In a modern globalized world where a great number of people work in transnational corporations or their overseas branches to keep up effective communication requires knowledge and understanding of both linguistic and cultural aspects of being polite not to break up corporate communication. The article analyses linguistic means to express politeness in English language and the notion of being polite in British culture. We suppose that they are fixed in language consciousness of native speakers and thus the absence of those linguistic means in a speech of people from other cultures may lead to misunderstanding or even break in communication. Literature review gave us material to distinguish basic linguistic means of politeness in English language and to identify behavioral and character features that define a polite person in British culture. Empirical material taken from different sources (46 transcripts from talk shows and interviews) and its analysis in terms of chosen forms of politeness allowed us to make a conclusion on most frequently used means to express politeness in Great Britain. The study showed that for British culture to be polite means to be indirect, not to boast (self-deprecation or irony), sometimes to understate. These cultural features of British politeness determine the choice of linguistic means to express it. The study provides a frequency analysis of those means in economic discourse (on the example of transcripts from talk shows and interviews). We suppose that the results of our study can be applied in cross-cultural communication training for people that are going to work in British companies or make partnerships with British businesspeople. 

Keywords: politeness, language consciousness, corporate communication, linguistic means, cross-cultural communication.

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