This study focuses on sociopragmatic occurrence and pragmalinguistic realization of regulative speech acts in authentic legislative texts and contracts, discussing politeness within a consideration of the imposition of regulatives. The selected patterns of regulatives differ from the ones selected in conversational English. It is argued that this difference is a question of strategy selection in a particular sender/receiver relationship within considerations of felicity conditions of the act and within the socio-pragmatic requirements of the situation.