Urban politeness.

[rivka]

Vignette 1: I am sitting on a bench along the sidewalk, eating a sandwich. At the other end of the bench, a middle-aged man is talking quietly on his cell phone. I catch phrases here and there - benign ones, at first, but then he starts repeating, "Why you got to say that? Why you got to talk like that?" His tone remains mild.

Suddenly, he gets up from the bench and walks over to stand about ten feet away from me, still talking into the cell phone. It's still close enough for me to hear him, because he's gotten much louder: "Listen, bitch, you better remember who you're talking to!"

I was a bit taken aback, but pleased that he was considerate enough not to disrupt my lunch or make me nervous by shouting obscenities right next to me.

Vignette 2: I get onto a very crowded bus. There are no seats at all, even in the front section that's reserved for the elderly and people with disabilities, so I brace myself to stand. A frail older woman who looks to be about seventy catches my eye and starts to rise.

"Miss, would you like to sit down?"

"Oh no, ma'am, you don't have to get up."

Immediately, two middle-aged, apparently able-bodied men fall all over themselves to get up and offer me their seats. They'd be the right age to be sons of the older woman, although they obviously don't know her. "Here you go, miss, my stop's about to come up." "You can sit right here."

I thank them as I sit down, and then thank the older woman - who seems quite satisfied with the response to her etiquette lesson.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Funny to read this stuff when I'm preparing to talk about politeness in my discourse seminar today.

I'd be interested to hear more about the context in which your seminar looks at politeness - not to mention how it interacts with your personal feelings about etiquette!

An interesting "politeness and language" sidenote, which I didn't think about until after I wrote up the story: within the culture in which I was raised, it seems to me that there would be impolite connotations to addressing a pregnant woman as "miss," because it would mean implying that she wasn't married. In the culture in which I'm living now, "miss" is much more of an age-related term.

So in Baltimore it was perfectly polite for the lady on the bus to call me "miss" and for me to call her "ma'am," because she was my elder by quite a bit. And that's how I read the exchange, so I wasn't bothered. But a tiny corner of my upstate New York heart had the niggling feeling that it would have been more proper for her to say "ma'am" to me, as well as me saying it to her.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

within the culture in which I was raised, it seems to me that there would be impolite connotations to addressing a pregnant woman as "miss," because it would mean implying that she wasn't married.

Mine too, and I noticed that right away in your story.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

curiousangel is of the opinion that when there's a great age differential (as there was between me and the woman who offered me the seat), it is always appropriate for the older woman to call the younger woman "miss." But the middle-aged men also called me miss when they belatedly offered me their seats, so obviously it's not the only rule in effect.

The other thing that occurred to me is that, forty years ago in Baltimore, I would have been making a strong political statement by calling that woman "ma'am." And probably the men would've been making a subtler political statement by not jumping up to give me their seats. Today, general rules of politeness apply regardless of race, so hooray for progress in etiquette.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

In Canada, I've too often encountered "Miss" by itself (not Miss Lastname) as a term used to a social inferior or used as part of a rude sentence. (People complaining to young waitresses or young store clerks for example.) I therefore cannot stand being addressed by my students as "Miss", and have come to the conclusion that it's better for me to tell them that directly than for me to seethe and remain especially critical of those students. On a bilingual campus, it was not uncommon for Francophone students to address me in English as "Miss" - I think maybe they assumed it was equivalent in connotation to "Madame", which was an appropriate way to address a professor.

On the other hand, I know women my age who take offense on being addressed as "Ma'am", because they feel like "Ma'am" is only for old ladies. Go figure.

I agree about the social progress that you mention.