Linguistic Politeness Theory

Abstract

We usually know for certain with what we mean when we describe someone’s behavior as polite. Our usual way of describing it is by giving examples of behavior, which we consider polite. For example, people behave politely when they show respect towards their superiors; they are always helpful; they speak really well or they use polite language etc. In English, polite language may be characterized by the use of indirect speech, the use of respectful forms of address systems like, Sir, Madam, or the use of formulaic utterances like, please, excuse me, sorry, thank you, etc. Linguistic politeness has occupied a central place in the social study of language; even it has been the subject of intensive debate in sociolinguistics and pragmatics. A lot of linguistic scholars have carried out studies on linguistic politeness in a wide range of cultures. As a result, several theories have been proposed on linguistic politeness and have been established as scholarly concept.