Publications

Publication details [#5859]

Labov, William. 1978. Modes of mitigation and politeness. In Lourie, Margaret A. and Nancy Faires Conklin, eds. A pluralistic nation: The language issue in the United States. Newbury House. pp. 382–389.

Publication type

Article in book

Publication language

English

Keywords

communicative style | mitigation | politeness

Annotation

It is argued that variations in discourse rules may present greater barriers to communication than phonological and grammatical differences because they affect the entire interpretation of a speech event.