and Juanchich study; bad news is very frequently sugar-coated in attempt to save face. Mitigated speech In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a chapter entitled, "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes." The chapter attempts to explain why so many planes that crash end up crashing from human error, and not mechanical issues. One of the most prominent reasons, Gladwell points out, is the lack of effective communication due to the power dynamic between the captain and the first officer. He uses numerous examples of black box recordings in which the first officer hints at a problem instead of addressing it outright. He introduces the linguistic term, mitigated speech, and states, "We mitigate when we're being polite, or when we're ashamed or embarrassed, or when we're being deferential to authority." First officers tend to use mitigated speech when addressing their captain and this has caused plane crashes in the past. Linguists Ute Fischer and Judith Orasanu conducted a study with a group of captains and first officers. They gave them a scenario in which they had to communicate to each other the need to change course to avoid a thunderstorm. Overwhelmingly the captains used commands, or what Brown and Levinson would consider bald on-record politeness strategy, to communicate with their first officer. On the other hand, the first officers only used hints, similar to what politeness theory would consider an off-record politeness strategy, to communicate with their superior, the captain. Airlines have been taking this issue seriously and have made strides in teaching captains and first officers how to communicate with each other effectively. Intercultural Communication Various researches have analyzed the application of politeness theory in communication between different cultural groups. Communicative expectations, patterns of communicative activities and choice of politeness strategies vary among cultures. For instance, Morisaki and Gudykunst argue that members from individualist cultures prefer to use negative politeness strategies in conflict management, while members from collectivist cultures would rather use positive politeness strategies. 12 In addition, some other researchers focused on the acquaintance of politeness strategies and knowledge about politeness difference in foreign language education. Japanese researcher Kawai found that there is a lack of “cultural learning” in English education makes the Japanese student weak in effectively use politeness strategies in English, such as the reliance on context understanding in Japanese may cause face-threatening acts when in inter-cultural communication with western cultures. Tanaka and Kawade found differences