This paper sets out to identify possible linguistic variations in routine and relational written business requests, attributable to the influence of the interpersonal variables of status, power, imposition and social distance. To minimize interference from personality traits 32 texts written by or to the same managing director were selected. The findings support Holtgraves and Yang's non-additive model of politeness insofar as the interpersonal variables are not independent variables across a variety of request types.