This review presents a new monograph by Wolfgang Gladrow and Elisaveta Kotorova devoted to basic notions and methodology of intercultural verbal behavior. The increased necessity in the theoretical foundation of contrastive studies to the one hand and systematization of typical intercourse situations to the other shows the actuality of the research. In the monograph, the both tasks are solved. For the first time the book provides a large-scale description of «speech behavior patterns» (SBP) in Russian and German cultures, based on national corpora of Russian and German languages. The authors critically deal with the notion of speech act and come to conclusion, that it must be understood as a set of speech acts in a typical situation. The generic SBP is practically equal to a micro genre. The authors have elaborated the algorithm of contrastive analysis that has allowed describing of 22 communicative situations, which are typical for the cultures under analysis. A prototypical center, which organizes a certain SBP as a communicative-pragmatic field, is the illocution of the speaker. For contrastive comparison, the authors use the notions of equivalence and adequacy. The monograph includes a new theoretical framework and focuses on realized intercultural comparison of SBP. It serves a foundation for effective, innovative pedagogy and will be interesting not only for linguists but also for teachers of German and Russian.