browngirl

As a further aggravating factor, a lot of Americans can’t seem to hear the word “politeness” without hearing something like “prissy Victorian formality”. They are perfectly capable of applying the rules of etiquette that they have absorbed (since every culture has rules of etiquette, just like every language has rules of grammar), but they are inihibited from talking about those rules, which makes it an uphill slog to convince them to consciously adopt new rules.