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ISSUE:    Philology. Theory & Practice. 2026. Volume 19. Issue 8
COLLECTION:    Theory of Language

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Communicative and pragmatic means of speech modification: hedging and mitigation

Elena Mikhailovna Petrova
Chelyabinsk State University
Submitted: August 20, 2026
Abstract. Nowadays, holding a successful conversation is one of the most essential skills for every person. The key aspects of successful dialogue are carefully selected communicative strategies, among which are linguistic hedging and mitigation. Although hedging and mitigation are often used as interchangeable phenomena from a functional perspective, these strategies cannot be regarded as identical. This paper aims to substantiate the differentiation of hedging and mitigation as independent communicative-pragmatic strategies. The novelty of this research lies in distinguishing the related linguistic phenomena of hedging and mitigation based on a functional-expressive criterion. The study focuses on presenting the existing approaches to hedging and mitigation, as well as suggesting the analysis of their classifications. The present paper also attempts to systematize the common and distinctive features of hedging and mitigation. The preliminary results show that the key difference lies in the hyperfunctions of the phenomena under study. The hyperfunction of linguistic hedging is to make a statement more or less fuzzy, whereas mitigation aims to attenuate the propositional content of an utterance. The shared and unique functional features of hedging and mitigation immediately depend on the existing correlation between their means of realization.
Key words and phrases:
коммуникативные стратегии
хеджирование
митигация
хеджи
дифференциация хеджирования и митигации
communicative strategies
hedging
mitigation
hedges
hedging – mitigation distinction
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