Introducing English Linguistics

Levels of impoliteness, face-threatening acts, and tact
While power relationships and social distance are important influences on
levels of politeness that speakers of a language will use, an equally impor-
tant consideration is the extent to which a speaker is willing to commit an
FTA. If I have a guest over for dinner who is overstaying his welcome, I can
simply say You’ve been here long enough. Leave! if I am unconcerned about pro-
ducing an utterance that is highly impolite. In most circumstances, howev-
er, people will mitigate the directness of an utterance such as this, using
strategies that convey their intentions but in ways that are more indirect: I
have to get up early for work tomorrow. Let’s call it a night and get together again
really soon. The difference between this utterance and the one above is direct-
ly related to Geoffrey Leech’s (1983) notion of “tact” as expressed through
his tact maxim, one of six maxims that comprise his politeness principle. 
Tact, according to Leech (1983: 109), has two polarities: 
Negative: Minimize the cost to h [hearer]
Positive: Maximize the benefit to h
The tact maxim, in turn, applies to two of Searle’s speech acts: directives,
which attempt to get someone to do something (I order you to ...), and less
commonly commissives, which commit the speaker to doing something 
(I promise to ...). Speech acts in each of these categories form a cline that
The social context of English
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Leech describes as a cost–benefit scale. Thus, an imperative sentence such as
Peel these potatoes violates the tact maxim and is (at least potentially) highly
impolite, since the cost to the hearer of doing what this sentence requests
is high and the benefit very low. In contrast, the imperative sentence Have
another sandwich adheres to the tact maxim and is at the appropriate level of
politeness: there is little cost to the hearer and considerable benefit.
Of course, context rather than the particular form of an utterance will
ultimately determine where on the cost–benefit scale it will rank. For
instance, if two people are working together to prepare a meal and one
inquires What should I do next, it would be perfectly appropriate for the
other person to reply Peel the potatoes without appearing to be too direct
and impolite. But in communicating with one another, speakers do rely
on a variety of strategies to mitigate the directness of their utterances:
(1) Directives can be mitigated by several expressions that help “soften”
the imposition that the directive causes. These expressions include please:
Let’s get started. Quiet please. 
(MICASE LEL115JU090)
Sit down please, on your bottom. 
(BNC F72 522)
Okay folks step right in the elevator please
(SBCSAE)
excuse me:
Excuse me
you don’t have a stapler like behind the desk that I could
use? 
(MICASE SVC999MX104)
and thank you (or its shortened equivalent thanks):
Thank you
for not smoking.
What are the cheapest seat tickets? I suppose getting tickets for the
Oxford game is going to be out of the question? Thanks in advance
for any help, Andy K. 
(BNC J1C 1089)
Both  excuse me and  thank you have additional uses beyond those given
above.  Excuse me is used in contexts where the speaker wishes to offer a
kind of mild apology for some inconvenience he/she has caused: