This book offers a ground-breaking, discourse-based framework of rituals, which draws on multiple research disciplines. By examining data from different languages and cultures, it explores the way in which groups of people work out their interpersonal relationships by performing rituals, and compares such in-group ritual practices with other forms of rituality. The cutting-edge theory proposed captures ritual as a relational action constructed in interaction through pre-existing patterns, and it overviews ritual from various perspectives such as history, culture and cognition. Stereotypically, English and other Western languages are thought of as languages which have dispensed with rituals, as ritual is popularly defined as a solemn, and often religious, act. The present book challenges this concept: it shows that ritual is more present in our daily lives than we would normally think, and that it manifests itself in both constructive and destructive forms of behaviour.

This is the first edited collection to examine politeness in a wide range of diverse cultures. Most essays draw on empirical data from a wide variety of languages, including some key-languages in politeness research, such as English, and Japanese, as well as some lesser-studied languages, such as Georgian.

This book provides a ground-breaking, interaction-based framework of rituals, drawing on multiple research disciplines. It examines ritual as a relational action constructed in interaction through pre-existing patterns and captures the features of ritual phenomena by analysing interactants' behaviour in culturally and socially diverse contexts.

This is the first edited collection to examine politeness in a wide range of diverse cultures. Most essays draw on empirical data from a wide variety of languages, including some key-languages in politeness research, such as English, and Japanese, as well as some lesser-studied languages, such as Georgian.