A portrait of a social and cultural community in which scholars were bound by a host of unwritten codes, highlighting the importance of social interaction for the intellectual world in the period immediately preceding the Enlightenment.

This collection combines research from the field of (im)politeness studies with research on language pedagogy and language learning. It aims to engender a useful dialogue between (im)politeness theorists, language teachers, and SLA researchers, and also to broaden the enquiry to naturalistic contexts other than L2 acquisition classrooms, by formulating 'teaching' and 'learning' as processes of socialization, cultural transmission, and adaptation.

When is language considered 'impolite'? Is impolite language only used for anti-social purposes? Can impolite language be creative? What is the difference between 'impoliteness' and 'rudeness'? Grounded in naturally-occurring language data and drawing on findings from linguistic pragmatics and social psychology, Jonathan Culpeper provides a fascinating account of how impolite behaviour works. He examines not only its forms and functions but also people's understandings of it in both public and private contexts. He reveals, for example, the emotional consequences of impoliteness, how it shapes and is shaped by contexts, and how it is sometimes institutionalised. This book offers penetrating insights into a hitherto neglected and poorly understood phenomenon. It will be welcomed by students and researchers in linguistics and social psychology in particular.

This book examines a neglected area of foreign-language teaching and learning: difficult and aggressive situations. The author presents the real-life experiences of language users and analyses how these individuals have dealt with confusion, impoliteness and hostility in target-language contexts in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and within their home country. By constructing a student-centred pedagogical model around the data collected, the author considers the choices available to language learners in difficult situations, as well as tools for language learners to develop pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic resources.

This collection of articles analyses the interests and experiences in the Levant of a number of leading western scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with an emphasis on the networks of learned friends throughout Europe with whom they corresponded.

In The Nature of the Book, a tour de force of cultural history, Adrian Johns constructs an entirely original and vivid picture of print culture and its many arenas—commercial, intellectual, political, and individual. "A compelling exposition of how authors, printers, booksellers and readers competed for power over the printed page. . . . The richness of Mr. Johns's book lies in the splendid detail he has collected to describe the world of books in the first two centuries after the printing press arrived in England."—Alberto Manguel, Washington Times "[A] mammoth and stimulating account of the place of print in the history of knowledge. . . . Johns has written a tremendously learned primer."—D. Graham Burnett, New Republic "A detailed, engrossing, and genuinely eye-opening account of the formative stages of the print culture. . . . This is scholarship at its best."—Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor "The most lucid and persuasive account of the new kind of knowledge produced by print. . . . A work to rank alongside McLuhan."—John Sutherland, The Independent "Entertainingly written. . . . The most comprehensive account available . . . well documented and engaging."—Ian Maclean, Times Literary Supplement

This book challenges common historical misperceptions of both the history of the sciences in early modern France and the history of the French Enlightenment. By reexamining the moral, political, and social ideas of those who defended the ascendency of the sciences, this book demonstrates the evolution of political views.