Variationist study of mitigation I: Towards a description of dialectal and sociolectal patterns of mitigation in Spanish

Abstract

The study of mitigation, a complex pragmatic phenomenon, has been prioritized in recent decades. It has been approached through linguistic disciplines related to speech, especially pragmatics and discourse analysis. Nevertheless, the sociopragmatic and geolectal variability of mitigation in Spanish has barely been studied. This is the main objective of this paper (which complements the research presented in Authors, this volume), which aims to examine the state of the art on sociolinguistic variation in mitigation strategies, especially within the framework of the Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish in Spain and America (PRESEEA). The present paper includes the theoretical framework and methodology for the sociodialectal study of mitigation and summarises the main data obtained from a comparison of mitigation in five urban geographic communities: Madrid, Valencia, Las Palmas, Santiago (Chile), and Puebla (Mexico). The comparison addresses the frequency of mitigation, its different functions and the most productive resources in each community. The findings of the present report show convergences and divergences and draw a picture of dialectal and sociolectal patterns in mitigation.