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Multimodal Im/politeness
Signed, spoken, written
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.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 333] 2023. vii, 360 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 27 January 2023
Published online on 27 January 2023
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Preface | pp. vii–viii
- Chapter 1. Multimodal im/politeness: IntroductionLucien Brown, Iris Hübscher and Andreas H. Jucker | pp. 1–23
- Part I. Signed
- Chapter 2. In your face: Im/politeness in signed languages, with examples from Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS)Penny Boyes Braem and Katja Tissi | pp. 27–63
- Chapter 3. Politeness in Catalan Sign Language (LSC): Mitigation of criticisms in spontaneous discourse in LSCBerta Moya-Avilés, Gemma Barberà and Carme Bach | pp. 65–98
- Part II. Spoken
- Chapter 4. Multimodality in refusals in English as a lingua francaXianming Fang | pp. 101–129
- Chapter 5. Indexing social distance through bodily visual practices in two languagesLucien Brown, Iris Hübscher, Hyunji Kim and Bodo Winter | pp. 131–161
- Chapter 6. Multimodal manifestation of ta’ârof in PersianFarbod Farahandouz and Shima Moallemi | pp. 163–183
- Chapter 7. Within-speaker accommodation behavior in apology-centered interactions: The role of socio-pragmatic factorsOmnia Ibrahim and Iris Hübscher | pp. 185–211
- Chapter 8. Perceptual changes between adults and children for multimodal im/politeness in JapaneseTakaaki Shochi, Albert Rilliard and Donna Erickson | pp. 213–249
- Chapter 9. Multimodal markers of irony in televised discourse: A corpus-based approachClaudia Lehmann | pp. 251–272
- Part III. Written
- Chapter 10. Multimodality and subtitles: A focus on im/politeness in Japanese films with French subtitles through the example of some ritualsChantal Claudel | pp. 275–296
- Chapter 11. Customer support agents in Spanish live chats: Affective communication and multimodal politenessEster Iyanga-Mambo | pp. 297–325
- Chapter 12. “He offered an apologetic smile”: The politeness of apologetic gesturesAndreas H. Jucker | pp. 327–351
- Subject index | pp. 353–355
- Name index | pp. 356–358
- Index of languages and cultures | pp. 359–360
“This engaging and critically illuminating volume, edited by Andreas H. Jucker, Iris Hübscher and Lucien Brown, presents cutting-edge contributions on an understudied subject matter. [...] This timely and intellectually stimulating volume contributes to our comprehensive understanding of im/politeness by offering a fresh multimodal perspective and opens up various possibilities for further studies. [...] It is highly recommended for scholars and researchers in im/politeness and multimodal discourse studies to read this informative volume.”
Jing Han & Chengtuan Li, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, in Journal of Pragmatics 216 (2023).
“What makes this volume valuable to the research field of pragmatics is not only its comprehensive collection of interdisciplinary papers on im/politeness, but also its relevance for those who are interested in the multimodal dynamics of language which is used to signal social distance, power, and cultural-specific politeness cues. Furthermore, it gives insights into a range of languages and cultures and offers a variety of research methods, such as media data, roleplay, written corpora, and experimental techniques. The book under review also succeeds in advancing insights into universality claims such as those made by Brown & Levinson, investigates the use of impoliteness, such as sarcasm and also revisits multimodal codes on the impact of proxemic behaviour and kinesics factors in interpersonal communication. Therefore, Multimodal Im/politeness is not only a valuable resource for researchers with an interest in im/politeness theories but anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the complex and multimodal nature of im/politeness.”
Luisa Warnat, University of Heidelberg, in Pragmatics and Society 17:1 (2026).
“Este volumen representa una valiosa contribución al campo de los estudios sobre pragmática multimodal, un ámbito que, hasta hace relativamente poco tiempo, había recibido escasa atención en la investigación (Culpeper 2011). Igualmente, abre nuevas perspectivas para comprender de qué manera los recursos gestuales, orales y escritos participan en la construcción y el mantenimiento de las relaciones sociales. La variedad de metodologías empleadas y la amplitud de contextos explorados confirman que la cortesía y la descortesía son fenómenos complejos que se co-construyen en la interacción. Así, esta obra no solo ofrece un panorama actualizado sobre el tema, sino que también señala la necesidad de continuar investigando la dimensión multimodal de la comunicación para comprender mejor cómo se negocian la imagen y las relaciones sociales en contextos cada vez más complejos y globalizados.”
Nadia Aldunate Martín, Universidad de Navarra, in Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, Año XXIII (2025). No. 46.
Cited by (6)
Cited by six other publications
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