11–32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2013). Developing L2 pragmatics. Language Learning, 63, 68–86.

198  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate Barron, A. (2012). Interlanguage pragmatics: From use to acquisition to second language pedagogy. Language Teaching, 45(1), 44–63. Bataller, R. (2010). Making a request for a service in Spanish: Pragmatic development in the study abroad setting. Foreign Language Annals, 43(1), 160–175. Bataller, R. (2013). Role plays vs. natural data: Asking for a drink at a cafeteria in peninsular Spanish. Ikala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura, 18(2), 111–126. Beltrán, E. V. (2013). Requesting in English as a lingua franca: Proficiency effects in stay abroad. ELIA, 13, 113–147. Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (1989). Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1984). Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 196–214. Cohen, A. D. (2008). Teaching and assessing L2 pragmatics: What can we expect from learners? Language Teaching, 41(2), 213–235. Culpeper, J., Mackey, A., & Taguchi, N. (2018). Second language pragmatics: From theory to research. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Curcó, C. (1998). ¿Me harías un favorcito?: Reflections on the expression of verbal politeness in Mexican and peninsular Spanish. In H. Haverkate, G. Mulder, & C. Fraile Maldonado (Eds.), La Pragmatica Lingüística del español: Recientes desarrollos (pp. 129–171). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Farahian, M., Rezaee, M., & Gholami, A. (2012). Does direct instruction develop pragmatic competence? Teaching refusals to EFL learners of English. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 3(4), 814–821. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2004). La mitigación en el discurso oral de mexicanos y aprendices de español como lengua extranjera. In D. Bravo & A. Briz Gómez (Eds.), Pragmática sociocultural. Estudios sobre el discurso de cortesía en español (pp. 285–299). Barcelona: Ariel. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2005). Métodos de recolección de actos de habla: Peticiones en el discurso natural y simulado de hablantes mexicanos. In J. Murillo Medrano (Ed.), Actas del II Coloquio Internacional del Programa EDICE (pp. 221–245). Estocolmo-Costa Rica: Programa EDICE-Universidad de Costa Rica. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2008). Teaching pragmatics in the classroom: Instruction of mitigation in Spanish as a foreign language. Hispania, 91(2), 479–494. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2012). Pragmatic variation by gender in market service encounters in Mexico. In J. C. Félix-Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues. Series: IMPACT (pp. 17–48). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2019). Pragmática del español: Contexto, uso y variación. London and New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C., & Cohen, A. D. (2012). Teaching pragmatics in the foreign language classroom: Grammar as a communicative resource. Hispania, 95(4), 650–669. García, C. (1989). Disagreeing and requesting by Americans and Venezuelans. Linguistics and Education, 1, 299–322. García, C. (2009). ¿Qué::? ¿Cómo que te vas a casar? Congratulations and rapport management: A case study of Peruvian Spanish speakers. Pragmatics, 19(2), 197–222.

Chapter 7 199 Hernández-Flores, N. (1999). Politeness ideology in Spanish colloquial conversation: The case of advice. Pragmatics, 9(1), 37–49. Hidalgo Navarro, A., & Cabedo Nebot, A. (2014). On the importance of the prosodic component in the expression of linguistic im/politeness. Journal of Politeness Research, 10(1), 5–27. Huth, T., & Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2006). How can insights from conversations analysis be directly applied to teaching L2 pragmatics. Language Teaching Research, 10(1), 53–79. Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. London and New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Kasper, G. (1997). Can pragmatic competence be taught? Retrieved from www. nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW06/Kasper1997 Lakoff, G. (1973). Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2(4), 458–508. Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London, UK: Longman. Lovejoy, K. (2015). Learning to interact in Spanish as a second language: An examination of mitigation and participation in conversational arguments (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Rutgers University. Maíz Arévalo, C. (2014). Expressing disagreement in English as a lingua franca: Whose pragmatic rules? Intercultural Pragmatics, 11(2), 199–224. Márquez Reiter, R. (1997). Sensitising Spanish learners of English to cultural differences. In M. Pütz (Ed.), In the cultural context in foreign language teaching (pp. 143–155). Duisburg: Peter Lang. Márquez Reiter, R. (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A contrastive study of requests and apologies. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Márquez Reiter, R., & Placencia, M. E. (2004). The pragmatics of Spanish beyond Spain. In R. Márquez Reiter & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Current trends in the pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 15–30). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Martínez Flor, A. (2007). Learners’ use of downgraders in suggestions under focus on forms and focus on form treatment conditions. Revista Canaria De Estudios Ingleses, 55, 167–180. O’Donnell Christoffersen, K. (2015). Mitigation of disagreement in peer review among L2 learners and native speakers in a college writing class. GiST, 11, 45–62. Padilla Cruz, M. (2013). Understanding and overcoming pragmatic failure in intercultural communication: From focus on speakers to focus on hearers. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 51(1), 23–54. Placencia, M. E. (1996). Politeness in Ecuadorian Spanish. Multilingua, 15(1), 13–34. Placencia, M. E. (2005). Pragmatic variation in corner store interactions in Quito and Madrid. Hispania, 88, 583–598. Ren, W. (2018). Mitigation in Chinese online consumer reviews. Discourse, Context, & Media. doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2018.01.001 Salaberry, R., & Cohen, A. D. (2006). Testing Spanish. In R. Salaberry & B. A. Lafford (Eds.), Spanish second language acquisition: From research to teaching applications (pp. 149–172). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

200  Teaching Language Learners How to Mitigate Salazar-Campillo, P. (2008). Task analysis on mitigation in the speech act of requesting: Discourse completion task and role-play. Linguistic Insights-Studies in Language and Communication, 68, 143–161. Salsbury, T., & Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2000). Oppositional talk and the acquisition of modality in L2 English. In B. Swierbin (Ed.), Cognitive factors in second language acquisition (pp. 57–76). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Su, Y. (2018). The pragmatic strategies adopted by an advanced Chinese EFL learner in realization of request speech act: A case study. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 9(3), 548–554. Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48, 1–50. Taguchi, N. (2019). Second language acquisition and pragmatics: An overview. In N. Taguchi (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and pragmatics (pp. 1–14). New York, NY: Routledge. Terkourafi, M. (2011). The puzzle of indirect speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(11), 2861–2865. Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 91–112. Usó-Juan, E., & Martínez Flor, A. (2008). Teaching intercultural communicative competence through the four skills. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 21, 157–170. Wannaruk, A. (2008). Pragmatic transfer in Thai EFL refusals. RELC Journal, 39(3), 318–337. Wigglesworth, G., Yates, L., Flowerdew, J., & Levis, J. (2007). Mitigating difficult requests in the workplace: What learners and teachers need to know. TESOL Quarterly, 41(4), 791–803. Yoshimi, D. R. (2001). Explicit instruction and JFL learner’s use of interactional discourse markers. In K. R. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.), Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 223–244). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

8 Bridging the Gap

Introduction Cohen (2010) has argued that testing pragmatic ability has not been characteristic of learning and teaching environments. Likewise, mitigation has also been overlooked in language instruction. There are many ways in which we can strike a partnership with learning environments and our investigations related to the acquisition of mitigating devices and strategies. In the previous chapter, we explained aspects related to teaching and learning about mitigation, and now we can look at ways in which we can draw connections between instruction and research. That is, we look at how research can inform learning environments and how learning environments can inform research. We are exploring in this chapter the following: How do we construct a two-way connection between instruction and research? Where do we start? Leech (1983, p. 11) has argued that pragma-linguistics deals with the “particular resources which a given language provides for conveying particular illocutions”. In brief, several of these resources entail directness and indirectness, linguistic routines, and a large variety of linguistic forms which I have often alluded to throughout this book as the speaker’s linguistic repertoire or inventory. How a learner accesses this repertoire and pairs it with the inherent features of a language represents a challenge for learners, instructors, textbook publishers, and researchers who collaboratively need to address attenuation. For instance, if we look at what is required for a learner’s pragmatic competence, they must have the ability to express the appropriate linguistic strategies depending on the context. Also, they have to consider the socio-pragmatic aspects, their ability to use and vary their repertoire according to social or external factors. To this end, learners also must consider how to use the target language in their new social and cultural contexts. So how do learning environments, researchers, and language instructional texts gather momentum and address these concerns? This chapter discusses how we can work together to increase instructional awareness regarding the acquisition of linguistic mitigation and

