I've been increasingly viewing lots of social norms like politeness language as having evolved as defense against attack. Any possible impolite oddities in my speech become vulnerabilities to attack; politeness feels like it emerged as the default least attackable wall
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As in; I wonder how much politeness norms evolved as being a set of the most culturally and morally defensible default actions. They're both practically useful (e.g. you can't be blamed for not caring when you ask how your day was), and also a signal that you know how to defend.
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Very true. Conflict avoidance is among our strongest social motivators - perhaps our only stronger motivators are status and sex.
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I saw a few minutes of a reality TV show where a celeb was interrogated by ex-SAS. When he responded with rudeness, they told him “that would get you killed”. I think politeness as a defence has always been a thing - it’s probably how it started in the first place. /1
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It's interesting think about this after studying other languages that have more structural styles of politeness (i.e. In Korean politeness is shown by leaving on endings to words often removed in casual speech)
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Look at Britain and Japan. Two high population density island cultures renowned for intricate systems of manners.
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I suspect this may have something to do with people feeling bashful about standing, or walking with good posture