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.
