This article provides a descriptive account of politeness as expressed in the pronouns, greeting and farewell expressions, apology, compliment and their responses, and in taboo-and euphemism expressions as used by Gurage speaker. It was based on pragmatics theories of face saving and threatening act, and communication maxims. The research design was cross-sectional description. The methodology used is qualitative; based on language data. Six key informants were selected purposefully, based on their knowledge of the language and culture. Texts collected for spoken corpus were also used to extract a few examples. The analysis is textual in which texts are thematically grouped based on genres. The finding showed that politeness is expressed by different means including honorifics, personal pronouns, agreement affixes of verbs, avoidance of proper name calling, and using special expressions of self-cursing. Social variables, such as age, marital relationship, social positions, gender, and super natural powers highly influenced the politeness use in the Gurage culture. Much of the politeness strategies used functionally were associated with a face work. 

Key Words: Culture; Gurage; Politeness; Pragmatics; Semitic