ABSTRACT
This chapter notes a shift towards detailed studies of particular Communities of Practices (CofPs)/activity types paralleled by a rejection of the existence of im/politeness 'universals'. It devotes to explain the links between face, identify, self-presentation and impression management. Brown and Levinson's face-saving model remains the most cited of the politeness models. Brown and Levinson's claims relating to the universality of positive and negative face are based on cross-cultural empirical evidence representative of the discursive practices of four sociocultural groupings: Tamil speakers from southern India, Tzeltal speakers from Mexico and English speakers from America and Britain. The chapter discusses the postmodern/discursive approach to relational work, with its emphasis on the perceptions of participants. It also discusses the more theoretical approaches devoted to capturing impoliteness, which use im/politeness labels more as a theory-heavy technical term known as im/politeness or second-order im/politeness.
