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.

Leyre Ruiz de Zarobe is Associate Profesor in French Linguistics in the Department of French Philology at the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. Her main research interests and publications are in the field of French pragmatics, discourse analysis, and French as a Second/Foreign Language. Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe is Associate Professor in English Linguistics in the Department of English Philology at the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. Her main research interests and publications are in the field of second language acquisition and multilingualism.

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