Outlining potential applications of their politeness model toward the end of their seminal essay, Brown & Levinson wrote:

In a response to this invitation that may well be seen, in a broader context, as a statement as political as it is scientific, the 12 original contributions to this volume begin to chart this terrain for two neighboring societies/cultures/languages: Greek and Turkish.

The political dimension of this enterprise is brought out in Sachiko Ide's short Preface: “An analysis of the communicative behaviour of each [of two neighboring peoples with differing backgrounds] makes a comparison of the two systems possible, and by bringing the mechanisms of their differences to light, makes understanding possible” (pp. xii–xiii). The pace of the volume is set in the editors' Introduction, where, following a brief critique of the Brown & Levinson model – mainly as to its cross-cultural applicability (3–5) – the editors emphasize the need “to test politeness in areas other than English,” clearly stating the empirical perspective from which the ensuing papers approach this task (7). This volume, then, is proffered as an opportunity not only to move away from the theory-makers' favorite “playground,” but also to observe interesting “regional patterns of behaviour … located between the East and the West” and to investigate “the results of cultural interaction” (7). To this end, alongside the traditional overview of chapters, the Introduction indicates a potential framework for comparing their findings: Hofstede's (1998) four-way grid incorporating the dimensions individualism/collectivism and masculinity/femininity.

In “Freedom, solidarity and obligation: The socio-cultural context of Greek politeness,” Renée Hirschon uses verbal evidence (token gift-receipts, thanking, and hedges of the if-you-wish type), supported by anthropological observation, to establish on one hand autonomy and personal deliberation (with their concomitant disdain for hierarchy), and on the other, solidarity and involvement, as the two opposing poles against which verbal interaction is played out in Greece. Indeed, “played out” is an appropriate term, Hirschon claims, because in Greece the two are reconciled by opting for a degree of verbal laxity and non-accountability, attested in Greeks' responses to insults.

Hirschon's hypothesis that a different balance between individual and collective face may well underlie the increased threat entailed by insults in Turkey (32–3) is corroborated in Denis Zeyrek's “Politeness in Turkish and its linguistic manifestations: A socio-cultural perspective.” Discussing a wide range of lexico-grammatical and discourse devices, Zeyrek establishes Turks' accordance of priority to group consciousness and concomitant assent to power (56), while being careful to point out that ongoing changes in gender roles and urban vs. rural lifestyles necessarily relativize any conclusions in this respect (45, 54, 58ff.), as well as producing novel forms of expression (address terms, “calque” formulae).

Investigating disagreements and corrections between status unequals in classroom and work settings by using a purpose-built discourse completion test is the subject of “Linguistics of power and politeness in Turkish: Revelations from speech acts” by Seran Dogançay-Aktuna and Sibel Kamıslı. They find a general preference for going on (rather than off) record using positive or negative strategies (though bald-on-record realizations as such were rare). Though not discussed in this light, this finding may well be interpretable with recourse to Blum-Kulka's (1987:141) principle of pragmatic clarity, attesting to a preference for directness similar to that found in Hebrew. Another interesting finding of this study pertains to inferiors' preference for positive strategies contrasted with superiors' preference for negative ones in work settings. Though mentioned only as running contrary to Wolfson's (1989) claims, similar findings have been noted for Japanese (Matsumura & Chinami 1999); this may be explained as part of interlocutors' identity-constructing efforts, which are necessarily constrained by their socioculturally defined habitus (Terkourafi 2001:183ff.).

The theme of power-laden interaction is taken up by Theodossia-Soula Pavlidou in “Politeness in the classroom? Evidence from a Greek high school.” Pavlidou's use of recordings of naturally occurring talk between teenagers and their teachers in a semi-urban classroom setting may be at least partly responsible for differences between her findings and those of Dogançay-Aktuna & Kamıslı, which were based on a DCT administered to university students. In particular, her finding that teachers attend more to students' positive face wants, whereas students attend to the teacher's negative face wants, if at all (117–8), contrasts with their finding that positive-type tag questions predominate in students' corrections to the teacher (88–9). At this point, the two studies' combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis deserves a mention, since this is what makes possible an assessment of the relative weight of each strategy in the two cultures. On the whole, Pavlidou's finding of minimal politeness investments in the Greek classroom acquires added importance when juxtaposed to Hirschon's claim regarding Greeks' unwillingness to concede authority.

