Politeness

In this co-authored book, Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson first formulate the politeness theory. In their thorough analysis of speech, they state that some speech acts may threaten other’s face needs. Politeness is nothing but the expression of the speakers’ intention to mitigate face threatening acts toward other speakers. Deriving their theory from that of Erving Goffman (1967), Brown and Levinson...