A Pragmatic Study Of Mitigation In Television Interview Talks

Mitigation is a pervasive phenomenon of language use that inherits much theoretical importance from the indispensability of the illocutionary force of a speech act to doing things with words. It involves a breaching of the Gricean maxims of conversation and generates nonconventional implicatures, which makes it an interesting topic of research. Mitigation is also a pragmatic strategy which the speaker uses in various ways in adaptation of different contextual factors to perform diverse functions at the interpersonal and the communicative dimensions. Despite its importance, it has been understudied in that more attention has been given to classifying its strategies than to describing its functions and explaining its mechanism. As a partial response to such limitations, the present study aims to make an integrative study of mitigation in ordinary language use. Based on Chinese data obtained from television interview talks and adopting a qualitative research methodology, it attempts to answer the following questions: 1) what are the mitigating strategies? 2) what contextual factors constrain the use of mitigation? 3) what functions does mitigation perform? 4) what is the general mechanism of mitigation?Mitigation is defined in the present study as a pragmatic strategy whereby the speaker reduces the illocutionary force of his speech act in order to soften an unpleasant effect that is detrimental to the achievement of his communicative goal. By illocutionary force is meant the justifiability of the speaker's illocution and the determination with which the speaker goes on record performing the illocution. By unpleasant effect is meant one of the perlocutionary sequels of the ensuing speech act. This definition involves two criteria, a reduction of the illocutionary force and a softening of an unpleasant effect, in comparison to previous definitions which take only one criterion. The adoption of this strict definition is justified to the extent to which it isolates prototypical instances of mitigation to the exclusion of peripheral cases and makes the present study more systematic and manageable. However, although both criteria are indispensable to the qualification of mitigation, the satisfactions of them do not have to be simultaneously manifested in the semantic meaning or the explicatures of the mitigator. In fact, in most cases only the satisfaction of one of them is made explicit while that of the other is left implicit and takes inference to be recovered.Mitigation can be classified into propositional mitigation, illocutionary mitigation and perlocutionary mitigation. Propositional mitigation explicitly operates on illocutionary vagueness, illocutionary mitigation on illocutionary nonendorsement while perlocutionary mitigation works on the speaker's concern or control over a perlocutionary sequel. All these trigger off a negotiation or a reshuffling of rights and obligations between the speaker and the hearer, and, by the principle of synchronic weakening, succeed in softening a negative effect of the speech act that is detrimental to the achievement of the speaker's communicative goal. Through a detailed analysis of the data, the present study has found that there is sufficient regularity in the manner in which the illocutionary force is reduced or the unpleasant effect is softened to further classify mitigation into several subcategories. Thus, propositional mitigation subsumes under it strategies such as understaters, evidentials, tag questions, epistemic modals and subjectivizers, among which understaters work on propositional fuzziness while the others work on the uncertainty of the speaker's propositional attitude. Illocutionary mitigation incorporates disclaimers, deprecators, truth claimers and hesitators, among which disclaimers encode the speaker's illocutionary nonendorsement more explicitly than the others. Perlocutionary mitigation includes strategies such as simple anticipation, concern showing, penalty taking and direct dissuasion, among which direct dissuasion represents the most explicit effort of control. Such findings contribute to a better understanding of mitigation than is provided by earlier studies, which directed their attention overwhelmingly to propositional mitigation.Like other phenomena of language use, mitigation is subject to the constraint of various contextual factors. It has been found that mitigation is interadaptable with powers, negative emotions, controversies, taboo topics and social values. These factors are highly relevant to the interview talks in which mitigation occurs, so there is self-evident correlation between the two. In addition, there are social norms related to these factors that require the speaker to mitigate his illocutionary force so as to be socially and communicatively rewarded rather than sanctioned. Mitigation is seen in this light as the result of linguistic adaptation to these factors and their corresponding norms. Moreover, when mitigation occurs, there is often a linguistic description of a social factor or the social norm related to it which constitutes the background for the use of mitigation and serves as the standard by which the illocution is characterized in the light suggested in the mitigator. In other words, the characterization is made with reference to the social norm. Thus, mitigation only makes sense when seen as a faithful representation of social norms, as an apology for a violation of the social norms and as an attempt to downplay the seriousness and the consequences of the violation. By analyzing examples extensively, the present study has found that different contextual factors constrain language use in their unique ways and are correlated with specific mitigating strategies. Thus, power in the hearer entitles him to more speaking rights and obligations and constrain the speaker into using tag questions and disclaimers typically to limit his own speaking rights and obligations. Negative emotions in the hearer call for the speaker's understanding and sympathy and constrain him into using deprecators, disclaimers and the strategy of concern showing predominantly. Controversies require the speaker to respect and acknowledge others' different views and lead the speaker to employ subjectivizers, epistemic modals more frequently than other strategies. Taboo topics motivate the speaker to use disclaimers to avoid violating them or to use deprecators to apologize for an inevitable violation. Social values such as modesty, honesty and restraint require the speaker to present himself as upholding these values by means of subjectivizers and disclaimers. It has also been found that these contextual factors are especially relevant to specific participants in the interview and lead to the clustering of different mitigating strategies around different participants. The host, for example, has to constantly adapt to the power in the guest or the honored guest and to the negative emotions in the guest, therefore his mitigating style is characterized by a combination of tag questions, deprecators and disclaimers. Controversy and the value of modesty are especially relevant to the honored guest, who overwhelmingly uses subjectivizers to adapt to the different views held by other honored guests and to present themselves as being modest. The guest has little to adapt to, his concern being to recount his experience or feelings as accurately