The purpose of this paper is to analyze the French expression s'il vous plaît, often considered to be a polite request formula (Un café, s'il vous plaît). Our corpus study shows that s'il vous plaît is seldom used in written instructions (?? Poussez, s'il vous plaît), public signs (??Cédez le passage, s'il vous plaît.), or verbal stereotypical announcements (??Demandez le programme, s'il vous plaît), since the senders of these messages, who are usually just 'spokespersons' for the information, do not undertake their own utterance. When using s'il vous plaît, the sender identifies for himself the situation that justifies his appeal, and expresses his attitude to his utterance, which suggests that s'il vous plaît is an enunciative request marker. The request communicated with s'il vous plaît is sometimes interpreted as a polite expression that softens the request, and other times as a strong command that emphasizes the importance of the message and draws attention of the receiver.
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