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This paper provides a definition of mitigation based on three interconnected dimensions: cognitive, rhetorical/social, and linguistic. According to the definition provided, some specific requirements from all three dimensions must be met for a linguistic expression to be considered an instance of pragmatic mitigation (self-image protection, communicative effectiveness and some specific semantic-pragmatic characteristics mainly related with Levinson's (2000) M-heuristics, respectively). The definition builds on previous contributions and considers important descriptive problems, such as the heterogeneity of the linguistic mechanisms used to express mitigation and the partiality or incompleteness of some definitions, which consider mitigation from a single perspective and are therefore only valid for specific contexts, genres or varieties. • An integrated and operative definition of pragmatic mitigation has been provided. • Three dimensions are addressed: cognitive, socio-rhetorical and linguistic. • The proposal deals with the problems of the recognition of mitigation in corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper attempts to establish the evidential character of the special prosodic configuration associated with direct reported discourse (DRD). A variety of expressive meanings have been commonly attributed to this marked prosodic configuration of DRD (such as expression of stance, emotion, mimicking, alignment). However, the concurrence of pragmatic/expressive meanings together with evidentiality is very frequent in ‘non-evidential’ languages like Spanish. Therefore, we argue that the prosody in DRD also signals ‘reported’ or ‘quoted’ discourse and, therefore, the presence of evidentiality. To provide evidence for this latter claim, 449 instances of DRD have been extracted from a corpus of (Iberian) Spanish colloquial conversations containing c. 150,000 words, and their prosodic behaviour has been observed. The data reveals a marked prosody in the majority of DRD instances in our corpus. Especial attention has been paid to the examples of DRD with no explicit introductory marks (e.g. verba dicendi ), since 100% of them are prosodically marked. Here, the marked prosody is the only indicator of the source of information. Consequently, it stops being a redundant trait (concomitant to the presence of introductory verbs or marks): it becomes prominent and its use is not optional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes three Spanish particles, namely al parecer, por lo visto and según parece, whose status as pure evidentials (i.e., elements that only convey 'source of information') has been put into question. The aim of this study is twofold: firstly, to observe the incidence of prosody in triggering the contextual meanings usually expressed by evidentials, i.e., politeness, impoliteness and self-image activities; secondly, to find out whether their prosodic behaviour provides any hint of their core meaning being 'source of information'. In order to carry out this analysis, a corpus of circa three million words of Peninsular Spanish has been compiled, which aims to reflect a variety of registers (formal and informal) and genres (both confrontational and non-confrontational). The study reveals different prosodic behaviours exhibited by pure evidentials on the one hand, and contextual meanings on the other. Theoretically speaking, the concept of 'relational work' embraces all the contextual meanings, and therefore explains the prosodic difference more effectively than other concepts. On the other hand, data show a high number of cases in Spanish where evidentials are used with their pure meaning, thus supporting the existence of elements exclusively conveying 'source of information', without any further contextual nuance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to reach a better understanding of the relationship between polite strategies and the phonic features displayed to express them. To do this, an oral corpus has been collected comprising interventions of academic committees (PhD and master theses). From this corpus, a set of fragments were analysed, namely countervailing positive fragments included in negative blocks and negative fragments embedded in positive blocks. The expected phonic behaviour is an increased phonic prominence in the former case and a decrease in the latter one. Despite this tendency being satisfied in most cases, however, a percentage of the examples do not follow this expected behaviour, where the tendency towards (lack of) phonic prominence is inverted. When comparing the phonic data with the degree of planning, it can be seen that abnormal results do frequently appear in interventions with a high degree of planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper analyzes the relationship between digressions and topic shifts in the light of the Spanish marker por cierto. Against the standard explanation, which takes digression as a well-established linguistic operation, digression is regarded as a rhetorical operation, underspecified at the linguistic level. The most conspicuous trace of digression, the so-called digressive markers, cannot be distinguished from topic shifters on the basis of the instruction provided by the marker alone. Thus, both types of markers should be grouped together as a single class, that of “new relevant information markers” (NRIMs). The perceived differences between topic shifters and digressive markers are due to the interaction between two parameters: on the one hand, the instruction provided by the marker and, on the other hand, the discourse unit covered by the scope of the marker. Val.Es.Co''s theory of discourse units will be applied to provide this account with a stronger theoretical background. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]