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, the book begins by discussing how it has been conceptualized in the literature, drawing on politeness theory among other perspectives from pragmatics, and highlighting increasing research on these topics in native and bilingual Spanish speakers and learners of Spanish. The volume explores examples from a variety of discursive contexts, including institutions, courts, and classrooms, 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 broader discussion in the field of mitigation and will be of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis, in addition to learners and pre-service teachers of Spanish.

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.

Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1 Linguistic mitigation A brief on mitigation Mitigation in socio-pragmatics Mitigation and vagueness and indirectness Summary References Chapter 2 Empirical research on mitigation in English and Spanish Research on mitigation in English Earlier research on strategies and devices Several comparative studies of English and Spanish mitigation Silence and discourse markers Mitigation in literature Other interactions: parent-child, sign language Research on mitigation in Spanish Suggested universalized taxonomy Summary References Chapter 3 Several theoretical perspectives Politeness Speech Acts Psycho-social-affective Socio-pragma-rhetorical cultural and affective Pragmatic variation Summary References Chapter 4 Detecting mitigation strategies and devices On detecting devices and strategies Discourses and mitigated expressions: Institutional and non-institutional talk Categories of mitigating devices, strategies Summary References Chapter 5 Putting it all together Mitigation strategies and devices Intensification vs. Mitigation Summary References Chapter 6 Methodological considerations The benefits of qualitative and quantitative approaches Identifying an appropriate corpus and data collection Elicitation methods: Oral narratives and conflict talk Metalinguistic awareness Coding data Summary References Chapter 7 Teaching language learners how to mitigate 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 References Chapter 8 Bridging the gap between research and language instruction Recommendations to increase research and instruction in: Digital communication: A first step Naturally-occurring speech Institutional discursive settings A model to inform instruction and research Assessing acquisition in instructional settings Suggested initial instructional interventions Summary References Chapter 9 Concluding thoughts Bibliography