ABSTRACT
The question addressed in this chapter is: How do we use language to regulate our relationships with friends, acquaintances, strangers, or members of distinctive social categories? This can be regarded as a trivial question since the simplest and most open way of regulating one’s relationships could be seen as giving uncensored expression to what we feel and think about somebody. If relationship regulation by linguistic behavior were so simple, then we could tell others what we feel or think, irrespective of how well we know them or the social context in which we find ourselves.
