Politeness in Professional Contexts

“ Politeness in Professional Contexts stands out as a sample of pioneering research at the interface of politeness research and business communication. It contains corpus-based research, ethnographic studies, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses also taking into account participant’s impressions. As a result, it achieves a rich picture of facework and rapport management in different professional contexts. This is a completely coherent volume that provides new insights into face work strategies and (im)politeness-related issues in a variety of professional
settings. There is also a clear continuity between this volume and recent publications in the Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, such as Freytag (2019) devoted to business communication, and Ogiermann & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich’s (2019) edited volume that gives a central place to participants’ conceptions and co-construction of (im)politeness. Finally, this volume invites follow-up research on the role played by interpersonal variables in facework strategies, and on the intercultural dimension of professional interactions. I have no doubt that it will appeal to politeness scholars, of course, but also to researchers in business communication and (intercultural) pragmatics.”

“This book demonstrates the importance of understanding how interactions are negotiated and managed in professional settings, thus provides unique insight into the issue of politeness in professional practices. [...] The book is also accessible to professionals and practitioners due to its detailed illustrations of concepts and examples to demonstrate how pragmatic concepts work in real situations. The well-explained rationales and concrete linguistic realizations are helpful to put into practice. This book makes a substantial contribution to the empirical as well as the theoretical study of interactions in professional contexts.”

“ Politeness in Professional Contexts is highly recommended reading for researchers in the field of linguistics (interactional pragmatics, sociopragmatics, interpersonal pragmatics), law, business, medicine, psychology, IT, and so on. Given the book’s take on the practical aspects of the professional context, practitioners and professionals with relevant backgrounds should also find it of interest.”

“I have no doubt that it will appeal to politeness scholars, of course, but also to researchers in business communication and (intercultural) pragmatics.”