202  Bridging the Gap draw meaningful connections to research. In the chapter, we provide several recommendations that address these aspects. To begin, we will recapitulate several points presented in earlier chapters in order to couch our thoughts and create a seamless web that addresses this chapter’s goals. We should first point out that language instructors usually conduct action research that goes undetected by researchers. That is, we tend not to collaborate with these instructional environments. We also know that researchers have investigated the expression of linguistic mitigation outside instructional settings. Namely, linguistic mitigation has been investigated in interactions among family, friends, service-encounters and institutional discursive settings. However, we still fall short on research on younger learners regarding the acquisition of pragmatics and, thus, mitigation. While we have also discussed mitigation research generated in institutional discursive settings (e.g., hospitals, courts, therapy), these are not considered learning environments that represent younger (e.g., teens or school-age) populations. In other words, most research on mitigation has been conducted on adults outside learning environments, and we need to delve into acquisition stages to better understand the thresholds and stages concerning the acquisition of specific devices and strategies. There are perhaps multiple constraints that seem to steer researchers away from gathering data from instructional sites such as schools and younger participant pools. These limitations are usually issues related to Institutional Review Boards, consents that need to be obtained from parents, principals, or administrators who are reluctant to have their learners’ knowledge measured, the time that is taken away from instruction and instructor, and many more reasons. However, many of these conditions are approachable and manageable if we look at ways to gather data that is not as intrusive or, if intrusive, leans towards finding a wellarticulated collaborative venture between researcher, instructor, and administration, one whereby all can attest to gains. In other words, we need to establish productive partnerships that impact all parties or stakeholders in a positive manner. If we set aside the logistical matters for the moment and examine the entire picture of language input, a conversation has to begin with the use of language-learning textbooks as the primary vehicle for transmitting knowledge regarding pragmatics. Language teaching texts in high schools, for example, do not tend to address socio-pragmatic competence and, thus, omit aspects of linguistic mitigation. To start, though, and, regardless of where we wish to measure the acquisition and development of attenuation, we need to stress the importance of this phenomenon by situating its importance as a linguistic and a: • •

socio-pragmatic-affective phenomenon, communicative function,

Chapter 8 203 • pervasive behavior among speakers of all languages (natives and learners), and • culturally bound behavior, not only a linguistic one. Given what constitutes attenuation, our premise then is that it is a pervasive communicative strategy situated within a particular social interaction, and it is a critical component of language use and, thus, language learning. This explanation may be more appealing to the parties previously mentioned when we discuss how to conduct research with learners. We need to focus on pragmatic competencies in language-learning environments and, thus, the pragma-linguistic, the socio-pragmatic, and the affective aspects related to mitigation. As a start, we provide several recommendations: 1. Incorporate digitally related tools and interactive social settings to supplement the teaching and learning of mitigating strategies and devices. 2. Increase exposure to mitigating devices and strategies by way of spontaneous communicative activities. 3. Employ spontaneous interactions to measure acquisition. In short, since texts overlook linguistic mitigation, use creative material (e.g., digital) to expand instruction outside the learning environment or classroom and measure acquisition of devices that are taught. Also, we must try to embrace oral, spontaneous interactions when measuring acquisition. Previously we discussed that mitigation refers to words, phrases, linguistic forms, devices, and strategies speakers employ to cushion, soften, pad, or decrease the strength of an utterance and its effect on the hearers. In other words, and in general, the strategies and devices contribute to reducing directness, a matter that benefits all parties in an interaction. Language instructors and researchers seem to agree that learners do not approximate the linguistic behavior of native speakers when it comes to pragmatic behavior, in general. Therefore, it is urgent that we attend to this issue. With this in mind, the following sections briefly suggest areas that we can address first in our future research and instruction, priorities which we should frame in and outside the language-learning environment since we need to stress that instructional action research informs researchers and researchers can inform instruction. Digital Communications: An Initial Step As mentioned earlier, to effect change in the ways we direct our focus on linguistic mitigation, digital communication may be the first area we

204  Bridging the Gap may wish to pursue. The reasoning for addressing this angle of communication is that language learners (younger adults and teens) seem to be exposed to a constellation of devices, platforms, and websites and they represent attractive ways to entice learners to work on their own. For example, and at a very novice level, we can address language learners by understanding how they tend to mitigate using symbols or emoticons (emojis). Sampietro (2016) explored the punctuation effects of emojis in Spanish chats. These symbols or other cues are known to transmit and convey attitudes that may intensify or diminish the strength of a message. Yus (2005) has argued that these symbols, particularly those placed at the end of a sentence, assist the writer to guarantee that the message is being appropriately understood. In a separate study, Clark-Gordon, Bowman, Watts, Banks, and Knight (2018) investigated the effects of instructor non-verbal cues (symbols such as emojis). In particular, the study examined non-verbal facethreatening mitigation in digital feedback. Feedback is known to represent a face-threatening act, and the use of non-verbal mitigation in feedback would represent a softening effect of a message sent to the learner. Clark-Gordon et al. reported that the mitigating effects of the symbols resulted in a positive effect on learners. There are also several studies that have investigated the use of emojis to convey attenuation in digital communications (Dresner & Herring, 2010). Dresner and Herring’s (2010) research shows how these symbols operate as indicators of illocutionary force. Apart from the fact that they may be used to make an interlocutor’s intention clear, the authors found that they also contribute to the receiver’s perception in understanding what could represent a softening or a cushioning effect. Beyond emoticons, computerized-mediated instruction (CMI) can serve as a modality in which we can examine utterances that have been attenuated. For example, there is ever-increasing popularity in online shopping. Digital communication in this context can investigate and inform instruction with ways in which consumers mitigate reviews, complaints about purchased returns, or other interactions. Digital interactions, such as a product or hotel review, also render data that are useful and are grounded in frequent, everyday interactions. For instance, they may point to ways in which attenuation manifests when products or services receive low reviews. Also, in analyzing the reviews, we can detect (un)mitigated commentaries and revise these reviews according to proficiency levels (e.g., to convert statements into mitigated ones or escalated ones). We can also source digital reviews according to learners’ proficiency levels; how the levels may affect the manner in which complaints or general criticisms are mitigated. For example, Ren (2018) points to ways in which mitigation and intensification may wax and wane among consumers in online reviews. This type of communication can serve dual purposes: to inform instruction and research.

Chapter 8 205 In sum, looking at CMI in a traditional online lesson or using current online discourses can prove beneficial as these sources may serve as a first step we can use to incorporate mitigation in instruction and research the acquisition of linguistic mitigation. Further, these tools do not rely on classroom instructional texts. Natural-Occurring Speech Because one of the book’s goals is to begin a conversation among researchers and language instructors, it is crucial that we explore how we can shape our research together. As mentioned earlier, if we only examine the realization of attenuation in a speech act such as a refusal, we may find disadvantages in that the manifestation of attenuation may be limited as it may not yield a wide variety of devices and strategies. However, initially and for novice learners, it may be plausible to probe how mitigating devices and strategies emerge in speech acts such as refusals or complaints to introduce mitigating behavior. We can also compare the linguistic behaviors among natives and non-native speakers if we focus on one particular speech act at a time. There is a compelling reason to use spontaneous interactions. By using free, spontaneous interactions to examine the expression of attenuation, we are forcing ourselves to use a wider lens to capture mitigated linguistic behavior. From this body, we can then triangulate data generated by other prompted production tasks or other experiments. Spontaneous interactions also allow us to understand the acquisitional threshold of learners; for example, how beginners differ from intermediate and advance learners. If we intend to contribute to theory (e.g., of mitigation, second language pragmatics) and we take into account the shortfalls in language instructional materials and instructional models, then we need to explore how we can maximize our efforts to capture mitigation, provide authentic input, and investigate the acquisition of this phenomenon. Furthermore, if we view mitigation as a communicative strategy, then we need to embrace its manifestation, to the extent possible, in naturally occurring spontaneous speech and written interactions. We also need to remind ourselves that if we use naturally occurring speech, then it is imperative that we look at ways in which we can capture and include accounts of mitigation concerning prosody, an under-investigated area (Cabedo Nebot, 2016). First and foremost, there are protocols and experimental techniques that researchers have already employed that can be used as instructional interventions. For instance, Lovejoy (2015) administered several protocols to learners, such as a film narration task. This task entailed having pairs of learners recall details of a silent film they had seen twice and argue about their different recollections. In it, speakers were found

