Politeness as a Theory of Relationship Development

Here is a brief and very preliminary discussion of what politeness as a theory of relationship development might look like:

Among the theories of interpersonal relationship development are such well known entries as social exchange theory, social penetration, rules theory, uncertainty reduction, equity, and a variety of others. Politeness theory needs to be added to this list. It would go something like this:

Two people develop a relationship when each respects, contributes to, and acknowledges the positive and negative face needs of the other and it deteriorates when they don't.

"Positive face" is the need to be thought of highly, to be valued, to be esteemed. In more communication terms, respect for positive face entails the exchange of compliments, praise, and general positivity. "Negative face" is the need to be autonomous, to be in control of one's own behavior, to not be obligated to do something. In more communication terms, respect for negative face entails the exchange of permission requests (rather than demands), messages indicating that a person's time is valuable and respected, and few if any imposed obligations. It would also entail providing the other person an easy "way out" when a request is made.

Relationships develop when these needs are met. Relationships will be maintained when the rules of politeness are maintained. And relationships will deteriorate when the rules of politeness are bent, violated too often, or ignored completely. Relationship repair will be effected by a process of reinstituting the rules of politeness. Politeness, of course, is not the entire story; it's just a piece. It won't explain all the reasons for relationship development or deterioration but it explains a part of the processes. It won't explain, for example, why so many people stay in abusive and unsatisfying relationships. It's major weakness seems to be that politeness needs for specific individuals are difficult to identify--what is politeness to one person, may be perceived as rude or insensitive to another.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, politeness seems to be relaxed as the relationship becomes more intimate. As the relationship becomes more intimate and long-lasting, there is greater relationship license to violate the normal rules of politeness. This may well be a mistake, at least in certain relationships. Our needs for positive and negative face do not go away when a relationship becomes more intimate; they're still there. If the definitions of politeness are themselves relaxed by the individuals, then there seems little problem. There is a problem when the definitions--relaxed or original--are not shared by the individuals; when one assumes the acceptability of something generally considered impolite as o.k. while the other does not.

When people in relationships complain that they are not respected, are not valued as they used to be when they were dating, and that their relationship is not romantic, they may well be talking about politeness. And so, on the more positive side, it offers very concrete suggestions for developing, maintaining, and repairing interpersonal relationships, namely: increase politeness by contributing to the positive and negative face needs of the other person.

How to Write a Lot

Here is a Word file of a brief article I wrote and which appears in the current issue of ETC: A Review of General Semantics and here with permission.

How to Write a Lot
Four Rules
Joseph A. DeVito

A lot has been written about effective writing. For example, the largest selling textbooks, for the largest college course (English Composition), are the basic English handbooks used to teach the skills of effective writing, attesting to society's conviction in the importance of effective writing and its concern with teaching the skills of effective writing. The importance of effective writing has even penetrated the best seller lists with such books as Eats, Shoots & Leaves and the continuing success of Strunk and White's Elements of Style. A search of "writing skills" on amazon.com/books yielded 46,769 results. And a Google search of the same phrase yielded 5, 190,000 sites, many of these devoted to teaching people in business the skills they never learned in college--despite the current emphasis.
But what about writing a lot? Surely there is some merit in writing a lot. And, contrary to what many who write little may argue, there seems no evidence to suggest that quantity is in any way negatively related to quality. Yet many persist in the belief that if you write a lot you can't be writing "good." But consider: Is Shakespeare any less a playwright because he wrote a lot? Similarly, for John Updike who has written some 60 books, for Joyce Carol Oats who has written over 100, and Isaac Asimov who wrote over 200. The same is true in the academic world. Those who write a great deal are in no way inferior to those who write little; instead, those who write a great deal seem (to me, at least) to be among the best writers and most significant contributors to their field.
This is not to say that there are some who write a great deal but are known not for quality but only their prolificacy. There are these people as well but they certainly don't define the class of prolific writers.
With this as a preface--to help de-demonize the writer who writes a lot--here are four "don'ts" that a writer might follow to write a lot. In the interest of avoiding allness, each of these "don'ts" comes with a "however."

