A study examined natural dialogue between high school disciplinarians (principals, deans, assistant principals) and students in disciplinary situations. Four disciplinarians (two men and two women--two assistant principals, one principal, and one dean) representing three schools in central Illinois audiotaped as few or as many complete dialogues with students as they felt comfortable doing. Tape recorders were within sight of the students. Of the 45 dialogues generated, 12 were transcribed in their entirety. Portions of three other dialogues were transcribed, and the rest of the 45 dialogues were played and reviewed. Each utterance was analyzed using P. Brown and S. C. Levinson's politeness strategies in order to determine the utterance's function in the negotiating process. Results indicated that, without exception, the disciplinarians made attempts to minimize the threat associated with acceptance of deviant behavior as a face-threatening situation. Results also indicated that students played a vital role in the degree to which the disciplinarian incorporated politeness strategies: cooperative students received more off-record strategies and more positive-face redress, while uncooperative students tended to receive more coercive utterances along with less indirectness and positive-face redress. An epilogue discusses issues raised in one of the dialogues in which a female, minority student interacted with a white school administrator. (Portions of the transcripts are included; 20 references and a list of politeness strategies are attached.) (RS)