‘The Pragmatics of Politeness is a fascinating journey through the past thirty years of politeness research, written in a clear and insightful manner. Yet this book is more than simply an account of the evolution of the field. It is the personal deposition of the authors views about politeness as they have been shaped and refined over the past thirty years. A delight to read, and full of critical insights about a wealth of phenomena including defaults, speech acts and indirectness, intra-and inter-cultural variation and the history of English politeness, The Pragmatics of Politeness is destined to become a new classic in the field of (im)politeness research”—Marina Terkourafi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This readable book presents a new general theoretical understanding of politeness. It offers an account of a wide range of politeness phenomena in English, illustrated by hundreds of examples of actual language use taken largely from authentic British and American sourc
