An attempt to determine acts of politeness of participants in conversation in everyday situations within a systematic descriptive and analytic framework, and to investigate their social meaning. More precisely, the objectives are (i) the predominantly linguistic description and analysis of politeness in English; (ii) the systematic representation of verbal forms and formulae for expressing politeness (iii) the detection of interactive patterns as constant actions of ego- and alter-oriented face-work; and (iv) the description of human communication which functions within the framework of presupposition and inferences.