Mitigation -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Foreword -- Presentation of the corpus -- Structure of the book -- Transcription conventions -- List of abbreviations -- List of metalinguistic abbreviations -- Glossary -- Chapter 1 Pragmatics: Subject and Subjectivity -- 1.0. Foreword -- 1.1. Towards a psychostylistics of interaction -- 1.2. A 'loaded' discipline -- 1.3. The subjectivity of language -- 1.3.1. The instance d'énonciation (Benveniste, 1966) -- 1.3.2. The deictic origin (Bühler, 1934) -- 1.3.3. The egocentric child (Piaget, 1989 [1926]) -- 1.4. A complex subjectivity -- 1.5. Stylistic markers -- 1.6. Semiotic markers -- 1.7. The function of identity maintenance and 'speech markers' (Giles et al., 1979) -- 1.8. Contextualizations cues (Gumperz, 1982a) -- 1.9. Mitigation: first definitions -- 1.10. Bridging the gap between linguistic pragmatics and self-psychology -- Chapter 2 Mitigation: The Background -- 2.0. Introduction -- 2.0.1. Structure of the chapter -- 2.0.2. Scopes of mitigating devices -- 2.1. Ideas of mitigation -- 2.1.1. Mitigation in different research areas: the empirical turn -- 2.1.2. Hedges in Brown and Levinson (1987) -- 2.1.3. Mitigation as vagueness: hedges -- 2.1.3.1. Lakoff (1972) -- 2.1.3.2. Bourdieu (1982) -- 2.1.4. Mitigation as indirectedness (Fraser, 1975 -- Leech, 1983 -- Holmes, 1984) -- 2.1.4.1. Fraser (1975) -- 2.1.4.2. Leech (1983) -- 2.1.4.3. Holmes (1984) -- 2.1.5. Mitigation as de-focalization of deictic origin -- 2.1.6. Mitigation as removal of unwelcome perlocutionary effects (Fraser, 1980) -- 2.1.7. Prince, Frader, and Bosk (1982) -- 2.1.8. The notion of weakening (Abschwächung) -- 2.1.8.1. Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten (1982) -- 2.1.8.2. Langner (1994) -- 2.2. Intensity -- 2.2.1. Intensity according to Bally (1970 [1909]).

2.2.2. Intensity according to Strawson (1964) -- 2.3. Towards an extended notion of mitigation -- 2.3.1. Some conceptual distinctions -- 2.3.2. The multidisciplinary relevance of mitigation -- 2.4. Conclusions -- Chapter 3 Pragmatics of Mitigation: Bushes, Hedges and Shields -- 3.0. Introduction -- 3.1. Mitigation as a bridging category -- 3.2. Types of mitigating devices (Habermas, 1987 [1981]) -- 3.3. The functioning of mitigation -- 3.3.1. Bushes -- 3.3.2. Hedges -- 3.3.3. Combination of bushes and hedges -- 3.3.4. Shields -- 3.4. Other strategies of mitigation: quotational shields and topical shields -- 3.5. Conclusions -- Chapter 4 Mitigation and Emotive Communication: Steps Toward a Psychostylistic Approach -- 4.0. Introduction -- 4.1. Style as a psycholinguistic issue: the role of emotion -- 4.1.1. Mitigation as an empathic strategy: attunement (Stern, 1985) -- 4.1.2. The other edge of the sword: mitigation as an anti-empathic strategy -- 4.2. On the conceptualization of emotion in linguistic theories -- 4.3. A folk psychological category: involvement -- 4.4. An approach to emotive communication (Caffi and Janney, 1994b) -- 4.4.1. Emotive communication and emotional communication -- 4.4.2. The notion of emotive contrast -- 4.4.3. Types of emotive devices -- 4.4.4. Emotive closeness and distance: empathic deixis -- 4.5. Immediacy (Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968) -- 4.6. Equivocation (Beavin Bavelas, 1985 -- Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990) -- 4.7. Disqualification -- 4.7.1. Haley (1959) -- 4.7.2. Mitigation and diqualification -- 4.8. Transactional disqualification (Sluzki et al., 1967) -- 4.8.1. Types of transactional disqualification -- 4.8.2. Reactive moves to transactional disqualification -- 4.9. The Freudian concept of 'undoing' (Ungeschehenmachen) -- 4.10. Conclusions -- Chapter 5 Doctor-Patient Dialogue: A Case-Study -- 5.0. Introduction.

5.1. Analysis of a dialogue at a primary care physician's -- 5.2. The broader summary of the encounter: the fabula -- 5.2.1. The phases of the encounter -- 5.2.2. The recurrent trend of the phases -- 5.3. Between fabula and plot: salient moments of the encounter -- 5.4. Muldimensional microanalysis of TR1: the plot -- 5.5. The argumentative layer -- 5.6. The illocutionary layer: overall illocutionary description of the phases -- 5.7. Mitigation and institutional politeness in TR1 -- 5.8. Micro-sequences of (non)-attunement -- 5.8.1. Topical and stylistic non-attunement -- 5.8.2. Micro-sequences of stylistic attunement -- 5.9. Distribution of mitigators -- 5.10. Mitigation and monitoring of emotive distances -- 5.11. Co-variance among parameters -- 5.12. Conclusions -- Chapter 6 Grammar of Mitigation in Doctor-Patient Dialogue -- 6.0. Introduction -- 6.1. Preliminary questions -- 6.2. Mitigation and institutional politeness -- 6.3. Types of mitigation -- 6.4. Between natural and non-natural mitigation: a transitional case -- 6.5. Non-natural mitigation -- 6.5.1. Lenitive mitigation -- 6.5.2. Tempering mitigation -- 6.6. Linguistic means of lenitive and tempering mitigation -- 6.6.1. Linguistic means of lenitive mitigation -- 6.6.1.1. Lenitive mitigation and deference -- 6.6.1.2. Summary of linguistic means of lenitive mitigation -- 6.6.1.3. Strategies of lenitive mitigation -- 6.6.2. Linguistic means of tempering mitigation -- 6.6.2.1. Prepositional phrases in tempering mitigation -- 6.6.2.2. Summary of linguistic means of tempering mitigation -- 6.7. Mitigation and felicity conditions (constitutive rules) -- 6.7.1. Attenuation of compliance with essential rules -- 6.7.2. Attenuation of compliance with preparatory rules -- 6.7.3. Attenuation of compliance with the propositional content rule.

6.7.4. Mitigation as side-effect of the reinforcement of the sincerity rule -- 6.8. Conclusions: toward a pragmatic typology of mitigators -- Conclusions -- Bibliography -- Appendices -- Appendix A: TR1, Visit at a Primary Care Physician's (Ch. 5) -- Appendix B: Examples from Chapter 6 -- A) 'Lenitive' mitigation (directive acts) -- B) 'Tempering' mitigation (assertive-verdictive acts) -- C) Other types of mitigation (other acts) -- Name Index -- Subject Index.