Negotiations are a careful balancing act between cooperation and competition—a successful negotiation requires extracting maximal value without offending and alienating a counterpart (i.e., the negotiator’s dilemma). It is thus surprising that negotiation scholars have largely overlooked a pervasive feature of negotiations: they entail “polite” speech. In this paper, we introduce politeness as a communicative strategy that is critical to solving the negotiator’s dilemma. By strategically adjusting their utterances to signal deference and respect, negotiators can make ambitious requests without derailing the exchange. Starting with an overview of politeness and a review of the relevant negotiation literature, we offer testable propositions regarding how attempts at polite speech manifest in negotiations, who is especially likely to express them, under what conditions, and to what effect. We also consider the conditions under which this communication strategy undermines negotiators. We hope our review and theorizing will open up broader discussions on the role of polite speech in deal making and conversational dynamics.

谈判是合作与竞争之间的谨慎平衡行为——成功的谈判需要在不冒犯和疏远对方的情况下提取最大价值（即谈判者的困境）。因此，令人惊讶的是，谈判学者在很大程度上忽略了谈判的一个普遍特征：它们需要“礼貌”的演讲。在本文中，我们将礼貌介绍为一种对解决谈判者困境至关重要的交际策略。通过战略性地调整他们的话语以表示尊重和尊重，谈判者可以提出雄心勃勃的要求，而不会破坏交流。从对礼貌的概述和对相关谈判文献的回顾开始，我们提供了关于礼貌演讲的尝试如何在谈判中表现出来的可测试命题，谁特别有可能表达它们，在什么条件下，以及达到什么效果。我们还考虑了这种沟通策略破坏谈判者的条件。