You have no manners (and neither have I), part 4: A Brazilian picks a fight with an Englishwoman in France
My friendly and dedicated correspondent, Lisa Marie (an Englishwoman who lives in France), is at it again. She wrote most thoughtfully about my recent posts on the subject of manners.
And you know what? The Brazilian in me disagrees with the Englishwoman in her, proving that I have no manners whatsoever! My retorts to Lisa Marie's remarks are inside the little boxes.
Hi Pedro,
I've been silently enjoying your posts on politeness. It's such a potentially hilarious subject. I think there are two kinds of behaviours which both fall into the category good manners but are very different. The first are all those culturally specific things that are often absurd (though not always) -- and have to be learned. The second category includes all those ways in which you attend to others to make them feel comfortable, e.g. listening to people until they've finished their desultory sentences, not staring over their shoulder in search of someone more interesting to talk to, not making other people aware of their lack of the first sort of good manners -- like the (probably apocryphal) hostess who drank her finger-bowl to save the blushes of a guest who had just drank his. It is easy to get the two categories muddled because some behaviours fall into both categories, for example -- remembering that guests arriving from far might want to rest and wash before they feel like being chatty and entertaining.
Er... I think both types of behavior you mention are similarly "cultural," speficic to certain groups and having to be learned. Listening to other peope until they finish their sentences, for instance: oftentimes in France and elsewhere, several people in a conversation might talk at the same time, without waiting for other people to finish what they're saying; and for people in such cultures, it's not considered rude in the least to converse in this manner. Indeed, I think ALL social behaviors are culture-specific; if that weren't the case, there would be SOME universal behaviors, and I can't think of even one that happens in all cultures, tribes, social settings, and so on.
I have problems in France with "Bonjour Madame X", to which, as you know the correct reply is "Bonjour Monsieur Y", (rather than plain unadorned "Bonjour" which I would find more natural)."Bonjour Monsieur Y" always makes me feel as if I've become trapped in a language primer and the words always come out of my mouth with audible (to me at any rate) inverted commas. I suppose any formulaic exchange learned later than childhood will always feel like an exercise in role-playing.
I think one can learn to absorb behaviors -- and make them become "natural" -- at any point in one's life, not in childhood alone; it's just that some things learned in childhood are more deeply rooted than others. Also, I somehow suspect that there are people in all groups who feel unhappy with the behaviors imposed by the traditions of the group. I'm sure there are Brazilians who don't like the cheek-kissing thingy, even though they grew up with it, and Frenchmen who are impatient with the "Bonjour, Madame" thingy.
Someone (Paul Theroux?) wrote 'The Japanese have so perfected good manners to the point that they have become almost indistinguishable from rudeness.'
Funny. And astute, I think.
Your hypothetical American sins by ignorance (bad manners category 1). Your hypothetical baker is arrogant -- despising his customer as a barbarian just because he cannot imitate his (the baker's) local customs inferring thereby that he (the baker) would fare better if suddenly whisked accross the Atlantic -- but he only commits bad manners category 2 if the American becomes aware of the baker's mépris.
Warm beer is the result of incompetence. English real ale should be served at (cold) cellar temperature but not refrigerated.
Sure, sure. But for a Texan who ALWAYS drinks beer ABSOLUTELY FREEZING-COLD (and any other beverages that he perceives as beer-like), real ale served at cellar temperature will appear WARM, therefore WRONG. The guy doesn't know the difference between real ale and lager, doesn't know about the gustatory demerits of drinks that are too cold... and he doesn't know he's making tons of assumptions about everything in this world.
PS I forgot to say that "I was only being Brazilian" is not an excuse I've ever heard before... Do you think the recipient of your Brazilian-ness subsequently felt embarrassed to have reacted as she did? -- how culturally insensitive!
If that woman regretted flinching at my Brazilian-ness, she certainly hasn't sent me a telegram about it -- yet!
PPS The possibilities for painful embarrassment are endless. I haven't even begun to bang on about tertiary embarassment -- that's when you feel embarrassed on someone else's behalf because they miraculously fail to feel as embarassed as you feel they ought. Perhaps that's an English thing...
Aha! The truth comes out! I knew most of the things you think, say, and feel arise from the assumptions you learned as a child in England!
Warm regards from the the patch of Brazilian jungle near the Bastille, Paris.
-- Pedro
Pedro
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Hi Pedro here are my replies to yours. Please feel free to edit as you wish.
(in answer to your 1st box) Hmm… perhaps I erred in seeming to say that my category 2 behaviours are practised exclusively by people who have worked them out for themselves through sheer empathy and deduction; I do not, in fact, believe this. But I persist in believing that the word 'politeness' covers 2 distinct kinds of thing. I will try to explain.
