Claudia V. Angelelli is the author of Medical Interpreting and Cross-cultural Communication and Revisiting the Role of the Interpreter, and the co-editor of Testing and Assessment in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Her articles appear in Interpreting, META, MONTI (Monografias de Traducción e Interpretación), The Translator, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Critical Link, TIS (Translation and Interpreting Studies), and ATA Chronicle. She is the author of the first empirically driven language proficiency and interpreter readiness test for the California Endowment and Hablamos Juntos. She is President of ATISA, World Project Leader for ISO Standards on Community Interpreting, and Director of the Consortium of Distinguished Language Centers.

Arın Bayraktarolu did her first degree in Turkey and her PhD in the UK. She received her matriculation from the University of Cambridge in 1977 and taught Turkish linguistics at the Faculty of Oriental Studies until the end of her tenure in 1982, although she returned as a visiting member of the Faculty, on and off, until 1995. Apart from publishing papers in various periodicals mainly on politeness, she also co-edited (with Maria Sifianou) a book entitled Linguistic Politeness across Boundaries: The Case of Greek and Turkish. She has been a member of Lucy Cavendish College Cambridge since 1986, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (UK) since 2005, and Specialist in Turkish on the Asset Languages project of OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations) Board since 2006. She worked from 1995 to 1999 as the Editor-in-Chief of TASG News: Newsletter of the Turkish Area Study Group and since 2005 she has been a member of the Advisory Board, Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture. Her research interests have been in pragmatics in general and (im)politeness in particular, as well as in the linguistic and cultural aspects of Turkish.

Abdelali Bentahila was born in Fez, Morocco, and after pursuing his undergrad­uate studies in English at University Mohammed V, Rabat, he obtained an MA and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Wales (UK). Since then he has pursued his academic career in Morocco, becoming professor and head of the English department at Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, and later professor at Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan. He is currently teaching at this university’s business school, in Tangier. He has published extensively on the sociolinguistics of Morocco, particularly Moroccan bilingualism, language planning policies, language teaching, and Arabic–French codeswitching. His own intercultural encounters include a British wife, and life in a bicultural household has given him many insights into the problems of communication across cultures.

Steven Brown is Professor of English and TESOL Director at Youngstown State University, Ohio, USA. He has a BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. He has co-authored two series of ELT textbooks, Active Listening and English Firsthand, as well as several teacher-education texts, including Topics in Language and Culture for Teachers. He taught English for ten years in Japan, where he also trained teachers in the Columbia University Teachers College MATESOL program. He also more recently taught English for six months at Lunghwa University of Science and Technology in Taiwan, on a faculty exchange.

Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor in the departments of English and applied linguistics at the Pennsylvania State University. He had his early education in the war-torn northern region of Sri Lanka where he taught English language and literature for students from mostly rural backgrounds at the University of Jaffna. Later, he joined the faculty at the City University of New York (Baruch College and the Graduate Center) where he taught multilingual urban students for a decade. His book Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (1999) won the Modern Language Association’s Mina Shaughnessy Award for the best research publication on the teaching of language and literacy. His subsequent publication Geopolitics of Academic Writing (2002) won the Gary Olson Award for the best book in social and rhetorical theory. Critical Academic Writing and Multilingual Students (2002) applies composition research and scholarship for the needs of multilingual students. His edited collection Reclaiming the Local in Language Policy and Practice (2005) examines linguistic and literacy constructs in the context of globalization. His study of World Englishes in Composition won the 2007 Braddock Award for the best article in the College Composition and Communication journal.

Jenny Cook-Gumperz is professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Gervirtz Graduate School of Education specializing in interactional sociolinguistics and the sociology of literacy. Her publications include The Social Construction of Literacy (2nd edition 2006), Children’s Worlds and Children’s Language (edited with William Corsaro and Jurgen Streeck, 1986), Social Control and Socialization (1973), and numerous papers. She is currently working on a new book with John J. Gumperz, Communicating Diversity, to be published in 2012.

Eirlys E. Davies was born and raised in Wales, UK, but after obtaining a PhD in linguistics from the University of Wales, she moved to Morocco, where she has now lived for almost thirty years. She was formerly a professor at Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, and now works at the King Fahd School of Translation, part of Abdelmalek Essaadi University, in Tangier. She has taught courses in semantics, stylistics, and pragmatics, and at present teaches translation and translation theory. Her publications range over the fields of bilingualism, particularly codeswitching, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and translation. Many years of frank discussion with Moroccan students, together with marriage to a Moroccan, have inspired in her an abiding interest in intercultural dialogue and the relations between the Arab world and the West.

Diana Eades (adjunct associate professor, University of New England, Australia) works on language in the legal system, particularly the language used by, to, and about Australian Aboriginal people. Her latest books are Courtroom Talk and Neocolonial Control (2008) and Sociolinguistics and the Legal Process (2010). She has been President, Vice-President, and Secretary of the International Association of Forensic Linguists, and is co-editor of The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.

