Diana Hornoiu - Hedging Opinion in Romanian Conversational Discourse: The Use Of Softeners
(pag. 161-166)
This corpus-based paper addresses the use of softeners in Romanian conversational discourse. It highlights two important interactional functions: (i) as devices for mitigating the imposition of face-threatening acts; (ii) as markers of shared knowledge. When they serve the latter function, softeners offer the addressee the opportunity to provide support, understanding, thus showing that both speaker and addressee are on the same wavelength