An alternative model and ideology of communication for an alternative to politeness theory

Brown cf. Levinson 1983: 16-18; 1995: 227-232). Brown this emergent character is not something for which our current theoretical models are well equipped. Workers in artificial intelligence have already detected a paradigm clash between 'cognitivism' and 'interactionism', and noted the failure of the former paradigm to account for interactional organization (see ... Suchman, 1987); our own account suffers from the same dose of 'cognitivism'. Work on interaction as a system thus remains a fundamental research priority, and the area from which improved conceptualizations of politeness are most likely to emerge.