A socio-pragmatic comparative study of

2. 13. 2. The Politeness Principle 
Politeness has been defined as the features of language which serve to mediate norms of 
social behavior, in terms of such notions as courtesy, rapport, deference, and distance. 
The politeness principle may be formulated as a series of maxims which people assume 
are being followed in the utterances of others. These maxims include: 
1. do not impose; 
2. give options;
3. make your receiver feel good. 
(cf. Lakeoff, 1973: 199) 
Clearly the politeness principle and the cooperative principle are often in conflict with 
each other. There is mutual incompatibility between politeness and truth as well as 
politeness and brevity. People are usually conscious of such collisions between the two 
principles. The term "white lie" has been desperately coined in an attempt to manifest 
the surrender of truth to politeness. 
The observation of politeness often results in the speaker's use of indirect speech acts. 
These are, according to Searle (1979), cases in which one illocutionary act is performed 
indirectly, by way of another. Sadock (1974) has coined the terms "whimperatives" and 
"quaclaratives" to indicate the apparent hybrid status or the indirectness of imperatives 
and declarations respectively.
It is important to note, however, that not all writers are using the term politeness in the 
same way. Grice and Searle (and Brown and Levinson (1987)) are principally 
concerned with politeness as an underlying motivation for indirectness. Leech (1983), 
however, is concerned with politeness as a surface-level adherence to social norms. 
Politeness, according to Leech (1983), does not need to have anything to do with any 
genuine desire to be pleasant to one's interactants. According to Brown and Levinson 
(1987), the degree of mitigation required depends on three factors: 

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CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE 
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1. Social distance (i.e. a composite of psychologically real factors such as age, sex, 
intimacy, etc.); 
2. Relative power (i.e. usually resulting from social and economical status);
3. Size of imposition. 
All these factors have to be weighted in relation to the cultural cotext and all should be 
considered as potentially negotiable within interactions, rather than as givens. The 
politeness principle has a regulative role rather than the aim of creating and maintaining 
social relationships.