Linguistic politeness: the backbone of cross-cultural communication within a second language environment

As politeness is conveyed within a communicational context, the concept of linguistic politeness is therefore relevant to any language user, striving to be an efficient communicator, especially within a socially and culturally diverse society. The concept of linguistic politeness has been the subject of much debate amongst theorists. Essential to any discussion on linguistic politeness are the aspects of euphemism, pragmatics and sociolinguistic and communicational competence, all of which will be discussed, and their implications for linguistic politeness will be considered. Linguistic politeness is a subject that should be central to any language curriculum and is of vital importance to the process of communication. It is therefore the aim of this paper to make evident how important a topic it is, and how necessary it is for the process of communication, especially cross-cultural communication.