On Polite Speech
This essay is an social commentary argumentative essay about the use of polite speech. This essay follows the College Board’s rubric for Question 3 of the AP English Language and Composition Examination’s Free Response section.
Politeness, undoubtedly, is one of the foundations of interpersonal relationships within the humanity. It is almost an universal value in which all of us have been told by our parents “to be polite.” We see politeness as an universal value and almost a message that we attempt to exchange with others to show that we are friendly. In real life, It is certainly true that a warm regards to people could light up their day. However, under the previous statement, there is a deeper question — How much role does “politeness” serve in the regards? Or, to be literal, does “Good morning” truly delivers a message of “I hope your morning are fine,” or is there an alternative definition that we have given to this conventional phrase in our daily life? There are so many times that we might thought about this. For instance, we sometimes claim “I said [something] out of politeness.” Does these actions infer we do not want to truly deliver the message in such context — we just want to deliver the “politeness” as the message? In daily interpersonal interactions of contemporary societies, people often utilize words that normally have literal given meanings — such as “how are you” or “good morning” — to solely deliver the messages of “politeness.” Additionally, given such utilization’s commonness in social interactions, neither the attempting deliverer nor the intended recipient infer such messages in their normal literal context — subsequently making these words widely accepted as “politeness-only” in these contexts. However, it is also clear that these words are an crucial part of rhetorics of human languages, given their “warm-heartedness” and “politeness.” Thus, it is arguable that despite no longer been seen as a literal phrase and lost their literal meanings, some words in daily human speakings still serve as an important part of human interaction, making them valuable assets in social context.
First, it is evident in people’s daily life that words such as “how are you” have lost their literal meanings. Imagine this situation: when one have been asked “how are you”, what should they respond? For most individuals in contemporary world, the answer will be “I am fine,” whether they are actually fine or not. This situation will be increasing evident when the recipient of the message is “not fine” actually — for instance — when the recipients are crying near the corner of a building wall or so. In such context, “how are you” is a delivery of caring and polite message — in contrast to the literal message of inquiring about the recipient’s daily mood. It is already clear enough that the recipient is “not fine” when we one sees recipient crying, but most of us will still start the conversation with “how are you” or “are you fine” in an effort of delivering not only a message of compassion but also an invitation of conversation to the recipient. The real meanings behind “are you fine” are “I care about you” and “want to talk about what happened?”. Additionally, as the conversation continues, there will be various similar situations. For example, “I’m fine” is actually an expression of gratitude out of politeness, and “Why are you crying” is more of a deeper invitation of conversation with the recipient. These words encompasses not their original redundant literal meaning but their hidden meaning of start a conversation with politeness and compassion.
Second, despite these words do not encompass a literal meaning in them, they still serve as an important part of rhetorics of humanity and the social message that these rhetorics attempt to deliver. This brings us to the question of, “why do we try to be polite.” Politeness, being one of the keystone of human languages, are developed from our exchange of friendliness. It is almost certainly true in our daily evidence that people that are more polite tend to behave more appropriately. However, why is this assertion true? Primarily, politeness serve as an ice-breaker of hostileness, given the people’s original intent is to demonstrate friendliness or even weakness at first. Our original politeness in wilderness starts with body languages, but the humanity further transformed aspects such as speaking volume, tone, rhetoric choices, etc. into the evaluation of politeness in normal life as the human civilization progresses. However, being polite isn’t easy, as it requires one to give up their defensive and hostile altitude first — which counters our human nature. Thus, it is almost true in the society that we need to “trained” to be polite, and those who are “trained” in the society tend to demonstrate more civilized behaviors in daily life. In this aspect, politeness almost become a credential of social trust in which we demonstrate our civilizedness through being polite. Thus, it is fair to say that these polite speeches are utilized as a demonstration of friendliness, an breaker of awkward situation, and a builder of initial trust.
Some may argue that these inferred meanings are still a part of the words’ original meanings. It is indeed arguable that “I care about you” are encompassed in “are you fine,” but this argument has its limitations. First, it only demonstrates situations in which the sadness of the recipient is extremely evident (i.e. when the recipient is crying or such), but it doesn’t explain why we speak the same words in daily interactions. Second, it is exactly a counterargument of itself that human are getting so used to this utilization that our brains are “wired” to translate this kind of speech. Literally, these two speech are not same, but we commonly use this so we almost add another literal meaning to “are you fine,” and meanwhile the original meaning of the word faint in our brains because we use it so occasionally since we can almost always infer a person’s approximate daily mood without asking that person with the same question.
In conclusion, it is clear that sometimes people speak polite speeches without their literal meanings; but given the social context, these speeches are still valuable assets to human talking, especially given their effort on the exchange of friendliness and the reduction of hostility.
