📕 Part 1: Politeness

This episode's vocabulary

Well mannered (adj.) - behaving in a pleasant and polite way.

Fraught (adj.) - causing or having extreme worry or anxiety.

Foul (adj.) -  foul speech or other language is offensive, rude, or shocking.

Maternal (adj.) - related to a mother's side of the family.

Neurotic (adj.) - behaving strangely or in an anxious (= worried and nervous) way, often because you have a mental illness.

Well behaved (adj.) - behaving in a way that is accepted as correct.

To put off (phrasal verb) - if something puts you off something, it makes you dislike it, or decide not to do or have it.

Well brought up (adj.) - people, especially children, who are well brought up are polite and act in a quiet and pleasant way, because they have been taught this behaviour at home.

Well bred (adj.) - speaking or behaving in a way that is generally considered correct and polite.

To scandalize (verb) - if you are scandalized by someone's behaviour, you disapprove of it and are shocked by it because you think it is against moral laws.

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Questions and Answers

M: Rory, do you think you are a polite person?

R: Well, I certainly try to be well mannered, especially with people I don't know well in formal contexts. I think it's important for making good person impression, isn't it?

M: Do you think people should be polite?

R: Well, most of the time, yes, people just want to get on, don't they? And being polite helps with that. It also helps smooth things over in fraught situations.

M: How do people in your culture show good manners towards others?

R: Well, they make eye contact, shake hands, generally avoid swearing and foul language and they dress for the occasion as well. And there are other things like respecting personal space, and conversational and social boundaries too.

M: Who taught you to be polite?

R: I think it was my parents and my maternal grandmother in the mean, although teachers and friends and others, like sort of played supporting roles in that sense. I think in most cultures it falls to the adults around you to take part in this aspect of socialization, doesn't it?

M: Is it important to be polite in your country?

R: Well, people have this impression that British people are sort of very neurotic about good manners and being well behaved. But actually, I would argue that we're pretty average in this regard. So compared to countries like Korea, or Japan, where there are sort of rules that govern the behavior of everything. And then if you talk about places like America, where people air their views on everything with little regard for other people's feeling. So we're sort of occupying the middle ground.

M: How important is politeness for you?

R: Well, I didn't realize it until the other day, that is actually quite a priority for me, especially when I deal with people I don't know. Like, I'm really put off when people don't have an opening in their emails and just go straight to whatever request they might have. Pleases and thank yous are also something that like helps me personally get invested in people and their problems. I know it seems a bit like window dressing, but at least in my case, it serves a useful purpose.

M: Thank you, Rory, for your polite answers.

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Discussion

M: When we talk about politeness, so we talk about polite people.

R: Why are you looking at me?

M: Because you are polite genuinely.

R: Allegedly.

M: Allegedly. And we can also paraphrase it using the word well mannered.

R: They are. So polite, well mannered. Sarah?

S: Oh.

R: Sorry, I've put you on the spot there, haven't I?

S: Polite, well mannered. Well brought up.

R: Yeah. Oh my god.

S: Well bred.

R: Well brought up, well bred. Do you say well bred in America?

S: We do. But we have a slightly different connotation that goes along with it because it comes down to your genetic history as well. So if families are connected with your family.

R: Oh, my God. I thought it had to do with like, with just being brought up well, but it's...

S: That's part of it. But it means that the generations of one family were brought up well, and matched well. Well, in this context, meeting with other members of high society, other wealthy families who pay the same level of attention to politeness, to manners, to etiquette.

M: Wow. So well mannered people or well bred people, or well brought.

S: Brought up.

R: Yeah, I say well brought up more than well bred.

M: Well brought up people. Yeah. Because bring up children, right. So parents bring up children, they educate children, so well brought up.

R: And they're well brought up so that they can get on with other people.

M: Right. So get on well with, have good relationship.

R: Or just to get on with people.

M: So people just want to get on, so they have to be polite.

R: Well, get on can mean like to continue to do the task as normal. Get on plus well, it's optional, really. It can mean like people enjoying a good relationship. It can also mean to get old as well, can't it? Yeah.

S: And that's one difference between British and American English, by the way. So in the US, you wouldn't be as likely to hear I get on with him quite well. You would be more likely to hear the phrase I get along with him quite well.

M: Right. Yeah. You said that it also helps smooth things over.

R: Yeah. So if you're in a difficult situation or here I said a fraught situation, they're the same thing. If you smooth things over, it means that you help calm things down to make things more manageable just to generally improve the mood in the atmosphere.

M: Being polite helps to smooth things over.

R: Usually.

M: Yeah. And what do you do when you want to have good manners? So you make eye contact, you shake hands, you smile, you avoid swearing, and you avoid foul language. Rory, could you give us some examples of foul language?

R: We will when we released the swearing episode.

M: Yes, so it's like f-bombs, right. So c words.

R: Yes, Maria. Let's move on.

M: Okay. Right. Moving on. Politely. So polite today, Rory. Look at you. You've mentioned your maternal grandmother.

R: Yeah, that just means my mother's mother.

M: Oh, right. If I have my father's grandmother, no, no.

R: My father's mother, that would be your paternal grandmother.

M: Paternal.

R: Yeah.

M: Oh, okay. Maternal grandmother and paternal?

