Linguistic mitigation employed by language supervisors in post-lesson discourse

This investigation explores the linguistic mitigation strategies employed by language supervisors in giving critical feedback to language teachers. The provision of feedback is personal and may be intense as a supervisor needs to meet two goals: clarity in feedback-giving and maintenance of relationships. One way to achieve these goals is through the use of linguistic mitigation, which blunts the harshness of a message. To study language mitigation, post-lesson conferences between four in-service teachers and two supervisors, and between four preservice teachers and two university supervisors were recorded and transcribed. A discourse analysis was then conducted to identify specific linguistic mitigation strategies in supervisory discourse using a taxonomy (Wajnryb, 1994). Results showed that supervisors used a variety of linguistic mitigation strategies that could be classified under three major groups: syntactic, semantic, and indirect mitigation techniques. This extensive use of mitigation strategies showed that the supervisors were aware of the threat posed by their feedback on the teachers’ face and the need to balance clarity and maintenance of personal relationships. The prevalence of mitigation in supervisory discourse also demonstrated that politeness may be an important consideration for teachers to accept feedback. The data also suggested that mitigation may be performing both personal and institutional roles for supervisors. Finally, the study would support the applicability of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) face-saving model in the Philippine context. The implications of this study for supervision and language research were likewise discussed in the conclusion of this paper.