Mitigation in online interactions on controversial topics: a methodological proposal

Aulit, Laetitia [UCL]

(eng) This article puts forward an adaptation of Albelda Marco et al.'s (2014) proposal for the pragmatic analysis of mitigation in online interactions on controversial topics, specifically in digital press forums and on Twitter. Drawing on the existing literature concerning the selected discursive genres and on an analysis of some contributions about a controversial Spanish tradition, namely the Moors and Christians festivals, this article highlights both situational and linguistic features that affect the presence of mitigation in these genres and proposes adaptations to Albelda Marco et al.'s (2014) methodology for analysing mitigation in spoken interactions. In doing so, this study presents a methodological proposal directly suitable for analysing mitigation in online interactions in discursive genres such as digital press forums and Twitter.