As it has been claimed that Brown and Levinson's (1987 [1978]) politeness model has a Western bias, especially in their 'face' construction, their overemphasis on face-threat and their assumption regarding individualistic and egalitarian motivations, as opposed to Eastern societies' more group-centred hierarchy-based ethos, the question remains whether there exists an East-West divide in politeness? It is argued that the proposed Grand Strategy of Politeness (GSP) approach provides the parameters of variation within which quantitative and qualitative differences in the settings of social parameters and linguistic parameters of politeness in Eastern and Western languages can be studied.