A comprehensive analysis of understatements and other forms of non-direct speech in English, based on a multi-level approach, including philosophical, cultural, and socio-psychological considerations. The central part consists of an inquiry into the linguistic restrictions for understatements and hedges to be formed by means of the following grammatical categories: predicate negation, predicate gradation, affirmative sentence modalization by means of parentheticals, modal adverbs, modal verbs, and questions.