Discourse and Politeness examines Japanese institutional discourse and attempts to clarify the relationship between politeness, facework and speaker identity. The book seeks to establish an empirically grounded analysis of facework as the basis for evaluating politeness, and describes facework in delicate situations such as disagreement, teasing and talking about troubles, which have rarely been discussed in politeness studies.

Insightful and cutting-edge, this research monograph will be of interest to researchers in discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and Japanese language.