In New York, people speak fast. In the American South, they speak slowly. Both of them are a form of politeness, understood in a different way. In New York, you speak quickly because you respect the value of the other person’s time and you don’t want to take up too much of it. In the South, you speak slowly because you want to respect the person by showing how much of your own time you are prepared to give to them.
Saved by sari and
They’ve learned that paying attention to someone’s body, alongside their voice, helps us hear them better. They have determined that how we ask a question sometimes matters more than what we ask. We’re better off, it seems, acknowledging social differences, rather than pretending they don’t exist. Every discussion is influenced by emotions,
“politeness principle” to accompany the “cooperative principle”: those of tact (try to minimize the cost to the other), generosity (maximize the cost to self), approbation (maximize praise of other), modesty (minimize praise of self), agreement (minimize disagreement) and sympathy (minimize antipathy).
In the United States, he feels, conversation is about how effective you are at turning your experiences into stories, whereas a Chinese person might be concerned with taking up too much of the other person’s time with inconsequential information.