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I did a TEDx talk at Sussex University a few months ago, and now the video is on-line. The subject is being polite in the UK and US, and it focuses on British thanking and American complimenting. I'm teaching a new course on Intercultural Communication next term, and I think one of the first things I'll ask them to do is to critique my use of the word
culture in that video (did I really use it
that much?!). Of course, we can also critique my use of the terms
British and
American--as many people do when writing to me about the blog. And we will do that in my course too, though I don't do it much here just because I want to get on with the business of discussing the phenomena I want to discuss. (And if you're interested in my courses, here is the door in.)
The main, vain thing I want to say about the video is this: all the lighting on me is from below. You know, like you did with a (BrE)
torch/(AmE)
flashlight to yourself in order to tell scary stories at (AmE)
slumber parties/(BrE)
pyjama parties (also AmE
pajama party--there is another blog post in this. I will do it next). I don't think I usually look this spooky. Please God, don't let me usually look this spooky.
(But if you want to see me looking spooky, I recommend watching this on YouTube, as the embedded version here cuts off the right side of the video.)
There's a lot more to say about thanking in particular, but what I mention at the beginning of the video, then never talk about at all, is
please. There is a lot to say about
please. There is a lot to research about
please. I'm limiting myself here to talking about saying
please when ordering in a restaurant--just because it's the place I notice it (and its absence) the most.
Now, when I first came to this country--and for a while after--I would hear British people claiming that Americans don't say
please, and I would bristle. Of course we do! We are trained to add
the magic word when we request things. We are nice people! I'm a nice person! And anyone who doesn't think so can have a sock in the eye.
But then I lived here a while and my family and friends started to come over and visit. They'd order food in restaurants and I'd hear how abrupt they sounded, leaving off the
please. Then I noticed myself and my English friends at our weekly
gossip pizza get-together. If I ordered first, then I'd notice that everyone else had said
please and I hadn't. When my brother's family came to visit a few months ago, I couldn't stop myself adding
please at the ends of their orders because they just sounded so terrible to me without them. And their orders were always without them. And my brother does not have a rude family.
(My bossy, corrective behavio(u)r was no doubt facilitated by being the parent of a preschooler--and the fact that I'm the big sister. As a parent, I try not to add the absent
pleases, but to ask:
Could you say that again in a nice way?)
But look, even on Sesame Street, where children are taught lessons about politeness, people order food without saying
please. Mr Johnson here says
I'd like a bowl of hot alphabet soup (with a bit of politeness marking in the
I'd like). He could have instead said
I'll have the alphabet soup.
Of course, it's not true that every British person always says
please when they order food, but I definitely hear more
pleases here. (On my visit to the US in July, I continued to add
pleases after my brothers' restaurant orders, mostly in whispers to myself, just because it was driving me crazy.)
So, how can it be that Americans think of themselves as polite when they fail to extend this common courtesy word?
Part of the story is touched upon in my TEDx talk. American interactions are generally aimed at creating/maintaining a sense of equality among the participants. My reading of what we're doing when we don't say
please is that we don't really want to point out that we are making requests in these situations--to do so would be to acknowledge that the customer is in a more 'powerful' or 'statusful' position than the waiter. So instead of thinking of it as telling waiters what to do (here I'm quoting myself from Emphasis Writing's e-bulletin):
Americans regard ordering as providing the waiter withthe information he needs to do his job.
On the other hand,
The British say please when ordering food inrestaurants because they view the action as a personalrequest to the waiter.
Please unambiguously marks an utterance as a request (it is an IFID: Illocutionary Force Indicating Device). Other means of softening requests involve making the request less obviously a request.
Could you bring me a salad? is literally a question about someone's ability;
I'll have the salad is a statement of my intentions;
I'd like the salad is a description of my mental state. They give the requestee a plausible way around dealing with the request (e.g.
Could you...? Not in these heels; I'd like..., Ooh, so would I. ). Not that they would refuse. But hiding a request in another type of speech act is a way of being polite, and that hiding is kind of cancel(l)ed out if an IFID like
please is added to say "Look at me! I'm ASKING YOU TO DO SOMETHING FOR ME!"
Please thus ends up not feeling right in some American contexts. Ben Trawick-Smith discussed this at his Dialect Blog:
while ‘thank you‘ is still important to civilized discourse, I find that ‘please‘ has almost the opposite effect in American English. It can make a question sound urgent, blunt, and even downright rude.
I'm sure people working in service industries in touristy places will have tales of cross-cultural request behaviour.
Please let us know about them!
P.S. I've remembered that I've written about something related, so (please) see also: making suggestions.
P.P.S. (12 September) Various pictures of signs like this are making their way round Facebook. Maybe this is what's needed in the UK, so that tourists learn the lingo without some of the rude interventions described in the comments section!
It was so and so sweet!
They were so much impressed!
Oh, how they thrilled!I even can not express to you, dear friends!
It was just amazing blessing to see their happiness!
A minute later.So happy by new socks. :)
Beautiful princess! :)
Oh, how they were amazed! There was such impression that for the first time in life they received new things. How they rejoiced, embraced, kissed and clapped!
It`s their wardrobe for 4-5 girls...
Love her smile
Probably, someone would love to bless these precious lives by new pajamas? ... We have all their sizes. It would be such pleasure for these poor children. Administration of the orphanage asked us to help more than once with underwear for children and a bed-clothes. We think probably, some day.... to help orphanage to get a new bed clothes, if God will allow.
Tanechka having strongly huged me spoke, I won't unhand you, I won't let you go, stay with us...They are so dear to our hearts...
The matter is that many teens having been "age out" from orphanages, have bad teeth. BOM helps them to treat and resolve this issue. Vova has not good teeth also. Some can still be treated and some need to pul out already. He suffers every day with a toothache. Thus we learned that the dentist can't treat his teeth, because Vova can't breathe by nose. He breathes through the mouth all the time!When we asked him, why he did not tell us earlier.He just gave a shrug of the shoulders. 
