Mitigation via exemplification in present-day Italian: A corpus-based study

The paper addresses the pragmatic functions of exemplification in Italian by focusing on a set of exemplifying constructions such as non so (Eng. 'I don't know') and tipo (Eng. 'like'). Based on a corpus-based study, we may hypothesise that such constructions may be formally heterogeneous but all of them are employed to express mitigation. Indeed, they may be conceived as procedural tools to conceptualise pragmatic acts with different illocutionary force as examples of a wider set in order not to impose or to weaken the burden of speaker's commitment