206  Bridging the Gap to attenuate when they contradicted their partner’s opinion and recall. Another instrument Lovejoy employed was a ranking conversation in which learners worked in pairs and had to prioritize what was more critical regarding relevant topics such as healthy food in a cafeteria, public transportation, and changes to policies. Both protocols were digitally recorded and yielded instances of mitigated speech or lack thereof. The protocols can also be used for instructional activities, interventions, and, thus, assessments. In another study, Placencia’s (2004) research gathered data from corner store interactions. These interactions can be used as a model for instruction. YouTube clips or other audio recordings such as these can serve as instructional activities whereby learners identify mitigating linguistic features or insert them if they deem there is an absence of attenuated linguistic behavior. Bataller (2010), for example, gathered data from study abroad interviews, a protocol that can also be used to explain metalinguistic perspectives associated with attenuated expressions. These studies provide robust data and sources that can also serve to inform instruction, assessment, and research. Regarding informal interactions, Hernández-Flores (1999) gathered tape-recorded conversations between friends and relatives and between guests and hosts. From these recorded conversations, instruction can focus on how learners discuss, identify, explain, or shadow native speakers’ uses of mitigating devices. We can also create scenarios that elicit mitigated utterances, scenarios in which learners and native speakers are required to deal with others’ opinions (Hong, 2015). We mentioned earlier Taguchi’s (2015) work, which points us to ways to measure the acquisition of pragmatic competence, and these protocols can also serve to measure the acquisition of attenuating devices and strategies. If our purpose is to explore how mitigation is realized in written documents, there is a plethora of material online we can utilize for instruction and research. For example, Alonso-Almeida (2015) used a compilation of research papers in the medical domain and Hyland (1996) and Sánchez Vicent (2008) examined hedges and attenuation in scientific and medical research articles. While these studies focused on medical-related discourse, we can use these same models to examine written discourse with a variety of content matters in science, politics, lifestyles, fashion, and many more topics, and modify them according to learners’ ages and proficiency. Research endeavors such as these are representative of instances in which mitigation is examined under the umbrella of a different natural discursive modality, not necessarily oral. We still can build from studies such as these since they may mainly rely on public documents and documents which can be obtained online. Said differently, language instructors and researchers can create collaborations that are crafted, configured, and tailored to different learner proficiencies and age groups using written (on and offline) documents

Chapter 8 207 (e.g., newspapers, reports, stories, plays). For example, we can benefit from blogs, podcasts, journals, diaries, and many more written and oral modalities from which we can develop lessons, probes, experiments, and exercises to investigate the use and acquisition of mitigating strategies pre- and post- instruction. Institutional Discursive Settings Another recommendation we make here is that we expand and situate our research on mitigation in institutional discursive settings for two reasons: First, it represents discourse which can be used to determine and harness attenuated linguistic behavior in a specific interaction and natural setting (e.g., classroom, medical, court, service-related encounters). Second, it is also suggestive of ways in which we can prepare learners to mitigate according to these specific interactions and authentic target language environment. For instance, learners can examine speech produced in relation to their school, profession, work, practice, and daily interactions (e.g., doctor-patient, student-teacher, customerclient) when interacting with members of their respective communities, and learners can also perform role-plays and act out service-related encounters. Earlier in the text, we discussed what we could consider institutional discourse (Agar, 1985; Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 2005). Within each of these types of interactions, we find a talk that is representative of authentic speech, and each interaction has a clear purpose. That is, a customer service representative may interact with clients in a store to sell products, to receive returned products, or to advise a client about how to use a product. They can also be representative of diagnosis or advice-seeking interactions. So, given that these interactions are usually about one theme, we can source them to investigate the presence and absence of mitigation. More importantly, they represent authentic contexts that can be used to inform learners as they relate to common, every­ day interactions.

A Model to Inform Instruction and Research With this discussion in mind, we also recommend following Briz and Albelda’s (2013) theoretical and methodological proposal to contribute to the advancement of mitigation research in addressing language-learning environments. Their approach is general enough to embrace many of the concerns we have previously noted regarding attenuation. In following their proposal, for example, we may provide instruction related to +/-formal discourses or the power dynamic. That is, how do learners differentiate the use of mitigating strategies and devices relative to +/- formal settings or when speaking to someone of higher status, among other

208  Bridging the Gap essential aspects? These two aspects are critical to instruction, assessment, and research. While we may consider these observations too general, the fact remains: Mitigation is not a cut-and-dry linguistic phenomenon. Briz et al. claim that minimizing and weakening entails various forms of distancing a message (e.g., by impersonalization), and that the weakening effect can be realized with various verbal and non-verbal resources. To determine the communicative contexts in which mitigation manifests, Briz et al. recom­ mend that we examine many factors, and we recommend that instruction include the external and internal factors such as features related to: • • • • • • • •

colloquial and formal speech, speaker gender, dialect differences, discursive types: oral, written, digital, degrees of familiarity of speaker and addressee, structural (internal and external), lexical items, and situational factors, among many others.1

To date and to our knowledge, the Briz and Albelda (2013) and Albelda Marco, Briz Gómez, Cestero Mancera, Kotwica, and Villalba Ibañez (2014) proposals are the most comprehensive guides for the examination of attenuation in Spanish and Portuguese and can be employed to analyze mitigation in English, with several modifications. The proposals can also be applied to ways in which we provide and assess explicit instruction.

Assessing Acquisition in Instructional Settings We know that attenuation strategies cannot be taught in a formulaic manner since it represents how speakers employ lexical, morphological, syntactic features, among others, to soften the illocutionary force of a message. Thus, assessments need to address material related to mitigation that is congruent with non-formulaic expressions. We also need to strike a balance with crafting instruction on mitigation that draws learners’ attention to its importance. For instance, Cohen (2010, p. 264) maintains that “classroom assessment of pragmatics sends a message to the students that their ability to be pragmatically appropriate in the comprehension and production of language in different socio-cultural situations is valued or even advantageous”. Thus, evaluating how mitigation is expressed is also of primary instructional importance, and it too has to be situated when measuring pragmatic competence. In second language learning (Spanish or English), we have a significant amount of studies (e.g., Bataller, 2016; Félix-Brasdefer, 2008; García, 1989), among many others, that center on mitigation in a particular

Chapter 8 209 speech act. These studies tend to look at attenuated speech in semiguided, guided, and spontaneous speech. While it may be beneficial to step outside of controlled protocols and address mitigation in a more naturalistic, spontaneous speech setting, the importance of controlledexperimental tasks cannot be understated, especially for novice learners. First, they serve to triangulate data. Second, they can serve as a first step in the assessment of the acquisition and development of mitigating strategies among learners of different proficiencies. As Cohen (2010) has noted, assessments allow instructors to identify the control their students have in pragmatics, a very challenging area of second language learning. To this, we should add that it also allows instructors to check whether what was explicitly taught was acquired. When the instruction on attenuation is made explicit, then we have several options we can use to measure acquisition. For instance, we can compare a group of learners who have been exposed to an instructional intervention with another group that has not been exposed. We can also use a non-controlled measure to test acquisition by observing role-plays, skits developed by learners, or other non-guided activities and compare data to native-speaker behavior. Later, we can probe awareness by way of a metalinguistic interview among learners of different proficiencies by examining learners’ reactions to (in)appropriate uses of mitigation in a different context (e.g., by examining reactions in digital environments, film clips, videos, spontaneous interactions). With this in mind, research and instruction should be conducted to assess the: 1. Instructional modalities that have been proven successful in the acquisition of mitigation, 2. Experiments, instruments, tools, and protocols that yield sufficient attenuated devices and strategies to enable us to evaluate its acquisition and, 3. The kinds of stressors that motivate the production of mitigation among learners as these may be perceived differently by learners (e.g., different genders, age groups, novice vs. advanced learners) since they initially rely on their L1 and culture to attenuate. Because mitigation represents one of many communicative strategies, and we know from our previous discussions that it must be taught explicitly, then it should be explicitly assessed first as such (see Taguchi, 2015). First, we must steer away from teaching and measuring the acquisition of formulaic chunks much like we do when we teach about other aspects of language. Second, we need to attempt to disassociate the perspective that mitigation is equal to politeness, something discussed earlier in the book. That is, while instruction seems to address politeness, we need to explain how we attenuate and the reasons for attenuating outside the realm of politeness (see Chapters 4 and 5). Third, we need to recognize

210  Bridging the Gap that language learners do not develop pragmatic and linguistic competences simultaneously in their target language as children who learn their native language (e.g., in naturalistic settings). Language learners depend on explicit input. Therefore, special efforts should be made to explicitly provide input and look at ways in which we can assess results that are beneficial to all learners. For instance, we have known for a while now that social power and distance have been found to play a significant role in the production of speech acts such as requests and apologies (Márquez Reiter, 2000). Therefore, a question we can explore is related to learners’ sensitivity regarding how they detect or issue mitigated speech depending, for instance, on an interlocutor’s age, gender, and social status, among other socio-pragmatic factors. For example, in Flores-Ferrán (2012, 2018), we found that native Spanish-speaking adults were sensitive to mitigating their responses when interacting with a professional of higher status. Delbene (2004) also found mitigated speech expressed in unequal social status interactions (e.g., doctors and patients). Therefore, there is a need to have these linguistic behaviors understood by learners and assessed, and this recommendation can address both instruction and research. A fourth consideration has to be addressed: On the cultural end, as noted by Placencia (1996, p. 21), the lexical choices speakers make can relate to guarding their public self-image or their attempts to ‘fit it’. She maintains that the cultural concepts of el qué dirán ‘what people will say’ and guardar las apariencias ‘to keep up appearances’ represent ways in which people need to hold a ‘good image’ or conform to group expectations. Therefore cultural values intersect with indirectness (Watts, 2003) and, thus, mitigation. Teaching about these cultural concepts is also imperative, and if we provide explicit instruction to this effect, we may assist learners in avoiding pragmatic failure. We need to find ways to assess these behaviors since they are culturally bound and perhaps do not represent tangible aspects of language learning. For instance, learners can be instructed on these concepts so that they can perceive and understand when mitigating forms or expressions are produced by interlocutors. On the other hand, learners can be exposed to these concepts if they feel the need to express them in a context that is representative of their cultural values or the values of their L2. Finally, several researchers have pointed out that early learners do not mitigate using a variety of linguistic devices and strategies that natives do. Novice learners seem to repeat the same devices as opposed to their counterparts who exhibit the use of a wide variety of devices. While it seems that advanced learners do seem to approximate native speakers (based on a variety of studies), research has not detailed whether we can distribute or parse attenuating features according to developmental stages. For instance, what devices and strategies should we teach first?

