This book examines the fundamental interactional dimension to foreign language communication, including the establishment, development, consolidation and maintenance of interpersonal relations.

Gerrard Mugford is a lecturer in pragmatics, discourse analysis and sociolinguistics at la Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. His current research interests include im/politeness, foreign-language interpersonal language use and critical pedagogy. His recent books, published by Routledge, are Addressing Difficult Situations in Foreign-Language Learning: Confusion, Impoliteness, and Hostility (2019), Developing Cross-Cultural Relational Ability in Foreign Language Learning: Asset-Based Pedagogy to Enhance Pragmatic Competence (2022) and Towards a New Pedagogy for Teaching Foreign Language Politeness: Halliday's Model and Approaches to Politeness (Mugford, 2023, Routledge).

1. Introduction. 2. Lay and theoretical concepts of phatic talk. 3. Collaborative structured phatic talk. 4. Convergence: Bridging cross-cultural phatic gaps. 5. Critical phatic talk. 6. Critical Pedagogy