Mais et la rectification atténuative

This article aims at studying attenuative strategies in popular economic discourse. In particular, our attention will be focussed on some of the techniques carried out by the adversative conjunction mais into a selection of articles and interviews of the economy pages of Le Figaro. Our corpus is based on approximately 30000 tokens, collected from January 1st to January 20th 2007. On the basis of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of mais, we will thus investigate some of its realisations, not only from a formal point of view, but also examining its meanings and effects when occurring with certes. Consequently, we would put into evidence the expression of mitigation and of attenuation, as well as the perception of a certain exposure on the part of the utterer (journalist/interviewee) in accordance with his declarations. Finally, some remarks will emerge from the obvious differences connected with the two different text types.