John Edwards is professor of the history of psychology at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He edits the Routledge Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, and the Multilingual Matters book series for the Bristol publisher of the same name. His own books include Language, Society and Identity (1985), Multilingualism (1995), Language in Canada (1998) and, more recently, Un mundo de lenguas (2009), Language and Identity (2009), Language Diversity in the Classroom (2010), Minority Languages and Group Identity (2010), and Challenges in the Social Life of Language (2011).

Lars Fant is professor of Ibero-Romance languages at Stockholm University. His research interests include cross-cultural and intercultural communication, semantics, pragmatics, general and critical discourse analysis, conversation and dialogue analysis, politeness studies and second-language acquisition, in particular with regard to high-proficient second-language use. He has conducted several large research projects, e.g. “Negotiation interaction: cross-cultural studies of Scandinavian and Hispanic patterns,” “Activity types and conversation structure in native and non-native (Swedish) speakers of Spanish,” and “Interaction, identity and language structure.” He is currently co-conducting a research program on “High-level proficiency in second language use” and is also involved in several co-operation projects with Latin American higher education institutions.

Rocío Fuentes (PhD, University of Pittsburgh) is a visiting assistant professor of Spanish, and faculty member of the Latino and Latin American Studies Committee at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her main fields of interest are the education of linguistic minorities, educational discourse analysis, and intercultural communication.

Amanda J. Godley is an associate professor in the Department of Instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. A former middle-and high-school teacher, she now researches critical grammar and language instruction and issues of language, literacy, and identity in urban high-school English classrooms.

John J. Gumperz is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his best-known publications are Directions in Sociolinguistics (co-edited with Dell Hymes; 1972, 1986 re-issued 2001), Discourse Strategies (1982), Language and Social Identity (1982); and Re-Thinking Linguistic Relativity (co-edited with Stephen Levinson, 1996). Gumperz is currently at work on two volumes: a follow-up to Directions in Sociolinguistics entitled New Ethnographies of Communication (co-edited with Marco Jaquemet) to be published in 2012, and Communicating Diversity (co-written with Jenny Cook-Gumperz) to be published in 2012.

Brenda Hayashi is associate professor in the Department of Intercultural Studies at Miyagi Gakuin Women’s University, Sendai, Japan. She has an MA in TESL from the University of California at Los Angeles and is presently in the linguistics doctoral program at Macquarie University. She has co-authored English textbooks for Japanese high-school and university students. Witnessing cultural “bumps” that arise when Japanese students venture to the United States, England, Scotland, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, Oman, and Tanzania, she firmly believes in the importance of cross-cultural communication training.

Janet Holmes holds a personal chair in linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington. She teaches sociolinguistics courses, specializing in workplace discourse, New Zealand English, and language and gender. She is Director of the Wellington Language in the Workplace project (see www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/lwp) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Her books include Gendered Talk at Work, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, now in its third edition, and the Handbook of Language and Gender (co-edited with Miriam Meyerhoff). Her recent work focuses on leadership discourse and the relevance of gender and ethnicity in the workplace. She is co-author of Leadership, Discourse and Ethnicity to be published in 2011 which examines effective leadership in Mori and Pkeh organizations. Most recently she has been investigating the discourse of skilled migrants as they enter the New Zealand workplace.

John Hooker is T. Jerome Holleran Professor of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility, and Professor of Operations Research, at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds doctoral degrees in philosophy and management science. His research interests include operations research, business ethics, and cross-cultural issues. He is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Business Ethics Education and a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. He has published over 130 articles, five books, and five edited volumes, including the textbook Working across Cultures. He has lived and worked in Australia, China, Denmark, India, Qatar, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Zimbabwe, and has extensive experience in Germany and Mexico.

Russell H. Kaschula is an award-winning author of a number of academic works, novels, and short stories, in both isiXhosa and English. He is Professor of African language studies and Head of the School of Languages at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.

Scott F. Kiesling is associate professor of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh. He served as chair of the department from 2006 to 2009. His work includes areas such as language and masculinities, sociolinguistic variation, discourse analysis, ethnicity in Australian English, and Pittsburgh English. His publications include the books Linguistic Variation and Change (2011) and Intercultural Discourse and Communication: The Essential Readings (2005, edited with Christina Bratt Paulston). He is probably best known for his article “Dude” (2004), which appeared in the journal American Speech.

Ryuko Kubota is a professor at British Columbia University, Vancouver, Canada. She obtained her PhD in education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto in 1992. Before her current post, she taught at Monterey Institute for International Studies and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her areas of specialization include second-/foreign-language teacher education, critical pedagogies, and multiculturalism. She is an editor of Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language: Exploring Critically Engaged Practice (2009). She has published many book chapters and articles in such journals as Canadian Modern Language Review, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, Foreign Language Annals, Japanese Language and Literature, Journal of Second Language Writing, Modern Language Journal, TESOL Quarterly, Written Communication, and World Englishes.

