American Deaf politeness

Brown and Levinson's Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (1987) suggested that there is some common ground in language usage among all cultures. Specifically, all cultures practice politeness in basically the same way. To date, there has limited research on Deaf sociolinguistics, specifically politeness. This research indicates that there are violations of the Brown and Levinson's theory in ASL conversation. The findings indicate Deaf people practice some politeness strategies in different ways from American hearing people.