Thirty or so years ago politeness was a specialist, even somewhat esoteric topic, primarily located in pragmatics.Indeed, Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's 1978 bookthe book that was to become so central to the areawas in fact bundled with another piece on questions and published as part of a collection edited by Esther Goody.Today, seven of the most cited articles published by the Journal of Pragmatics involve politeness or impoliteness, according to the publisher's website.Furthermore, the field now has its own dedicated journal: the Journal of Politeness Research.The surge in politeness studies has had profound effects on the study of pragmatics.As O'Driscoll (2007: 465) points out, Brown and Levinson's "great achievement has been to put socio-pragmatic concerns at the forefront of pragmatic research and the affective aspects of communication firmly on the pragmatics map".Moreover, the multidisciplinary nature of politeness studies, something which undoubtedly has contributed to its popularity, has been strengthened.Although the conceptual heart of the field is still located in pragmatics, models of politeness have been applied and sometimes refined in diverse disciplines, including psychology (especially social psychology), anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, literary studies and behavioural organisation.Section 2 immediately following is devoted to politeness and is the largest section in this chapter.After some consideration of definitions of politeness in section 2.1, the discussion is structured according to two waves in the politeness literature.The first, in section 2.2, involves the pioneers who created the "classic" models of politeness in the 1970s and 1980s, and also the scholars who applied their model and offered specific criticisms of it mostly in the 1980s and 1990s.What is articulated here is generally a more pragmatic view of politeness.The second, in section 2.3, involves the scholars who in the 1990s and 2000s argued for the rejection (or at least radical revision) of the classic models, some of whom also proposed alternative models.What is articulated here is generally a more socio-cultural view of politeness (a few alternative models also attend to core aspects of pragmatic theory in their proposals).Section 3 of this chapter focuses more closely on the new burgeoning subfield of impoliteness.And finally, the concluding section of this chapter returns to the definition of politeness and suggests what might be referred to as the attitudinal view of politeness. 2.Politeness Definitions of politenessWhat might politeness encompass?For somebody who has been invited to dinner in England, politeness might include remembering to use please when you want something passed, complimenting the cook on the food and definitely not burping.Each of these three things involves complexities that work on politeness attempts to account for.The word please is the 'magic word' that British parents impress upon their children to use with all requests, and it looms large in the British psyche.But how is it actually used by adults?Aijmer (1996: 166-8) provides some evidence.It matters how the rest of the request is worded: please is most likely to
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