The lost art of the good schmooze: building rapport and defusing conflict in everyday and public talk

This book shows how a good schmooze can be turned to social benefit, without the humiliation of "sucking up" or the hypocrisy of the "the hard sell."

- Conversational exchanges in social life, family life, workplace talk, educational interaction, and cross-cultural sequences

- Excerpts from interviews, media, and ordinary verbal interactions

- Examples of personalities schmoozing well, and badly

- A glossary of sociolinguistic terminology

- A bibliography of sources about discourse analysis