#Politeness

[isaacsapphire]

Politeness requires correctly gendering others. Failure to correctly gender others may result in violence (imagine a macho gangster type reacting to being told that he looks like a woman or a homosexual, for example). As a customer service worker, you quickly learn that misgendering is extremely offensive to most normies, and even misgendering a baby deeply offends many people.

Being in proximity to a person that you don’t know how to interact with in a non offensive manner is extremely stressful, even if you don’t necessarily have to interact with them.

The social norm of it being non offensive to explicitly tell someone their gender identity is unclear is NOT universal, and has the potential to get you killed in some circumstances.

Okay but can anyone articulate the mindset that leads older people to feel like they NEED to know people's gender identity all the time? Like what's going on there

[dailymanners]

Always make sure everyone in the group is acknowledged.

For example, say you run into some friends while you're out in public, but they have with them their roommate who you've barely met. In this case, don't just ignore the roommate in favor of only acknowledging and speaking to your friends, make sure you acknowledge and greet the roommate too, even if it's just a smile or even just a polite nod.

Humans are by our nature a communal species, and as a result tend to be pretty affected by feeling ignored or excluded. Even if you're not ignoring them on purpose, you just feel awkward acknowledging someone you barely know, try to consider how you might feel if you were totally brushed off and ignored by someone who is acknowledging everyone else but you.

Even if you personally don't think you'd personally be hurt by being brushed off by your roommates' friend, know that your feelings aren't universal and plenty of people would feel bad about feeling ignored, especially if they're someone who has a history of being excluded by their peers.

This doesn't apply to people you are trying to avoid because they make you feel uncomfortable or even unsafe, safety comes first before good manners. But if they're not someone who you think is a risk to your safety and/or someone who makes you uncomfortable, it won't hurt you to politely acknowledge them.

[philosophybitmaps]

[ilikeit-art]

A very polite cat knocking on a door in a bid to be let in ..

[stupid-elf]

Growing up with strict, neurodivergent parents while neurodivergent yourself will have you as an adult acting like you've recently escaped the feywild. What are the tricky rules? Is everything accounted for? How do I ensure I don't accidentally step over the line into Impoliteness. You know the consequences aren't death and dismemberment but you might look down one day and find you've lost your shadow and all of your friends if you're not careful

[welcome2theinternet]

Here's a fun idea. Don't comment on what people eat or if they're losing/gaining weight. Doesn't matter if you thought it was a compliment. You don't know why that may be happening. Some people lose weight when they're anxious or depressed (or of course suffering from an eating disorder). You may have meant well but it can be triggering or upsetting

[philosophybits]

True politeness is a polish, not a varnish; and should rather be acquired by observation than admonition.

Mary Wollstonecraft, Original Stories from Real Life

[ahedderick]

Manners matter. maybe.

Now that Son has moved out, we have family dinner on Monday nights. This includes Roommate. Last night I was reflecting on this, in comparison to dinners that I grew up with.

My parents managed to somehow occupy both ends of the spectrum of parenting. Practically speaking, this meant that one day I'd be a beloved child, so smart, so good looking, have a cookie, we'll buy you a pony - followed by screaming abuse, curses, I was the worst, most Ungrateful Childe ever, silent treatment. And so on and so forth.

They also had a sort of two-pronged approach to life in general. We lived on a farm, raising beef cattle. Being barefoot and mud-smirched in the garden, or in heavy boots, smeared with blood and cow manure in the barn, went side-by-side with expectations of perfect grammar and enunciation, Emily Post table-settings and manners, and the highest grades in school. It was, in a word, very weird. And honestly, the emphasis on elegant table manners, matching silverware/tableware/glasses, etc never really sat well with me. Manners at that level always struck me as ridiculous and fake. Especially in a damned farm kitchen.

Anyhoo. This is in my mind as I regard my own table. The plates matched, almost. Cups and silverware were a random assortment. Son was talking animatedly to my husband about forestry, K and I were chatting (my elbows were on the table, as they often are), and Roommate was hunched over his plate moving his fork up and down like a sewing machine needle. Ten hour shifts welding; he's hungry. Everybody was happy, engaged, and getting full of nutritious food.

That. That was all that mattered.

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 99: A politeness episode, if you please

If it wouldn't be too much trouble, if you have a spare half hour, could we possibly suggest that you might enjoy listening to this episode on politeness? Or, if you've prefer a less polite version, "Listen! Now!"

