In this transitional chapter, Chen proposes a model of Chinese politeness (MCP): “Politeness is the judgement of a behavior – both linguistic and otherwise – that it is appropriate in context for the purpose of harmony.” Appropriateness, further, is defined in terms of the position of the speaker and hearer; the maintaining of face, and the avoidance of friction between all parties involved. Chen then moves to the proposal of a general politeness theory based on Brown and Levinson’s theory but with the incorporation into it notions of self-politeness and impoliteness. The theory – Brown and Levinson extended (B&L-E) – is a set of causality relations: waht a speaker does (either benefitting or hurting) to face (either self-face or other-face) leads to a particular type of politeness or impoliteness. The benefitting of other-face, for instance, often leads to the evaluation of politeness. The benefitting of self-face, on the other hand, may (or may not) result in a judgement of impoliteness to other. Of the two models, Chen argues, MCP is a cultural specification of B&L-E. His view is therefore that there should be a universal theory of politeness such as B&L-E, which is capable of subsuming under it culture-specific models such as MCP.

In this chapter, MCP and B&L-E are applied to contemporary politeness phenomena in the Chinese linguaculture. Four areas are selected for analysis: Self-denigration and self-presentation, moral order and morality, conflict resolution, and humorous mockery. These areas – which would seem to be disparate at first sight – are expected to display different politeness principles at work. However, Chen shows that MCP and B&L-E, working together, offer a unified account for all while, at the same time, are capable of revealing differences among them. Humorous mockery, for instance, has been viewed by some as a genre to which politeness does not apply. Chen’s analysis demonstrates that it does, as long as one sees it as a tug-of-war between self-politeness and other-politeness.