This study discusses how an important aspect of Thai politeness, called KKJ, broadly understood as ‘consideration for others’ feelings, needs to be judged in terms of a binary (‘means-to-end’ and ‘rapport-oriented’) rationality. KKJ is shown to exist in other cultures as well and it is argued that politeness is to benefit from looking beyond the constraints of face metaphor and a rationality founded purely on Euro-American logic and individualism. The paper concludes that combining politeness ingredients from various cultures may advance Emancipatory Pragmatics's aims.