Your slip is showing: Γλωσσικές και μεταφραστικές γκάφες (και μικρολαθάκια)

[pontios]

το "extenuating" δεν είναι εντελώς άσχετο, αφού υπάρχουν οι οριακές σημασίες που συζητήσαμε.
Άρα, όχι απλή άγνοια , αλλά ατελής γνώση ... ο συντάκτης γνώριζε τη λέξη από μία μόνο φράση και την επέκτεινε πέρα από εκεί που στέκει.

 

[cougr]

I tend to agree, pontios.

The only viable context for 'extenuating conversation' is one where the conversation itself functions as a mitigating factor, or as shorthand for the legal (or other) discussion and analysis of those factors.

I could probably think of some other highly stylized, archaic uses of the term - though none of which apply to the autopsy situation.

 

[pontios]

It's most likely a malapropism.

The fact that people confuse extraneous and extenuating in the other direction (your last post documenting extraneous circumstances) suggests this is a slip, not a stylistic use ... and I agree that the archaic interpretations are probably the least plausible.

 

[m_a_a_]

I'm not saying it's an apt choice of words by any means.

'There is no other extenuating conversation going on in the room, compared to other cases that I have worked on,' remembers Ciaccio. 'In all my years of doing autopsies and everything, this was probably one of the most solemn I was ever a part of.'

I'm reading this, more or less, like: "There is no attempt to extenuate (through chit-chat) what we were doing: we're cutting up corpses (of celebrities we're fond of).

Good to know: Some student forums use the term extraneous circumstances, but for official forms, you’ll need “extenuating” or “mitigating.”

This one triggered my curiosity a tad, and I googled "mitigating conversation", but then I narrowed the search down to books.
Here's what I found:

…and…

First one is from the Handbook of Research on Medical Interpreting, by possibly non-natives Souza, Izabel E.T. de V. and ‎Fragkou, Effrossyni (Effie); second one, though, is from a book called Purgatory by British author Paul David Adkin (whom I'm not familiar with).

My point being: yes, I perfectly understand that the collocation "extenuating conversation" is nothing short of weird, and I'm not confident enough to reach a verdict on whether "mitigating", "alleviating" or something else along those lines would be the more natural adjective, but I do get the point. And extraneous is in my eyes just too generic. Of course the talk is gonna be irrelevant if it's meant to extenuate the mood (which, by the way, I take to be the –implicit– object). But the point is to describe the purpose of the conceived conversation, not its content.

 

[cougr]

And extraneous is in my eyes just too generic. Of course the talk is gonna be irrelevant if it's meant to extenuate the mood (which, by the way, I take to be the –implicit– object). But the point is to describe the purpose of the conceived conversation, not its content.

Even if we were to accept the premise of an 'implicit object,' an atmosphere or a mood cannot be extenuated because a mood carries no moral culpability to be mitigated.You could perhaps say "attenuate the mood", though it's not that typical either.

Furthermore, dismissing 'extraneous' as too generic misses the structural context of the quote. The medical examiner clearly stated that they 'discuss only what is essential' in the sentence beforehand.
So, it's not so much a generic descriptor in this case but rather it perfectly matches and builds on the context of the previous sentence (which specifies that the team only discusses what is 'essential).


.

 

[cougr]

In my haste (I had a μνημόσυνο to go to), I forgot to mention the use of the word "other" which was used in the passage.

"They discuss only what is essential. There is no other extenuating extraneous (non-essential) conversation..."

Replacing "extenuous" with "extraneous", "other extraneous" smoothly links back to the essential discussion.

If the author genuinely intended to shift focus from content (essential) to purpose ("extenuating" the mood), they could not syntactically use the word "other" to connect them. To say "there was no other extenuating conversation" implies that the essential discussion mentioned right before it was also an extenuating conversation.

Edit: Pontios, had also alluded to this earlier on.

 

[cougr]

I'm not saying it's an apt choice of words by any means.

Σε κάθε περίπτωση, όποια κι αν ήταν η πραγματική πρόθεση του ομιλητή, δεν έχει και τόσο μεγάλη σημασία. Το σημαντικό είναι ότι συμφωνούμε και οι δύο πως η επιλογή των λέξεων ήταν εντελώς άστοχη.