Don't No. 1. Don't Delay

Don't wait to sit in your favorite chair with a cup of coffee at your computer to write. If you're on a bus and a thought hits you, write it down on the paper and pen you always keep with you. Louis L'Amour, the prolific Western writer, said that he could write in the middle of Times Square. And, though I doubt that he tried, I'm sure he could have. It's that attitude that helps you write a lot. And don't wait for inspiration which may or may not come. Novelist Peter deVries put this in perspective: "I only write when I am inspired. And I see to it that I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning."
However, there are many instances from literature of prolific writers who only wrote at certain times or in certain ways. And it obviously worked for them. Tolstoy wrote in the morning, Dostoyevsky late at night, and Benjamin Franklin and Edmond Rostand at any time but preferably in the bathtub.

Don't No. 2. Don't Edit

Don't edit, evaluate, or self-censor your own work. This can come later. Pausing to evaluate may be an indication of fear of being able to move on and so you pause and evaluate, censoring more and more ideas. This suggestion is nothing more than a repeat of the brainstorming rule: "Don't Evaluate". Creativity and the easy flow of ideas work best when uncensored.
However, at some point you need to separate what works from what doesn't and here you need to start evaluating. But, only after you've written a lot.
At some point you'll need to spell and grammar check and edit what you've written but just don't do it at the point of creation. You can always fine tune your sentences at a later, editing stage. Thomas Wolfe approached this differently, He simply wrote as much as possible and then left it up to his editor to cut and edit his length prose. Fortunately for Wolfe, his editor was the famed Max Perkins, the editor, not only of Wolfe but also of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

Don't No. 3. Don't Stop

Don't stop your writing or interrupt your creative flow by looking up a word, finding a statistic, or locating an apt quotation. These are often stall tactics, similar to sharpening pencils in the olden days, and are best avoided at this point. Instead, consider writing directly into your manuscript a note to yourself (I call these NTM, notes to myself) such as "needs a good quotation here" or "rewrite in plain English!" (one of my favorites).
If something is giving you trouble, don't stop to resolve the problem. Continue writing and go on to the next point--perhaps, again, making a note to yourself--"this statement needs research support" or "a good example would really help here." If you stop to find the research support or the example, you're likely to lose your writing momentum--too large a price for finding the information right now.
However, under some circumstances you'll want a break. If that's the case, take a break and you might want to use the time to find that quotation or example. Or you might want to integrate breaks into your writing routine. Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code, for example, sets a clock, write for one hour, and then takes an exercise break and does pushups and stretches. Taking a break when you want it is perfectly acceptable and leads easily into our next and final suggestion.

Don't No. 4. Don't Follow Rules

"You have to write every day" is one of the time-honored rules for prolific writers. William Zinsser, in his popular On Writing Well--now in its 30 anniversary edition--echoes the advice originally given by Balzac ("You must write one page each day."): "The only way to learn is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis." This suggestion is not surprising coming from Balzac who tried to write for 24 hours at a stretch, aided by lots of black coffee from which he supposedly died.
Not only is there no evidence to support this claim, there's good reason for believing otherwise. Rules like this make writing work and that's not going to help you write a lot. The more that writing is fun, enjoyable, exciting, engaging, interesting, etc., the more you'll write. And that's perhaps the clearest rule for writing a lot: Write a lot. Basically, the less rule-bound, the more enjoyable the experience will be and the more likely you'll write a lot. After all, why spend a great deal of time doing something you don't like?
However, some people do need rules and it helps to recognize this. If you find that you write more when you follow a set pattern (from 9-12, Monday through Friday, say) then do so. If you want to set a quota, then do so. After all it worked for Hemingway who had a quota of 500 words and it works for Stephen King who uses ten pages (around 2000 words) as his guideline.
Perhaps the best "don't" comes from playwright Lillian Hellman: "If I had to give young writers advice, I'd say don't listen to writers talking about writing."

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Joseph A. DeVito is Professor Emeritus of Communication at Hunter College of the City University of New York and, by at least some standards, would be considered to have written a lot.