as possible. The audience have only to adapt to the competition for the speaking floor and guest's negative emotions, so they mostly use subjectivizers to take and keep the floor and use the truth claimer "实话实说" to pacify the guest while making unreserved outpourings.Mitigation is used to perform various functions in specific contexts in accordance with the speaker's communicative goal. Mitigating functions include interpersonal functions and communicative functions. Interpersonal functions refer to the contribution made by mitigation to the maintenance or improvement of the relationship between the speaker and the hearer while communicative functions refer to the role played by mitigation in heightening communicative involvement or effectiveness. At the interpersonal level, mitigation performs the functions of image management, pacification and solidarity building. At the communicative level, it performs the functions of invitations, floor manipulations and persuasions. Through a detailed analysis, the present study has found that these functions are regularly associated with specific participants who use different strategies to adapt to specific contextual constraints. Thus, image management is especially relevant to the host and the honored guests, who use deprecators, subjectivizers and disclaimers to adapt to social values and taboo topics to avoid being negatively evaluated. Pacifications are the result of the host's adaptation to the guest's negative emotions by means of concern showing and disclaimers. Solidarity building occurs between the host and the guest who feels ill at ease at the beginning of the interview. The inviting functions result from the host's adaptation to the guest's experience or negative emotions or to the honored guest's expertise by means of tag questions, disclaimers, and concern showing. Floor manipulations are realized due to the mitigator's performativity, negotiability and by creating psychological expectations in the hearer, mostly through the use of subjectivizers by the audience. Persuasions are the ultimate goal of communication aimed to be reached through all forms of mitigation.Four patterns emerge from a summary of the findings concerning the mitigating strategies, the contextual constraints on mitigation and the mitigating functions. Firstly, tag questions are almost exclusively used by the host, who adapts to the power in the guest or the honored guest in order to perform inviting functions. This is consistent with the observation that the host is mainly concerned with securing a maximal degree of participation in the interview to make it run smoothly. Secondly, the subjectivizer "个人认为" is surprisingly monopolized by the honored guests whose power entitles them to speak more assertively. This is explained by one honored guest's empathic adaptation to the controversial views held by another in order not to impose and not to be imposed upon, as well as to appear modest. Thirdly, subjectivizers such as "我认为" and "我有个观点" are favored by the audience, who adapt to the strong competition for the speaking floor in order to seize and keep the floor. Fourthly, the truth claimer "实话实说" is favored by all participants partly because it justifies unreserved outpourings while mitigating resentment and partly because it has come into vogue due to the popularity of the TV program.It has further been found that mitigation is inherently related to empathy. On the one hand, it involves an incongruence, such as underrepresentation, irrelevance, redundancy or contradiction, between the semantic meaning of the mitigator and the speaker's illocutionary intention. This semantic incongruence can only be reconciled by assuming that in the use of mitigation the speaker is taking the hearer's perspective, showing affective convergence to the hearer and being altruistic to him. On the other hand, despite being aware of the problematic nature of his illocution and despite his wish to empathize with the hearer, the speaker goes on record performing the illocution. This seeming irrationality can only be explained away by assuming that the speaker is bidding for the hearer's empathy on the ground of reciprocity. In other words, by the use of mitigation the speaker is also attempting to get the hearer to take his perspective, converge to his affect and make an altruistic interpretation of his utterance. These constitute the speaker's empathic intention in engaging in mitigated communication. Metapragmatically speaking, through the use of mitigation the speaker explicitly communicates his empathic intention to the hearer and hopes thereby to realize various mitigating functions. Mitigation conveys the metapragmatic message that in general or in other contexts the speaker would agree with the hearer, but in the present context he would expect the hearer to agree with him. In terms of interpretational constraints, the speaker discourages the hearer from making a conventional interpretation of the utterance but constrains him into making a novel and altruistic interpretation based on the adoption of the speaker's perspective.In order to account for mitigation, the present study proposes the notion of empathic adaptation. Adaptation is egoistically oriented, empathy is altruistically oriented while mitigation is both altruistic and egoistic. Thus empathic adaptation captures the very nature of mitigation, namely that it is egoistic via being altruistic. The explanatory power of this notion is manifested in its account of the motivation of mitigating strategies and the realization of mitigating functions. On the one hand, the use of mitigation can be viewed as resulting from the speaker's empathic adaptation to various contextual constraints. That is, the speaker does not only have to take his communicative goal into account, but also has to adopt the hearer's perspective and affect with regard to the corresponding constraint. Given the egoistic orientation of adaptation, the speaker would probably opt for reinforcement rather than mitigation if he were not empathic with the hearer. Conversely, if the speaker empathizes with the hearer while adapting to the contextual constraint to reach his communicative goal, he will naturally choose mitigation as it takes care of both needs. On the other hand, the realization of mitigating functions can be viewed as resulting from the hearer's empathic adaptation to the speaker's mitigating strategy. If the hearer adapted to the speaker's use of mitigation, but were not empathic with the speaker, he would be stuck in his own perspective or preoccupied with his own affect, so much so that he would fail to see the speaker's perspective and mitigation would fail to realize its functions. But if he empathizes with the speaker while adapting to the speaker's use of mitigation, he will interpret the utterance in a way that is advantageous to the speaker. If and only if this happens can the mitigating functions be realized.In sum, mitigation is a multidimensional and multifunctional phenomenon that takes a multiperspectival research paradigm to reveal its intricacies. The present study has explored the mitigating strategies, the contextual constraints on mitigation, the mitigating functions and the mechanism of mitigation, yet it is more extensive than intensive, more rudimentary than systematic and more tentative than conclusive. It has only revealed the tip of the iceberg, which awaits more penetrating studies to come.