This book analyses the complex relationship between directness, indirectness, politeness and impoliteness. Definitions of directness and indirectness are discussed and problematised from a discursive theoretical perspective.

This book analyses the complex relationship between directness, indirectness, politeness and impoliteness. Definitions of directness and indirectness are discussed and problematised from a discursive theoretical perspective.

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.

"Philippe Rosinski is a leader in the coaching field. Coaching Across Cultures reveals his pioneering multi-cultural approach and innovative global perspective. His book is a treasure for anyone eager to learn how to effectively facilitate human fulfillment and responsible growth." - Laura Berman Fortgang, Author of Take Yourself to the Top and Living Your Best Life As coaches and clients increasingly realize, the demands of business mean that it is now vital to integrate, understand and leverage cultural differences across countries and corporations. Coaching Across Cultures bridges the gap between coaching and interculturalism.

Indirectness has been a key concept in pragmatic research for over four decades, however the notion as a technical term does not have an agreed-upon definition and remains vague and ambiguous. In this collection, indirectness is examined as a way of communicating meaning that is inferred from textual, contextual and intertextual meaning units. Emphasis is placed on the way in which indirectness serves the representation of diverse voices in the text, and this is examined through three main prisms: (1) the inferential view focuses on textual and contextual cues from which pragmatic indirect meanings might be inferred; (2) the dialogic-intertextual view focuses on dialogic and intertextual cues according to which different voices (social, ideological, literary etc.) are identified in the text; and (3) the functional view focuses on the pragmatic-rhetorical functions fulfilled by indirectness of both kinds.

Explores the fascinating phenomenon of indirect speech acts, highlighting the situations they are used in, and how they are understood.

Communication across Cultures explores how cultural context affects the use and (mis)interpretation of language. It provides an accessible and interdisciplinary introduction to language and language variation in intercultural communication by drawing on both classic and cutting-edge research from pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and politeness studies. This new edition has been comprehensively updated to incorporate recent research, with an emphasis on the fluid and emergent practice of intercultural communication. It provides increased coverage of variation in language within and between cultures, drawing on real-world examples of spoken and written communication. The authors review classic concepts like 'face', 'politeness' and 'speech acts', but also critique these concepts and introduce more recent approaches. Each chapter provides a set of suggested readings, questions and exercises to enable the student to work through concepts and consolidate their understanding of intercultural communication. This is an excellent resource for students of linguistics and related disciplines.

This collection of 19 papers celebrates the coming of age of the field of politeness studies, now in its 30th year. It begins with an investigation of the meaning of politeness, especially linguistic politeness, and presents a short history of the field of linguistic politeness studies, showing how such studies go beyond the boundaries of conventional linguistic work, incorporating, as they do, non-language insights. The emphasis of the volume is on non-Western languages and the ways linguistic politeness is achieved with them. Many, if not most, studies have focused on Western languages, but the languages highlighted here show new and different aspects of the phenomena.The purpose of linguistic politeness is to aid in successful communication throughout the world, and this volume offers a balance of geographical distribution not found elsewhere, including Japanese, Thai, and Chinese, as well as Greek, Swedish and Spanish. It covers such theoretical topics as face, wakimae, social levels, gender-related differences in language usage, directness and indirectness, and intercultural perspectives.