Like most mothers I try to teach my children what I believe are 'good' manners (i.e. manners that will make them agreeable to be with, for the sort of people they're likely to be with. Some things I try to instill are just arbitrary from the point of view of logic, e.g. how to hold your knife and fork ("But my way is so much easier!") and which k and f to use when. This knowledge is only of any use when you're with people who have the same customs and you can't deduce any other behaviours from it. Transgression disturbs people a bit but it doesn't annoy them.
("In our tribe dear, we always pass the armadillo chunks to the left while serving ourselves with the thumb and fourth finger of our right hand, it's crazy but it's our own craziness and if you do it any other way you will perplex people and they will blame your parents.")
But for many other forms of politeness you have constantly to draw their attention to what other people might feel "would they be likely to enjoy being lightly sprayed with crumbs of semi-masticated Weetabix? No? Well don't talk with your mouth full! ....most people don't wear protective clothing at table..."
From this very basic consideration of others as real, and likely, mutandis mutatis, to react as you would, many other polite behaviours can be deduced and applied to different situations.
I don't mean to knock the arbitrary customs; I admire them, (at a safe distance) as I admire French formality. And the amateur anthropologist in me can recognise that they increasing the cohesion of the group by increasing the pleasure its members have in each other's company - the feeling of being at home, of belonging, of knowing what to do and being able to do it, the gentle pleasure of invisibility...(OK, highly extrovert people will find such pleasure a bit of a mystery, nevertheless...)
No universal customs? Try these - I would bet my last Polynesian hardwood votive fetish that in no society is it considered comme il faut to shake your eating implement in a fellow-diner's face and that where eating implements are used, they will always be held in a conscientiously un-warlike way. Also that in no society is it considered polite to sneeze or cough over other people or their food. (Such societies may have existed once but they all DIED OUT "it's not just me dear, Evolution says 'Put your hand in front of your mouth'").
(The talking at once thing,)- sure, youth, impatience, self-importance and general excitableness have made us all on occasions interrupt each other and talk at once. However, it will be a sign of laisser aller, of relaxation maybe, and won't be considered 'polite' even if it's acceptable/accepted. (I don't want to sound too sniffy about this but there's polite behaviour and just, sniff, behaviour). Nobody likes being interrupted* and therefore everybody with two bits of imagination to rub together can deduce that other people might just feel the same way.
* I can, in fact think of occasions when it is a bit of a relief to be interrupted but exception.. proves.. rule etc
All right, you have a good point about forks and weapons. But I bet even in England you have food fights, no?
Hallo again Pedro,
Because I have been stricken to bed with an unpleasant but unheroically trivial illness my further thoughts on your posts have taken the form of a fevered dream.....
Scene - scruffy public house somewhere off High Holborn, London EC1
Enter our old friends your 'very proper' Englishman (E) with your Texan (T). There are many other people at the bar and seated at tables nearby...
E (tentatively) Er, so have you tried English beer before? I mean before that other place where it had been badly kept... (mentally he is preparing a speech on temperatures, amber tones and nuttiness, remembering his own shock at having his taste buds apparently anaesthetised by Budweiser served at minus temperatures - only later realising that it didn't taste of anything much anyway)
T Yes, thanks (he is looking at what is on offer) I'll go for the Bass rather than the Flowers I guess, I really prefer Breakspears but they don't serve that here...
E (looks askance) :://!!?//?
T (a little nettled) Well, I have lived here for three years and just because Pedro - Ah, there he is sitting over there! (and it is indeed he, or rather, you, seated at a table nearby) just because Pedro decided to write me as some irredeemably dumb-ass red-neck there's no need for you to start explaining all the local customs and condescending like crazy.
E But… (feeling his new acquaintance was being a little unfair but understanding that the circumstances were indeed trying he remonstrates no further. In any event the Texan is now addressing Pedro)
T (angry, decrescendo-ing to hurt and offended) Listen Bud! I KNOW what 'how do you do' means! and if I hadn't known I coulda guessed it wasn't a question by the absence upward inflection. I got special mention for linguistic acuity at college, you know...
P ?!!://!?
