Linguistic Mitigation in English and 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