Pragmatic boundaries between mitigation and deception: the case of warning and advice in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic

Abstract

This paper focuses on the analysis of mitigation and its effect on the speech act of warning. Drawing on Lakoff’s & Johson’s (1980) analysis on the selective and cognitive process that takes place in the use of metaphors, it is observed that when mitigation is used to soften a speech act, a similar selective process takes place. Mitigation uses euphemistic devices that contribute to softening relevant semantic connotations in order to highlight others that, while less semantically relevant, are more interactively manageable, instead. It is argued that mitigation weakens the illocutionary force of the warning to the extent of changing the illocutionary act of its communicative purpose. If it was intended as a warming, then it could be understood as and advice. The difference between these two speech acts is examined. The paper concludes that the effect of mitigation, in the context of a pandemic, is neither polite, nor cooperative.