Along with the general trends of research from traditional Gricean approach to postmodern approach, politeness has been conceptualized as facework, social indexing concept, relational work and interactional work. Based on examination of debates over East group-oriented and Western individual-oriented politeness, first-order and second-order politeness, as well as the universality and relativity of conceptualizations, this paper has roughly demonstrated that the tension between universality and relativity of politeness can help to explain the reason for lack of uniform definition and concept in this field. It is essential for researchers to seek a universal second-order culture-general theoretical construct on one hand, and to look at first-order culture-specific constructs on the other hand.