R: Yeah.

M: Oh, wow.

R: It's probably important to point out that different cultures have different ways of being polite. So things like eye contact, and shaking hands. There are different rules about this in Russia, for example. Excessive eye contacts is rude or aggressive. And men only generally shake hands with other men. They don't usually shake hands with women unless they're invited. Whereas in the West, you shake hands with everybody.

S: And for me as an American, I didn't know this at first. So for me, I found that people were being very rude when they would enter a room and not shake my hand, but shake the hands of all of the men sitting around me.

R: Really?

M: Oh, wow.

R: In Russia?

S: Yeah. I thought that it was just these people were so poorly mannered, but it turns out, it's just a cultural difference.

R: Yeah.

M: Oh, wow. That's a good example. Yeah. So you thought that these people were impolite, impolite.

R: In the same way, I've offered to shake a woman's hand before in Russia, and she's looked at me like I was completely insane.

M: Oh, that's funny.

S: I was, I was quite scandalized.

M: Wow. So you told them like, okay, excuse me.

S: Yeah. I made a big deal about it at first.

R: It's a good word for talking about politeness if you're scandalized. It's like mortally offended, which is another way of saying like, you're really offended.

M: Yeah. Wow. Nice.

S: And to make a big deal out of something. Maria, what does it mean?

M: Well, when you have a fly, you make an elephant out of a fly. So you just make a big deal of it.

R: Is that a Russian expression?

M: I think so. Yeah.

S: We say to make a mountain out of a molehill in American English.

R: Same. in British English.

M: Yeah. We use a fly and an elephant. Yeah.

R: Do you have a storm in a teacup?

M: Storm in a teacup? Oh, no, I don't think so.

R: Storm in a teacup is like a massive argument over nothing, basically.

M: Right. So people could be neurotic about something, people could be neurotic about good manners. And people could be neurotic about being well-behaved.

R: Yes. Like, well, we talked about Korea and Japan having lots of rules for how you behave.

M: When people are not polite they could be rude, or impolite, right? So it's impolite. Impolite. And you can be really put off when people don't do something.

R: Yes. So if you're put off, then you're no longer interested in a situation. Like, if someone just sends me, if you send me a message on Instagram saying, oh, I want these books, then I would be quite put off. And so I wouldn't be interested in a situation. And I might also be put out, which means that while I still deal with the situation, I'm not really feeling too great about it.

S: Because nobody loves a craftsperson.

R: No, no. Americans know all about that. Why you're looking at me?

M: It seems like window dressing.

R: Yeah, so window dressing is just like something that appears on the surface to make something look nice. So generally, people think that saying please and thank you is, you know, it's just, oh, it's fatik speech, which is like it serves a social purpose so of just helping people get along. But actually, window dressing in this sense means it's just there to look nice. But in my case, I said it seems like window dressing, which means it's not actually, it's quite necessary.

M: Yep. Okay. So do you generally think that people are more polite now?

R: I don't know how you would measure that. I say this often, but I really don't know how to tell. I think...

M: Do we say like thank you? And thank you very much, I'm sorry. Even like when we would text each other.

R: I think amongst my group of friends when we are dealing with people that we don't know, we're quite polite, but we're not polite with each other. But then that's quite true of close friends everywhere, I think.

S: I would say simply that the rules of what's considered polite or impolite are shifting.

R: They've changed. Yeah, that's a better way of saying it.

S: For example, it used to be considered just absolutely, again, scandalous if someone were to walk into a room and leave their hat on, whereas nowadays, no one's paying attention to this.

R: I am. Vanya needs to take his hat off. And he has. Look, he's learning.

S: He's being polite today.

R: Just today.

M: Oh, yeah. Russian speakers seem to be impolite to foreigners because of our intonation. So we say like, how are you? Fine. Okay.

S: You also yell a lot.

M: Yeah, we yell a lot, so we use falling intonation patterns. And if I asked Rory, like, Rory, how are you? How are you, Rory?

R: I'm good. Thank you. How are you?

M: Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Thank you. So it's like intonation goes up. In Russian it goes down. That's why... How are you? Normal. Normal. Okay, fine. Yeah. Sarah, did Russian people seem rude to you?

S: Did?

M: No, I mean, like, because of our intonation patterns and the way we speak.

S: I would say that Russians are quite short when they speak with you. And even now, after I've been here for so many years, it still seems that way to me from time to time.

R: They're super direct, but then I quite like it. I think it makes things efficient.

M: I thought Americans were quite direct.

S: Not to the same extent.

M: No, yeah. Okay. Okay.

S: We still, we still do a lot of pleases and thank you. We still do use...

M: Small talk.

S: Small talk. And conditionals for being polite, for example. Would you be so kind? Would you please pass me that bottle?

M: Oh, right.

S: Would you hand me my phone?

M: Yeah, true in Russia, we just say, okay, close the door. Just close it, come on.

R: Now.

M: What are you waiting for?

R: What are you waiting for? A please would be nice.

M: A please would be nice.

R: However, we know what to do. And we, well, Maria, please bring an end to the episode.

M: Thank you very much for listening. Sara, thank you very much for being with us and contributing politely to this episode on politeness.

R: We're super polite. Bye!

M, S: Bye!!!

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