Hedging Opinion in Romanian Conversational Discourse: The Use of Softeners

<P align=left><I><FONT size=1 face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=1 face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=3>This corpus-based paper addresses the use of softeners in Romanian conversational </FONT><FONT size=3>discourse. It highlights two important interactional functions: (i) as devices for mitigating the </FONT><FONT size=3>imposition of face-threatening acts; (ii) as markers of shared knowledge. When they serve the latter </FONT><FONT size=3>function, softeners offer the addressee the opportunity to provide support, understanding, thus s</FONT><FONT size=3>howing that both speaker and addressee are on the same wavelength.</FONT></FONT></FONT></I></P>

10_Lucia Opreanu.pdf

<font size="3"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Abstract</span>: Jane Austen’s work has inspired an impressive number of intertextual projects, few of<br>which have generated as many controversies as Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget<br>Jones: The Edge of Reason. The present paper will neither engage in the debates concerning<br>Fielding’s allegiance to or betrayal of feminist ideals, nor discuss her novels’ questionable artistic<br>merits, but will focus instead on the intricate layers of intertextuality at work in the creation of the<br>two main protagonists. If as far as the two plots are concerned Fielding’s borrowings from Pride and<br>Prejudice and Persuasion are relatively straightforward, the portraits of Bridget Jones and Mark<br>Darcy are the result of quite complex fusions that go beyond Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy<br>to comprise various other characters belonging to a wider array of texts. The analysis of the female<br>protagonist will refer in turn to all Austen’s novels and include parallels with her numerous heroines,<br>while the discussion of Fielding’s Mark Darcy will entail an incursion across media, including the<br>nineteenth-century original as well as its most famous film version in an attempt to reveal the<br>numerous levels of dialogic interaction established between the various texts.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">Key words</span>: adaptation; convention; dialogism; imperfection; intertextuality; romance</font>