ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to determine the mitigation devices and indirect speech employed by Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Mexican clients in an institutional discursive setting. It explains a mixed method approach to investigate pragmatic variation. Pragmatic variation examines how language use varies in specific sociocultural or situational contexts. Pragmatic variation has received little attention in the field of sociolinguistics. With respect to Spanish, new research has drawn attention to the ways in which indirectness manifests among Spanish speakers with regard to age, gender, dialects, and between distinct languages. The chapter discusses theoretical considerations and related literature. It also discusses the qualitative and quantitative analyses. The quantitative analysis revealed that there were unique preferences among the clients' dialects. The Puerto Ricans exhibited a tendency to employ parenthetical verbs, shields, and tag questions while the Dominicans showed a stronger preference to employ bushes compared to their counterparts.
