2005 Reviews

Politeness in Europe

Klein, Carina

Leo Hickey and Miranda Stewart’s delightful new volume, Politeness in Europe, takes a fresh look at this question, and examines the many ways in which we express politeness, such as gestures and eye contact, some of which have frequently been neglected in other studies.

A review of the field of politeness studies since the publication of Brown and Levinson’s seminal work (1978, 1987), reveals that a plethora of books and journals has sprung up on this topic in the last thirty years. But it soon emerges that this field has, up to now, been “the playground of North America” (Bayraktaroglu & Sifianou, 2001). In this light, Hickey and Stewart’s book, a collection of 22 chapters representing diverse voices from Belgium to Britain, from Norway to the Netherlands, and from Spain to Sweden, is particularly welcome.