Michael Lempert is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and previously taught linguistics at Georgetown University. He received his PhD in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and specializes in the study of face-to-face interaction. His first book, Discipline and Debate: The Language of Violence in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, details how interaction rituals like monastic debate and public reprimand are changing as reformers take seriously liberal-democratic ideals. Lempert has also written on poetic structure in discourse, stance and affect, addressivity, and gesture, and is presently co-authoring a book on US political communication.

Pamela Maseko is a senior lecturer in the African language studies section of the School of Languages at Rhodes University, South Africa. Her research and teaching interests are language policy and planning and language development, particularly the intellectualization of African languages. She holds a PhD.

Leila Monaghan teaches anthropology and disability studies at the University of Wyoming and the University of Maryland, University College. She received her PhD in linguistic anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles and her dissertation work was with the New Zealand Deaf community. Her publications include a co-edited book, Many Ways to be Deaf (2003), on the international development of Deaf communities, a 2002 Annual Review of Anthropology article with Richard Senghas, and HIV/AIDS and Deafness (co-edited with Constanze Schmaling, 2006). She also does research on the history of linguistic anthropology and wrote the 2010 review of the year in linguistic anthropology for the American Anthropologist on the revival of interest in historical approaches in the field. Monaghan was a visiting scholar at the University of Wyoming Department of Anthropology’s George C. Frison Institute from 2008 to 2009 when the majority of this chapter was written and thanks the Frison Institute for its support.

Ikuko Nakane is a senior lecturer in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include silence in intercultural communication and more recently language and the law, in particular analysis of courtroom and police interview discourse. She is the author of Silence in Intercultural Communication (2007).

Christina Bratt Paulston, born in Sweden, is Professor Emerita of linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh. She served as chair of the department from 1974 to 1989 and as director of the English Language Institute from 1969 to 1998. Her numerous publications include Intercultural Discourse and Communication: The Essential Readings (2005, edited with Scott F. Kiesling), Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings (2003, edited with G. Richard Tucker), and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Bilingual Education (1992).

Ingrid Piller is professor of applied linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She holds a PhD from the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, and has taught at universities in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. She has published widely on the sociolinguistics of language learning, multilingualism, and intercultural communication. She is the author of the textbook Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction (2011). She blogs about her research at www.languageonthemove.org.

Elizabeth S. Rangel is a research associate at Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC), a cognitive research institute at the University of Pittsburgh. She is earning her PhD in foreign-language education from the University of Pittsburgh. Before completing her doctorate, she taught college-level Spanish and courses in language acquisition, cultural diversity, and sociolinguistics. Her research on early elementary language learners has focused on native-language phonological interference in the reading acquisition process. Her most recent publications include chapters in the third edition (2009) of the International Encyclopedia of Education, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ’s (OECD, 2010), Innovative Learning Environments.

Maria Sifianou is professor of linguistics at the Faculty of English Studies, University of Athens. Her publications include the books Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece (1992/1999/2002) and Discourse Analysis (2006) and a number of articles in edited books and international journals. She has co-edited Themes in Greek Linguistics (1994), Anatomies of Silence (1999), Linguistic Politeness across Boundaries: The Case of Greek and Turkish (with Arın Bayraktarolu, 2001) and Current Trends in Greek Linguistics: Essays in Honour of Irene Philippaki-Warburton (2003). She was a member of the scientific committee on intercultural communication in the framework of the Thematic Network Project in the Area of Languages of the European Union (1997–). Her main research interests include politeness phenomena and discourse analysis in an intercultural perspective.

Deborah Tannen is University professor and Professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. She is author of eleven books and editor or co-editor of eleven others. Among her books, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly four years, including eight months as No. 1, and has been translated into thirty languages. Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends and Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse have been reissued in second editions. She is Associate Editor of Language in Society and is on the editorial boards of many other journals. Her cross-cultural communication research has addressed the conversational and narrative styles of New Yorkers and Californians, Greeks and Americans, and women and men. She has won many fellowships and awards including a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She received her PhD in linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been awarded five honorary doctorates. Her website is deborahtannen.com.

Jonathan M. Watt is professor of biblical studies at Geneva College (Beaver Falls, PA) and adjunct professor at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary (Pittsburgh). His publications often address the intersection of sociolinguistics and biblical or religious issues. They include Code-Switching in Luke and Acts, a chapter on religious literacy in Blackwell’s Handbook of Educational Linguistics (Bernard Spolsky and Francis M. Hult, eds.), and a forthcoming volume on Colossians-Philemon in the new Brill Exegetical Commentary Series.

Kikue Yamamoto has worked in and outside of Japan as a corporate trainer, executive coach, and management consultant for about twenty years. She has co-authored a book titled Competencies on Relationship Building at Multi-cultural Societies with Kyoko Yashiro. Among many articles, one is based on her three-time research (1987, 1991, 2005) at NUMMI, the Toyota and GM joint-venture, USA. She teaches at Miyagi Gakuin Women’s University and Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. She has a BA in English and American literature from Hosei University, a second BA in Mass Communication from San Francisco State University, and an MA in Communication from the University of New Mexico. She has her own business: Office Yamamoto Ltd.