Niamh Powell

I’m pretty sure we’ve all heard the classic ‘why are French people so rude’ or joked about German’s being the first to grab the sunbeds. Yet, well why are the French, rude and what makes German’s incapable of saying ‘thank you’. Is it their lack of politeness or is it our lack of understanding?

What is usually masked within this humour about other cultures is the fundamental differences us. Like did you know talking about the weather in French is simply just not a thing or that If someone from China bowed would you realise this is a sign of politeness?

Politeness is something we all should know enough about, yet across different cultures we seem to hit a brick wall. It’s even got to the stage that German institutes are putting up websites and videos to break the stigma.

One piece of advice your parents would always give you is to say please and thank you, but is this something just British people do?
Sometimes I have to admit as a brit myself I take for granted the English language. Not only when I go on holiday and order ‘ice cream’, but when I automatically think their culture must include ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ as a way of being polite. As we’ve already established this clearly isn’t the case.

What this blog hopefully aims to provide is an insight into answering that interesting question of what is politeness? . how we can view these concepts within the 20th century.

So how do we really define what is politeness?
In almost all academic books professionals highlight how there are a complex array of views. One theorist imaginatively describes the process of

“writing an introduction to politeness is like being in mortal combat with a many-headed hydra. You’ve barely severed one head before a few more grow in its place “(Watts, 2003)

Another entertaining viewpoint is that of politeness is the ‘icing on the cake’ (Watts, 2003). Through this metaphor, linguists show politeness to be simply just a decorative feature on human language, an additive that is really only there to make it look pretty.

Yet, not only do I strongly disagree against this viewpoint, other linguists have my back. Leech, (a very interesting guy) highlights the view that politeness is a ‘social phenomenon, which comes to life through language use’ (Leech, 2014). He even takes is so far as saying politeness is something as humans ‘we would find hard to do without’ (Leech, 2014).

5 things according to Leech (2014) you need to know about politeness

1. Politeness is not obligatory – simply that politeness is not something everyone does, you can be impolite. Pretty sure we’ve all encountered our fair share of that.
2. There are varying gradations of polite and impolite behaviour – politeness is a scale. You can be really polite or really impolite whatever you choose.
3. A shared sense of what is normal. Recognised by another member of the society – in other words, shared understandings of what is deemed polite behaviour.
4. Depends on the situation – in some situation’s politeness is expected like meeting someone for the first time, whereas it isn’t as expected when you’re with your mates.
5. There is reciprocal asymmetry between two people. – what this means is that through polite language use the individual being spoken too is benefitting from the politeness used.

Manners

Now manners arguably in a cultural context is just as complex as politeness. In pragmatics manners is mostly referred to as being behaviours that’s can be classed as ‘polite’ or ‘impolite’. One manner that is engrained into our brains since childhood is please. But how do you use please like a pro.

Lynne Murphy talks about this manner of politeness within the context of English and American English. She brings into question whether Americans are as polite as they say they are. In her experience ‘pleases’ are heard more in the UK than in the US. Even to the point where she finds herself whispering it after her family when they order at restaurants. Give her ted talk a watch it really is an eye opener.

However much like politeness, manners are something that worldwide we can encounter quite awkward situations when we don’t know what is expected of us. Here this blog will provide you with a quick tour of good manners worldwide.

List of to dos and don’ts worldwide.

• Pakistan
  Arrive about 15 minutes after the scheduled start time of a meal
  Arrive up to one hour after the start time of a party.
• Kuwait
  If the host stands, it means the meal is over
• India
  Do not wink or whistle in public
• Vietnam
  Do not touch someone’s head or shoulder
  Do not pass things over someone’s head
• Brazil
  Avoid purple lipstick, it is associated with funerals. Fine for clothing and accessories though!
• China
  It is bad luck to let your date borrow your umbrella to go home. Umbrella sounds too much like their word for ‘break apart’.
• Spain
  Punctuality and Spaniards don’t get on very well.
  Compliments act as a way of showing friendliness in Spain, not as a form of flattery.