Mitigation Strategies in Colloquial Conversations: A Contrastive Approach in European, Cuban, Mexican, Argentinian and Chilean Spanish

Abstract

This paper compares the pragmatic mitigation strategies used by speakers of five geographic varieties of Spanish: European, Cuban, Mexican, Argentinian and Chilean Spanish. Mitigation can be understood as a pragmatic strategy arising from face-protection needs that seeks to reduce possible adverse effects on the satisfactory progress of communication. The data are drawn from the Ameresco corpus of colloquial conversations, and the analysis includes four kinds of parameters: linguistic, pragmatic, and socio-situational. The study explores the functions and frequency of use of mitigation, speakers’ and hearers’ exposure to social and relational risks, the degree of their commitment in interaction, and the most productive resources observed in each variety. The results show convergences and divergences in the use of mitigation in these geographical areas, providing a picture of dialectal and sociolectal patterns here. The study concludes that mitigation varies according to the priorities of face needs in each speech community.