The article presents a theoretical study of the relationship of social change and development of etiquette. The author describes major trends and processes of modern society development and shows their effect on changes in human communication, including etiquette. Standards of behaviour and rules of etiquette are an important tool of culture ensuring civilized people-to-people contacts. Dynamics of the social environment is changing the behavioural pattern, thus, providing elasticity of etiquette: appearance of new communication standards, disappearance of out-of-date models, updating of a certain kind of etiquette that has special significance at this historical stage and even formation of new specific types of professional etiquette. The main trend of modern society development is globalization - the process of forming one single world. Globalization determines the need for new unified standards, which contributed to mutual understanding of representatives of different cultures. Along with globalization (and, in a sense, as its consequence) the need to know and learn traditions, rituals and rules of the etiquette of different national cultures becomes important. Knowledge and application of these specific national standards is an important condition for success in any contacts.