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.
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Acknowledgments
This research has been supported by the European Community Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013), under grant agreement no. 231287 (SSPNet).
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This article is part of the Supplement Issue on “Social Signals. From Theory to Applications,” guest-edited by Isabella Poggi, Francesca D’Errico, and Alessandro Vinciarelli.
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Brunet, P.M., Cowie, R., Donnan, H. et al. Politeness and social signals. Cogn Process 13 (Suppl 2), 447–453 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-011-0418-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-011-0418-8