Chapter 8 211 Should we address lexical devices as opposed to the more complex strategies such as epistemic disclaimers or the use of ‘one’, the generic, impersonal, shield? Thus, a question that can be explored is related to how we assess the acquisition of mitigating strategies and devices and their corresponding developmental stages.

Suggested Initial Instructional Interventions In what follows, several ideas of how to develop instructional interventions in the teaching of mitigation (and pragmatics) are presented. Specifically, we discuss how we can inform our research and instructional practices as they relate to attenuating expressions. If we consider what pragmatic competence means, the ability to use language appropriately in a variety of contexts, it becomes necessary that our instructional models focus on language learners’ abilities to communicate effectively in their L2 environment. Consider the fact that most learners’ pragmatic competence trails behind their grammatical competence, and that textbooks and curricular materials do not guide language instructors or address pragmatic competence with respect to mitigation. We thus need to plan and strategize ways in which we can conduct trial-and-error activities to enable us to gauge developmental progress in language learners. The suggested tasks that follow have omitted the first part of a lesson in which an instructor presents essential lexical items and strategies. These mini-interventions constitute examples of how we can probe acquisition and document developmental stages. They can also represent mini-assessment tools; therefore, they can address learning and how we shape research:

Task 1  Awareness building and practice: Analyze native speakers’ use of attenuating devices in a written or oral skit 1. Learners analyze native speakers’ skit (two) that contains several mitigating devices. 2. Present the two skits in which learners practice (in pairs) the use of the same mitigating devices; they act out the skit. 3. Present two new skits, and now have learners create and present modified skits to a new set of partners. 4. Ask learners to collaborate with a partner to create an original skit in which the same devices are employed. This team then presents the skit in class for corrective feedback. 5. Present a brand-new skit with new devices (using synonyms of the previous ones) and repeat steps 1–5.

212  Bridging the Gap 6. A week or two later, have learners present two original skits with several mitigating devices that were explicitly presented in steps 1–5. First, have novice learners complete a skit that has blanks where the mitigating devices have been omitted. Second, have individual, more advanced learners create an original skit to determine if the linguistic devices were employed appropriately. 7. Several weeks later, learners create their skit in step 6 regardless of proficiency, but this time present them with a topic or theme to create their new skit.

Task 2  Awareness building and audio-visual analysis of mitigating devices 1. Have learners carefully listen to and watch a short TV interview or conversation in which two speakers are discussing politics, fashion, food, among other contexts in high- and low-content material depending on learner proficiency. 2. Request that learners identify and describe when they detect the use of mitigating strategies by the interviewer and speaker. 3. Ask learners to write down the linguistic strategies and devices which they believe function to pad, soften, cushion the speakers’ messages. Have learners illustrate their examples to the entire group. 4. Have learners role-play the TV interview with partners to observe if they can replicate the use of mitigating strategies and devices. 5. Show and tell: Have pairs present a simulated TV interview to the class. 6. After several days or weeks, repeat this same activity but, instead, have learners incorporate the same devices and strategies employed in Tasks 1 and 2.

Task 3  Meta-awareness on mitigation during table talk 1. To increase metalinguistic awareness, have groups of learners listen to or read a skit that contains attenuated expressions between a pair of teens and adults, preferably an argument at

Chapter 8 213 dinner (e.g., borrowing a car to go to a party, getting extra time on the computer for games). 2. Have learners identify what they consider is attenuated in both the speakers and ask learners to report to the group why they think the forms and features used contribute to diminishing the harshness of a message. Novice learners can work in small groups while more advanced can work in pairs. 3. Observe the interaction among learners. Have all groups join the class and ask them to present what they determined was an important feature that seemed to cushion and pad their messages. 4. Request that learners create original arguments during dinner which incorporate mitigation strategies and devices in an argument after a month, a week, or after several sessions.

Task 4  Awareness building and institutional discursive interaction 1. Have learners listen to a conversation in which a customer is returning an item to a service agent, an interaction in which both speakers do not attenuate their messages and are abrasive. 2. Explicitly indicate how the key utterances can be reformulated in such a way to pad or cushion their messages. Point out the key lexical items that can be used in customer service-related interactions. 3. Ask learners to reformulate ways (using other devices and strategies) in which the speakers could have attenuated their messages from being abrupt and demanding. Ask learners to offer advice on how to attenuate rather than being abrupt and harsh. 4. A week or two later, to assess acquisition, have pairs of learners prepare a skit using the same context of customer-service agent interaction.

Task 5 Awareness building and drawing comparisons 1. Have learners discuss how they would respond to an interaction in their native culture (in a context such as in Task 1 with a boss and subordinate, or a teacher and student).

214  Bridging the Gap 2. Have them point to ways in which the pragmatic practices of their L1 differ from the target language. 3. Create a board that contrasts linguistic behavior related to mitigation. 4. Have learners in small groups discuss the expectations of their own culture as opposed to their target language. 5. After several weeks, have learners present a list of recommendations of what they find essential to express when they attenuate in the target language.

Summary We have briefly discussed the importance of creating partnerships among language instructors and researchers. In doing so, we have touched upon how digital communication can serve instruction while at the same time contribute to ways we investigate attenuated speech starting from symbolic emoticons to written emails and other online communications. The chapter implicitly calls on publishers to assist in explicitly dealing with instruction related to pragmatic competence and mitigation. The chapter also briefly dealt with the importance of using naturally occurring speech to provide instruction, assess acquisition, and create measures appropriate to the interventions’ designs. We also discussed how the Briz et al. (2013) and Albelda Marco et al. (2014) models could inform instruction, assessment, and research. In this discussion, the importance of using institutional discourses has also been stressed since these types of discourses represent an authentic context for learners and can provide avenues for assessment and research. Finally, we provided several tasks, short-term formative assessments, that can prove beneficial for instruction and research.

Note 1. For further details on the typology and coding of attenuated linguistic features, readers are advised to visit ONOMÁZEN, 28, diciembre 2013: 288–310 at doi:10.7764/onomazein.28.21. While this methodological proposal is written for Spanish, the structure can be universally applied to our research in English and, we can modify it according to our research goals. For English, we can also inform our work with Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984). Requests and apologies: a cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 196–214, mentioned throughout this book.

