In 2017, the linguist Niktelol Palacios of El Colegio de México published a study of softened speech in Puebla in the journal Anuario de Letras. Lingüística y Filología. It drew on the PRESEEA corpus of Puebla, among speakers with little formal education.
The study names one aim of the softening devices that these speakers use: “se trata de evitar al máximo el desacuerdo” (the point is to avoid disagreement as far as possible).