Mitigating Devices within the Context of Two-Way Mediated Shop Conversations

Abstract

In this paper, we will present our three-month-long study aimed at investigating the concept of relational language and mitigating devices and how such mitigating devices are used within the context of two-way mediated shop conversations. We will also see how relational language and mitigating devices help speakers establish and maintain good relationship. Our study results show that this relationship is maintained by the avoidance or reduction of unwelcome effects a speech act may have on others within a communication context. The communication context of this paper and the pertaining study are related to the recordings of agent-customer communications in English language. We will show some of the most representative examples found in our corpus and, through those examples, we will be able to see how agents of one telecommunication company in Montenegro1 use different mitigating devices in order to sell a product or a service, entice a customer, or resolve a potentially face-threatening, problematic or volatile situation.

Keywords

• power relations
• discourse rights
• perlocution
• deixis
• hedging