In “Congratulations and bravo!” Marianthi Makri-Tsilipakou presents an anatomy of two expressions, sinxaritiria and bravo, which are propositionally equivalent in expressing approbation and praise, but differ in usage, as reflected in their combinatorial possibilities with verbal and nonverbal items. More formal, institutionalized situations call for sinxaritiria, while requirement for agency is applicable in the case of bravo. To confirm these intuitions, spontaneous occurrences of the two expressions reveal instances of abuse, mainly in media discourse, which are interpreted as exaggerated manifestations of the premium placed on involvement and positive politeness in Greek society.

A similar emphasis on supportiveness occupies center stage in “Advice-giving in Turkish: ‘Superiority’ or ‘solidarity’?” by Arın Bayraktaroglu. Drawing on recordings of informal interaction, Bayraktaroglu shows how such relation-building potential exists alongside the face-threatening aspect of advice-giving, previously emphasized by studies of other languages. She further surmises that the dual potential of this act is universal, while which of these two aspects is foregrounded depends both on cultural norms and on the distance between particular interlocutors.

Service encounters constitute the focus of the following two articles, which reveal shared gender-specific norms: In both cultures, men show greater awareness of transactional dimensions and lean toward fewer/lower politeness investments. In “The use of pronouns and terms of address in Turkish service encounters,” Yasemin Bayyurt and Arın Bayraktaroglu investigate socio-economic aspects of the encounter against the backdrop of Watts's (1992) distinction between politic and polite behavior, and with the help of a questionnaire covering a range of less to more formal settings. Explaining minimal politeness investments in exchanges with a kebab-kiosk owner with recourse to culture-specific knowledge of prejudices targeting particular social groups, they remind us, once more, of the value of situated/emic interpretation, above and beyond universalizing trends in politeness research. By contrast, in “Brief service encounters: Gender and politeness,” Eleni Antonopoulou draws on an extensive corpus of spontaneous exchanges in a single shop, to propose – contrary to an established orthodoxy in gender research – that men are equally accommodating to their addressees. In her data, each gender shifts toward the other's norm in cross-gender encounters.

The next pair of contributions, “What you're saying sounds very nice and I'm delighted to hear it: Some considerations on the functions of presenter-initiated simultaneous speech in Greek panel discussions” by Angeliki Tzanne, and “Analysis of the use of politeness maxims in interruptions in Turkish political debates” by Alev Yemenici, use unscripted television broadcasts to analyze overlapping talk in media discourse. Once more, this appears to be motivated by positive politeness considerations in a Greek context, while serving rather more competitive ends in a Turkish one. This finding, however, may well be related to the particular topics dealt with in the recorded broadcasts, which left little space for political “point scoring” in the Greek case but had everything to do with it in the Turkish one (303).

The final pair of contributions, “Relevance theory and compliments as phatic communication: The case of Turkish” by Sükriye Ruhi and Gürkan Dogan, and “ ‘Oh! how appropriate!’: Compliments and politeness” by Maria Sifianou, deal with complimenting in the two cultures, which the authors view as encompassing a strong interpersonal component. From a relevance-theoretic point of view, this component may be captured with reference to the notion of phatic communication; from a politeness-theoretic one, the same intuition motivates a conceptualization of compliments as offers. Similarities between the two cultures concern a prevalence of formulaic compliments in institutionalized “compliment” slots and to less familiar addressees, with a concomitant move away from formulaicity between intimates, and the female sex-preferential pattern familiar from studies of compliments in other languages.

All in all, the contributions to this volume represent a mosaic of methodological and theoretical approaches, which cover, if sometimes only in passing, mainstream views on linguistic politeness. Though it is not primarily intended as a theoretically oriented work, points of agreement or disagreement with previous proposals are noted in most articles. The main strength of the volume, however, resides in the breadth and wealth of the empirical data adduced, as well as the detailed analysis of these data guided by both politeness and conversation-analytic considerations. Finally, the editors should be praised for having masterfully coordinated such a project, as evidenced by the many cross-references between articles, which allow common themes to emerge.