The aim of this paper is first to examine the characteristics of hints as a form of requests in relation to politeness and then analyze the semantic device on the basis of the type and degree of opacity in natural data. Some hints are so fixed and routinized that their use is the same as that of conventionally indirect requests while others are so diverse and rather specific that their pragmatic force is varied according to the interlocutors and situations. English hints get lower politeness ratings regardless of the degree of formality, while Korean hints with honorifics are considered very polite. A survey of requestive hints in natural Korean and English data has shown that the frequencies of hints are about one third of all the utterances by speakers of Koreans as well as those of English. This means that provided that there is no lack of pragmatic clarity between interlocutors, there is a tendency of avoiding expressing explicitly what they would like to say. That is the very essence of using hinting strategies, which could explain the discrepancy between lower level in politeness and high frequency in actual use. The hinting strategies adopted here are a means to establish solidarity. Besides, among the three strategies in propositional scale, speakers of Korean are found to prefer statement of act to statement of component, while those of English prefer the latter to the former. Explaining hinting strategies as a means to realize politeness in this way faces a dilemma in the light of the formulation of politeness by Brown & Levinson(1987) in that both indirectness, a negative politeness, and solidarity, a positive politeness, are thought to be used under a single strategy in this approach. This could call for a new concept of politeness and further studies.

• Kyung Seon Pae