Language and Dialogue 4:3 (2014), 497–499. doi 10.1075/ld.4.3.10saf issn 2210–4119 / e-issn 2210–4127 © John Benjamins Publishing Company Cap, Piotr. 2013. Proximization. Te Pragmatics of Symbolic Distance Crossing. John Benjamins: Amsterdam. pp. 220. Hardbound. ISBN 978- 90-272-5637-9 Reviewed by Răzvan Săfoiu (Transilvania University of Braşov, Romania) In this book, Cap dwells on Chilton’s work (2004) on discourse space models, tak- ing it further and suggesting proximization as a candidate for a theory of commu- nication. Before proceeding, Cap defnes proximization as “a discursive strategy of presenting physically and temporally distant events and states of afairs as directly consequential to the speaker” (p. 3). Te author is interested in how distance and proximity to an event are achieved in discourse, i.e. how events are presented as remote or close to the speaker. Troughout the book, the analyses are multidisci- plinary, the author using frameworks from cognitive linguistics, pragmatics and critical studies. Te book is divided into 7 chapters that focus on theoretical ac- counts on proximization (Chapters 2, 3 and 4), in-depth analyses (Chapters 5 and 6) and suggestions for further research (Chapter 7). Afer a brief history of the concept (Section 1.2) and discussion on the direct and indirect goals of the book (Sections 1.3 and 1.4), in Chapter 2 — Proximization as a (linguistic) concept — the author discusses major works, theories and mod- els that used this concept in order to “assess these works in terms of a contribu- tion they could make to the development of an integrated proximization theory” (p. 15). Te chapter is structured chronologically since Cap wanted to show the step by step development of the concept. He starts with Chilton’s work (2004) on political discourse, a cognitive-linguistic framework (Section 2.2), continues with his own research (Cap 2005) on proximization (Section 2.3), an essentially prag- matic approach, and with Hart’s (2010) analyses of (anti-)immigration discourse, dwelling on cognitive linguistics and evolutionary psychology (Section 2.4), as well as with Dunmire’s (2011) research that brings to front the idea that proximi- zation can operate across political genres (p. 37) (Section 2.5). In Chapter 3, Proximization and legitimization, the author brings to front le- gitimization discourse as a multi-level phenomenon that can be analysed at a lin- guistic as well as at a conceptual level. In fact, legitimization is defned by Cap as the “enactment of the speaker’s socio-political right to be obeyed” (p. 50). In order to build on the idea that “proximization is worth building a theory around” (p. 73), in Chapter 4 — Conceptual structure of the (S)patial — (T)emporal