Threats, suggestions, hints, and promises are examined for their politeness and expediency in gaining others' compliance. The compliance gaining and politeness literatures rank‐order these verbal acts along a unidimensional scale where politeness and efficiency are treated as bipolar opposites (i.e., what is polite is inefficient and what is efficient is impolite). This research tested the predicted rank‐orderings of the politeness and expediency of threats, suggestions, hints, and promises stemming from these literatures and found that: (a) hints, while inefficient, are not among the most polite strategies for gaining compliance; (b) threats, while impolite, are not among the most efficient strategies for gaining compliance; (c) direct requests, while among the most efficient ways to get others to do things, are not impolite; (d) suggestions are neither as inefficient nor as polite as expected; and (e) promises are only moderately polite while equally efficient as threats. The value of politeness theory for accounting for instrumentally‐oriented behavior and the need for compliance gaining research to uncouple intuitions about strategy effectiveness from claims about strategy efficiency are discussed.
Communication Quarterly
Volume 44, 1996 - Issue 2
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