The setting up of multinational companies is a current phenomenon in Romania; such companies bring together Romanian and foreign employers and employees who, irrespective of their mother tongue, use English for professional communication. Consequently a new type of institutional culture has developed, reflected at all levels of institutional activities – discourse practices, methods of communication, etc. This paper is part of a more complex study which analysis features of intercultural communication, such as evaluation, modality, questions, humour; it has two parts – the context of the study and the theoretical framework used for the analysis, while the second one focuses on mitigation analysed in terms of the functions and linguistic devices selected by the participants.