13. A method of determining perceived power differences between parties using politeness based scoring, the method comprising: gathering data regarding a plurality of captured communicative acts occurring between two parties, the two parties defining a sender and receiver pair; using a processor and predefined politeness based patterns stored in at least one database to score each of the plurality of captured communicative acts to determine a plurality of power scores for the sender and receiver pair, each one of the plurality of power scores representing a perceived power difference between the sender and receiver pair for a respective one of the plurality of captured communicative acts based at least in part on politeness used during the respective one of the plurality of captured communicative acts; and combining the plurality of power scores for the captured communicative acts occurring between the sender and receiver pair to construct a combined power score for the sender and receiver pair indicating the perceived power difference between the sender and receiver pair based on all of the plurality of captured communicative acts between the sender and receiver pair; wherein: the sender and receiver pair is one of a plurality of sender and receiver pairs in a group having a previously unknown organizational structure, and the processor determines a different combined power score for each of the of plurality of sender and receiver pairs, and the method further comprise using an aggregating hardware engine to aggregate the different combined power scores for each of the plurality of sender and receiver pairs to construct a social power hierarchy for the group, the social power hierarchy for the group indicating relative power between all individuals in the group that form part of the plurality of sender and receiver pairs.
18. The method of claim 13 , wherein: the predefined politeness based patterns include a general set of politeness scoring patterns and a set of predefined cultural scoring values corresponding to an identified culture of the group, and the using the processor and predefined politeness based patterns to determine the power score is performed using the general set of politeness scoring patterns as one or more of modified and supplemented by the set of predefined cultural scoring values corresponding to the identified culture of the group.