Book excerpt: This book examines a neglected area of foreign-language teaching and learning: difficult and aggressive situations. The author presents the real-life experiences of language users and analyses how these individuals have dealt with confusion, impoliteness and hostility in target-language contexts in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and within their home country. By constructing a student-centred pedagogical model around the data collected, the author considers the choices available to language learners in difficult situations, as well as tools for language learners to develop pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic resources.