This book offers an important new perspective on “ironic” and “sarcastic” uses of language and how these relate to our understanding of (im)politeness. It challenges the common assumption that irony and sarcasm can be straightforwardly defined in a technical manner by showing important differences in the way these concepts are understood and practised in (British) English and Italian from a participants’ perspective. It contributes to the growing field of metapragmatics, the study of awareness on the part of users about the ways in which they use language, and is essential reading for (im)politeness researchers who are serious about taking into cross-linguistic differences in theorising (im)politeness. It will also be of great interest to researchers in humour studies, particularly those with an interest in “irony” and “sarcasm”.

- Michael Haugh, The University of Queensland,

Charlotte Taylor’s book is a pioneering attempt to examine mock politeness from a first-order participant perspective, using an innovative approach that combines corpus linguistics with im/politeness theory. [...] I believe that Taylor’s work is a must-read.

- Puyu Ning, Hungarian Academy of Sciences & North China Electric Power University, in Corpus Pragmatics Vol.2, pp. 107-112,