In this monograph, Johanna Isosävi investigates how face and identity are co-constructed in intercultural interactions between Finnish and French speakers; what role multimodal cues play in the co-construction of face/identity and im/politeness; and how cultural considerations impact the co-construction of face/identity and im/politeness. To address these questions, Isosävi examines multimodal im/politeness from an intercultural perspective. In looking at data on longer-term intercultural relationships, she addresses an under-explored area in im/politeness research. Her study answers the call for more empirical work on the conceptualization of face in connection with identity. According to the author, this short monograph is specifically aimed at researchers and students interested in intercultural communication and pragmatics; I believe it will also appeal to (im)politeness scholars and anyone working on face-to-face interactions.

Chapter 1, “Introduction”, provides the general theoretical background for the case studies investigated, defining im/politeness research, multimodality and intercultural encounters. Isosävi also identifies the research gaps that her monograph aims to fill, connects the contents of the book with her own previous work, and delineates its target audience. In Chapter 2, “Im/politeness studies”, Isosävi critically reviews the definition of politeness and impoliteness, clarifying which definitions she is adopting in her monograph, and justifying the framing of her studies within interactional pragmatic approaches. The chapter also comprises a discussion of im/politeness in intercultural contexts, multimodal im/politeness, family interactions (zooming in on multilingual configurations), and workplace interactions. The research questions she addresses in this book are outlined at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 3, “Data and methods”, presents the data under consideration, i.e., (transcribed) video recordings of intercultural interactions between Finns and French people in family lunches, conversations among friends and students, and professional coaching sessions. These recordings took place in Lyon and Paris in 2017. Isosävi acknowledges ethical considerations and provides information about the participants. The relevant datasets are also documented in more detail in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. The theoretical framework underlying the research is well-justified: interactional pragmatics (Haugh, Reference Haugh2007), complemented with Bucholtz & Hall’s (Reference Bucholtz and Hall2005) identity in interaction approach, the multilingualism and diversity approaches (Backus et al., Reference Backus, Gorter, Knapp, Schjerve-Rindler, Swanenberg, Ten Thije and Vetter2013; García and Wei, Reference García and Wei2014), and Mondada’s (Reference Mondada2019) multimodal conversation analysis for the transcription of multimodal content. Bucholtz & Hall’s (Reference Bucholtz and Hall2005) framework, in particular, is central to the analysis of the exchanges in Chapters 4, 5 and 6, with systematic referencing of their principles.

Chapter 4 explores daily interactions in two bicultural Finnish-French families, focusing on the parents coaxing their children to remain at the dinner table, the children’s attempts to get their parents’ attention, and the management of disagreements about how much is enough for a child to eat. In Chapter 5, Isosävi looks at interactions among friends and university students, highlighting instances of mock impoliteness as an accepted or contested practice. Chapter 6 delves into individual coaching sessions from the fields of business and acting. The closing chapter, Chapter 7, is devoted to the “Conclusions and implications” of the research presented in the monograph. The conventions for (multimodal) transcription are included.

With this short monograph, Isosävi achieves her scientific objectives: her case studies document the co-construction of face and identity in authentic intercultural interactions between Finnish and French speakers, with special attention on multimodal aspects, such as the combination of words, gestures and silence. Three types of daily situations are considered, i.e., bicultural family exchanges at the dinner table, interactions between university students preparing a collective assignment, a conversation between friends having an aperitif, and professional coaching sessions. The monograph as a whole is fully coherent, as Isosävi consistently adopts a qualitative, interactional pragmatic approach to face-to-face interactions, using multimodal conversational analysis as transcription method. It should be praised for its systematic attention to the linguistic and gestural components of the video-recorded interactions, offering detailed analyses of rich, authentic verbal exchanges both in private and professional settings, a complementarity that broadens the scope of the discussion. In these case studies, interculturality is not taken for granted, but investigated with critical distance, as a topic possibly emerging from the interaction. The author also discusses the practical implications of her work for the management of intercultural interactions in professional contexts, providing insights for intercultural mediation and dealing with the complexity of the relationship between L1 and L2 speakers.

There are a few areas of inconsistencies or under-developed aspects of the research. A first minor shortcoming concerns the prosodic dimensions of specific conversational utterances (e.g., ‘soft voice’, ‘singing tone’), which are not given a homogeneous treatment in Chapters 4 and 6. It was also not always clear to what extent Chapters 4-6 overlapped with or complemented Isosävi’s recently published work. I assume that the data under scrutiny have already been examined in separate articles. While not being an issue in itself, this was not obvious while reading these chapters. Another remark relates to the collective notions of face, which are alluded to in Chapter 6 (p. 71), but not connected to relevant research, such as that on national face (Chen & Hwang, Reference Chen and Hwang2016). I also believe that participants’ ‘national identities’ could have been questioned more, especially given the multiculturalism and/or multilingualism that characterize the interactions studied.

In the words of the author, “[t]he contribution of [this] study reaches beyond the specificity of these two European languages, the findings of which likely resonate with other intercultural interactions featuring different lingua cultures” (p. 80). Accordingly, she considers several directions for future research on the topic of im/politeness in intercultural interactions, welcoming research on im/politeness in intercultural interactions comparing different languages and using complementary approaches. Following-up on an incidental finding of Chapter 4, which reveals a series of father-child turns consisting only in silent gestures, non-verbal cues in im/politeness, especially non-verbal turns, should be investigated more systematically. In addition, Isosävi calls for more longitudinal interactional studies probing into intercultural differences. Finally, more attention is needed on the interaction between cultural identities and more temporal identities to advance im/politeness studies.