Politeness and privacy are, in fact, largely about maintaining impressions (especially positive impressions) through coordinating against the revelation of truth.
I think this is not fully correct. I think a significant fraction of politeness norms (and professionalism norms) come from trying to provide a simple, reliable API for two parties to engage in transactions with, in a way that limits downside risk.
If I hire a plumber, I really don’t want to have long philosophical discussion with my plumber, and I also don’t really want them to provide commentary on my interior decoration while they are doing the plumbing. I mostly just want them to fix my plumbing, which requires me to describe my current plumbing problems, for them to ask clarifying questions, then for them to perform some units of work, and then for me to give them some money.
A lot of the constraints we put on professional interactions are I think not because we want to maintain impressions, but because we have to drastically simplify the interface of permissible speech acts to a small subset to make the interaction predictable and manageable.
I do also separately think that a significant fraction of politeness norms are about maintaining impressions, but it felt important to highlight this alternative explanation, which I think explains a lot of the same data.
I think this is not fully correct. I think a significant fraction of politeness norms (and professionalism norms) come from trying to provide a simple, reliable API for two parties to engage in transactions with, in a way that limits downside risk.
If I hire a plumber, I really don’t want to have long philosophical discussion with my plumber, and I also don’t really want them to provide commentary on my interior decoration while they are doing the plumbing. I mostly just want them to fix my plumbing, which requires me to describe my current plumbing problems, for them to ask clarifying questions, then for them to perform some units of work, and then for me to give them some money.
A lot of the constraints we put on professional interactions are I think not because we want to maintain impressions, but because we have to drastically simplify the interface of permissible speech acts to a small subset to make the interaction predictable and manageable.
I do also separately think that a significant fraction of politeness norms are about maintaining impressions, but it felt important to highlight this alternative explanation, which I think explains a lot of the same data.