Abstract
This article investigates the dynamic relationship between negation and interpersonal communication with a special interest in the interpersonal pragmatic functions of negative mitigation. The online talent show—The Birth of an Actor (named as I am An Actor from season two)—totals two seasons composed of 30 episodes, among which, 39 rounds of conversations are collected to fulfill this research. This paper invites research methods as recognizing, encoding, analyzing and induction to probe into the interpersonal pragmatic functions of negative mitigation in online talent show. Three findings of this research are that negative mitigation functions firstly, to mitigate blame, secondly, mitigate questions, thirdly, mitigate objections that demonstrates addressors’ ability of resolving online conflicts with regard to interpersonal pragmatics.