Abstract
This paper critically reviews politeness studies of the past thirty years emphasizing the distinction between descriptive and theoretical approaches. Descriptive approaches refer to studies pursuing politeness realizations in various languages and cultures, whereas theoretical approaches refer to studies pursuing common principles, which systematically explain, interpret, and predict motivations that induce (im)politeness strategies in human interactions in various cultures. After examining the roles and significance of both approaches, I focus on the theoretical studies of politeness and reexamine Brown and Levinson's politeness theory and other major theoretical politeness studies inspired by their theory. I then summarize some crucial points to be developed and integrated into politeness theory in order to establish a more comprehensive discourse-level theory of politeness. I introduce Discourse Politeness Theory (DPT), which is based on a series of empirical studies of discourse behavior in naturally occurring conversations. This theory broadens politeness research to encompass the concept of relative politeness and permits the explanation of both politeness and impoliteness within the same framework, and allows the pursuit of common principles of discourse politeness in various languages. It can be considered both as a system of the principles of motivations that induce politeness strategies and as a system of the interpretations of both polite and impolite behavior in human interactions. In this paper, I introduce the newly developed parts of the theory, in which I propose that (im)politeness in human interactions should be captured from a more macro-global perspective in addition to a micro-local level. I also discuss the factors that I incorporated into the theory, such as face-balance principle, speaker's desire to save his/her own face, and bystanders presence, when estimating the degree of face threat in a certain act.