Drugstore Politeness

Yesterday, I went to a drugstore to get a prescription for Vicodin (I had a tooth pulled) and there I stood waiting for someone to acknowledge that I was in fact standing at the drop-off counter with a prescription in my hand. Four people were behind the counter doing various things. Not one of them looked my way, made eye contact, or said anything. About 3 or 4 minutes later, someone came and asked if I needed help. “Of course, I need help. Why else would I be standing here with a prescription in my hand?” This incident, which I figure happens every day at every drug store, stimulated me to think of some guidelines for politeness in this type of situation. So, here goes—with love to all the drug-store workers (who are often overworked), please consider the following simple suggestions:
1. Be mindful that people waiting to get their prescriptions filled are probably not at their best. They’re probably feeling ill or in some sort of pain. Of course, this is not true of everyone but it’s probably a good assumption for a drug store worker to act on.
2. Recognize the presence of the person at the drop-off counter. Even if you’re busy and can’t stop to take care of the customer, acknowledge the presence of the person with a simple smile and an “I’ll be right with you.”
3. Treat the customer as a person with a friendly acknowledgment. A simple “hello, how are you?” is sufficient to let the person know that he or she will be treated as a person and not simply as a walking prescription.
4. Further acknowledge the presence and important of the customer by making brief eye contact. Look at the person before you look at the prescription; it will take no longer than a second.
5. Instead of just taking the prescription and walking to the computer in silence, tell the customer what you’ll be doing, e.g., “Let me look up your insurance and see what we have” or “Let me see if I have this in stock.”
6. In giving the prescription, ask the customer if he or she has any questions that you might be able to answer. For example, you might say, very simply, “Do you have any questions about this?” Or, “Have you taken this medication before? There are important precautions to take and these are all written down on this leaflet.” It’s a simple thing that will make the patient feel a lot better.
7. Avoid mentioning the medication or the person’s name if other customers are within earshot. “Mr. Barley, your Viagra is ready” is probably not going to make Mr. Barley feel very comfortable. It’s a variation on that great scene from the Golden Girls where the Girls are buying condoms and feeling very uncomfortable about it and so just whispering, only to have the clerk ask on loudspeaker for the price of the condoms the Girls are buying.
8. Avoid jargon as much as possible. You know the names of all these medications and physical conditions; the customer may not. Keep in mind that your responsibility is to communicate clearly and that means beginning with what the customer knows. Probably the best assumption to make here is that the customer does not know any of the information you learned in pharmacy school.
9. Explain when the prescription will be filled and give the customer as many options as available. Say something like “This will take about 10 minutes, would you like to wait or come back later?” or “This will take several days; we can call you when it comes on or mail it to you.”
10. Thank the customer. After all, your salary and job depend on that customer coming back and a simple “thank you” can help a great deal. It’s also a big part of politeness.
As it turned out, I didn’t need the Vicodin; there was no pain. But the experience at the drugstore did help me to think in another way about politeness.

Facial Attraction

Here's an interesting article on facial attraction that is likely to stimulate some interesting class discussion. The basic finding is that women who are in their fertile period prefer masculine facial features (George Clooney, rather than Pee Wee Herman--examples from Steven Gangestad, the author of the study).

Names

Here’s a study on names (you can access the entire study from the website given here/above) that has received lots of attention—Psychology Today, The New York Times, etc. it was conducted in The Netherlands and so probably cannot be directly applied to the United States. Yet, its findings (or “hypotheses” for study in other cultures) are most interesting. The study focuses on the perceptions people have of women as a result of their changing (or not changing) their name to that of their husbands’. For example, the study found that women who took on their husbands’ names or created hyphenated names were perceived as more dependent, emotional, and caring and less intelligent, competent, and ambitious than women who kept their own names. Even more interesting is the finding that a female job applicant who took used her husband’s name was less likely to be hired than the woman who kept her own name. It will be interesting to see if there’s any effect to Portia de Rossi’s taking the name of her wife, Ellen DeGeneres, and becoming Portia Lee James DeGeneres.

Online Politeness

Here's an intresting take on politeness (Int. J. of Virtual Communities and Social Networking, 1(2), 65-84, April-June 2009), a topic we address in our textbooks but never fully enough.

Virtual and face-to-face meetings

Here is a great little interview on virtual meetings and how they differ from the face to face groups that we emphasize in our small group chapters. Among the issues considered are how to dress for videoconferences, how to deal with the delays in teleconferences, and how a presentation in a virtual group should differ from one given in a face-to-face group.