[jasode]

>, politeness is bolstered by some level of ambiguity. Rather than explicitly state your needs, desires or opinions, you imply them at some level of abstraction, allowing other participants in the conversation to accept or decline more easily.

Steven Pinker explores this point in an entertaining presentation[1] for RSA. He also covers other language topics such as spacetime encoding, and profanity but the last part analyzes the need for ambiguity in a language. I deep-linked into the relevant portion of the presentation although the the entire talk is very enlightening. It's worth rewinding to the beginning to watch the entire talk. The 2nd youtube video[2] is the mostly the same material but it's the older one he presented at Google TechTalks.

[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S1d3cNge24#t=32m55s

[2]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU#t=40m38s