This study investigates the interface of power and politeness in the realization of
disagreements in naturalistic language data. Power and politeness are important phenomena in
face-to-face interaction. Disagreement is an arena in which these two key concepts are likely
to be observed together: both disagreement and the exercise of power entail a conflict and at
the same time conflict will often be softened by the display of politeness (defined as marked
relational work). The concept of power is of special interest to the field of linguistics in
that language is one of the primary means to exercise power. Often correlated with status and
regarded as an influential aspect of situated speech the workings of the exercise of power
however have rarely been formally articulated. This study provides a theoretical framework
within which to analyze the observed instances of disagreement and their co-occurrence with the
exercise of power and display of politeness. In this framework a checklist of propositions
that allow us to operationalize the concept of power and identify its exercise in naturalistic
linguistic data is combined with a view of language as socially constructed. A qualitative
approach is used to analyze the concepts of power and politeness. The material for analysis
comes from three different contexts: (1) a sociable argument in an informal supportive and
interactive family setting (2) a business meeting among colleagues within a research
institution and (3) examples from public discourse collected during the US Election 2000.
