- Key People:
- Baldassare Castiglione
- Emily Post
- Amy Vanderbilt
- Marie Manning
- Related Topics:
- The Honourable
- Honorific
- netiquette
- courtesy title
- style
etiquette
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What is etiquette?
Etiquette is a system of rules and conventions that regulate social and professional behavior. These norms are mandated by custom and enforced by group pressure. Breaching etiquette results in the disapproval of other group members rather than formal penalties.
Regardless of material culture, stratified societies have etiquette where people know expected behaviors. Royal courts were natural homes for etiquette, with behavior niceties spreading from the monarch. The habits of etiquette can and do change with the constantly changing communities of society.
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Why do people follow social norms?
People follow social norms, including etiquette, for a few key reasons. Social norms are shared rules of behavior within a group, and people conform to them due to the desire for both accurate perceptions and acceptance.
Conforming to norms helps individuals gain confidence in their beliefs by aligning with respected others. Norms can be internalized through socialization or enforced externally via sanctions. Breaching etiquette results in disapproval from the group. Moreover, norms maintain social order and can deal with recurring social problems. Deviance from these norms can lead to social instability, prompting regulation through disapproval from family or friends. Sanctions, whether positive or negative, serve as reactions indicating approval or disapproval, reinforcing these behavioral standards.
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How is etiquette different in public and private settings?
Etiquette, a system of social norms, dictates accepted behavior within a group. While breaches of etiquette don't result in formal penalties, they can lead to disapproval from others.
The level of formality in etiquette often shifts between public and private settings. Public etiquette generally involves more rigid adherence to rules of politeness and decorum to maintain social order and respect. In contrast, private settings, such as close family gatherings, typically allow for more relaxed standards of behavior. However, regardless of the setting, etiquette helps to ensure consideration for others.
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What are some examples of proper etiquette in different cultures?
Social norms vary significantly across cultures, influencing etiquette. In Japanese culture, the refined kaiseki dining experience involves specific etiquette, such as hosts expressing gratitude to the chef before the meal with "arigato gozaimashita" and starting the meal with "itadakimasu." Chopsticks should be handled with care, and the oshibori (hand towel) is only for wiping hands.
French cuisine emphasizes the importance of gathering over meals to celebrate significant life events. This tradition highlights the cultural importance of gastronomy in France, which UNESCO recognized in 2010.
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How does etiquette help people interact peacefully?
Etiquette is a system of rules and conventions that regulate social and professional behavior. These norms, mandated by custom and enforced by group pressure, help people know what behavior is expected of them and what to expect from others.
By providing a framework for polite and respectful interaction, etiquette helps to construct and maintain a pleasant, comfortable, and efficient environment, as well as to avoid placing strain on the system and generating conflict among users. It promotes personal conduct and behavior that is evaluated by an accepted standard of appropriateness for a social or professional setting.
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How can changing social norms affect etiquette over time?
Etiquette, a system of rules that governs social behavior, is impacted by shifting social norms because the customs and norms within communities evolve, leading to changes in etiquette. Social change is perpetual in any society, driven by the invention of new technologies, knowledge, beliefs, or trends.
Innovations are adopted selectively and must align with cultural values. Often, higher-status groups initiate these changes, setting examples that lower-status groups follow. As innovations spread, they lose their distinctiveness, prompting the early adopters to seek new trends. This mechanism explains the continuous evolution of etiquette in response to social changes.
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etiquette, system of rules and conventions that regulate social and professional behaviour. In any social unit there are accepted rules of behaviour upheld and enforced by legal codes; there are also norms of behaviour mandated by custom and enforced by group pressure. An offender faces no formal trial or sentence for breach of etiquette; the penalty lies in the disapproval of other members of the group. Regardless of its level of material culture, any highly stratified society will possess an etiquette in which every person knows the behaviour expected from him toward others and from others toward himself.
The royal court was the natural home of etiquette, because it centred upon a monarch around whom niceties of behaviour spread in expanding circles. The author of Beowulf, writing of Anglo-Saxon society, describes Wealtheow the queen, “mindful of etiquette,” carrying the goblet first to the king, then to the courtiers, in a clearly defined order of precedence.
The Middle Ages was a golden period for Western etiquette, since the feudal system was strictly stratified. Jean Froissart in his Chronicle speaks of the Black Prince waiting at table upon the captive king John of France, after the Battle of Poitiers.
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In Britain standards of conduct were greatly affected by the publication in the 16th century of certain Italian works known as courtesy books. Probably the most influential of these was Baldassare Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano (1528; The Book of Courtesy, 1561). Further elaborations by English authorities—e.g., Richard Brathwaite’s The English Gentleman and Description of a Good Wife—arrived in colonial America with passengers of the “Mayflower.” These British imports were soon followed by such indigenous products as the manual for parents entitled School of Good Manners (attributed to Eleazar Moody, 1715).
The late 18th and early 19th centuries showed another great flowering of etiquette in Britain when exquisites like Beau Nash and Beau Brummell imposed their whims as rules upon polite society; even the Prince Regent would not leave his waistcoat unbuttoned to a greater degree than Brummell prescribed. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries those in the upper strata of society regarded the observance of the most trivial demands of etiquette as at once a diversion and, for the women, an occupation. More and more elaborate rituals were designed to create a sense of exclusiveness for the initiates and to keep the unworthy, ignorant of them, at a distance.
By mid-20th century, however, concern about polite conduct was no longer confined to a social elite. Good manners for ordinary people in everyday situations were set forth in the United States by two prominent and influential arbiters of taste, Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt. Drawing on her own wide experience in social, political, and diplomatic situations, no less a personage than Eleanor Roosevelt published her own typically practical Book of Common Sense Etiquette (1962).
World wars and increasing social equality resulted in a simpler code, appropriate to the faster tempo and less pampered conditions of life in society. Nonetheless, etiquette remains active on royal or ceremonial occasions and in the more formal aspects of professional or communal life. No rule of law or principle of morality decrees that a soup plate should be tilted away from, never toward, the diner, or that (in Great Britain) a surgeon shall be known as “Mr.” while a physician is addressed as “Dr.,” but etiquette ordains it. Since the framework and content of the communities of which society is formed are constantly changing, the habits of etiquette can and do change with them.
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