Sara Mills (2003). Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 270 pp., ISBN Hb 0 521 81084 1, Pb 0 521 00919 7. VIRGINIA ACUÑA FERREIRA Universidade de Vigo virginia@uvigo.es This book re-examines research on women’s and men’s use of politeness in a critical way, calling attention to a number of problems related with the application by these studies of Brown & Levinson’s model (1978, 1987). In contrast to the view of politeness as the performance of specific speech acts that has expanded from the establishment of this framework, the author proposes a more interactional perspective on the issue that takes into account both the speaker’s production and the hearer’s reception of the utterances, on the basis of a conception of politeness as a judgement of the interactants. From the development of this new perspective, Mills critically reviews studies on women’s and men’s use of politeness, trying to show the problems that arise in the interpretation of data as a result of the application of Brown and Levinson’s model. Likewise, drawing on the performative theoretical perspective that most language and gender researchers are currently advocating, the author maintains that the contention commonly defended by these studies that ‘women are more polite’ than men, is more based on a stereotypical view of ‘women’s language’than on actual women’s linguistic behaviour. The structure of the book can be described as composed of two main parts, if we exclude the introductory and conclusive sections. In the first part, which comprises three chapters, the text focuses on a critical re-examination of Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness, beginning with a rethinking about the way many linguists in general put the speaker implicitly (and, in some cases, even explicitly) at the centre of attention in their analyses of data. Thus, considering her/him as an autonomous person who consciously chooses to use certain language items and strategies rather than others, and assuming that they can unequivocally determine which are the intentions of their productions. This initial chapter (“Rethinking linguistic interpretation”) is important to the extent that establishes the basis of the criticism directed at Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness that the author develops subsequently. In the following two chapters (“Theorizing politeness” and “Politeness and impoliteness”), Mills makes this model problematic because of its assumption that certain speech acts are intrinsically polite (or impolite), and that these are unequivocally used by speakers to show concern or deference by others (or, on the contrary, to be ‘unfriendly’ or ‘disrespectful’). In contrast to this perspective, the author maintains that, instead of assuming that politeness can be objectively found in specific speaker’s productions, we should also take into account the hearer’s ESTUDIOS DE SOCIOLINGÜÍSTICA 158