Chapter 8 215

References Agar, M. (1985). Institutional discourse. Text, 1, 147–166. Albelda Marco, M., Briz Gómez, A., Cestero Mancera, A. M., Kotwica, D., & Villalba Ibañez, C. (2014). Methodology worksheet for the pragmatic analysis of the discursive attenuation in the Spanish corpus (es.por.atenuacion). Oralia, 17, 7–62. Alonso-Almeida, F. (2015). On the mitigating function of modality and evidentiality evidence from English and Spanish medical research papers. Intercultural Pragmatics, 12(1), 33–57. Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Hartford, B. (2005). Institutional discourse and interlanguage pragmatics research. In K. Bardovi-Harlig & B. Hartford (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics: Exploring institutional talk (pp. 7–36). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bataller, R. (2010). Making a request for a service in Spanish: Pragmatic development in the study abroad setting. Foreign Language Annals, 43(1), 160–175. Bataller, R. (2016). Por favor, ¿Puedo tener una coca-cola, por favor? L2 development of internal mitigation in requests. Issues in Applied Linguistics: IAL, 20, 1. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/13r4d97g Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1984). Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 196–214. Briz, A., & Albelda, M. (2013). Una propuesta teórica y metodológica para el análisis de la atenuación lingüística en español y portugués. La base de un proyecto en común (ES.POR.ATENUACIÓN). Onomázein, 28, 290–319. Cabedo Nebot, A. (2016). La función de la atenuación y la configuración prosódica: un estudio a partir de un corpus de español coloquial. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 27, 55–73. Clark-Gordon, C., Bowman, N., Watts, E., Banks, J., & Knight, J. (2018). As good as your word: Face-threat mitigation and the use of instructor nonverbal cues on students’ perceptions of digital feedback. Communication and Education, 67(2), 206–225. Cohen, A. D. (2010). Approaches to assessing pragmatic ability. In N. Ishihara & A. D. Cohen (Eds.), Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Harlow and Essex, England: Longman, Pearson Education. Delbene, R. (2004). The function of mitigation in the context of a socially stigmatized disease: A case study in a public hospital in Montevideo, Uruguay. Spanish in Context, 1(2), 241–266. Dresner, E., & Herring, S. C. (2010). Functions of the non-verbal in CMC: Emoticons and illocutionary force. Communication Theory, 20, 249–268. Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. (2008). Pedagogical intervention and the development of pragmatic competence in learning Spanish as a foreign language. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 16(1), 47–82. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2012). Pragmatic variation in therapeutic discourse: An examination of mitigating devices employed by Dominican female clients and a Cuban American therapist. In J. C. Félix Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues. Impact Studies in Language and Society (pp. 81–112). Philadelphia: Benjamins. Flores-Ferrán, N. (2018). Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Mexican Spanish: Mitigation and indirectness in an institutional setting. In M. González Rivera (Ed.),

216  Bridging the Gap Current research in Puerto Rican linguistics (pp. 157–184). London, UK: Routledge. García, C. (1989). Disagreeing and requesting by Americans and Venezuelans. Linguistics and Education, 1, 299–322. Hernández-Flores, N. (1999). Politeness ideology in Spanish colloquial conversation: The case of advice. Pragmatics, 9(1), 1018–2101. Hong, C. (2015). Making complaints-proficiency effects on instructor- and peerdirected email correspondence. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 6(1), 53–60. Hyland, K. (1996). Talking to the academy: Forms of hedging in science research articles. Written Communication, 13(2), 251–281. Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London, UK: Longman. Lovejoy, K. (2015). Learning to interact in Spanish as a second language: An examination of mitigation and participation in conversational arguments (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Rutgers University. Márquez Reiter, R. (2000). Linguistic politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A contrastive study of requests and apologies. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Placencia, M. E. (1996). Politeness in Ecuadorian Spanish. Multilingua, 15(1), 13–34. Placencia, M. E. (2004). Rapport-building activities in corner shop interactions. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8, 215–245. Ren, W. (2018). Mitigation in Chinese online consumer reviews. Discourse, Context, & Media. doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2018.01.001 Sampietro, A. (2016). Exploring the punctuation effect of emoji in Spanish WHATSAPP chats. Lenguas Modernas Universidad de Chile, 47, 91–113. Sánchez Vicent, I. (2008). Hedging in the language of psychiatry: A contrastive analysis of four scientific genres from a cross-cultural framework. In P. Sánchez Hernández (Ed.), Researching and teaching specialized languages: New contexts, new challenges (pp. 150–161). Murcia, Spain: Universidad de Murcia. Taguchi, N. (2015). Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going. Language Teaching, 48, 1–50. Watts, R. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yus, F. (2005). Not all emoticons are equal. Linguagem em (Dis)curso, 14(3), 511–529.

9 Concluding Thoughts

The preceding chapters have attested that mitigation is ubiquitous in verbal, digital, and written interactions and that it is found in all levels of communication. We have also noted that attenuation is influenced by interpersonal relations and that this phenomenon has expressions, devices, and strategies that, when analyzed in context, allows us to understand the pressures that motivate its expression. Further, we have explained that the wide range and scope of the linguistic devices and strategies are prompted by psycho-social and affective aspects of speakers’ interactions. Three objectives are in mind in the concluding chapter. The first one is to draw together the various aspects of mitigation discussed in the book. The second objective of this chapter is to reflect on what has been narrowly described as mitigation. The final aim is to propose a brief declaration about attenuation, a rally that can impact the way we investigate this phenomenon. This last aim centers on addressing how attenuation is embraced in language instruction and research contexts. We address all these aspects by way of questions so that readers can reflect upon them. From Chapter 1, defining linguistic mitigation: 1. What are the defining characteristics of linguistic attenuation? 2. Are all mitigated utterances related to indirectness and vagueness? Are there contexts and utterances that are indirect and vague yet not mitigated? 3. To what extent is linguistic mitigation related to politeness? From Chapter 2, on empirical research in English and Spanish: 1. In what ways do researchers who investigate mitigation in English benefit from research conducted in Spanish and vice versa? 2. What aspects of attenuation are significant in order to create a universal taxonomy and, if so, can a universal taxonomy inform a theory of linguistic mitigation and future studies?

218  Concluding Thoughts From Chapter 3, theoretical perspectives: 1. Can Politeness Theory provide an adequate account of attenuation? 2. What is the predominant relationship between Speech Act Theory and linguistic mitigation? 3. What role do the psycho-social and affective play in relation to the expression of attenuation? From Chapters 4 and 5, detecting devices and strategies and combining theories: 1. In what ways can mitigating devices and strategies be detected? 2. What kinds of devices and strategies can be identified in communication beyond the ones discussed in the chapter? 3. Are there differences in the use of devices and strategies (linguistic features) found among Spanish and English and other languages? 4. What are ways (e.g., devices and strategies) in which we can detect escalation rather than attenuation? 5. How can individual speaker pragmatic variation be captured? How can we explain pragmatic variation in Spanish and English varieties? From Chapter 6, methodologies: 1. How can qualitative and quantitative approaches benefit an analysis of linguistic mitigation? 2. Is awareness-building critical to the acquisition of linguistic mitigation? 3. When we code and analyze data, what are the predominant factors we need to take into account in order to capture a thorough expression of this phenomenon? 4. How would we code data that were obtained from different discourses (e.g., narratives, interviews, online corpus, pair and group interactions)? From Chapter 7, teaching about mitigation: 1. Are there acquisitional stages, developmental stages, that can be attributed to the learning of linguistic mitigation? 2. What are other relevant ways, apart from those discussed in the chapter, in which we can teach attenuated expressions? 3. Can specific interventions be employed (beyond using speech acts), to teach language learners about attenuated communication?

Chapter 9 219 From Chapter 8, partnerships between researchers and language instruction: 1. What critical elements have to be considered in bridging gaps between researchers and language instruction? 2. What is the importance of using naturally occurring speech and institutional-related discourses when we examine and teach about attenuation? 3. What kinds of interventions lend themselves to action research, research which can inform teaching practices and vice versa? The book has treated the ways we mitigate our expressions (albeit spoken or written), and we have used data from English and Spanish to attest to several ways in which we can determine whether features can be considered mitigating or not. Throughout the book, we have noted that attenuating linguistic features are not often expressed by themselves; they seem to co-occur with other features. In revealing this aspect, we have also explained and stressed the role that context plays and how context mediates the use of these expressions. The psycho-social-affective and external factors in which an interaction is situated are also considered essential since they allow us to comprehend how attenuation manifests. In addition to the previously mentioned aspects, we call for a thorough analysis of the socio-pragma-linguistic and affective elements that may condition, prompt, and mediate attenuation including the cultural notions that are inherent and fused to a given language. The following represents only a list of several aspects we need to consider. We also need to integrate the power-distance, prosodic features, types of discourse, social status, other cultural elements, and participation behaviors such as silence, among many others, in our analyses:   1. Lexical items   2. Grammatical elements   3. Prosodic features   4. Interlocutors’ social status   5. Contextual aspects   6. Cultural proverbs, sayings, and behaviors   7. Social relations   8. Semantic features   9. Issues related to epistemic modality 10. Categories of discourse 11. Formal and informal interactions. While we may consider all of these aspects and many more as critical to the way we uncover, interpret, and determine the expressions related to

