Politeness and social signals

Paul M. Brunet

Roderick Cowie

Hastings Donnan

Ellen Douglas-Cowie

pp. 447-453

in: Cognitive Processing 13, 2012.

Abstract

In the literature, politeness has been researched within many disciplines. Although Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness (1978, 1987) is often cited, it is primarily a linguistic theory and has been criticized for its lack of generalizability to all cultures. Consequently, there is a need for a more comprehensive approach to understand and explain politeness. We suggest applying a social signal framework that considers politeness as a communicative state. By doing so, we aim to unify and explain politeness and its corresponding research and identify further research needed in this area.