Cover not available

In:Handbook of Pragmatics: 29th Annual Installment
Edited by Frank Brisard, Sigurd D’hondt, Mieke Vandenbroucke and Jana Declercq
[Handbook of Pragmatics 29] 2026
► pp. 145–168

Variational (im)politeness

 | WU Vienna University of Economics and Business
 | University of Vienna
 | Lancaster University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A brief history: How we got here
    • 2.1(Im)politeness
      • First-wave approaches
      • Second-wave approaches
      • Third-wave approaches
    • 2.2Variational Pragmatics
  • 3.Previous work in variational (im)politeness
    • 3.1(Im)politeness and region
    • 3.2(Im)politeness and other social factors
  • 4.Case studies
    • 4.1Sociopragmatic variation in Britain: A corpus-based study of politeness (van Dorst, Gillings and Culpeper, 2024)
    • 4.2Saying goodbye to and thanking bus drivers in German-speaking Switzerland (Leemann et al., 2024)
    • 4.3Politeness variation in spoken English business communication (van Dorst, 2025)
  • 5.Challenges, opportunities, and what is to come
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
References (85)
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