This innovative and interdisciplinary book on style shifting in Japanese brings together a wide range of perspectives and methodologies—including discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and functional linguistics—to look at a variety of types of style shifting in both spoken and written Japanese discourse. Though diverse in approach, the contributions all reflect the belief that language use is inextricably linked to both context and language structure in mutually constitutive relationships. Topics covered include shifting between "polite" and "plain" styles, the emergence of a "semi-polite" style, speakers' strategic use of gendered styles or regional dialects, shifting between different deictic expressions, and prosodic shifting. This careful and detailed examination advances our understanding of the complex phenomenon of style shifting not only in Japanese, but also more generally, and will be of interest to researchers and students in fields such as linguistics, linguistic anthropology, communication studies, and second language acquisition and teaching.

Julie Bruch, Mesa State College, USA, on Linguist List, 20.2585:
The papers in this book address the topic of style shifting in a highly interrelated yet multi-faceted way, giving the reader both depth and breadth of understanding. [...] The research methodologies represented are solid, innovative, and helpful in articulating directions for futurework. There is also broad reference to extant research, which helps to ground the reader theoretically.