In the present study the use of thanking formulae is examined across different genres and varieties of English. Data is taken from the British National Corpus and the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English.
Employing a form-to-function mapping, thanking formulae are not only analysed quantitatively, but also qualitatively accounting for local contexts and genre. Additionally, the status of thanking formulae is examined in the most prominent models of politeness, and the interpersonal relation amongst the interlocutors is investigated. The first part is devoted to a variational analysis, which is supplemented by a genre perspective in the second part. The findings of the study contribute new insights to research on thanking (formulae), politeness, variational pragmatics and media discourse.

Wei Ren, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, on Linguist List 25.165 (2014):
The book makes important contributions to the field of variational pragmatics. It adds to the rather limited body of studies on varieties of English other than British and American English, in this case New Zealand English. It demonstrates a way to combine pragmatics research and corpus linguistics. In addition, it comprehensively explores thanking formulae and verifies the models of politeness against its findings, which makes the study unique in the field of pragmatics research. This book is recommended for researchers and students at the graduate level who are interested in pragmatics, sociolinguistics and politeness theories.