220  Concluding Thoughts mitigation, we cannot disregard the psycho-social aspects and pressures that may prompt the expression of mitigation discussed in this book, the motivations for why we mitigate our speech or written communiques (including digital). As noted earlier, mitigation relates to how we modify our statements to make our language more pleasing or acceptable to others, how we convey uncertainty, how we avoid being direct, how we communicate without being abrasive, and how we hide our real intentions. In general, we can say that we mitigate to be safe. Furthermore, we have highlighted the fact that linguistic mitigation is not to be equated to politeness. The view taken in this work is that mitigation is a distinct communicative strategy that affects the severity of what is being stated, the perlocutionary effects. To this end, we have considered the broadest definition of attenuation since, throughout the text, we have exemplified how this phenomenon manifests in many different interactions unrelated to politeness. The implicit message here is that we attenuate quite often in our daily interactions. In other words, as a socio-pragmatic and affective concern, this complex linguistic phenomenon is pervasive in much of our expressions and, in general, is part of human communication. To a nonlinguist, mitigation may be known as an attempt to downplay or ‘sugarcoat a message’ (Gladwell, 2008), but to us, it is much more than that. What we have espoused throughout these chapters is that speakers employ an arsenal of resources, linguistic, stylistic, psychological, and socio-pragmatic ones to craft and attenuate their messages. One of the primary tenets of mitigated or attenuated communication is that we seem to rely on it to avoid conflict and diminish risk, not just face. So were the goals of the book met? Headlines may grab attention; linguistic mitigation does not. It seems as though while it is a pervasive communicative strategy speakers and writers express, it is not a wellknown phenomenon. Moreover, while linguists may understand its purpose, non-linguists do not. In the text, we defined mitigation in the field of socio-pragmatics, we discussed theoretical perspectives, characterized and substantiated what mitigation looks like in English and Spanish, described the normative ways several linguistic features are used to attenuate, and we have explained dialect and regional differences regarding its manifestation in English and Spanish. We finalized the book by discussing how language instruction can incorporate linguistic mitigation, its importance in instruction. We also discussed how we could bridge the current gap between research and instruction since instruction on mitigation has been mostly underrepresented in language-learning texts.

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Index

Aaron, J. E. 107 Abdolrezapour, P. 158 Abrams, Z. 184 academic lectures and text 33 – 35 acquisition in instructional settings 204 – 207 adverbial attenuator 136 – 137 Agar, M. 90, 203 agent avoiders 51 age of acquisition 43 – 44 Agüero Chaves, A. 101 Aijmer, K. 31, 32 Alarcos Lorach, E. 98, 109 Alba Juez, L. 80 Albelda Marcos, M. (Albelda, M.) 7, 40, 41, 59, 64, 66, 74, 75, 86, 125, 148, 162 – 163, 165 – 166, 167, 167n5, 203, 204, 210 Alcón Soler, E. 184 all-inclusive pronoun 76 Alonso-Almeida, F. 35, 36, 202 altruistic mitigation 27 American Sign Language (ASL) 38 Amrhein, P. 110 Anglo-American model 79 anthropology 1 apologies 69 approximation markers 32 Arewa, E. O. 121 Arndt, H. 44, 66, 115 atenuación see mitigation attenuation 11, 12, 26 – 27, 60, 64; directive 2; expressions 7, 12, 13, 77; messages 13; mixed-method approach for 46, 152, 167; native speakers and language learners 158; speech 72; strategies 111, 123; see also methodology for attenuation; mitigation attenuators 29, 138 Austin, J. L. 27, 59, 67, 110

Australian English (AE) 70 authentic speech 134 awareness building 188 – 189, 207 – 208; audio-visual analysis of mitigating devices 208; drawing comparisons 209 – 210; institutional discursive interaction 209 Banks, J. 200 Bardovi-Harlig, K. 40, 89, 184, 189, 203 Barron, A. 59, 78, 184 Barros García, M. 49, 158 Bataller, R. 184, 193, 204 belief 30 Beltrán, E. V. 188 Blum-Kulka, S. 10, 11, 37 – 38, 62, 67, 68 – 69, 71, 113, 163, 166, 167, 176, 192, 210n1 Boero, P. 157 Bolinger, D. 141 – 142 boosters 73 Borrás-Comes, J. 115, 117 Bowman, N. 200 Bravo, D. 44, 72, 125 British English (BE) corpus 32 Briz Gómez, A. (Briz, A.) 7, 11, 12, 15, 16, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 59, 64, 65, 66, 74, 75, 98, 102, 125, 142, 148, 162 – 163, 165, 166, 167, 167n5, 203, 204, 210 Brown, P. 6, 13, 17, 27, 32, 44, 59, 60 – 61, 66, 73, 79, 125 Bull, P. 105 Bull, W. 109 Cabedo Nebot, A. 5, 13, 115 – 116, 162, 191, 201 Caffi, C. 3, 6, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 23n2, 30, 49, 61, 63, 65, 67, 77, 86, 94, 99, 158

Index  239 cajolers 113 – 114 Callahan, L. 78, 79 Cameron, R. 92, 127n1 Cantero Serena, F. 115, 116, 162 Caracelli, C. 150 Catalán prosody 117 Cestero Mancera, A. M. 41, 47 – 48, 49, 165, 166, 204 Channell, J. 19 Chodorowska, M. 107, 108 Clark-Gordon, C. 200 Clay, R. 143 code-switching 53n1 coding verbs 111 COGILA 49 Cohen, A. D. 7, 167n3, 172, 176, 184, 185, 197, 204, 205 committers 51 communication 23n1 communicative function 198 communicative silence 37 communicative strategy 3, 10, 172 Comrie, B. 112 confianza (mutual closeness or trust) 42 conflict talk 161 – 162 consultative devices 51 conventional indirectness 69 conversational interactions 72 conversational mitigation 27 conversational routines 164 cooperative principles 117 – 118 Cordella, M. 67, 158 Creswell, J. W. 150, 151, 152, 167 cross-cultural awareness and pragmatics 175 cross-cultural differences 68 Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP) 68, 69 Cuban Spanish dialect 136 Culpeper, J. 7, 8, 115, 164, 167n3, 176 cultural and political wisdom 118 cultural beliefs 121 culturally-bound behavior 199 cultural proverbs 215 cultural values 125 Curcó, C. 193n2 customer-initiated requests 79 Czerwionka, L. A. 6, 12, 15, 16, 21, 39, 41, 46, 49, 50, 51, 59, 60, 66, 72, 73, 77, 90, 122, 125 Dastjerdi, H. V. 158 data and data collection 162 – 164 David, C. 32 – 33

Davidse, K. 142 De Araújo, M. A. 162 De Fina, A. 105 degree expressions 142 degree of certainty 28 degree of imposition 12 degree of modulation 12 degree of uncertainty 12 degrees of illocutionary force 62 degrees of intensity 15 deictic expressions 31, 103 – 107 de-intensifier 18 de-intensifying 67 deixis 31, 155 Delbene, R. 16, 22, 40, 49 – 50, 67, 158, 206 De Pablos Ortega, C. 80 De Rycker, A. G. H. 158 Devís Herraiz, E. 115, 116, 162 dialect 136 dialect differences 101 dialect variation 46 Díaz Blanca, L. 44 – 45, 98 digital communications 199 – 201 direct non-mitigated response 87 direct refusals 122 disagreement, conveying 29 discourse and mitigated messages 89 – 91 Discourse Completion Task (DCT) 38, 157, 166 discourse in defense processes 73 discourse markers (DM) 48, 60, 107 – 109, 164 discourse operators 107 discourses 88 discursive contexts 127 discursive devices 29 discursive moves 73 discursive strategy 75 discursive weakening 75 downgraders 11; lexical 46; prosody 46; syntactic 46 downgrading 11, 67, 75 downtoners 28 – 29, 32, 51 downtoning 67 Drave, N. 19, 22 Dresner, E. 200 Dundes, A, 121 Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. 157 el compromiso social (a sense of social obligation) 4 Elias, V. 143 elicitation instrument 158 – 159

240 Index elicitation methods 157 – 159 elicited production tasks (EPTs) 157 el qué dirán and guardar las apariencias (what others will say and guard appearances) 4, 21, 121 – 127 English Language Learners (ELLs) 175 English mitigation in courts 53n5 epistemic and non-epistemic disclaimers 99 epistemic modality 30, 36, 86, 100, 215 epistemic verbs 36 escalation 134 escalation/intensification 7 Escobar, J. 90 European Continental Tradition 78 explicitly teaching, model for 178 expressions 23n1; of indirectness 10; of mitigated utterances 134 – 141 external modifications 33, 38 face-saving 122; effects 61 face-saving agenda 61; Brown and Levinson’s model 61 face-threatening acts 13, 38, 60, 66, 71, 118, 125 face-to-face interactions 164 Faerch, C. 70 Fairclough, N. 103 Fanshel, D. 10, 29, 33, 107, 112, 113, 161, 163 Farahian, M. 184 Félix-Brasdefer, J. C. 39, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47, 53n3, 59, 78, 79, 157, 162, 163, 165, 172, 184, 185, 189, 190, 193n2, 204 Fetzer, A. 105 fillers 32 Fillmore, C. J. 103 Firth, R. 118 Flores-Ferrán, N. 4, 22, 30, 31, 39, 40, 49, 53n1, 65, 67, 69, 86, 89, 90, 93, 101, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 119, 122, 125, 127n1, 152, 158, 159, 167n1 – 2, 206 Flores Treviño, M. E. 47 Flowerdew, J. 33 – 35, 189 force of criticism 28 forewarnings 51 formulaic disclaimers 73 Fraser, B. 3, 4, 13, 15, 27 – 28, 49, 60, 95, 99, 107 free-spontaneous oral interactions 90

