These two studies, which were part of a cross-national project exploring the development of Italian and British children's understanding of sociolinguistic rules, investigated politeness in children's requests addressed to adults and children, and children's views on how requests addressed to persons differing in status and familiarity would be expressed and answered. Participants in study 1 were 64 4- to 9-year-old Italian and 42 4- to 8-year-old English children; study 2 involved 40 7- to 9-year-old Italian children. Findings of study 1 indicated that older Italian and English children used level of linguistic politeness as a cue for identifying addressees of requests. This behavior was in contrast to that of the younger members of the groups. Findings of study 2 suggested principles guiding Italian children's views about using linguistic politeness, namely, that one should: (1) be polite when addressing people; (2) expect polite directives from peers but do not expect much politeness from adults; (3) be polite with both familiar and unfamiliar people, but expect less politeness from unfamiliar than from familiar people; and (4) expect more politeness between unfamiliar peers than between familiar peers, but less politeness between unfamiliar adult and child than between familiar adult and child. Italian children seemed to base their requests mainly on interrogative forms and on the use of "please." As age increased, they used auxiliary verbs and justifications. (RH)