"In this valuable book, linguistic anthropologist Luke Owles Fleming examines global linguistic and cultural evidence of the expression of meaning in social interaction through forms of 'avoidance' or modes of suppression of direct interaction. The book illustrates, with scholarly thoroughness and challenging novelty, gradient and multimodal properties of 'avoidance' and their grounds in human sensory capacities and socio-cultural frameworks. (Socio-)linguists, anthropologists, and other social scientists will want to read this book and consider the fundamental issues it addresses."--Francesca Merlan, Professor of Anthropology, Australian National University "This remarkable book extends the study of kinship beyond kinship terms to the vast range of speech and non-speech behaviours through which kinship relations are performed and construed in interpersonal conduct. It presents a unified framework for studying kinship and its infrastructures across human societies. Vivid examples and perspicuous discussion make analytic techniques highly accessible throughout, inviting readers to apply them to the study of other realms of human sociability."--Asif Agha, Francis E. Johnston Term Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania "On Speaking Termsis an instant classic in the anthropology of kinship and in the study of interaction.

Rarely does an author synthesize such a breadth of comparative ethnography, with such insight both about specific examples and about the principles across them. This is now the definitive work on 'avoidance' as a social form, and via that topic offers a challengingly original synthesis of what it is to be kin and act as kin."--Rupert Stasch, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.