Abstract David Mamet is undoubtedly a great American dramatist who is conscious of the language of his characters. In his Glengarry Glen Ross, the salespersons populate the characters and their language is dominant. Upon studying the conversations through the use of Conversation Analysis, it becomes apparent that the characters use a wide range of politeness strategies. The writers of the article have used Leech’s Politeness Principles to analyse the play. Leech’s Politeness Principles, appear to be the same strategy that is seen in the characters’ use of politeness strategies. The characters seem to be mostly situated in two-person power dynamics. The speech style of the characters differs and this difference causes difference in the relative power and the status they have. Within these two-person power dynamics, the characters struggle to exercise, gain or keep their power. Much of this struggle are traceable through the way they use speech style. The characters use politeness principle such as the Modesty maxim, Approbation, Agreement and Sympathy to help ease the conversation and their opponent in the power dynamic. Both the dominant and the dominated participant struggle in their own way though not equally to either keep the power or gain it through their observance or lack of observance of politeness maxims coupled with suitable alternations in their speech styles. The findings of the study show the marked use of Politeness Principles in the play in terms of power, and the characters’ varying speech style have been found to be significantly related to their attempts to gain and resist power in their dynamic conversations.

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