Politeness in Mexico and the United States -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- List of figures and tables -- Figures -- Tables -- Transcription conventions -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. The scope of politeness -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Origins of polite behavior: Past to present -- 1.3 The politeness1 vs politeness2 distinction -- 1.4 Grice's cooperative principle and the maxim of politeness -- 1.5 Face/facework, politeness, and relational work -- 1.6 Concluding remarks -- 2. Speech acts in context -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Speech act theory -- 2.3 Speech act theory as an approach for examining speech act sequences -- 2.4 Speech acts in context -- 2.5 The speech act of refusals -- 2.6 Concluding remarks -- 3. Methodology and organization of the study -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Methodological issues: Data collection methods in pragmatics research -- 3.3 Organization of the current study -- 3.4 Pilot study -- 3.5 Data collection procedures for the current study -- 3.6 Pragmatic strategies as manifestations of relational work -- 3.7 Data analysis -- 4. Results -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Refusal strategies as manifestations of relational work -- 4.3 Individual variability and speech act production -- 4.4 Face systems and situational variation -- 4.5 Internal modification of the refusal sequence: Expressions of epistemic modality -- 4.6 Concluding remarks -- 5. Results -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 Cognition: Attention to linguistic and sociocultural information -- 5.3 Perception of directness or indirectness -- 5.4 Perception regarding an insistence in the act of declining an invitation -- 5.5 Concluding remarks -- 6. Conclusions and discussion -- 6.1 Introductory remarks -- 6.2 The negotiation of a refusal and face systems -- 6.3 Insistence as a discourse strategy.

6.4 The discourse function of epistemic expressions: Internal modification of a refusal -- 6.5 Perceptions of politeness -- 6.6 The notion of 'face' in Mexico -- 6.7 Refusals across languages -- 6.8 Issues on research methodology and implications for future research -- References -- appendix -- Appendix IA. Role plays (Americans) -- Appendix IB. Role plays (Mexicans) -- Author index -- Subject index -- The Pragmatics & Beyond New Series.