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about what politeness and rudeness are made up of at a linguistic level. We talk about existing cultural notions of "saving face" and "losing face", aka the push and pull between our desire for help vs our desire for independence, and how they've been formalized in a classic linguistics paper. We also talk about being less polite to show intimacy, addressing God in English and French, which forms of politeness are and aren't overtly taught, different uses of "please" in UK vs US English, levels of indirectness, email etiquette across generations and subcultures, rudeness and pointing, nodding norms in Japanese and English, smiling at strangers in the US vs Europe, and how a small number of politeness ingredients can combine in so many different ways that are culturally different.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about science metaphors and learning everything with Tom Lum and Caroline Roper, cohosts of Let's Learn Everything! We talk about whether programming languages should count as a language credit, numbers and ritual stock phrases like seventeen and "once upon a time", as well as etymology and metaphor in ecology, chemistry, and linguistics. We also talk about turning the "constantly trying to figure things out" part of your brain off, attending the word of the year vote, and how linguists have a tendency to be curious about language all the time, which... sometimes gets us into trouble.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Looking for a last minute gift for the language nerd in your life? Or are you trying to get someone in your life to love linguistics as much as you do? Patreon have newly added a gift memberships feature! So if you'd be excited to receive a patreon membership to Lingthusiasm, forward this link to your friends and/or family with a little wink wink nudge nudge.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

'Politeness: Some universals in language use' by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson

Wikipedia entry for 'Politeness'

Lingthusiasm bonus episode 'The Most Esteemed Honorifics Episode'

'Routine politeness in American and British English requests: use and non-use of please' by M. Lynne Murphy and Rachele De Felice

@killersundy video about the Irish offering cake to the Irish on TikTok

Lingthusiasm episode 'If I were an irrealis'

Lingthusiasm episode 'Look, it’s deixis, an episode about pointing!'

'Nodding, aizuchi, and final particles in Japanese conversation: How conversation reflects the ideology of communication and social relationships' by Sotaro Kita and Sachiko Ide

'Why Americans Smile So Much' by Olga Khazan for The Atlantic

'Three-year-olds infer polite stance from intonation and facial cues' by Iris Hübscher, Laura Wagner, and Pilar Prieto

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

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Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[allthatispeculiar]

[autolenaphilia]

So I do literally have my pronouns in bio. Now it should not be a requirement or anything. If you don't want to put your pronouns in bio, don't put them there, and I'm totally okay with that.

I didn't put pronouns in bio until my egg cracked because I was uncomfortable with the thought, turns out I was uncomfortable with gendering myself for a reason.

But if someone does put pronouns in bio, if they are easily accessible, I do think you have the responsibility to respect them. It feels like a fairly basic social media courtesy. To do otherwise is textbook misgendering.

Of course I presume here you are not a transphobe who thinks misgendering is okay or even obligatory (as some of them explicitly claim). If you are, fuck off, i'm not that interested in litigating my value as a human being or my status as a woman. My assumption here is that misgendering is bad and I don't particularly need to establish why.

Referring to someone by the wrong pronouns when said person has made their pronoun preference very clear, there is no other word for it but misgendering. In fact, misgendering someone with their pronouns in bio on social media is often less excusable than many accidental misgenderings in meatspace, because we often don't make our pronoun preferences that clear and obvious in meatspace.

it does take a few seconds to check the bio of a social media user, but being polite and courteous sometimes requires effort, which is not a blanket excuse to be rude. If it is too much effort to look it up before writing something about someone, then save all your effort and just don't write anything at all.

And using singular they/them about a specific person is misgendering, if said person has made their non-they/them preference clear, by for example putting their actual pronouns in their bio. You are not being "genderneutral", you are just misgendering and being rude.

This is a well known tactic of transphobic misgendering. Like if a writer wrote an article about Chelsea Manning and consistently they/themed her, the fact that said writer is a transmisogynist who is misgendering her wouldn't be in much dispute. They/them is often just the acceptable form of misgendering.

And also "dude/bro/man" are not genderneutral, I will barely dignify such nonsense with a response.

