Recent developments

While over the decades there has been a strong chorus of critical comment on the classic politeness theories, including the issues raised in the boxes above, no single replacement model has yet emerged. Instead, over the last decade three different, yet partly overlapping, approaches have emerged, approaches which we will label discursive, relational and frame-based. We will give the flavor of these approaches. These will be followed on what might be seen as the opposite to politeness, namely, impoliteness, an area of study that has grown rapidly in the last decade, and on the interactional approach to politeness, an approach that has made an appearance in recent years and is in tune with the interactional thread.