Levinson (1978, 1987) proposed principles of language usage according to politeness, which they claim to be universal. Their principles are supported by evidence from three languages of different origins. However, t he universality of the principles is questionable from the perspective of languages with honorifics, in particular Japanese. Their framework neglects two aspects of language and usage which are distinctly relevant to linguistic politeness in Japanese. The neglected linguistic aspect is the choice of 'formal linguistic forms' among varieties with different degrees of formality. The neglected aspect of usage is 'discernment': the Speaker's use of polite expressions according t o social conventions rat her than interactional strategy. This paper Claims that a comprehensive framework for universals of linguistic politeness will have to incorporate these aspects and shows how Brown and Levinson's framework puts these aspects outside of their scope. Finally, the justification of the comprehensive framework is discussed in terms of Weber's typology of actions and Habermas' theory of communicative action. Multilingua

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