Fuentes Rodríguez, C. 77 fuzziness 17 García, C. 39, 68, 80, 157, 193n2, 204 García Vizcaíno, M. J. 107 Gass, S. 67 Ghesquière, L. 142 Gholami, A. 184 Gili Gaya, S. 109 Gladwell, M. 216 Goffman, E. 10, 17, 45, 60 Gómez Torrego, L. 93 Graham, W. 150 Gratch, J. 6, 12, 59, 90 Greenbaum, S. 143 Greene, J. C. 150 Grice, H. P. 20, 70, 118 Gricean principles of interpretation 19 Grice’s maxims 118 Gries, S. 32 – 33 Grimshaw, A. 161 guardar las apariencias (guard ’’our appearances) 4, 21, 72, 121 – 127, 156, 206 Guarnaccia, P. J. 90 Gumperz, J. J. 149 Gutiérrez, L. 45 – 46 Halliday, M. 91 Halonen, M. 97 Hartford, B. 89, 203 Hasler-Barker, M. 163, 165 Haverkate, H. 31, 92, 94, 109, 150 head act 14 hearer-oriented downtoners 29 hedging 11, 17, 51, 67, 73, 77; performative 27, 28 Hernández, T. A. 157 Hernández Bartolomé, A. I. 35 Hernández-Flores, N. 39, 77, 125, 193n2, 202 Herring, S. C. 200 hesitators 51 heuristic approach 149 Hidalgo Navarro, A. 115, 194 high pitch 28 Hispanic cultures 122 Holmes, J. 8, 11, 28 – 29 Hong, C. 162, 202 Hooper, J. 109 House, J. 10, 51, 52, 68, 73, 113, 192 How to do Things with Words (Austin) 67

Index  241 Hoza, J. 38 – 39 Hübscher, I. 115, 117 human psychology 1 Huth, T. 184 Hyland, K. 35, 36, 202 Hymes, D. H. 149 ideologies 121 illocutionary acts 11, 67 illocutionary force 3, 12, 62, 67; of expressions 26; of message 134; of speech 27; of utterance 116 imperative verb 101 impersonal constructions 51, 73; as shields 91 – 95 impersonalization 75 (im)politeness 66, 115; see also politeness imposition and certitude 50 – 51 impreciseness 32 indefinite uno (one) 92 indirect denials 74 indirectness 6, 10, 11, 12, 17, 19 – 22, 26, 60 institutional discourses 49 – 50, 92 institutional discursive interaction 209 institutional discursive settings 33, 203; academic lectures and text 33 – 35; internal and external modifications 33 – 35 institutional talk 89 instructional interventions 207 – 210 instruction-related academic discourse 35 intensification 14, 134; vs. mitigation 141 – 146; in utterances 143 intensifiers 17, 141, 143, 146 interactions: parent-child interaction 37 – 38; sign language 38 – 39 Interian, A. 90 interlocutors 76, 125 interlocutors’ interest 15 internal modification 33 interpersonal relations 3 intra-lingual pragmatic variation 78 Ishihara, N. 7, 157, 167n3, 172, 176, 184 Italian mitigation 6 Janney, R. 44, 66, 115 Jaworski, A. 37 Jianda, L. 164 Johnston, B. 37 ‘just a little’ 10

Kallen, J. 13, 37, 44 Kanwit, M. 143 Kasper, G. 10, 51, 52, 68, 70, 73, 113, 192 kinesic and non-verbal behavior 44 kinesic cue 115 kinesic-related features 73 Knight, J. 200 Koike, D. 71 Kotthoff, H. 158 Kotwica, D. 41, 166, 204 Labov, W. 10, 29, 33, 91, 107, 112, 113, 159, 161, 163 Labovian 163 Lachowicz, D. 98 Lakoff, G. 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 177 Lakoff, R. 32, 51, 66, 126 language-learning 158; contexts 172; related studies 157 Lantoff, J. 109 Lapidus, N. 92, 104 Lavandera, B. 109 learner behavior, variability in 189 – 193 learning environments 86 Leech, G. 11, 13, 15, 22, 32, 62 – 63, 66, 67, 75, 78, 143, 172, 197 Levelt, W. J. M. 110 Levinson, S. 6, 13, 17, 27, 32, 44, 59, 60 – 61, 66, 73, 79, 125 Levis, J. 189 lexical devices 29 lexical downgraders 46, 70 lexical expressions 107 lexical items 12, 14, 26, 30, 32, 42, 51, 60, 114, 184, 215 lexicon 165, 175, 184, 189 linguistic attenuation 148 linguistic behaviors 29, 106, 204 linguistic devices 91; deictic expressions 103 – 107; epistemic and non-epistemic disclaimers 99; impersonal constructions as shields 91 – 95; morphological diminutives 100 – 103; omission of referents 95 – 97; parenthetical verbs 99 – 100; passive voice construction 97 – 98; and strategies 2 linguistic distancing 75 linguistic expressions 122 linguistic forms: cajolers 113 – 114; discourse markers 107 – 109; el qué dirán and guardar las apariencias

242 Index (what others will say and guard appearances) 4, 21, 121 – 127; prosodic features 114 – 117; tag questions 112 – 113; tense, mood, and aspect 109 – 112 linguistic indicators 116 linguistic mitigation 75, 86; acquisition of 197 – 198; see also mitigation linguistic mitigation, learning 172 – 175; acquisition of mitigation 184 – 188; awareness building 188 – 189; explicit instruction 176 – 181; instructional interventions 184 – 188; pragmatics 175; sample presentation 181 – 183; Spanish and English 184; variability in learner behavior 189 – 193 linguistic particles 88 linguistic politeness 13, 37, 64 linguistic-pragmatic process 173 linguistic repertoires 26, 197 linguistic resources 12 linguistic strategies 13 linguistic units 59 linguistic variables 151 lip-puckering 39 Lipski, J. 101 literary discourse 37 little semantic content 32 Liu, Y. 162 L1 linguistic environments 177 locutionary acts 11, 67 London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English 32 Lovejoy, K. 39, 40, 49, 62, 67, 82n1, 86, 107, 157, 158, 161, 184, 185, 190, 191, 201 – 202 low volume 28 Mackey, A. 7, 167n3, 176 Maíz Arévalo, C. 191 Malamud-Makowski, M. 107 Mao, W. 6, 12, 59, 90 Marcano, Z. 43 Mariottini, L. 42, 43, 103 Márquez Guerrero, M. 143 Márquez Reiter, R. 79, 86, 102, 103, 114, 157, 177, 190, 193, 206 Marsella, S. 6, 12, 59, 72, 90 Marti, L. 164 Martínez-Cabeza, M. A. 107 Martínez-Flor, A. 157, 184, 187 Martín-Martín, P. 35, 36

Martinovski, B. 6, 12, 53n5, 59, 66, 72, 73, 90, 158 Matte Bon, F. 103 Mei, M. 164 Mendiluce Cabrera, G. 35 meta-awareness on mitigation 208 – 209 metalinguistic awareness 164 – 165 metaphoric saying 140 methodology for attenuation 147 – 149; coding data 165 – 167; conflict talk 161 – 162; corpus and data collection 156 – 157; data and data collection 162 – 164; elicitation methods 157 – 159; metalinguistic awareness 164 – 165; oral narratives 159 – 161; qualitative and quantitative approaches 149 – 156 Mexican Spanish speakers 71 micro-linguistic features 52 Mihatsch, W. 40 Miller, W. R. 90 Miskovic-Lukov, M. 32 mitigated expressions 11, 34 mitigated linguistic behavior 47 – 49 mitigating devices 14, 65, 110, 146, 153 – 154, 172; and strategies 179 – 181 mitigation 69, 115, 172; comparative studies of English and Spanish 36; defined 1, 10 – 12; and face 4; factors affecting 1; in human interaction 3; indirectness 19 – 22; linguistic 1; in literature 37; meta-awareness on 208 – 209; and politeness, intersection 74; psychological 1; silence and discourse markers 37; in sociopragmatics 12 – 17; stylistic 1; universalized taxonomy 51 – 52 mitigation, empirical research on 23n2, 26 – 27; connection, past and present 27 – 28; modulation 28 – 29 mitigation devices 172; according to speakers 156; distribution of frequencies 155; proverbs and sayings 117 – 121 mitigation in English: deictic expressions 31 – 32; literature 37; parentheticals and reduced parenthetical clauses 29 – 30; ‘sort of,’ ‘kind of’ 32 – 33; strategies and devices 30 – 31

