Politeness

[timwi]

If someone tells me that something I did, said, or wrote is impolite, rude, or in any other way objectionable, surely they do so in order to pressure me into "bettering myself", which essentially means to behave in a way they prefer. Logically, it is therefore actually their problem if they get worked up over something I do, say, or write, because

Comments

[timwi]

When someone says that something you're doing is rude or objectionable or whatever, what they mean is that they are offended by something you have done, or possibly that they are hurt by something that you have done. Then the ball is in your court as to what to do with that information. You decide whether the other person's feelings and comfort is more important than the thing that they said was rude, and if so, you modify the behaviour around them as a courtesy, or you decide that the behaviour is more important to you, and you don't modify your behaviour, but don't surprise if the cost of that is alienating the other person.

See, you're making the same mistake that the person who triggered this did. You are assuming that you can just say "This was rude" and that I will know precisely what you are talking about and precisely what particular behaviour needs to be modified to be seen as less rude by you. Then, if some other future behaviour evokes the same annoyance in you, your next assumption is that I must be doing it deliberately, out of malice towards you, because why would someone "do it again" if they've been told that it was rude? Then you proceed by responding with your own malice, except you are now doing it deliberately, something I never did.

If I ask what I'm supposed to have done wrong, people give extremely vague and unclear replies, such as "you were rude" or some other adjective, or "it's the tone of your e-mail". Amazingly few of them realise that they can't even explain it, and yet they expect others to understand it.

The rest of your comment is thus kind of a strawman. Wearing a bright blue shirt is something that someone can specifically point out. "Don't wear a bright blue shirt." Fine, I can follow that simple instruction (if I choose to). But "Stop being so rude"? I don't know what that means; it is a concept that exists only in other people's minds. How can I weigh the consequences of something that other people are making up?

[pthalogreen]

If I or someone else is unclear when we say "this is rude", you have every right to ask for clarification about what specifically went wrong. A good way to go about it is saying that you didn't mean to offend them and you appologise, and could they please tell you what specifically they found offensive so you can know for future reference. Then the ball is back in your court. If they say "farting at the table is rude", then you know where they're coming from. But if they just say "hey, that's rude", then you don't know, and trying to guess may well make the matter worse if you guess wrong.

I think it might be human nature to assume that people should just know what is bothering us. You're right, few people can articulate what it is about an e-mail that makes the tone offensive, but many people can look at an e-mail directed at them and either take offense or not.

I agree, the blue shirt example might have been kind of dumb, and it doesn't seem to fit with the situation now that I know more about it, but if someone ever does tell you not to wear blue shirts, you'll know my opinion on the matter, or something.

The thing with tone is that it's tricky, it's something that many native speakers of any language can recognise, and it's something that's very hard to master in a foreign language, even when you're fluent, and it's also something that varies from language to language. Tone is also something that's hard to put a finger on. You don't really know exactly what it is that makes you upset, you just know that something is making you feel upset and insulted. It's unfortunate when this happens and the other person didn't even mean to upset you.

An example of this from Hungarian would be negative questions. In Hungarian, negative questions are neutral. You say "aren't you hungry?" (nem vagy éhes?) and it means "because if you're hungry, i've got some food, i'm kind of hungry myself, but if you're not hungry, that's okay too." But if you say "Aren't you hungry?" in English, it means "you really should be hungry, and there's something wrong with you, if you aren't." An amusing example from a linguistics class I had was when an American teacher said that a Hungarian, who was fluent in English, said to him after a long train ride in the summer "don't you want to take a shower?" which in English means "you stink! take a shower!" and in Hungarian, "nem akarsz letusolni?" means "you must be tired and hot and sweaty after that train ride, and i'd want a shower if I were in that situation, so i'm offering one to you, if you want one." The Hungarian speaker got the tone wrong in the English question, though her question was grammatically correct.

Even native speakers of a language get tone "wrong" though, often out of habit. Saying things like "Even you should know that x is a type of z" means that everybody, even really stupid people, know that x is a type of z, and that you're really stupid, but even though you're really stupid, you really should know that x is a type of z anyway.

Tone can be condescending when you explain something that you don't think the listener knows, and the listener thinks that even stupid people know this fact. In support it was often an interesting challenge to walk a fine line between explaining enough so that the 78 year old technophobic elderly lady could understand my support answer without being condescending to a 35 year old computer specialist. The former needs everything spelled out, and the latter doesn't want to hear what cache is, because s/he already knows.

Your best bet would probably be to talk to the person in question, let them know you didn't mean to offend and to ask them if they have any insights as to what parts of your e-mail were offensive. They may not be able to tell you, and they may think you should know, but they might be able to give you some hints as to how the e-mail made them feel, aside from "offended". If they can give you an answer like "I felt like you were talking down to me in the second paragraph" or "I felt like you think I'm stupid", then the tone probably came off as condescending.

