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Although present in all languages, its realization and functioning differ between cultural contexts. Multiple theories explain how politeness strategies are expressed, each showing strengths and limitations that affect cross-cultural applicability. This paper critically reviews major approaches by Brown and Levinson, Lakoff, and Leech, and evaluates their fit for Eastern and Western cultures.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/a-critical-review-of-prominent-theories-of-politeness/589483/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/a-critical-review-of-prominent-theories-of-politeness/589483.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Terk","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-31","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":29},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why is politeness important in cultures and societies?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Politeness helps maintain relationships and supports face saving in social interaction.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Which politeness theories are most widely used in the paper?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The paper focuses on Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), Lakoff (1973), and Leech (1983, 2005).",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the paper assess whether politeness theories fit different cultures?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It argues that each theory has strengths and weaknesses and may not be suitable for all cultures; it particularly highlights Leech’s (2005) Grand Strategy of Politeness as potentially more applicable to Eastern and Western contexts.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},589483,1792193241,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":29,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":44,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144,"preview_page_count":4},1099525198933,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","Advances in Language and Literary Studies ISSN: 2203-4714  \nVol. 7 No. 6; December 2016  \n Australian International Academic Centre, Australia  \n|  |  |  |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n|  |  |  |\n| Flourishing Creativity & Literacy |  |  |\n\nA Critical Review of Prominent Theories of Politeness  \nHutheifa Y. Al-Duleimi (Corresponding author)  \nDepartment of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia, 43000, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia  \n[E-mail: hu1978da@yahoo.com](E-mail: hu1978da@yahoo.com)  \nSabariah Md. Rashid  \nDepartment of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia, 43000, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia  \nE-mail: [smrashid@upm.edu.my](smrashid@upm.edu.my)  \nAin Nadzimah Abdullah  \nDepartment of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia, 43000, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia  \nE-mail: [ain@upm.edu.my](ain@upm.edu.my)  \nDoi:10 .7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.6p.262  \nURL: [http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.6p.262](http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.6p.262)  \nReceived: 05/10/2016  \nAccepted: 28/11/2016  \nAbstract  \nPoliteness plays a crucial role in all cultures and societies for maintaining relationships and for face saving. Although politeness is common to all cultures and languages, how it functions and is realised varies from one culture to another. Different theories have been proposed to examine the strategies with which politeness is expressed. Each theory has weak and strong points which may make it appropriate to a culture but not to another. The most widely used of these theories are Brown and Levinson’s (1978) and its modified version (1987), Lakoff’s (1973), and Leech’s (1983, 2005) theories of politeness. This paper aims to provide a critical review of the aforementioned theories. Specifically, it discusses different scholars’viewpoints on these theories, highlighting the weak and strong points of the theories. Accordingly, it examines the applicability of these theories to the East and West cultures. A review of these theories indicated that they have weak points as well as strong ones. Furthermore, they might not be suitable for all cultures. This confirms that politeness is a social behaviour not specific to one culture or language. Critical review revealed that Leech’s (2005) Grand Strategy of Politeness might be the most applicable theory that could cover aspects of Eastern and Western cultures.  \nKeywords: prominent politeness theories, Eastern culture, Western culture  \n1. Introduction  \nTo begin with, politeness is not a natural phenomenon. It exists as a result of interactions between people and culture (Reiter, 2000, pp. 1-2), and politeness is acquired with the passage of time through the sociocultural coexistence of people with one another. People perform functions of politeness to various degrees to successfully communicate with each other. They use it to minimise the force of their speech acts. Therefore, different theories have been proposed to cover how politeness is involved in any act of communication. This paper provides a review of Brown and Levinson’s (1987), Lakoff’s (1973), and Leech’s (1983, 2005) theories of politeness as they are most widely used.  \nTo shed light on the different viewpoints of different theories of politeness, Terkourafi (2005) presented a very important distinction between two groups of theories of politeness: the traditional theories of politeness presented by Brown and Levinson (1987), Lakoff (1973), and Leech (1983), and the new theories, which were proposed by Elen (2001), Mills (2003), and Watts (2003) . Whilst the first group of theories dealt with politeness as a social phenomenon, it was based on Grice’s theory of cooperative maxims and the theory of speech acts, which focused on the speaker’s intention as abstracted from the actual performance. This means that the theories advocated the speaker’s face orientation. The first group of scholars assumed that s","cbCaicWHrAbvqZ71","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaicWHrAbvqZ71","pdf",227453,"English","# Abstract\n# Keywords\n# 1. Introduction","[{\"question\":\"Why is politeness important in cultures and societies?\",\"answer\":\"Politeness helps maintain relationships and supports face saving in social interaction.\"},{\"question\":\"Which politeness theories are most widely used in the paper?\",\"answer\":\"The paper focuses on Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), Lakoff (1973), and Leech (1983, 2005).\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper assess whether politeness theories fit different cultures?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that each theory has strengths and weaknesses and may not be suitable for all cultures; it particularly highlights Leech’s (2005) Grand Strategy of Politeness as potentially more applicable to Eastern and Western contexts.\"}]","A Critical Review of Prominent Theories of Politeness | PDF",1792067443,23]