ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the existing work on linguistic politeness in Peninsular Spanish and suggests new research directions. It focuses on the theoretical discussions that based on Peninsular Spanish usage express unease about universal applicability of Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness, judging its perspective too Anglo-Saxon. The chapter examines the most relevant empirical studies on politeness and speech acts, politeness and address forms, and politeness and the turn-taking system. In drawing together the body of work into requests and politeness in Peninsular Spanish, it can be concluded that, as in other European and Latin American cultures, there is a preference for indirect conventional forms. Politeness, understood as appropriate behavior in response to a particular communicative situation includes the choice of the correct form of address for each situation. The body of empirical studies on politeness phenomena in Peninsular Spanish has expanded enormously, as could be seen in the foregoing account.
