Reviewed by Alessandro Capone, University of Palermo

Institutional discourse is an issue which deserves special importance, as it privileges the situatedness of speech acts, which are subject to special rules and are sensitive to contextual influence. The contributors focus on the cross-section between institutional discourse and cross-cultural pragmatics. The methodologies employed in this volume include: ethnomethodology, speech act theory, and systemic-functional grammar. The goal is that diversified approaches can yield more interesting results.

The book studies three areas of institutional interaction: classroom interaction, professional interaction, and academic interaction. In classroom interaction, the focus is on how foreign language learners can improve their communicative competence in a formal teaching environment. The contributors focus on intonation, phatic talk (i.e. the establishment of human bonds), the ways speech acts are expressed, and autonomous language learning. There are clearly culture- and language-specific differences in the realization of speech acts of which learners should be aware. The authors argue that it is important to study the status of information in relation to intonational patterns. Meaning in the classroom can be studied by investigating acoustics and, in particular, the tonicity of the teacher’s speech.

The second type of discourse examined is that which occurs in professional interactions. Business communication is realized through written and spoken modes of communication. The contributors distinguish between everyday pragmatics and business pragmatics, while pointing out the constraints a business environment may have on discourse. They also consider prescriptive rules in relation to complaints.

The third type of interaction investigated is that of academic interactions. Academic discourse is an area which demonstrates the need for a greater number of studies on the spoken language. Focusing on one type of academic discourse, that is, during office hours or academic advising sessions, the contributors postulate the need for an increased emphasis on interactional aspects of academic discourse. It is also stressed that there is a research gap in the cross-cultural dimension of research, suggesting that future research pay more attention to interlanguage aspects.

The volume seems to be a good step in adopting a societal view of linguistics. This approach, which takes the situated aspects of language into account, cannot help but elicit positive reactions.