1st Edition
Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish How Speakers Attenuate Expressions
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.
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
Biography
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.
