Politeness and impoliteness are not just expressed by words. People communicate polite and impolite attitudes towards each other through their intonation, tone of voice, their facial expressions, their gestures, the positioning of their bodies towards each other, and so on. This volume brings together eleven empirical studies that investigate these various modalities of im/politeness across signed, spoken and written languages, plus a detailed introductory chapter that establishes a framework for the multimodal investigation of im/politeness. The papers cover a range of languages and cultures, including Swiss German Sign Language, Catalan Sign Language, English (as a native language and as a lingua franca), Korean, Catalan, Persian, Japanese and Spanish. Using a range of data sources and state-of-the art methodologies, the papers reveal that these multimodal features are essential aspects of im/politeness across different languages, cultures and modes of interaction. Put together, the findings from these studies lay the groundwork for a new understanding of im/politeness which is fundamentally multimodal.

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 explores the use of technology to detect, predict and understand social cues, in order to analyze and prevent conflict. Traditional human sciences approaches are enriched with the latest developments in Social Signal Processing aimed at an automatic understanding of conflict and negotiation. Communication—both verbal and non-verbal, within the context of a conflict—is studied with the aim of promoting the use of intelligent machines that automatically measure and understand the escalation of conflict, and are able to manage it, in order to support the negotiation process. Particular attention is paid to the integration of human sciences findings with computational approaches, from the application of correct methodologies for the collection of valid data to the development of computational approaches inspired by research on verbal and multimodal communication. In the words of the trade unionist Pierre Carniti, "We should reevaluate conflict, since without conflict there is no social justice." With this in mind, this volume does not approach conflict simply as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a concept to be fully analyzed. The philosophical, linguistic and psychological aspects of conflict, once understood, can be used to promote conflict management as a means for change and social justice.

This book seeks to extend research on framing beyond linguistic and cognitive perspectives by examining framing in visual and multimodal texts and their impact on moral cognition and attitudes. Drawing on perspectives from frame semantics, blending theory, relevance theory, and pragmatics, the volume establishes a model of "pictorial framing", arguing that subtle alterations in the visual presentation of issues around judgment and choice in such texts impact perception, and applies this framework to a range of case studies from Egyptian, British, and American cartoons and illustrations. The book demonstrates the affordances of applying this framework in enhancing our understanding of both the nature of word-image relations and issues of representation in the op-ed genre, but also in other forms of media more generally. The volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars in multimodality, critical discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, social psychology, and communication studies.

This handbook comprehensively examines social interaction by providing a critical overview of the field of linguistic politeness and impoliteness. Authored by over forty leading scholars, it offers a diverse and multidisciplinary approach to a vast array of themes that are vital to the study of interpersonal communication. The chapters explore the use of (im)politeness in specific contexts as well as wider developments, and variations across cultures and contexts in understandings of key concepts (such as power, emotion, identity and ideology). Within each chapter, the authors select a topic and offer a critical commentary on the key linguistic concepts associated with it, supporting their assertions with case studies that enable the reader to consider the practicalities of (im)politeness studies. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of linguistics, particularly those concerned with pragmatics, sociolinguistics and interpersonal communication. Its multidisciplinary nature means that it is also relevant to researchers across the social sciences and humanities, particularly those working in sociology, psychology and history.

(Im)politeness and Moral Order in Online Interactions presents a timely response to the ‘moral turn’ in (im)politeness studies. This volume, presented by a roster of prominent figures in the field, documents and showcases the complexity of (im)politeness as social practice by focusing on the morality of (im)politeness in internet-mediated interactions. It includes, among others, studies on how the moral order is made explicit and salient in the production and perception of online impoliteness as social practice and how situated impoliteness can perform positive social and communicative functions. This volume confirms once again that (im)politeness can serve as a lens through which a variety of topics, genres, and contexts are intertwined together pointing to the very presence and existence of human beings, and is bound to be of interest to not only students and scholars engaged in the area of (im)politeness and internet pragmatics, but also to all those with a more general interest in the study of human (inter)actions in various situations and contexts. Originally published as special issue of Internet Pragmatics 1:2 (2018).

This volume is the first monograph exploring the functions of visual cues in humor, advocating for the development of a non-linguocentric theory of humor performance. It analyzes a corpus of dyadic, face-to-face interactions in Spanish and English to study the relationship between humor, smiling, and gaze, and shows how, by focusing on these elements, it is possible to shed light on the “unsaid” of conversations. In the book, the humorous framing of an utterance is shown to be negotiated and co-constructed dialogically and multimodally, through changes and patterns of smiling synchronicity, smiling intensity, and eye movements. The study also analyzes the multimodal features of failed humor and proposes a new categorization from a dialogic perspective. Because of its interdisciplinary approach, which includes facial expression analysis and eye tracking, this book is relevant to humor researchers as well as scholars in social and behavioral sciences interested in multimodality and embodied cognition.

Aspects of Linguistic Impoliteness aims to bring together a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches exploring the notion of “impoliteness” and the usage of impoliteness phenomena in language and discourse per se, instead of simply considering impoliteness as “politeness that has gone wrong”. Impoliteness draws mainly on linguistics, but also its sub-disciplines, as well as related disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and communication. Various researchers have been selected to contribute to Aspects of Linguistic Impoliteness, and the diversity of sub-disciplinary approaches is reflected in the multi-dimensional organisation of the five sections of the book. The book is divided into five thematic parts, with 16 chapters in all, as follows. The first part aims to study the links between impoliteness and rudeness, by providing a general framework to these notions. The second part deals with occurrences of impoliteness in television series and drama, when the third part mainly focuses on the discursive creations of impoliteness found in literary works. The fourth part concentrates on impoliteness and the philosophy of language, and the fifth and final part offers some case-studies of impoliteness in modern communication.

This volume develops a new multimodal semiotic approach to the study of communication, examining how multimodal discourse is construed transmedially and interculturally and how new technologies and cultural stances inform communicative contexts across the world. It contributes to current theoretical debates in the disciplines of semiotics, linguistics, multimodality, and pragmatics, as well as those aspects of pedagogy and film studies that engage with the notions of text and narrative by addressing questions such as: How do we study multimedia communication? How do we incorporate the impact of new media technologies into the study of Linguistics and Semiotics? How do we construe culture in modern communication? How useful are the current multidisciplinary approaches to multimodal communication? Through the analysis of specific case studies that are developed within diverse academic disciplines and which draw on a range of theoretical frameworks, the goal of this book is to provide a basis for an overarching framework that can be applied by scholars and students with different academic and cultural backgrounds.

Encompasses a wide range of approaches from classical rhetoric to cognitive neuroscience Comprises 33 chapters, each providing an introduction to the subject, an overview of its history, an instructive example of how to conduct a stylistic analysis, a section with recommendations for practice and a discussion of possible future developments in the area for readers to follow up on Includes four newly commissioned chapters in the emerging fields of cognitive grammar, forensic linguistics, the stylistics of children’s literature and a corpus stylistic study of mental health issues