Helen Spencer-Oatey is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. Her academic background is in both psychology and linguistics, and she draws on both disciplines in her well-known work on rapport management and intercultural relations. Her popular books include Culturally Speaking (2008) and Intercultural Interaction (with Peter Franklin, 2009). Dániel Z. Kádár is Chair Professor and Head of Research Centre in Dalian University of Foreign Languages, China and Research Professor at the Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is author/editor of twenty-five books and has expertise in intercultural and cross-cultural pragmatics, interactional rituals and East Asian languages. He is Co-Editor in Chief of Contrastive Pragmatics: A Cross-Disciplinary Journal.

• Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; Part I. Conceptual Foundations: 2. Conceptualising politeness; 3. Conceptualising culture; Part II. Evaluating Politeness across Cultures: 4. Overview of the politeness evaluation process; 5. Contextual assessments and culture; 6. Norms, expectations and culture; 7. Evaluation warrant 1: culture and the bases of rapport; 8. Evaluation warrant 2: culture and conceptions of the socio-moral order; 9. Making judgements and culture; 10. Application: data analysis sample and practice; Part III. Managing Politeness across Cultures: 11. Managing politeness across cultures: an overview; 12. Responding to offencess and restoring relations; 13. Dealing with disagreement and conflict; 14. Maintaining smooth intercultural relations; 15. Initiating and fostering positive intercultural relations; Part IV. Implications and Concluding Comments: 16. Implications for politeness theory; 17. Implications for the intercultural field.

'With a firm focus on the negotiation of relationships in context, Helen Spencer-Oatey and Daniel Kadar provide an immensely useful discussion of theory, methodology, and applications in intercultural research on politeness. Their analyses draw on their extensive research experience and are illuminated by data from a wide range of sources, making this an engaging text which researchers, practitioners and students will find stimulating.' Janet Holmes, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, Victoria University of Wellington