Here, we connect interpersonal pragmatics to the language of intimacy, showing how individuals perform pragmatic acts in their questions to mitigates risk as intimacy increases, much like how politeness is employed to save face (Brown et al., 1987).
we examine pragmatic choices in questions around (i) the speaker's certainty, expressed in hedges from Hyland (2005) (ii) the speaker's belief of the social distance, expressed in swearing.