This paper attempts to investigate linguistic politeness in Malay and Malaysian English (henceforth MalE) and has three primary objectives. Firstly, it aims to compare the two systems of politeness through the use of politeness markers in Malay and MalE. Secondly, it sets out to identify the levels of directness and typical politeness markers that are common when Face Threatening Acts (henceforth FTAs) are performed in the two languages amongst educated Malay bilingual speakers in Malaysia. It is hoped that this study will afford a clearer picture of the linguistic permutations of the transfers of directness levels in multilingual Malaysia. Thirdly, the paper will compare the data obtained for Malay and MalE with that of House and Kasper’s (1981) for British English (henceforth BrE) as the parameters of this paper have been extensively modelled on those of House and Kasper.