Being gendered correctly is not a privilege of the famous either. This applies even if the person in question is a random tumblr user and you are another random tumblr user writing about them. You should check their bio before writing about them. You should especially check if that person is likely going to read what you write, if it is a reply or tags to a post they made. It's not nice to get misgendering of you in your notifications. This feels like fairly basic courtesy on social media.

Failure to check is at best rude and impolite, and people have a right to object to being misgendered. And then ask for a correction and an apology. And really, all you have to say in such a situation, is something like "I'm sorry, I didn't check" and then maybe correct the misgendering post by editing it. Unless you are really committed to being able to misgender people without pushback, it's likely not the end of the world, and the person being misgendered will likely accept a sincere apology.

And this applies even if you don't like the person in question, if you are writing something that disagrees with their take. Being gendered correctly is not something that you have to earn, it's not a privilege for good behavior, of having the correct takes, of never making a mistake. And it can't be taken away for perceived and real transgressions. It is still unacceptable to misgender an unpleasant person.

Pronouns in a social media bio are not there for a person's friends, it's there so that random strangers interacting with a person's account will hopefully read them and gender the person correctly. The pronouns are there for you to read and respect.

(before anyone tries to be clever on the reading incomprehension website, , I'm using a generic singular they/them in most of these sentences. If you are talking about a specific person, who uses she/her or he/him or any pronouns that aren't they/them, it's msigendering to use they/them for them)

[dailymanners]

When boarding buses, or any sort of public transportation where you have to walk past a driver to board, always smile at and greet the driver as you're boarding.

It doesn't waste anyone's time, yours or the drivers, to smile and greet the driver, as chances are you probably have to pay or scan your pass which is going to take a second or two, about the amount of time it takes to smile and greet the driver.

When we don't look at or acknowledge the driver at all, this can make the driver feel dehumanized to not be acknowledged by other human beings all day. Being a bus driver is a difficult job, they have to do customer service AND deal with traffic all day. Bus drivers also face a lot of burn out because they are often treated poorly. The least you can do is humanize them by smiling at them and greeting them.

[isaacsapphire]

Something that strikes me as I'm planning on hosting some visiting relatives (BTW if I have any New Zealand followers can you please reblog or comment with details about what type of tea is considered standard or a little better than average in New Zealand?) is how much comfort and joy I've given vegetarian and vegan travelers in the past by just serving them some good tasty normal calorie levels vegetarian/vegan food, as unfortunately that can be hard to come by as a traveler in the US and so several of the people I've hosted were obviously running a calorie deficit because they were struggling to find enough food suitable to their diet.

And, I am not vegetarian! I'm low-key ideologically Not vegetarian! But I also believe that 1. It's immoral to intentionally trick someone else into violating their own morals even if you don't share them and 2. Hospitality means serving people good food that they like and can eat.

I've gotten a lot of shocked responses from people in the past when I would say something like, "This recipe can be made vegetarian/vegan if you swap the meat broth with vegetable broth/swap the cheese for vegan cheese or omit it" and then they'd assume that I must be vegetarian/vegan myself, and not understand why I would care about tracking which recipes could be vegetarian or consider it a valuable thing. Other people have dietary restrictions and sometimes I want to make them something nice to eat! It's shitty hosting to invite someone to Thanksgiving and then have like two things out of twenty they can eat, you know?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

This is Marc Chagall in 1960, looking out of the window of his apartment on Ile Saint Louis (in the heart of Paris), where he lived during quite a long time. In the background, the Pont Marie, one of the oldest bridges of Paris.

A photo by © Loomis Dean

* * * * *

People silently struggle from all kinds of terrible things. They suffer from depression, ambition, substance abuse, and pretension. They suffer from family tragedy, Ivy-League educations, and self-loathing. They suffer from failing marriages, physical pain, and publishing. The good thing about politeness is that you can treat these people exactly the same. And then wait to see what happens. You don’t have to have an opinion. You don’t need to make a judgment. I know that doesn’t sound like liberation, because we live and work in an opinion-based economy. But it is. Not having an opinion means not having an obligation. And not being obligated is one of the sweetest of life’s riches.

Paul Ford, How to Be Polite

[moreespressoformydepresso]

I’ve seen portrayals of Anthony Tremaine as snobbish and mean, but I think it would be funnier if Anthony’s always extremely polite. In fact, sometimes, he’s so polite that it circles right back around to being rude.

Also, he definitely uses formal language to veil insults that take a bit to settle in and truly hurt.