[pthalogreen]

You shouldn't have to spend hours tailoring your e-mails and making sure you avoid every possible offense, but if you frequently get feedback that your words are coming across in a way that you didn't intend them to, and you get that feedback from several different sources, and especially if many sources say the same thing, it might be something to look into, from a linguistic stand point. There might be something in the subtext of your statements that you aren't aware of. If it's just one person reading too much into things, that is their problem, but it's still your problem to the extent that it's going to affect your relationship with them until you talk things through.

[timwi]

Okay, so let's take this "Don't you want to take a shower?" example. Suppose I am Hungarian and I say this to an English speaker. Then the English speaker gets all offended and stuff. After he cools down, he explains to me that the connotation of that sentence was "You stink."

Problem number 1: I am expected to know that "you stink" is rude even when it is true, and I am expected to follow that implying it via that question is also rude. Neither of these two is obvious.

Problem number 2: I am further expected to modify by behaviour. But how exactly, I am not told. For example, I could refrain from ever saying that phrase again -- but it's only one phrase out of millions of billions. I would have to build a huge archive of phrases I'm not allowed to say. Or, I could refrain from ever using the negative-question construction again. But this would remove a vast amount of expressive power, including totally polite things like, "You have travelled for hours, don't you want to lay down and sleep for a while?" (But maybe you're going to tell me this is rude too because it could be taken to imply that I want the person to shut up and leave me alone for a while? This is a fruitless guessing game for me.)

Explaining something the listener already knows is an example I can connect with more easily, because it is one of the few things I can actually get offended by myself if someone does that to me. However, even here you have already highlighted the root problem: there is absolutely no way that I can guess what level of knowledge someone is at! And people even admit that openly, so why is it so hard to accept that it is highly unfair to assume malice when there is merely ignorance?

Your best bet would probably be to talk to the person in question, let them know you didn't mean to offend and to ask them if they have any insights as to what parts of your e-mail were offensive.

I did e-mail the person to apologise and to tell them there was no intention to be offending. However, I did not ask for any such insight. It would be useless information for me anyway. I have collected such information for the good part of 10 years and I still evoke such emotional reactions just as regularly, so it was clearly a waste of time.

[pthalogreen]

It isn't fair, you're right. People expect other people to read their minds all the time, and most of the time it isn't justified. If I've told you I don't like being tickled and you tickle me anyway, I'll likely get upset, even if you likely just forget. But after we talk it over and I realise that you didn't mean to upset me, I'll calm down. But if you were close friends with someone and they were staying at your house for a few days and you said "hon, take a shower. you stink" they would think you were being honest, not rude. And it's polite to tell someone you're close to like that, rather than letting them go out on a date smelling like they haven't showered in three days. That's the problem: the rules are very intricate, every situation is different, and generalisations are almost impossible.

But you can generalise a little bit: most people don't like being told negative things about them (you stink), so when commenting on something negative about a person, it can help to phrase it delicately. You might get out some mint candies, take one for yourself and offer the other person one, rather than saying "man, your breath stinks! phew!" The better you know a person, the closer they are to you, the more tolerant they'll be of you giving them negative feedback, because after a certain level of friendship, it will be seen as you looking out for their best interest.

And to make matters more complicated, negative sentences aren't always rude. They just carry a subtext that most native speakers are aware of when they hear them. A sentence like "Don't you want to go to the movies?" sounds funny in English even though it's grammatically correct and even though it isn't rude. It implies that you should want to go to the movies and it's kind of weird that you don't. But if would be perfectly neutral and acceptable to say that, if your friend said "let's go see the 5 o'clock showing of this or that movie" and that at 4:30pm he wants to start a new game of scrabble. And it wouldn't be rude.

As for the condescending bit: you're absolutely right. You can try to guess how much information a person has, but you're likely to guess wrong. You can generalise that your computer geek friend doesn't need to be told "double-click" when he wants to open an icon on your computer, but you can't generalise that your new friend Joe is so thoroughly experienced with Socrates' writings, that anything you say about Socrates will be seen as "common knowledge" by him. I spent most of my childhood being offended that my teachers were being condescending and insulting my intelligence by trying to teach me things I'd learned years before. Then one day I realised that the reason they were teaching us these things is because the average 6 year old doesn't know them yet. But it took me a while to get there.

Anyway, that's what appologies are for. You'll never be able to read someone 100% of the time, and you'll never be able to completely avoid offending other people. All you can do is try, and if you mess up, you appologise and talk it over and explain what you meant, and that generally clears things up.

On a side note, I avoid slang in Hungarian to a certain extent. I understand a good deal of the slang vocabulary, and if it's used in a sentence by someone else, I know what they're on about, but I don't use it in my own speech, because I'm still lacking the subtext. There's probably about 15 ways of saying you slept with someone, and I can't "hear" the difference in tone between most of them, so I use a neutral, non-slang version because I know the subtext of it.