The paradox of mitigation in political discourse. Its argumentative functionality in the parliamentary questions raised by parliamentary men and women in Andalusia

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the pragmatic phenomenon of mitigation in political discourse, and more specifically in parliamentary questions raised in the Diario de Sesiones (ie. The Hansards) of the Andalusian Parliament, during the period 2010-2011. The aim of this study is to identify mitigation operators present in parliamentarians’ speeches (both men and women), in order to analyse possible gender differences as well as their function. Mitigators can be used to express politeness (to protect the speaker’s self image or others’ image from face-threatening acts) but, at the same time, mitigators have a pragmatic function, which has to do with the rhetoric of interaction (Briz 2001:143). The ultimate goal is to optimize our saying-doing (Caffi 1999). According to Caffi, mitigation and attenuation are synonymous, being both the result of downgrading or weakening one of the interactive parameters when parameters are scalars. In short, mitigation performs several functions depending on whether its effects are considered at the level of the multiple speech micro-acts, or at the level of the speech macro-act, which is argumentation as a whole. Regarding speech micro-acts, mitigation weakens the intensity of several conversational parameters (illocutionary force, role of the participants, propositional content) but instead, it strengthens other parameters that are considered to be more profitable in terms of persuasion. In contrast, as regards the general level of argumentation, mitigation is a device that operates as an intensifier of the illocutionary force.