Index  243 mitigation in Spanish 39; age of acquisition 43 – 44; dialect variation 46; imposition and certitude 50 – 51; institutional discourses 49 – 50; kinesic and non-verbal behavior 44; operationalizing attenuation 39 – 42; passive voice 44 – 45; polysemic bastante (Enough, Too Much) 47; power and distance 45 – 46; social or external factors 47 – 49; un poquito (a little) 42 – 43 mixed-method approach for attenuation 46, 152, 167 modal expressions 73 modality 28, 30, 91 modulation 12, 28 – 29; escalation 14 monolithic mono-cultural society 62 Morgan, M. 20, 22 morphological diminutives 100 – 103 morphological endings 60 Morris, C. W. 59 motivational interviews (MIs) 89, 90, 135 multiple-choice instruments 164 Murillo Medrano, J. 43, 86, 100 – 101 narratives 73 natural-occurring speech 201 – 203 Navarro, Hidalgo 115 negative-positive polarity formulations 73 negative statement 15 Nevala, M. 164 Nguyen, T. T. M. 158, 164 non-confrontational stylistic devices 68 non-epistemic disclaimers 99 non-face-threatening act 118 non-formulaic expressions 204 non-mitigated devices 68 non-mitigated response 63 non-speech-act related expressions 72 non-verbal behaviors 44 nosotros 103 – 104 notion of politeness 141 Núñez-Pertejo, P. 143 Nwyoe, O. 126 O’Donnell Christoffersen, K. 158 Olshtain, E. 163, 166, 167, 176, 210n1 Omar, A. S. 40 omission of referents 95 – 97 oral corpus of spontaneous speech 162 oral narrative, eliciting 160 oral narratives 92, 135

oral spontaneous speech 27 Orwenjo, D. O. 118 Östman, J. O. 108 Otheguy, R. 92, 104 Padilla Cruz, M. 184 Palacios Martínez, I. 143 Paradis, C. 142 – 143 parental directives 37 parent-child interactions 37 – 38, 53n1 parenthetical verbs (PV) 29, 36, 87, 99 – 100, 155, 164, 172, 181 – 183 passive voice construction 97 – 98 passive voice in Spanish 44 – 45, 53n3 pauses 60, 73, 164 performatives 28 performative-type verbs 28 performative verb 34 Perkäkylä, A. 82n1 perlocutionary act 67 perlocutionary acts 11 personalization 92 personal relationships 61 pervasive behavior 199 phonotactic aspects 117 phrasal downgraders 70 phrases 60 Piatti, G. 13, 44 Placencia, M. E. 4, 6, 15, 16, 20 – 21, 39, 61, 72, 77, 79, 80, 121 – 122, 157, 190, 193n2, 202, 206 Plano Clark 150 politeness 3, 10, 13, 26, 41, 74 – 75; and attenuation 64; cultural context 62; and mitigation intersection 74 politeness-related communicative strategy 86 politeness-related motivations 122 Politeness Theory (PT) 6, 10, 13, 27, 40, 44, 59, 125, 134 polite utterance 63 polysemic bastante (enough, too much) 47 Pomerantz, A. 162 Potowski, K. 107 pragma-linguistics 197; category 15, 62, 172, 199; knowledge 172 pragmatic ability 197 pragmatic approach 66 pragmatic category 75 pragmatic connectors 107 pragmatic knowledge 3 pragmatic vagueness 69

244 Index pragmatic variation (PV) 59, 77 – 81, 134, 136; macro-social 78; microsocial 78 preparatory formulas 11, 14 PRESEEA 41, 42, 48; corpus 48 Prieto, P. 115, 117 prosody 30, 60, 115, 162; devices 29, 65; downgrader 46; features 88, 89, 114 – 117, 215; modulation 116 proverbs 60, 118 – 119 pseudo-inclusive reference strategies 31 psychological-social-affective theory 72 – 74 psycho-social perspectives 59 psycho-social (PS) and affective aspects of mitigation 134 psycho-social (PS) proposals 76 psycho-socio-cultural sense 62 psycho-socio-pragmatic and affective approach 66 Puga Larraín, J. 1, 6, 42, 44 – 46, 59, 72, 73, 90 qualitative analysis of attenuation 91 quantitative approach and 150 quantity approximator 101 quedar bien (to get along) 4 Quirk, R. 32, 143 reciprocity 62 Reduced Parenthetical Clauses (RPC) 30 reduction of face loss 15 regional dialects 88 Reiter, Márquez 102, 103, 114 Ren, W. 190, 200 Rezaee, M. 184 Rodríguez Alfano, L. 77 role-plays 164 Rollnick, S. 90 RPC see Reduced Parenthetical Clauses (RPC) Said-Mohand, A. 107 Salaberry, R. 176 Salazar-Campillo, P. 157 Salsbury, T. 189 Samper Hernández, M. 48 – 49 Sampietro, A. 162, 200 Sánchez Vicent, I. 202 saving ‘face’ 27 Sbisà, M. 15, 16 Schauer, G. 164

Schegloff, E. 148, 149 Schiffrin, D. 78, 107 Schneider, K. P. 59, 77 – 78 Schneider, S. 3, 12, 30, 64, 100 Schwenter 107 Searle, J. R. 19 – 20, 27, 59, 67, 69, 110 Seitel, P. I. 118 self-clarification 37 selflessness 3 self-seeking 3 self-serving mitigation 27 semantic and syntactic approach 14, 66 sentence connectives 107 Serena, Cantero 116 signs 59 silence with respect 37 Silva-Corvalán, C. 111 Sing, C. S. 22 social interactions 7, 75 socialization processes 38 social obligation 72 social relations 113, 118, 121, 215 socio-affective consequences 89 socio-affective function 10 socio-cultural notion 141 socioeconomic status 43 sociolinguistic interviews 159 sociolinguistic pragmatism 48 sociolinguistic variables 117 sociology 1 socio-pragma-affective-linguistic phenomenon 14, 16, 22 socio-pragmatic-affective phenomenon 198 socio-pragmatic category 199 socio-pragmatic-cognitive variation 78 socio-pragmatic competence 172 – 173 ‘sort of,’ ‘kind of’ 32 – 33 Spanish dialects 115 speaker-addressee relationship 12 speaker constellations 78 speaker-oriented downtoners 29 speech acts 10, 23n1, 67, 71, 174; adjustment to 16 Speech Act Theory (SAT) 6, 20, 59, 67 – 72, 110, 134 spontaneous speech 162 strengtheners 73 stressors 127 Stungiené, A. 35, 158 Su, Y. 190 subjunctive moods 109 Suh, S. 53n1

Index  245 Svartvik, J. 32, 143 syntactic additive 35 syntactic alterations 60 syntactic connection 30 syntactic devices 29 syntactic downgraders 46, 70 syntactic-semantic verb class 109 syntactic strategy 14 syntactic structures 30, 89 systematic intervention approach 90 tag questions 28, 73, 112 – 113 Taguchi, N. 7, 167n3, 172, 176, 184 – 185, 187, 202, 205 Taleghani-Nikazm, C. 184 Tannen, D. 126 taxonomy of speech acts 67 tense, mood, and aspect 109 – 112 Terkourafi, M. 20, 21, 158 term of endearment 38 Terrell, T. 109 thanks minimization 10 theory of mitigation 59 – 60 therapeutic discourse 127 therapy sessions 86 Thomas, J. 172 time deixis 109 tone of voice 73 Torres, L. 107, 109 Travis, C. 107 Trosberg, A. 49 – 50 Ullman, S. 17, 18 understaters 51 uno ‘one’ 4, 92, 151 un poquito (a little) 42 – 43 unwelcome news 13

unwelcoming-ness of message 27, 28 Urmson, J. 29, 35, 51 Usó-Juan, E. 157, 184, 187 usted (formal ‘you’) 82n2 utterances 13, 27, 60, 87; and expressions 52 vague boundaries and fuzzy edges 17 vague language 19 vagueness 6, 10, 11, 12, 17 – 19, 26, 32, 60 Vega, W. A. 90 verbs 109 verb tenses 109 Verschueren, J. 91 Villalba Ibañez, C. 41, 166, 204 Von Wormer, K. 90 Wales, K. 93 Wannaruk, A. 181 Watts, E. 200, 206 Watts, R. J. 13, 59, 75, 122 weakeners 73 weakening effect 11, 75 Weizman, E. 69 – 70 Wierzbicka, A. 17, 18, 19, 32 Wigglesworth, G. 189 Wu, Y. 162 Yates, L. 189 yo ‘I’ 4, 92 Yoshimi, D. R. 181 Yus, F. 200 Zanatta, A. 162 Zuluaga, F. 118, 119 Zupnik, Y. 105