USAMI Mayumi is Professor of Social Psychology of Language and Teaching of Japanese as a Second Language at Institute of Global Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. She received her MA in psychology from Keio University in Japan, and Ed.M and Ed.D in Human Development and Psychology, Acquisition of Language and Culture from Harvard University.  Her research interests lie in Discourse Politeness Theory, the social psychological approach to conversation analysis, language and gender, pragmatics, and intercultural communication.

She taught Japanese and Japanese culture at several universities in Taiwan from 1984-86, at Colby College from 1987-88, and at the University of Chicago from 1988-90. She has published more than a hundred of articles and books including “Discourse Politeness in Japanese Conversation: Some Implications for a Universal Theory of Politeness” Hituzi Syobo, 2002, Kotoba wa shakai o kaerareru [Language can change the society] Akashi Shoten, 1997, “Why do we need to analyze natural conversation data in developing conversation teaching materials? -Some implications for developing TUFS language modules-”.  In Yuji Kawaguchi, Susumu Zaima, Toshihiro Takagaki, Kohji Shibano & Mayumi Usami (eds), Linguistic Informatics�V:The First International Conference on Linguistic Informatics, John Benjamins Co., 2004 and (2004) “Discourse Politeness Theory and Second Language Acquisition”,  In the proceedings of the Inaugural CLS International Conference CLaSIC, Singapore 719-737.
She is currently on the international Advisory Board of electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching or e-FLT.