Linguistic politeness in intercultural communication in Japanese

Abstract

Politeness is said to be the essence of Japanese communication and is deeply
rooted in its culture. Linguistic politeness is necessary for smooth
communication in other cultures too. Ide (1989) defines linguistic politeness
as " the language associated with smooth communication realized through
(I) the speaker's use of intentional strategy to allow his or her message to be
received favorably by the addressee, (2) the speaker's choice of expressions to
conform to the expected and or prescribed norms of speech appropriate to the
contextual situation in individual speech communities" (ibid:225).