You make it sound like the alternative, where everyone has idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable and there’s no way to generalize from one person to another, leads to less offense being taken.
I guess that would be true if everyone treated every possible utterance as inoffensive. Which, OK, if you can get a community to actually do that, great… but it’s far from easy to pull off.
Otherwise, not so much.
The point of etiquette is to avoid giving offense unintentionally.
When everyone knows the rules, we don’t think of it as following rules of etiquette, we think of it as not being a jerk.
The point is that in a culture where one is expected to greet someone by saying X if the other is male and above you in status, Y if they are female and above, Z if they’re a blacksmith… etc. it is much easier to give offence by accidentally using the wrong greeting than in one where you greet people with X regardless of the situation.
How does having simpler rules lead to “idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable”? We seem to do fine without a rule on how to greet a one-legged chess player on a tuesday.
Sure, if what you mean by “a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness” is one in which there is one standard greeting, X, with which you greet people “regardless of the situation,” then you’re absolutely correct: that is not at all idiosyncratic.
I guess I misunderstood you: I thought you were proposing an approach where people just greet one another however they wish and they don’t worry about etiquette at all, rather than an approach where there is a single approved way of greeting everyone.
The former I think does lead to idiosyncratic standards; the latter I agree does not.
Sorry for the confusion and thanks for the clarification.
You make it sound like the alternative, where everyone has idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable and there’s no way to generalize from one person to another, leads to less offense being taken.
I guess that would be true if everyone treated every possible utterance as inoffensive. Which, OK, if you can get a community to actually do that, great… but it’s far from easy to pull off.
Otherwise, not so much.
The point of etiquette is to avoid giving offense unintentionally.
When everyone knows the rules, we don’t think of it as following rules of etiquette, we think of it as not being a jerk.
I don’t follow at all.
The point is that in a culture where one is expected to greet someone by saying X if the other is male and above you in status, Y if they are female and above, Z if they’re a blacksmith… etc. it is much easier to give offence by accidentally using the wrong greeting than in one where you greet people with X regardless of the situation.
How does having simpler rules lead to “idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable”? We seem to do fine without a rule on how to greet a one-legged chess player on a tuesday.
Sure, if what you mean by “a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness” is one in which there is one standard greeting, X, with which you greet people “regardless of the situation,” then you’re absolutely correct: that is not at all idiosyncratic.
I guess I misunderstood you: I thought you were proposing an approach where people just greet one another however they wish and they don’t worry about etiquette at all, rather than an approach where there is a single approved way of greeting everyone.
The former I think does lead to idiosyncratic standards; the latter I agree does not.
Sorry for the confusion and thanks for the clarification.