Politeness Ideology in Thai Computer-mediated Communication Krisadawan Hongladarom and Soraj Hongladarom 1. Introduction The Internet has become a worldwide phenomenon. Many countries are racing to embrace it, believing that it will bring in many benefits. Thailand is becoming increasingly wired. Currently there are approximately 600,000 Internet users in the country. The government is convinced that the Internet will serve as a gateway toward greater prosperity, and as a result a lot of money has been invested in expanding the infrastructure. At present there are a number of web sites which act as hosts for these virtual communities. 1 Of these perhaps pantip.com (http://www.pantip.com/) is the most popular. Created a little more than three years ago, the web site is attracting thousands of visitors. Most participants—ranging from teenagers to the working middle class—take part in the fourteen different discussion "tables" to talk about a variety of topics such as science, mathematics, politics, health, entertainment, and pet care. The existence of such computer-mediated communities naturally raises the question of how culture will be affected by these new advances. Investigating the interplay among language, culture, and ideology, this paper aims at showing that computer-mediated communication (CMC) plays an instrumental role in the change of Thai culture. However, this change is not entirely passive. Thais strategically use language as a measure to counteract and maintain their identity. This resiliency of Thai culture appears to reflect Soraj Hongladarom's (1999) "thick" and "thin" conception in making sense of the tension between the global and the local in CMC. Prevailing wisdom regarding CMC and culture seems to be that it tends to make all the world's cultures the same. This paper, however, will take a critical look at this issue, focusing on politeness strategies in Thai CMC in order to find out about the following questions: What is the nature of politeness