The purpose of this paper is to represent linguistic mitigating devices in Russian and to present a framework for a pragmatic analysis of mitigation. Mitigation is defined as a strategy for softening or reducing the strength of a speech act whose effects are unwelcome to the hearer. The negative character of the speech act for the addressee, its being a face-threatening act, is very important parameter of mitigation. So mitigation works in directive speech acts and in assertive speech acts, both in deontic and epistemic modality. Mitigation works in a multi-layered and multi-dimensional way, affecting a plurality of linguistic levels and interactional dimension. The linguistic mitigating devices are categorized into external and internal modification. The former include if-clauses, pre-sequences, clauses, grounders, the latter include different linguistic levels and various linguistic components. Internal mitigating devices cover three different linguistic levels: morphological-lexical, syntactic, and discourse-pragmatic level. In Russian, there are many different mitigating devices, such as aspect, conditional mood, modal words in morphological-lexical level; verb parentheticals, indirect quotation, indirect question, tag-question, passive structure - in syntactic level; indirect speech act, hints, and discourse ellipses - in discourse-pragmatic level. Function of mitigating devices can be distinguished according to the abstract component on which mitigation centers. This abstract scope can be gathered around three major focuses: the proposition, illocutionary force, and the deictic origin of the utterance. First, speaker's epistemic commitment to the propositional content weakens the speaker's degree of certainty about proposition. Second, speaker's downgrading of illocutionary force decreases the weight of imposition of directives. Third, speaker's avoidance of deictic origin of utterance, ascribing another source or shifted to another situation, has an effect on indirectness of utterance. By means of mitigation we may express respective, polite attitude towards addressee and we can reach the expected goal of communication. Thus mitigation establishes interpersonal interaction between speaker and hearer, and plays a very important role in various social activities.

The purpose of this paper is to represent linguistic mitigating devices in Russian and to present a framework for a pragmatic analysis of mitigation. Mitigation is defined as a strategy for softening or reducing the strength of a speech act whose effects are unwelcome to the hearer. The negative character of the speech act for the addressee, its being a face-threatening act, is very important parameter of mitigation. So mitigation works in directive speech acts and in assertive speech acts, both in deontic and epistemic modality. Mitigation works in a multi-layered and multi-dimensional way, affecting a plurality of linguistic levels and interactional dimension. The linguistic mitigating devices are categorized into external and internal modification. The former include if-clauses, pre-sequences, clauses, grounders, the latter include different linguistic levels and various linguistic components. Internal mitigating devices cover three different linguistic levels: morphological-lexical, syntactic, and discourse-pragmatic level. In Russian, there are many different mitigating devices, such as aspect, conditional mood, modal words in morphological-lexical level; verb parentheticals, indirect quotation, indirect question, tag-question, passive structure - in syntactic level; indirect speech act, hints, and discourse ellipses - in discourse-pragmatic level. Function of mitigating devices can be distinguished according to the abstract component on which mitigation centers. This abstract scope can be gathered around three major focuses: the proposition, illocutionary force, and the deictic origin of the utterance. First, speaker's epistemic commitment to the propositional content weakens the speaker's degree of certainty about proposition. Second, speaker's downgrading of illocutionary force decreases the weight of imposition of directives. Third, speaker's avoidance of deictic origin of utterance, ascribing another source or shifted to another situation, has an effect on indirectness of utterance. By means of mitigation we may express respective, polite attitude towards addressee and we can reach the expected goal of communication. Thus mitigation establishes interpersonal interaction between speaker and hearer, and plays a very important role in various social activities.

mitigation, speech acts, indirectness politeness, illocutionary force