Politeness in communication

This article observes the importance of politeness in communication on the basis of three different approaches to the analysis of politeness in language namely, politeness as social rules, politeness as adherence to an expanded set of Gricean Maxims, and politeness as strategic attention to “face”. It clarifies that the last one can account for the observable commonalities in polite expressions across diverse languages and cultures, and positions the analysis of politeness as strategic attention to face in the modern context of attention to the evolutionary origins and nature of human cooperation.