Politeness expressed through grammar --- I absolutely agree, comparative studies across languages of how tense, aspect modality and mood are used in order to add nuance to what we say are fascinating.

Every language has ways of expressing politeness through its grammar, not just its lexicon. Participants are welcome to provide an insight into how their own languages do so.

The subjunctive mood in all the Romance languages is central to creating a parallel world into which we can deflect our requests and speculations in order to make them more tentative - and therefore less assertive/imposing.

English does not use the subjunctive much but has a rich range of modals (may, could, would etc...) and also uses the conditional.

Chinese does not mark tense (past, present, future) on the verb, but it has a rich aspectual range (aspect measures the structure of an event rather than mapping the event onto a time line as tense does). The modulations of politeness in Chinese are expressed (as in English) through modality, but also through the 'tentative' aspect (which conveys a 'give-it-a-go' meaning).

Source author: Biljana Scott biscott@diplomacy.edu