E I, too, would like to register a complaint. You gave me only four utterly conventional words to say before you jump in claiming they laid bare my indifference to my fellow-man. Nonsense! Rubbish! and likewise, Balderdash! Greetings formulae are just that,- fomulae, comfortable if you know the right response but likely to go off track if one participant realises he's already been introduced and is simultaneously fed warm beer! What have you got against 'how do you do'? Do you go about taxing Frenchmen with insincerity when they say 'Enchanté' when they're palpably not enchantés and, let's face it, why should they be? Moreover, bogged down as you were in dumb Texan and uptight Brit gags - with which the world is already more than adequately supplied- you missed a chance to consider a much more interesting conversational trope, one which really needs decoding. I am referring, of course, to 'How are you?' As one who, in social situations, is somewhat given to literalist panic, the question 'How are you?' has bugged me for sometime. How to respond? What did it mean? Was it an opening for theological debate - HOW are you? Did it express ontological curiosity - how ARE you? Does the person want my life story from my earliest infant memories to my most recent medical records - how are YOU?
T and P )(////?!?//!!
E (still lecturing while flicking pipe-tobacco ash off his deer-stalker)Well, through much painstaking research, observation and deduction - I have finally decoded this remark and, if you will let me, I shall share my conclusions with you.
T Fire ahead, Sherlock.
E Please, my friends call me Ratzi.
T and P !! Ratzi!!?
E Yes, Derivation lost in the mists of time, it has stuck from childhood
T So will egg-yolk if you let it! I would wipe it off.
E Do you honestly prefer Sherlock?
T OK, Ratzi, but it's a close call.
E To return to my conclusions; How are you? is a wonderfully succinct way of saying (drum roll) "Please stop me launching into a catalogue of my very minor troubles or regaling you with a, to me, amusing anecdote or organising you into coming to dinner next Thursday, if you've just lost a close relative, had a bad diagnosis, car-crash or other disaster". The reply, variations on "Fine, thank you", signals that frivolous conversation is OK and the response question, fairly swiftly returned - "And you? your family?" is designed to put the first speaker back on track to start his catalogue/anecdote etc. So laborious to explain; so swift to utter. But not peculiarly English as, I believe, most languages have an equivalent. Universally necessary short-hand perhaps?
(At that moment a human-tank appears, shouting into a mobile 'phone. He bumps into their table, spilling their drinks ((that have miraculously appeared there without being queued for, ordered or paid for - I know, but dreams are like that - continuity is a closed book to the subconscious)) The human-tank turns his outraged - which ******* put that******* table ******* there! - face towards them. It is the face of one for whom opening hours are just one long psychotic episode).
HT Vyoogottaprobblmm?Wotchoolookinattme?
T (aside) At last! A proper Englishman! (pedantically) that's proper in the sense of veritable.
T, E & P (very politely but avoiding eye-contact as much as possible) No!, No! Absolutely not! ... on our way out in fact........
Finis
Oh dear (as the English say), I guess I asked for it... You wrote a one-act play in which my only spoken line is "No! No!" It won't be enough to get an Equity card, uh?
Oh no! I realise I'm losing touch with my native idiom. What HT should have said is "Vyoogo'aprobblm?Wotchoolookinap'me?". I forgot the glottal stops. Damn!
re - your lack of equity card - there's no pleasing some people, I just didn't want to commit lèse-person-perfectly-capable-of-writing-their-own-lines and anyway, you've got your own blog, one long opportunity to soliloquise.
re - food fights - and your point is? - that English people also behave badly ? - (well blow me down and who'd a thunk it?!) or perhaps that I am misleading my children about the general public's desire to wear Weetabix all over their clothes? (I think not; you would be chucked out, even from the Drones Club, if you chewed your bread-roll before hurling it convivially at your companions.)
Sorry, sorry (irritating, apparently insincere but somehow necessary english apology) - I'll shut up now.
About the food fights: In a previous post of yours you talk about all cultures NOT using their forks and knifes as weapons during meals. Hey, presto: food fights, and knifes and forks become secondary weapons (the primary one being FOOD).
"and knives and forks become secondary weapons",? eh? that wasn't a food fight you were at, Pedro, that was a riot; different clothes, different etiquette.
PS And anyway you are (again) mixing up behaviour that people can get away with (in the case of food fights,- when they're rich and young and daft) and behaviour that even exactly the same people think of as 'polite' behaviour, - the behaviour they assume when they respect, like and/or are slightly nervous of the company they are in.
Me, mixing up behaviors? Me, distorting arguments? Me, talking nonsense out of the side of my mouth? Nah. You must be referring to my evil twin brother.
Hi dear people,
Oh, too long since I have checked your blog Pedro (in fact I did last week); must make it regular. Like branflakes.
I never knew that this thing in French, about Bonjour X and not just Bonjour. I have been offending people for 6 years... and it is true, I don't remember their names!
oh no!
john
hi John, someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's much more OK to say just 'bonjour' if the person who bonjour-ed you has used your first name. It's denying people their rightful Monsieur/Madame that they find offensively casual - and forgetting names is no excuse since you can just say'Bonjour Mr/Mme'.