This is the first edited collection to examine politeness in a wide range of diverse cultures. Most essays draw on empirical data from a wide variety of languages, including some key-languages in politeness research, such as English, and Japanese, as well as some lesser-studied languages, such as Georgian.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this is the first book to systemise the processes by which we manage relations across cultures.

Communication Across Cultures remains an excellent resource for students of linguistics and related disciplines, including anthropology, sociology and education. It is also a valuable resource for professionals concerned with language and intercultural communication in this global era.

This volume includes 14 papers investigating politeness phenomena in Greece and Turkey, the cultural cross-roads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It reflects current research and provides observations of and findings in patterns of linguistic politeness in a geographical area other than the much studied English speaking ones. The book appeals to professionals and students interested in a broader perspective of language use in its social context.Articles in the collection are empirically rather than theoretically oriented and examine realisations of politeness in relation to social parameters. The chapters have been arranged in pairs (Greek/Turkish), treating the following related issues: firstly a more general ethnographic picture of the two societies, the variables of power/status in classroom and other interaction, solidarity in advice-giving and the use of approbatory expressions, service encounters and the differential use of language by males and females, the use of interruptions in television talk, and finally compliments.

We use politeness every day when interacting with other people. Yet politeness is an impressively complex linguistic process, and studying it can tell us a lot about the social and cultural values of social groups or even a whole society, helping us to understand how humans 'encode' states of mind in their words. The traditional, stereotypical view is that people in East Asian cultures are indirect, deferential and extremely polite - sometimes more polite than seems necessary. This revealing book takes a fresh look at the phenomenon, showing that the situation is far more complex than these stereotypes would suggest. Taking examples from Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Singaporean Chinese, it shows how politeness differs across countries, but also across social groups and subgroups. This book is essential reading for those interested in intercultural communication, linguistics and East Asian languages.

Exploring a largely uncharted territory of cultural history and linguistic ethnography, Understanding Historical (Im)Politeness offers in-depth analyses and perceptive interpretations of the conveyance of social-relational meaning in times (long) past and across historical cultures. A collection of essays from the pens of authoritative historical (pragma)-linguistics researchers, the volume examines the forms and functions of historical (im)politeness, varying from single utterances and act sequences to fully-fledged (im)polite speech encounters and genres, with a focus on their period- and culture-bound appraisal. What is more, the book sheds light on what is still very dimly seen: diachronic trends in 'relational work' and the cultural-societal factors behind patterns of sociopragmatic change. The volume reviews theoretical concepts, methods and analytical approaches to improve our present-day understanding of the historical understanding of relational practices of the distant as well as the more recent past. Since it includes newly established themes and positions and breaks new ground, this collection furthers considerably the field of historical (im)politeness research. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics 12:1/2 (2011).

Speech Acts and Politeness are among the main areas of interest in pragmatics. These communicative phenomena can be considered universal and at the same time language and culture-specific. It is this latter dimension that has been at the centre of recent developments in pragmatics, and it is also the focus of this book. The aim of this book is to reflect this development, providing evidence from four main areas crucial to pragmatics across languages and cultures: a description of a variety of speech acts and politeness strategies in different languages and cultures, a cross-cultural comparison of several speech acts and patterns of politeness, an in-depth analysis of issues concerning the learning and teaching of speech acts and politeness in second/foreign languages, as well as some methodological resources in pragmatics. This book is intended for researchers, scholars and students interested in the field of pragmatics, in general, or in the fields of cross-cultural and second/foreign language pragmatics, and specifically for those interested in speech acts and politeness. It will also be useful to any scholar interested in how communication and culture are related.