Good In Our Time this week on ‘Politeness’ (and thanks to Matt for the heads up). You can still use Radio 4‘s Listen Again thing to hear it online (until thursday i think).
So – politeness as an active, self-conscious – almost revolutionary – social moment, and as something evoked by social changes which brough people into new forms of contact, in new social spaces, and made less relevant the old behavioural guidelines of class, sex and rank.
I wonder how can ground-rules of behaviour, aimed at mitigating conflict and misunderstanding, can be propagated in the aftermath of the current, global, sweep of social change?
(remember quote #49)