Topic 12 - Meaning between the lines (Session B) > Politeness and impoliteness > Task C > Answers

Politeness and impoliteness

Task C - Linguistic mitigation

Linguistic mitigation is the strategy of trying to repair linguistically the damage done to someone’s face by what you say or do.

If you say ‘You’re a plonker, but so am I’ you have reduced the threat to the other person’s positive face by suggesting in the second clause that you are both equally silly.

If you say ‘I wonder if you could give me a bit of help’ instead of ‘Help me!’, you have mitigated the threat to the other person’s negative faced by (i) making the amount of help needed seem small by using the hedging expression ‘a bit’, (ii) being more indirect linguistically, (iii) using a declarative structure rather than an imperative and (iv) framing the request as if it were hypothetical (cf. ‘I wonder if’ and the modal verb ‘could’).

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