As an important topic in fields such as pragmatics and sociolinguistics, politeness plays a key role in communication and is closely related to the establishment and maintenance of interpersonal relationships. In spite of the considerable achievements having been made and various views having been proposed in the second-wave research on politeness, there still lacks an integrated theoretical framework that can incorporate those valuable theories, concepts and understandings into a coherent whole. Seeking to address the above problem and building on the core concepts of “social practice” “time” and “social space”, the theory of Politeness as Social Practice (Kádár & Haugh, 2013) defines politeness as a form of evaluative social practice for the first time and provides an operable analytical framework for multiple understandings of politeness, thus representing a new trend of development in politeness research. Based on the interpretation of politeness as social practice, this paper compares the theory with other classic politeness theories, offers some evaluation of those theories, and outlines future developments in politeness research.