From traditional paradigm to current paradigm, different approaches to linguistic politeness take different stances in the following two debates: first, the perspectives of politeness research; second, the explanatory dimensions for politeness phenomena. A social cognitive approach to interpersonal pragmatics that attempted to address the above two debates has emerged in recent years, notably Long’s (2016) social cognitive approach to relational work. It is to be argued that the approach sheds light on the resolution of the debates concerning politeness research. Yet, due to the limitedness of its research background, it may fail to provide a complete explanatory framework for interpersonal interaction and social cognition. Thus, an improved social cognitive approach to interpersonal communication is yet to be developed.