Obana and Haugh question the extent to which commonly accepted theories in pragmatics can readily explain sociopragmatic phenomena in Japanese. Their book proposes a framework for exploring sociopragmatic phenomena, building on the key sociopragmatic axes of indexing, evaluating and relating, and offers fresh new perspectives.

Yasuko Obana is Professor at the School of Science, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan.

Michael Haugh is Professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics in the School of Languages and Cultures at The University of Queensland, Australia.

1. Introduction Part I: Indexing 2. Honorifics 3. Routine Formulae 4. Politeness strategies Part II: Evaluating 5. Giving/Receiving expressions 6. Honorific irony Part III: Relating 7. Joint utterances 8. Off-record requests 9. Concluding remarks